21 killed, dozens missing after attack in central Mali

BAMAKO, Mali - Twenty-one people were killed in an attack overnight on a village in central Mali, the government said Friday, in an apparent spate of ethnic violence in the deeply troubled region.

The attack occurred in Ogossagou, a village mainly inhabited by Fulani people where 160 died last March 23 in a massacre blamed on Dogon militiamen. 

About 30 gunmen carried out the new attack, village chief Aly Ousmane Barry told AFP. 

Malian government spokesman Yaya Sangare said that 21 people had been killed in the attack, according to a provisional tally, and that others were missing. 

"Huts and crops were set alight, livestock was burned or taken away," he added, vowing that the government would find the perpetrators.

A local government official, who requested anonymity, said that 28 people were missing.

He blamed the attack on a traditional Dogon hunters' group -- an assertion that could be not be verified independently.

The official and village chief Aly Ousmane Barry both said the attackers moved in several hours after government troops had pulled out of the area. 

Central Mali became gripped by ethnic violence after a jihadist revolt broke out in the north of the country in 2012.

The insurgency has claimed thousands of lives and spread to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso. 

Tit-for-tat attacks in central Mali flared after Fulani people, also called Peul, became associated with jihadists. 

Led by a firebrand Islamic preacher Amadou Koufa, a militia called the Katiba Macina recruited members from among the Fulani and became accused of ethnically-motivated attacks.

Other ethnic groups such as the Bambara or the Dogon began to form self-defense groups that in turn became accused of reprisal massacres. 

In addition to the latest attack at Ogossagou, 14 Fulani were killed in central Mali in January.

Around 75 Dogons were killed in the villages of Sobane Da, Gangafani and Yoro in June last year, in an attack blamed on Fulani militants.

"EPICENTER" OF VIOLENCE

Human Rights Watch this month pointed to the ethnic patchwork of central Mali as the country's "epicenter" of violence. 

It said over 450 civilians had been killed in the region in 2019, "the deadliest year for civilians" since the jihadist insurgency began.

Reflecting the chronic instability in the centre, Malian soldiers are themselves frequently targeted.

On Friday, one soldier was killed in an attack on a military camp in Mondoro, security officials said. 

It had already been hit before -- as part of a joint raid by militants that also targeted the military camp of Boulkessy near the border with Burkina Faso, killing at least 25 soldiers. 

On January 26, Al-Qaeda-linked militants attacked a military camp in Sokolo, central Mali, killing 20 gendarmes and wounding five more. 

The violence in central Mali coincides with renewed hopes that the fragile government can reassert control over the widely lawless north. 

Troops returned on Thursday to Kidal, a northern town that had been a bastion of Tuareg rebels, after a six-year absence. 

Regular forces returned to the town accompanied by former rebels who have been integrated into the army under a regional peace agreement. 

The deal, reached in Algiers in 2015, is considered one of the few avenues Mali has for escaping the cycle of violence.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'I had to get out': Students fled Texas high school shooter

SANTA FE, Texas - Students at Santa Fe High School in Texas were just beginning Friday classes when an alarm bell sounded, gun shots rang out, and they had to run from the latest mass shooting at a U.S. school.

"I wanted to take care of my friends, but I knew I had to get out of there," said 15-year-old freshman Courtney Marshall, who saw the gunman walk into her art class and open fire. "I knew the guy behind me was dead."

Police said a student fatally shot at least 10 people, including students, before he was arrested. Explosive devices were also found on campus, authorities said.

Student Zack Wofford said he was in a classroom two doors down from where the shooting took place. He said his substitute teacher ran into the corridor and pulled the fire alarm and that students barricaded the door.

"On the side it happened ... was only three, four classes," Wofford told CBS affiliate KHOU. "We knew there was another 1,000 (students) on the whole other side of the school. We knew the fire alarm would get them out safe."

Sophomore Dakota Shrader told reporters there was panic as teachers told the students to run.

"As soon as the alarms went off, everybody just started running," she said, "and next thing you know everybody looks, and you hear boom, boom, boom, and I just ran as fast as I could to the nearest floor so I could hide, and I called my mom."

One male student told KHOU how he sprinted for the safety of a nearby treeline: "I didn't want to be in sight. I heard four more shots, and then we jumped the fence to somebody's house."

Another, Damon Rabon, recounted how he and a substitute teacher saw the shooter after they heard several loud bangs and poked their heads out of a classroom door.

"Black trenchcoat, short kind of guy, had a sawed-off shotgun," Rabon told CBS News in an interview.

One female student was interviewed by CBS News in a video that was widely shared online. In it, she said she was not surprised that the shooting took place at her school because they have been "happening everywhere."

