Crash possibly third-deadliest in history
CRASH from page 1
-emnly watched the search.
“We have collected 200 bodies so
far from all over the field,” said
Mohammed Akhil, the police officer
in charge of die Operations.
The Saudi Arabia-bound Saudi
Arabian Airlines jediner with 312 pas
sengers and crew members had been
in the air for only seven minutes when
it collided with a Kazakstan Airlines
Ilyushin-76 cargo plane, which was on
a landing approach, aviation officials
said.
Seventeen foreigners were on board
the Saudi jetliner, including two Ameri
cans and a Briton, Press Thist of India
news agency reported.
The plane arriving from Shymkent
in the former Soviet republic of
Kazakstan was carrying 39 people, 28
Kazak passengers and an 11-member
Russian crew.
All aboard the two planes were
thought to be killed. There were no
reports that anyone on the ground dial.
Hours after die crash, the crumpled
fuselage of the Kazak plane rested in a
field. The jet’s wings had been sliced
off. A few charred bodies lay an the
ground.
Local district administrator
T.V.S.L. Prasad said workers were try
ing to extricate bodies from the plane.
The American pilot of a C-141 Air
Force transport plane who was bring
ing in supplies for the U.S. Embassy
in New Delhi witnessed the crash’s fi
ery aftermath from 20,000 feet.
“We noticed out of our right-hand
(side of the plane) a large cloud lit up
with an orange glow, from within the
clouds,” the 30-year-old captain told
reporters in a conference call from the
Indian capital.
The U.S. Embassy could not con
firm that two Americans were on
board.
Nine Nepalese, three Pakistanis, a
Bangladeshi and a Saudi were also on
the Saudi plane, which had taken off
from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Inter
national Airport.
The Indian government announced
a judicial inquiry into the cause of the
accident.
The weather in New Delhi was nor
mal for this time of year. The sides were
clear, albeit polluted. Smoke from fire
works set off in recent days to celebrate
the Hindu holiday of Diwali had thick
ened the haze.
m-—
I saw 60 or 70 bodies, but only about
15 were identifiable
Manjit Singh
19-year-old college student
At about 6:40 p.m. local time, as
the sun was setting, the Saudi plane was
cleared to climb to 14,000 feet, while
the Kazak aircraft was authorized to
descend to 15,000 feet, said H.S.
Khola, the director general of civil
aviation. Suddenly, he said at a new
conference, “the radar blip of both air
craft was lost.”
In 1977, twaBoeing 747s operated
by Pan American and KLM collided
at the airport on Tenerife in Spain’s
Canary Islands, killing 582 people. In
1985, a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747
crashed into>a mountain on a domestic
flight, killing 520.
Until Tuesday’s crash, the third
deadliest crash was a 1974 accident
outside Paris involving a TUrkish DC
10 that killed 346 people.
Guards block Zairians from tood warehouse
— -• • • - ' ■ • i
Refugees receive first aid shipment in weeks
GOMA, Zaire (AP) — Security
guards with sticks beat hundreds of
hungry residents back from the en
trance to a food warehouse today, as
Zairians scrambled for the crumbs of
the first aid to arrive in more than two
weeks.
Nearly a month after fighting broke
out in eastern Zaire between Tutsi
rebels and the Zairian army, neither
food nor medical aid has reached the
1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees
who fled dozens of U.N. camps hoe.
Sixteen trucks and jeeps came in
fron neighboring Rwanda on Monday,
but the 16 tons of beans and rice they
carried werejust a drop in this region’s
ocean of need.
U.N. Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali said Tuesday that
Canada has agreed to lead a military
contingent that could bring up to
20,000 troops to try to restore calm and
aid refugees in eastern Zaire.
He said details of the proposed
Canadian-led military intervention are
still being settled, but more than a
dozen nations have so far pledged sup
port.
“People are talking between 10,000
* and 20,000 (troops),” Boutros-Ghali
told reporters, speaking in Rone the
day before the opening of the U.N.
World Food Summit. He would not
estimate when the first soldiers could
arrive. , .
Canadian officials say they have
committed 180 soldiers in a Disaster
Assistance Response Team and ex
pressed a willingness to provide 1,500
additional troops.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean
Chretien spoke to 15 world leaders
over the weekend, trying to firm up
participation in the force, his aides said.
Desperation was increasing even
among Goma’s 80,000 residents,
thought to be slightly better off than
the refugees.
“We come here every day just in
case there are same beans or rice for
us," said Muhima Kishuba, a 35-year
old Zairian teacher and father of four,
as he stood outside Goma’s main food
aid compound.
“There’s hardly any food at the
market, and we have no money to buy
it with anyway,” he said. “There are
many hungry people in Goma.”
- International aid workers fled the
chaos in Goma and Bukavu more than
two weeks ago and have not yet been
allowed back in.
An estimated 100,000 Hutu refu
gees scattered in the hills above Uvira
need food but are afraid to come down,
and more than 60,000 refugees are re
ported to be converging on Kisangani,
330 miles northwest of Goma, U.N.
officials said Tuesday.
Students want leader ousted
KINSHASA, Zaire (AP) — In
the underground corridors of a Uni
versity of Kinshasa dormitory, hun
dreds of young men sleep head-to
foot on mats lining damp cement
floors.
"V . ■ - , 4 i ••
There is no running water and
only sporadic electricity. The stench
of overflowing toilets is tolerable
only when overwhelmed by the
sweet-and-sour smell of manioc
leaves and pilipili peppers boiling
on open fires.
Here, bright students with
dreams of becoming engineers, doc
tors and lawyers have become lead
ers of a movement to overthrow the
government.
