!MRRR d. 1 99ft
CHICHIGALPA, Nicaragua (AP)
- First there was a roar, then a mon
strous wave of mud on the horizon. In
an instant, entire towns were swallowed
up.
For three days, survivors were
trapped on a hilltop in El Ojochal with
out food or drinking water, under a dri
ving rain brought on by Hurricane
Mitch. The mud that covered El
Ojochal and seven other villages in a
miles-wide swath was too unstable to
walk over safety
Alter days of pounding rams, the
crater lake high above them on the
Casitas volcano had overflowed. The
two rivers that drain die lake had joined
to form (me massive deluge.
The El Ojochal survivors, 45 in all,
straggled to die hilltop, now an island
in a sea of mud. The healthy men
among them made briefj desperate for
ays onto the shimmering mud to look
for survivors and rescue-the injured.
Nine people were found.
“the injured people stank because
their wounds woe so infeeted, and the
dead stank even worse,” Ortiz recalled
They walked out Monday, because
the ground had firmed somewhat and
“because we would have died there if
we had not,” Miguel Angel Ortiz, a sur
vivor, said.
Vice President Enrique Bolanos
said the slide apparently killed 1,000 to
1,500 people in several communities
near the city of Posoltega, at the foot of
the Casitas volcano.
Tuesday, the mayor of Posoltega,
Felicita Zeledon, said workers had
recovered 1,950bodies. The president’s
office said 1,338 died in the crater lake
mudslide. The differing figures could
not immediately be reconciled.
Another small mudslide on the
northern slope of the volcano wiped
out 34 houses Monday night, but there
were no apparent casualties, Defense
Minister Pedro Joaquin Chamorro
said
Central American officials estimat
ed Monday more than 7,000 people
died in floods and mudslides triggered
by Mitch, one of the strongest hurri
canes ever to hit the Caribbean.
The first relief helicopters reached
the region Sunday. They found decom
posing bodies everywhere, some with
just limbs sticking out of the mud
At first soldiers struggled to bury
bodies where they lay. But with die fear
of epidemics growing, volunteer
U.S. seeks help of Saudis
in possible attack on Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) — Warning
again of a possible military attack on
Iraq, top Clinton administration offi
cials sought die cooperation of Saudi
Arabia, a key player in the Persian Gulf
and in the U.S.-led combat operation
against Baghdad eight years ago.
As Defense Secretary William
Cohen flew overnight to die region,
with Saudi Arabia his first stop, Vice
President A1 Gore and Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright made sepa
rate telephone calls to Crown Prince
Abdallah, first in line to ailing King
Fahd.
As always, U.S. officials were reti
cent Tuesday about the contacts with
I i
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the Saudis, who guard their relation
ship with the United States from expo
sure in the Arab world: State
Department spokesman James P. Rubin
said only that Albright called Abdallah
to underscore “die gravity of die situa
tion.”
Cohen took no reporters with him.
Undersecretary of State Thomas
Pickering was aboard, a signal that the
Clinton administration was not aban
doning diplomacy even while threaten
ing President Saddam Hussein again
for declaring an end to Iraqb coopera
tion with U.N. weapons inspectors. *
But also with Cohen was Marine
Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander for
the region.
A Saudi official said Fahd had told
Cohen in Riyadh dial he would not per
mit the Arab kingdom to be used as a
“springboard” for attacks on Iraq.
Saudi Arabia was the centra: of U.S.
war operations during the 1991 Gulf
War that evicted Saddam’s forces from
Kuwait
If bases in Saudi Arabia were
denied, one way the United States
could get around the logistical problem
would be by flying B-52 bombers from
Britain to Iraqi targets. Six of the
bombers are there.
resident Clinton called British
Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss
Iraq. In a 10-minute conversation, they
agreed on the “gravity we see in the
current state of affairs,” White House
spokesman PJ. Crowley said.
