Latest News Items

Date: 10 Mar 2010Source: UN Country Team in Chile

Date: 10 Mar 2010Source: UN Children's Fund

Date: 09 Mar 2010Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

A police raid on the outskirts of Jakarta Tuesday may have killed one of Indonesia's most-wanted terrorists, though officials said they would await tests to verify the man's identity. Local media cited counterterrorism squad members saying that a shootout in Pamulang, Banten province, killed Dulmatin, a senior member of the al Qaeda-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah. But Indonesia's national police spokesman, Edward Aritonang, said he could not immediately confirm whether Dulmatin was dead until further testing. DNA test results were not expected soon.

A Christian organisation in Nigeria has accused government security forces of failing to stop hundreds being killed in clashes near the city of Jos. Hundreds died during attacks on three villages over the weekend in an area which straddles the country's mainly Christian south and Muslim north. The massacre is seen as revenge for a previous round of killings in January. The head of the northern area of Nigeria's Christian Association said he believed mercenaries were involved. He said that fighters from neighbouring Chad and Niger took part in the violence.

A major investigation has been launched into contracts awarded by coalition forces in Afghanistan that are worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The probe into construction and logistics contracts of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has been ordered by Major General Nick Carter, commander of Isaf forces in the south of the country. It is prompted by mounting concerns that the very money supposed to win over the hearts and minds of Afghans is ending up in the hands of the Taliban, drug lords or profiteers.

Bangladesh is waging a campaign of arbitrary arrest, illegal expulsion, forced internment and starvation against Muslim refugees from neighbouring Myanmar, according to a report released Tuesday. Tens of thousands of unregistered Rohingya refugees, many of whom have lived in Bangladesh for decades, have been forced into makeshift camps where they are being left to starve to death, the report by Physicians for Human Rights says. 'It is unconscionable to leave this vulnerable population stateless and starving,' said Richard Sollom, PHR director of research and investigations.

Yemen, under international pressure to quiet domestic unrest and focus its sights on al Qaeda, has offered to hold talks with southern separatists and hear their grievances, state media said on Tuesday. The move by President Ali Abdullah Saleh follows an escalation in violence on both sides in south Yemen that has left a trail of dead and wounded in recent weeks even as insurgent violence elsewhere in the country fades.

In the last few weeks the Taliban's overall military commander for Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is Mullah Omar's deputy, was captured in a joint intelligence raid in Karachi by Pakistani and American agents. Several members of the 'Quetta Shura', the movement's ruling council were later captured in the city, while the group's Pakistani leader Hakimullah Mehsud was believed to have been killed in a missile strike by an unmanned Predator drone. Earlier this week, Mullah Omar's son-in-law, a former minister in the last Taliban government was also arrested.

Sudan's army on Monday accused Darfur rebels of ambushing U.N.-African Union peacekeepers and said it had taken control of a central rebel stronghold in the restive west of Africa's largest country. A force of around 60 joint U.N.-African Union (UNAMID) peacekeepers was ambushed on Friday and held for 24 hours by unidentified armed men in Jabel Marra, which for years has been a rebel-controlled area. 'They were attacked in Jabel Marra and rebels took from them 53 guns, seven cars and seven large artillery,' Sudan's armed forces spokesman al-Sawarmi Khaled told Reuters.