The movement was provoked by
ethnic Tutsi rebel attacks on east
ern Zaire and anger over a govern
ment too weak to counter those at
tacks. But it was bom in the humil
ity of living in constant filth and
hunger.
“I’m ashamed for you to see this,
our villa in the hills,” said Dave
Tanda, a 30-year-old law student
and protest leader. “It’s each man
for himself here.”
The students want parliament to
oust Prime Minister Leon Kengo wa
Dondo. They say Kengo, whose
mother is a Rwandan Thtsi, has been
soil on Rwanda, Zaire’s tiny neigh
bor to the east with a Tutsi-led gov
ernment accused of supporting the
Tutsi rebels who have taken over
parts of eastern Zaire.
Thousands of students in the
past two weeks have taken to the
streets, often commandeering pub
lic buses and private cars. Thdr vio
lent clashes with drivers and sol
diers have killed three students and
one soldier.
The students had planned to
march Tuesday, but the capital was
calm—perhaps because university
officials threatened to cancel final
exams, already delayed by several
months, if students didn’t stay put.
Student leaders say they deplore
the attacks on ethnic Thtsis—most
of whom have fled the capital —
and issued a declaration calling on
theirpeers to forget their “xenopho
bic sentiments” and join their cause
to peacefully oust the government.
“We don’t want Kengo out be
cause he’s a Tutsi. We want Kengo
out because of his indifference to
our poverty and suffering,” said Fox
Kabundi, 31, a movement leader
and graduate student in physics.
There are more than 15,000 stu
dents at the University of Kinshasa
and some 20,000 students at 11
other state-run, vocational colleges
in the capital.
Crumbling, dorms and class
rooms are overcrowded. Hundreds
of students often share one textbook
and one professor who, if paid,
earns the equivalent of $30 a month.
Many students at “U-Kin”
awake before dawn to mark then
place in line for showers rumored
to be working and then rush to class
rooms to claim chairs so they won’t
have to sit on the floor.
The university’s vice chancellor,
Lumpungu Kamanda, understands
the students’ cause is bom of frus
tration over their conditions and
over politics—including a six-year
wait for multiparty elections prom
ised by President Moubutu Sese
Seko.
Money missing since Nazi reign recovered
Swiss bank ombudsman
finds five victims’assets in
bank vaults.
ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) —
Assets belonging to five Jewish victims
of Nazi Germany have been found so
far in one search of Swiss bank vaults
that was begun under intense interna
tional pressure.
Hanspeter Haeni, an ombudsman
appointed by Swiss banks to help heirs
of Holocaust victims locate missing
accounts, said Tuesday that the discov
ered assets were part of $ 1.2s million
belonging to 11 depositors he has
found so far this year.
Haeni did not describe the six other
depositors. However, he said only
$8,800 of that money was owed to the
heirs of Holocaust victims.
The World Jewish Congress, which
has been campaigning to open Swiss
bank books for what it claimed would
be $7 billion in such assets, called his
findings “pathetic.”
The search covered dormant ac
counts up until 1985 on the theory that
would cover any Holocaust victims
who died during or after the Nazi era.
“In terms of figures, the results of
our activities may seem disappointing
at first glance,” Haeni said. “I myself
consider the results encouraging, just
because something has been found.”
The Jewish victims included three
people killed by the Nazis and two
people in Romania who lost all they
owned during World War n, he said.
The Romanians have apparently since
died, and only after the fall of Com
munism could their descendants ask
about the assets, he said.
Haeni has conducted 51 searches
so far, culled from 2,229 requests for
assistance received during the first nine
months of the year.
Two-thirds of those requests came
from victims of the Nazis, even though
there had been previous Swiss efforts
to give Jews their rightful assets, he
said.
Everyone who sent in a request was
given a questionnaire, and about half
of thosejiave been returned. Most of
those cases have cleared additional
checks and advanced to the search
stage.
Court upholds prosecution of former East German leaders
National Defense Council members face prison terms for roles in human-rights crimes
bunn, uermany (AP) —
Germany’s highest coart Tuesday up
held the prosecution of former Ea&
German leaders for the killing of free
dom-seekers who hied to flee over the
Berlin Wall ami across the deadly bar
riers that once divided the country.
The Constitutional Court ruled that
the killing of more than 500 people
along the former communist state’s
border during the 41 -year existence of
Bast Germany violated international
standards for human rights.
The Communists erected watch
towers, electrified barbed-wire fences
and high walls along the border be
tween East Germany and the West, cre
ating “death strips” that were patrolled
by guards with machine guns and at
tack dogs.
The decision is a significant victory
for united Germany's efforts to punish
those responsible for “shoot-to-kill”
orders that resulted in the deaths.
' + The court upheld the 1993 convic
tions of former East German Defense
Minister Heinz Kessler, his top aide,
Fritz Streletz and Communist Party
boss Hans Albrecht.
The three, all members of the Na
tional Defense Council that oversaw
border patrols, unsuccessfully argued
that their trial was illegal because they
had only carried out the law of a sov
ereign state: East Germany.
Survivors of the victims welcomed
the decision.
Marlit Schubert watched her hus
band, Helmut Kleinert, gunned down
as they tried to run across a field on
the border with West Germany in 1963.
“the court’s ruling is a victory for
all of us (families of the victims),” she
said.
Kleinert was 24 when he died.
Schubert was 22 and pregnant.
Thirty-three years have passed and
she has remarried, but Schubert said
■
she still visits the site m the Harz
Mountains where her first husband
died.
“What I went through is something
you never forget,” she said.
Kessler, Streletz and Albrecht are
among about three dozen former Com
munist officials and border guards who
have been convicted for border
shootings since Germany's 1990 reuni
fication.
The three were convicted on
charges stemming from seven border
deaths and were given prison sentences
of up to 7!6years.
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