"I've always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too," said the student, who was not named. "I wasn't surprised, I was just scared."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Donors flock to blood banks in Vegas after shooting

As more than 500 wounded flooded the hospitals of Las Vegas after the worst mass shooting in modern US history, electronic billboard ads urged people to give blood.

The response from the community has been overwhelming, with long lines of donors snaking out the doors -- sustained with offerings of pizza and cookies.


"Donors came after two in the morning when they received the news. The flow did not stop well until the evening," said Mitzy Edgecomb of United Blood Services, an agency that collects donated blood and supplies it to hospitals.

"Yesterday we collected 700 donations in the Las Vegas area. Well over 1,000 people attempted to donate. We are seeing numbers not seen in a very long time," Edgecomb said outside a blood drive center in suburban Las Vegas.

Tuesday morning, when the doors opened at 9:00 am, more than 100 people were waiting outside to give blood, and in the afternoon a dozen were still waiting.

A Salvation Army truck handed out free slices of pizza.

People not even wishing to donate showed up with water and homemade cookies.

"Anything like this brings a community together. People are good at heart and they want to do something to help at the time when they are slightly helpless," said Edgecomb.

She said she expects the flow to keep up through the weekend.

"We've met the needs at the hospitals where some of the victims were transported. We are replenishing that supply and preparing for the days and weeks ahead," she said.

'We love you'

At one blood drive center, Dianne Spence, 70, lay down on a cot next to her husband Richard.

She squeezes a rubber ball as a nurse inserts a needle into her arm. She is from Georgia and has lived in Las Vegas for 27 years.

She is a regular blood donor and already had an appointment for Tuesday, even before Sunday's carnage by a retired accountant named Stephen Paddock. He killed 58 people and himself, and wounded 527.

Spence kept her appointment "because it is a critical time and people need it."

She said she was proud of the way the people of Las Vegas are responding to this crisis.

"Hate is just a sad symptom of fear. People are in a very rough place today," she said. "I grew up in the south and we have a lot of hate. It's just sad, really sad."

One cot further over, Sammy Rangel is talking to the nurses.

He is wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Las Vegas, We Love You" that does not quite hide all the tatoos on his body.

Rangel used to be the leader of a white supremacist gang in Chicago and spend 18 years in prison.

Then he founded an association called Life after Hate, which brings people like him together for social rehabilitation programs.

The motives of the shooter in Las Vegas are still not known.

Rangel said he is here to "counter the message of hate with love and compassion." And blood donations.

"This is where acts of hate and terror lose, because they're not designed to bring communities together and yet it seems that when these things happen, communities come together," said Rangel.

"It's counter-intuitive to what they're trying to accomplish, right?"

Douglas Fraser, a surgeon at University Medical Center, said he saw more than 100 patients come in after the shooting, including 20 in critical condition.

He said his people are trying to help both physical and psychological injuries, and the latter take longer to heal.

"The emotional strain is probably the highest right now," he said. "Right now we are just trying to help each other and the patients kind of get right through this."

"Some of these wounds will heal physically but the mental aftermath is going to be for some time," he said, adding victims' families members of would also have to deal with the trauma of mass shooting.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

A day after a massacre, Vegas is not quite Vegas

LAS VEGAS- The slot machines were still ringing and the drinks still flowing but the party didn't feel quite the same along the world-famous Las Vegas Strip on Monday evening, 24 hours after a gunman staged the bloodiest shooting in modern US history.

The somber mood was especially pronounced at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where police say a retiree with an arsenal of assault rifles rained hundreds of bullets into a crowd of concert-goers below his room, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 500.

A hush had descended over the Mandalay hotel lobby that, in normal times, bustles with excitement at nearly every hour of the day or night. The shrieking gamblers, the bachelorettes with oversized cocktails, the high-rollers spruced up for an expensive evening out, all were nowhere to be seen.

Instead, a few solitary gamblers sat with glassy eyes in front of slot machines in the lobby. Four security officers unceremoniously escorted a Reuters reporter out when she tried to interview a casino guest.

"It's eerie. People are trying to enjoy it, but there's a cloud hanging over the city right now," said Greg Hartnett, 31, who had arrived for his first visit to Vegas earlier in the day.

Hartnett, who lives near the site of the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university, said Sunday's rampage reminded him of that bloodbath.

"It really shows the dark side of humanity," he said.

Vegas cabbie Alex Sanchez said his passengers were much less chatty than usual, and there were many fewer cars on the road.

"People come here for an escape. They want to leave their stresses behind," Sanchez said. "And this really puts a damper on it."