Albright, at a news conference
here, said “the end point here is not
specifically to use force but to achieve
what you want.” She said, however, that
“all options remain on the table.”
Albright, trying to bolster allied
support for a tough stand against Iraq,
has telephoned British Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook and Foreign
Ministers Hubert Vedrine of France,
Igor Ivanov of Russia and Luiz Felipe
Lampreia of Brazil, as well as U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The State Department’s position is
that there is no need for a new U.N.
Security Council resolution to autho
rize force, that there is a legal basis
already to take action and that the
United States could attack on its own if
others did not choose to go along.
«-—-—
The only thing the federal government does
is ask us for a number every half hour...
but they don’t send us anything.”
Eluio Palacio
Chichigalpa mayor
brigades set out from Chichigalpa on
Monday to bum bodies.
“We need the government to send
us gasoline if they want to avoid an epi
demic,” said Robert Lopez Marcia, a
member of Chichigalpa’is emergency
commission.
At an improvised shelter in a
Chichigalpa elementary school, doc
tors stitched wounds and performed
other minor surgery on people evacuat
ed from the mountains. The doctors
were in desperate need of medicine,
antibiotics and bandages, and there was
little clean water or food. Children lay
on desks with Moody bandages on their
heads.
“The only thing the federal govem
ment does is ask us for a number every
half hour - how many dead, how many
injured - but they don’t send us any
thing,” said Chichigalpa Mayor Elijio
Palacio.
All along the Pan American high
way, thousands of people walked in the
pouring rain Monday, some leanring the
disaster area, others going in to search
for family members;
Few got very far Dozens ofbridges
were washed out, and roads were dam
aged. Bystanders pitched in to help cars
and ox carts stuck in the mud. ^
Erie Rio, 26, and Ms wife, Ruth
Reyes, 25, hiked several hours through
deep mud into Barrio Chamorro to
check on family and friends.
“We saw about 10 bodies, all very
decomposed,” said Rio.
Robbers on trial
e •P . ■ . %
after crime spree
■Police say small
mistakes doomed the
usually clean work of the
Trench Coat Robbers.
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - Odd,
Kathleen Prentice thought, as she
and another bank employee were
locking up the cash at the end of the
day: There shouldn’t be a man indie
vault.
Stranger still, the man said he
was with die FBI and had come for
the money. But he showed no ID.
And what kind of FBI agent enters a
bank wearing a baseball cap, big
sunglasses, gloves and a trench
coat?
/\s ms parmer rounaea up anom
er employee in the lobby, die man
^iiose presence had so baffled the
bank staff felt compelled to explain
the obvious: “This is a robbery.”
In the next 90 minutes, the man
and his similarly clad accomplice
would drain the Seafirst Bank
branch in suburban Lakewood,
Wash., of $4,461,681 - what real
FBI agents say was the most ever
taken in an American bank robbery.
The job was so professional that
customers outside continued to use
the ATM without noticing anything
wrong.
In a federal courtroom here,
Prentice and other government wit
nesses described the last big haul by
die Trench Coat Robbers - two men
who for 15 years made crime pay
very well.
The FBI contends Ray Lewis
Bowman, 50, of Parkville, Mo., and
his partner, William Arthur
Kirkpatrick, 57, of Hovland, Minn.,
stole $8 million in 28 robberies dat
ing to 1982. The crimes, some of
which are beyond the statute of lim
itations, took place in 17 Western
and Midwestern states.
Bowman is on trial in connect
tion with the Seafirst robbery as
well as holdups in Des Moines,
Iowa; Saginaw, Mich.; Portland,
Ore.; and West Carrollton, Ohio.
Kirkpatrick will stand trial later, in
Minnesota.
Bowman, who was sentenced to
2Vi years in prison earlier this year
for illegally possessing gun silencer
parts, could get an additional 25
years if convicted in Tacoma.
