1,000 dead in Colombia quake
Citizens search for food, supplies, coffins as government looks for aid
ARMENIA, Colombia (AP) - The
death toll from the worst earthquake to
hit the area in more than a century sur
passed 1,000 on Tuesday as survivors
anxiously awaited relief supplies and
prayed for signs of life under the rubble.
Those hopes were dashed again and
again.
Monday’s 6-magnitude earthquake
devastated cities and villages across
western Colombia, a vast Andean ter
rain where much of the world’s coffee is
grown. The tremor shook buildings as
far away as the capital, Bogota, 140
miles from the epicenter.
A small aftershock shook the region
Tuesday afternoon, causing little dam
age but sending panicked residents run
ning into the rubble-littered streets. It
was one of about 15 aftershocks.
With hundreds of people believed
still buried beneath the rubble, mayhem
reigned Tuesday in the streets of
Armenia, a city of300,000.
Rescue teams had recovered nearly
650 bodies in the country by noon and
estimated that at least 2,700 were
injured - but warned this was only a par
tial accounting.
Capt. Ciro Antonio Guiza,
Armenia’s deputy fire chief, said rescue
workers were so strapped that many
bodies remained on the streets uncol
lected. “There are more than 1,000
dead, perhaps more than 2,000 in
Armenia alone,” he said.
Two-thirds of the city’s buildings
were rendered uninhabitable. People
wandered about desperately looking for
relatives. There was no electricity or
running water in most of the city, and
food was in dangerously short supply.
An estimated 180,000 people were left
homeless in Armenia alone. '
Coffins have become a coveted
commodity.
“I’ve been looking for five coffins
for relatives since 8 o’clock this mom
ing and I couldn’t find any, so we’re
going to have to bury them in plastic,”
said 34-year-old Diego Ruiz, who lost
his grandmother, a sister and three
nieces.
Rescue workers scrambled to evac
uate the thousands of injured and to
locate survivors. At die city’s small air
port, ambulances arrived every 15 min
utes with more victims, who were air
lifted to hospitals in Bogota, Medellin
and Cali.
“There is a danger of epidemics,
because we have mote than 200 bodies
and we have no refrigerated trucks,”
said Carlos Gilberto Giraldo, a top
Colombian Red Cross official.
Two members of Colombia’s pro
fessional soccer chib Adetico Quindio -
Diego Montenegro and Rubai Biurret,
both from Argentina - were found dead.
Witnesses said die two were holding
onto each other in the ruins of a down
town hotel. Another four players are
feared dead.
Authorities say they need help, tons
of it: tents, food, forklifts, backhoes,
antibiotics, generators - and body bags.
Colombians, eager to help, formed
long lines at blood banks. The govern
ment set up a bank account to receive
donations, and by noon more than
$125,000 had been deposited. The
European Commission promised $1.1
million, Colombian officials said
Tuesday.
What was needed, though, was far
more - maybe hundreds of millions of
dollars.
“We’re going to need a great deal of
international aid because the govern
ment by itself does not have enough
resources,” said Piedad Correal
Rubiano, the ombudsman of Quindio
state, whose capital is Armenia.
First lady Nohora Pastrana went on
national television to promise
Colombians that relief was on the way.
Pentagon admits to
Iraq missile mistake
■ Officials say they can’t
back up Iraq’s claims of
fatalities and casualties.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Pentagon acknowledged for the first
time Tuesday that an Air Force mis
sile considered to be among its most
accurate went astray during an
attack on Iraqi air defenses and
struck a residential area. Iraq has
claimed it killed a number of civil
ians.
Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for
Defense Secretary William Cohen,
said a rocket-powered missile
known as the AGM-130, one of the
Air Force’s newest weapons, “did
miss its target” by a few miles. He
said the Air Force had not yet deter
mined what went wrong.
The missile landed in the al
Jumhuriya neighborhood outside of
Basra, a port city in southern Iraq
where U.S. planes have attacked air
defenses almost daily in response to
increased Iraqi challenges to
enforcement of a “no-fly” zone.
Reporters who visited the neigh
borhood Monday said four homes
were completely destroyed and six
were damaged. Iraq reported an
unspecified number of casualties
there; it said a total of three
American missiles killed 11 civil
ians in a series of attacks.
Bacon said only one U.S. missile
went astray.
“It created some damage, we
realize that and we regret any civil
ian casualties, but this was done in
response to a provocative attack
against our planes by Saddam
Hussein,” he said.
“We don’t have any independent
estimate of casualties or fatalities
that can back up what the Iraqis have
said about this,” Bacon said.
In a related development, Bacon
and other administration officials
acknowledged Tuesday that
American warplanes patrolling the
skies over northern and southern
Iraq are operating under new guid
ance that authorizes more aggres
sive action against Iraqi air defens
es.
“We’re acting here in self
defense and in response to concert
ed attacks by Saddam Hussein,”
Sandy Berger, the president’s
national security adviser, said in an
interview with defense reporters.
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House prosecutors push
for Lewinsky subpoena
WASHINGTON (AP) - House
prosecutors pleaded with the Senate
On Tuesday to issue subpoenas for “a
pitiful three” impeachment trial wit
nesses - Monica Lewinsky and two
others - and to request that President
Clinton answer questions under oath.
As the Senate went behind closed
doors to debate the witness issue, the
White House said Clinton has no
intention of submitting to questioning,
even if the Senate votes to request it.