Despite the overall gloominess, people along the Strip appeared more ready than on a more carefree day to hold a door or share a quiet smile with strangers.

"I've been thanking every police officer I see," said Hartnett. "I feel like it's bringing people together.

Sheriffs deputies and their gleaming white motorcycles were parked on the sidewalk in a show of force, perhaps intended to reassure anxious tourists.

"Thanks for last night, guys," shouted one passing woman.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

4 dead in townhouse shooting in Aurora, Colorado

AURORA, Colo. - A gunman who barricaded himself inside a townhouse after killing three people in the home was shot to death by police on Saturday in Aurora, Colorado, the same Denver suburb where 12 people where slain in a movie house massacre last July, police said.

The gunman and his three victims, as well as a woman who fled safely from the home at the outset of the violence and alerted authorities, were all believed to be related to one another, police spokeswoman Cassidee Carlson said.

But the motive for the killings was not immediately understood.

"We're trying to find out what set this guy off," she told Reuters.

A hostage-negotiation team called to the scene had sought to talk the suspect into surrendering for about five hours before police moved to shoot tear gas into the home at about 8:00 a.m. (10:00 a.m. EST/1500 GMT), prompting the gunman to open fire on officers from inside, police said.

About an hour later, the gunman began firing at police again from a second-floor window, and police returned fire, killing the suspect, according to a police statement following the incident. No police were wounded.

Officers entering the townhouse found the bodies of the gunman and three other people - two men and a woman - who were presumed to have been shot hours earlier before police were called to the scene.

"None of the officers heard gunshots until they were directed at us at about 8 o'clock," Carlson said. The woman who escaped the home also told police the victims were shot before she fled.

The names of the gunman and his three victims were being withheld until the coroner could confirm their identities and notify next of kin, authorities said.

The episode kept residents in much of the surrounding community awake overnight, as police notified neighbors of an emergency situation and evacuated several adjacent blocks.

One neighbor, Sunil Pawar, 59, said he received a reverse 911 call advising him to stay inside and away from windows before police later showed up to ring doorbells and escort residents of the townhouse development to safety.

Pawar said he opted to stay put, later hearing gunshots, followed by the voices of police calling to the gunman though a bullhorn, saying, "Sonny, we want to talk to you, pick up the phone, Sonny."

Another neighbor, Michael Ignace, 46, said he had previously spoken with the man suspected of the shooting, and "he seemed like a reasonable guy, and we talked about motorcycles."

The standoff and shooting unfolded just a few miles south of the Aurora movie theater where 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded when a lone gunman opened fire there in July during a midnight showing of the Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises."

The suspect in that rampage, former college student James Holmes, is due back in court on Monday for a hearing in which prosecutors will seek to convince a judge they have sufficient evidence to put him on trial.

The Colorado movie theater killings had ranked as deadliest mass shooting in the United States last year until a Dec. 14 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman shot 20 school children and six adults to death before taking his own life. The shooter in that case also had killed his mother at their home.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Aurora, with additional reporting by Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Walsh)

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Gabriela marks massacre anniv with protest

MANILA, Philippines - Women's group Gabriela held a picket at the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday to mark the 3rd anniversary of the gruesome Maguindanao massacre and International Day to End Impunity.

Armed with placards that demanded an end to impunity against women and children, Gabriela called on the DOJ, through Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, to speed up the resolution of pending cases involving violence against women and children.

Of the 58 Maguindanao massacre victims on Nov. 23, 2009, some were women journalists and female members of the Mangudadatu clan.

The protesters lamented the "slow pace" of preliminary investigations being conducted by the DOJ on these cases.

Gabriela also lamented how the Aquino administration has "tolerated" abuses against women and children, and lashed out at government's "Oplan:Bayanihan" counter-insurgency campaign.

"Sa halip na maglapat ng hustisya sa mga biktima ng mga krimeng kinukunsinti ng gobyernong Arroyo, ipinagpatuloy lang ni Presidente Aquino ang walang habas na paghahari ng lagim ng military, mga warlord, at death squad na gumagahasa at umabuso sa kababaihan at kabataan," Gabriela secretary-general Joms Salvador said in a statement.

Salvador said families of victims against these crimes continue to seek their support. The latest case referred to them was the case of a 15-year old girl who reportedly went mentally unstable after having been allegedly raped by soldiers inside a Camp in Tanay, Rizal, and another minor female from Lobo, Batangas who was allegedly raped by his CAFGU uncle.

Gabriela urged government to not only exert efforts to attain justice for the victims, but to also secure their witnesses and kin.

