Afghans still hope to find survivors from quake
Zinda Jan, Oct 10: Clinging to hope that finding survivors was still possible, Afghan rescuers and villagers kept digging through rubble in western Herat province on Tuesday, three days after one of the deadliest earthquakes in the region left more than 2,000 dead. Elsewhere in Herat, people were digging graves for loved ones killed in Saturday’s 6.3 magnitude quake. On a barren field in the district of Zinda Jan, a bulldozer removed mounds of earth to clear space for a long row of graves. “It is very difficult to find a family member from a destroyed house and a few minutes to later bury him or her in a nearby grave, again under the ground,” said Mir Agha, from the city of Herat, who had joined hundreds of volunteers to help the locals. Across kilometres (miles) of dusty hills, there was little left of villages besides rubble and funerals. In Naib Rafi, a village that previously had about 2,500 residents, people said that almost no one was still alive besides men who were working outside when the quake struck. Survivors worked all day with excavators to dig long trenches for mass burials. (AP)
Californian Sikh pleads guilty to sword attack
San Francisco, Oct 10: A 44-year-old Sikh man has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a sword attack, which left a man with 23 stitches to his face, during an annual Sikh Parade in California’s Yuba City in 2018. Parmvir Singh Gosal, a resident of Tracy city, admitted last week to attempted murder and mayhem for inflicting injuries at the November 4, 2018 parade known as Nagar Kirtan, according to the Sutter County District Attorney’s Office. The victim got 23 stitches to his face and had an orbital fracture below his left eye after Gosal and three other suspects attacked him with swords and brass knuckles, The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported. In addition, Gosal also pled guilty to second-degree robbery, assault producing bodily injury and dissuading a key witness to the sword incident. (IANS)
Displacement camp bombed
in Myanmar
Bangkok, Oct 10: Myanmar’s military was accused of launching an airstrike on a camp for displaced persons in the northern state of Kachin late on Monday that killed about 30 people, including about a dozen children, Kachin militants and activists and local media said. Col. Naw Bu, a spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army, said 29 people including 11 children under the age of 16 were killed and 57 others injured in the attacks carried out by air and artillery. The casualties occurred at the Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp in the northern part of Laiza, a town where the headquarters of the rebel KIA is based. A spokesperson for Kachin Human Rights Watch gave slightly different figures, saying 19 adults and 13 children were killed in the attack, which occurred shortly before midnight. Laiza is about 324 kilometers northeast of Mandalay Myanmar’s National Unity Government, the main nationwide opposition group that considers itself the country’s legitimate administrative body, said a kindergarten, school, church and many civilian houses were destroyed at the camp. (AP)