Both he and Kirkpatrick have
denied any wrongdoing. Defense
attorney Peter Camiel said that
Bowman does not match witnesses’
descriptions and that there is no
physical evidence linking him to any
of the bank jobs.
The prosecution is expected to
wind up its case this week.
U.S. Attorney Kate Pflaumer
described the Trench Coat Robbers
as pros who sprat weeks casing their
targets. Boh were master lock picks
and had a full set of master keys for
Chryslers, their preferred getaway
cars.
They struck just before banks
opened or closed, quickly tying up
tellers and rifling vaults and expert
ly evading alarms.
For the most part, the jobs were
slickly done: in and out quickly, no
fingerprints, minimal violence -
though a teller was shot in a 1983
holdup, and during a Las Vegas
heist, the robbers exchanged shots
with police and took a hostage.
For all die Trench Coat Robbers’
precision, it was small acts of care
lessness - waving cash around,
falling behind on a storage bill,
speeding - that ultimately led to die
two arrests.
In 1996, the IRS got a tip that
Kirkpatrick and his girlfriend had
paid $183,000 in cash for a custom
built log home in Minnesota.
In 1997, Bowman failed to pay a
bill at a Missouri storage company.
When an auctioneer found guns
inside, federal agents were called in.
That same year, a Nebraska state
trooper pulled Kirkpatrick over for
doing 7 mph above the limit Inside
his car, police found four pistols, ski
masks, phony police badges, lock
smith tools and $1.8 million in cash.
3 •' • .. v. • ■ :
Mitch still menaces
Yucatan Peninsula
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS
CASAS, Mexico (AP) -
Residents of Mexico’s Yucatan
Peninsula braced for a possible
lashing from Mitch as the former
hurricane strengthened Tuesday
over the Gulf of Mexico and
became a tropical storm.
Weather forecasters said the
storm, moving to the northeast
with 45 mph winds, could batter
the northern portion of the penin
sula and possibly southern
Florida later in the week with
heavy rains - but not with any
thing approaching hurricane
force winds.
The remnants of Hurricane
Mitch already have killed at least
five people in the southern state
of Chiapas, officials said
Tuesday.
Several hundred people were
evacuated from the southernmost
tip of Mexico on Monday because
of rivers swollen by the storm.
ggpjf
§—
i i
Before it will comply, Israel
asks for fugitives’ arrest
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel said
Tuesday it will not carry out the land
for-security peace agreement until it
gets assurances that the Palestinian
Authority will arrest 30 Palestinian
fugitives, raising questions about
whether the accord could be imple
mented.
The Palestinians said the United
States was satisfied with their anh-terrar
plan and accused Prime Minister
BenjaminNetanyahu of seizing apretext
to avoid handing over West Bank land,
The peace accord, signed Oct 23 in
Maryland, was to have taken effect
Monday but was delayed at die request
of Netanyahu. Under the agreement,
the first installment of an Israeli troop
pullbadk from 13 percent of the West
Bank is due on Nov. 16.
U.S. envoy Dennis Ross was to
arrive Thursday to oversee implementa
tion of the program that is to be carried
out over 12 weeks. Palestinian negotia
tor Saeb Erekat said it was up to the
Americans to break the latest impasse.
Justices hesitant to allow
blanket searches by police
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme
Court justices were skeptical Tuesday
about giving police Wanket authority to
search people and their cars without
consent after ticketing them for routine
violations.
“It does seem an enormous amount
of authority to put into the hands of the
police,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsbmg
said. ‘We do have constitutional checks
because we’re not always sure that the
police will exercise good judgment”
An Iowa man’s lawyer argued that
his rights were violated by a search of
his car that turned up marijuana.
Patrick Knowles, who had been
stopped for speeding, said the search
violated the Constitution’s Fourth
Amendment protection against unrea
sonable searches. Iowa courts allowed
die marijuana to be used as evidence,
and Knowles was convicted and sen
tenced to 90 days in jail.