"Katulad ng mga biktima ng Ampatuan masaker na pinagbabantaan ngayon, ang mga pamilya ng bikima ay pinagbabantaan din para iurong ang kanilang mga kaso," Salvador said.

The protesters, totaling at least 50, were also joined by women members of Migrante International.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Syria Massacre Shocks The World

DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — Syrian forces bombarded the protest city of Homs Saturday, killing more than 200 civilians in a “horrific massacre,” activists said.

Opposition groups put the Homs death toll at between 217 and at least 260, making it the deadliest incident in the nearly 11-month uprising.

The Damascus government denied involvement in the pre-dawn assault, blaming groups trying to incite unrest ahead of a possible Security Council vote, as television images showed bodies and buildings destroyed in the city.

“Assad forces randomly bombed residential areas in Homs, including Khalidiyeh and Qusur, which resulted in at least 260 civilians killed and hundreds of wounded, including men, women, and children,” said the Syrian National Council (SNC).

The “Assad regime committed one of the most horrific massacres since the beginning of the uprising in Syria,” it said.

Assad's forces also “bombed” the northern town of Jisr al-Shughur near the Turkish border, and suburbs of Damascus, it said.

Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya television showed dozens of bodies and scenes of chaos as tweets claiming to be from residents said Homs ''is bleeding'' under the bombardment.

''It's a real massacre,'' Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, calling for ''immediate intervention'' by the Arab League.

He said at least 237 were killed, including 99 women and children, and several hundred wounded in Homs, a flashpoint of the Syrian uprising.

Al-Jazeera said witnesses spoke of nail bombs exploding and incessant shelling.

Resident Danny Abdul Ayem reported ''non-stop bombardment... by tank shells and mortar bombs.''

''The bombardment stopped this morning, and residents emerged to look for the dead and wounded in the debris,'' activist Hadi Abdullah told AFP by phone from Khalidiyeh, adding that ''nearly 200 martyrs'' were prepared for burial.

A medical student told Al-Jazeera the local hospital was struggling to cope.

''There is a lack of blood, a lack of oxygen... There is danger in the streets,'' he said. ''We are overwhelmed. We have opened the mosque next door'' to the wounded, he said.

AFP was not immediately able to verify the authenticity of videos or of opposition and resident accounts because of restrictions on reporting in Syria.

The government denied its army had shelled Homs and accused television stations of ''inciting'' violence, the official SANA news agency said.

''The civilians shown by satellite television stations are citizens who were kidnapped and killed by armed gunmen'' it accused of ''wanting to use that information to (pressure) the Security Council.''

France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, condemned this “further step in savagery,” calling it a “crime against humanity.”

In an apparent allusion to Moscow, it said anyone hindering condemnation of the violence and steps toward a political solution would ''bear a heavy responsibility in history.”

Opposition groups again demanded the world act to end a campaign they say has killed at least 6,000 people since March, and angry protesters stormed Syrian embassies in Athens, Berlin, Cairo, Kuwait and London.

Tunisia said it was expelling Syria’s ambassador and ending its recognition of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

A statement from the presidency in Tunis said “there is no solution for this tragedy other than the fall of (the) regime and the opening of a road towards a democratic transition in Syria.”

And the head of the Arab League’s parliament called on member nations to cut diplomatic and economic ties with Syria.

In separate violence, Abdel Rahman said security forces opened fire on funerals near Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding 30.

A diplomat at the United Nations said the Security Council was expected to meet between 1400 and 1500 GMT and vote later on a resolution of condemnation.

But there were new objections from Russia, which opposes a resolution that can be used to justify foreign military intervention, call for Assad to quit or impose an arms embargo on Syria.

''The draft does not suit us at all and I hope that it is not put to a vote,'' Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Lavrov will meet later Saturday, amid a renewed American push for passage of the resolution.

President Barack Obama accused the Syrian government of murdering civilians in an “unspeakable assault” and demanded that Assad step down.

“Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now. He must step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately,” Obama said in a statement.

The SNC demanded Russia change its position and ''clearly condemn the regime and hold it responsible for the massacres, to stop the killing in Syria.''

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe condemned ''in the strongest terms the new attack by the Syrian regime on the people of Homs.

''Far from halting their policy of repression, the Syrian authorities have taken a further step in savagery. The massacre of Homs is a crime against humanity, its perpetrators must answer for it,'' he said in a statement.

''This unbridled violence underlines the urgency for the United Nations Security Council to end its silence in order to condemn the authors of this crime and open the way to the implementation of the Arab League's political plan.

''The international community must recognise and support the right of the Syrian people to freedom, security and the choice of their political future.

''Those who would hinder the adoption of such a resolution would assume a heavy responsibility in history.''

source: mb.com.ph