“It’s time to wrap this up,” presidential
spokesman Joe Lockhart said of the
trial, in its third week.
Clinton’s lawyers, joined by
Senate Democrats, also warned that
the issuance of any subpoenas for wit
ness depositions would raise the possi
bility of long delays in the proceed
ings.
Lewinsky, summoned to
Washington over the weekend to be
interviewed by the House prosecutors,
checked out of her hotel and flew
home to California. Her lawyer said
she would return if ordered to answer
further questions.
The prosecutors said they had
trimmed their list to pass Senate
muster. “A pitiful three, and I would
think you would want to proceed with
that minimum testimony,” said Rep.
Henry Hyde, the lead prosecutor.
Democratic leader Tom Daschle
conceded that the Republicans, with a
66
... / think you would
want to proceed with
that minimum
testimony”
Henry Hyde
leading House prosecutor
55-45 majority, were likely to prevail
when the roll is called on Wednesday,
forcing approval of subpoenas for
Lewinsky, presidential friend Vernon
Jordan and White House aide Sidney
Blumenthal. “I think it’s going to be
virtually a party-line vote, unfortu
nately,” he said.
All witnesses would be questioned
under oath at private depositions about
the facts concerning allegations of
peijury and obstruction of justice by
the president in connection with his
efforts to conceal a sexual relationship
with Lewinsky. Guidelines for the
questioning remain to be worked out.
Tuesday’s closed-door Senate ses
sion was the second in as many nights.
As was the case on Monday, a request
by Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin of
Iowa and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota
to open the doors was rejected.
Pope set for St. Louis visit
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Pope John
Paul II headed for St. Louis and a meet
ing with President Clinton on Tuesday
after a heartfelt “adios” from tens of
thousands of Mexican faithful capped
his triumphant, five-day Mexico visit
The visit to St Louis was die second
leg of a mission to give new direction to
his flock on the eve of the millennium
and to strengthen ties between Roman
Catholics in North and Latin America.
Upon arriving, he was scheduled to
meet with President Clinton in an air
port hangar - a day after the Vatican
condemned the latest U.S. bombing
raids on Iraq.
In a statement, spokesman Joaquin
Navarro-Vails said the U.S. bombing
“confirms once again” the pope’s view
that military measures “don’t resolve
problems in themselves; rather, they
aggravate them.”
The pope has criticized US. policy
on the death penalty, abortion and eco
nomic sanctions against Cuba and Iraq.
The differences shouldn’t dampen
the pope’s welcome for the 30-hour
visit, his seventh stop on U.S. soil during
his 20-year papacy. As many as 600,000
people were expected to turn out
Tuesday’s schedule in St. Louis
includes a youth rally, a fitting event
because the pope is counting on young
Catholics to battle what he calls a “cul
ture of death.”
The 78-year-old pontiff used his
Mexico visit to outline church strategy
throughout the Americas for the start of
the new millennium.
He sighed a declaration containing
that strategy. It also condemned the
evils of exploitative capitalism, abor
tion, euthanasia and capital punish
ment.
■Jordan
King to be treated in U.S.
for possible cancer
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - King
Hussein left for the United States
Tuesday for urgent medical treatment
after suffering what his doctor
described as a possible recurrence of
cancer.
The 63-year-old king departed
hours after naming his eldest son,
Abdullah, as his future successor.
Lt Gen. Samir Farraj, Hussein’s
private physician, said the monarch
suffered from “low blood counts and
fever and I, as well as doctors from
the Mayo Clinic, thought it is best to
send him back to die clinic for check
ups and treatment”
■Great Britain
Lawyers say torture is not
an international crime
LONDON (AP) - Lawyers
asking Britain’s highest court to
free former Chilean dictator Gen.
Augusto Pinochet argued Tuesday
that torture and hostage-taking are
not international crimes.
“They are crimes that give rise to
international concern, which is not
the same thing,” lawyer Clare
Montgomery told a seven-judge
panel in the House of Lords. “They
are national crimes.”
Pinochet was arrested Oct 16 in
London at die request of a Spanish
magistrate seeking his extradition on
charges or murder, torture and kid
napping during his 17-year regime.
■Yugoslavia
Evidence-tampering may
hide truth about deaths
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -
Finnish forensic experts investi
gating how 45 ethnic Albanian vil
lagers were killed may be unable to
determine whether they were mas
sacred or shot in battle because of
the possibility of evidence-tamper
ing, the lead pathologist said
Tuesday.
The remarks by Helena Ranta
suggest the world may never learn for
sure the truth of the Racak village
killings, which sparked international
outrage and renewed calls for NATO
action against the government of
Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic.
■Antarctica
Father-son team
reaches South Pole - .
SCOTT BASE, Antarctica
(AP) - Hauling 395-pound sleds,
Peter Hillary, son of Mount Everest
conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary,
* reached the South Pole with two
other ski trekkers Tuesday after an
Antarctic journey beset by prob
lems.
Hillary and his father, who was
also part of a trans-Antarctica
expedition in the 1950s, are the
fust father and son to reach the bot
tom of the world.
“Now that I’ve got here, every
thing seems worth it,” he said after
his team reached the United States’
Amundsen-Scott base. “I wouldn’t
want to be anywhere else.”
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II .
also praised the trio “on your
notable achievement,” in a message
read to them on their Iridium
mobile phone as they stood at the
pole.
