RTC Director

Deaths rise to 523 in Turkey

The number of people known to have been killed in Sunday's earthquake in Turkey's south-east has risen to 523.

Officials say 1,650 people were injured in the 7.2-magnitude quake which had its epicentre in Van province - 185 people have been rescued alive.

Rain and snow are hindering the rescue effort and worsening conditions for the thousands of people made homeless.

Tents and other aid supplies are being delivered after some initial criticism that the response was too slow.

Hundreds of people are still missing under collapsed buildings.

Rescuers in some places are continuing to search for those buried in the rubble, but at other sites they have stopped work and attention is turning to the needs of the survivors.

People in the hardest-hit town, Ercis, have formed long queues to try to get hold of tents but many have been told there are none left.

"Everyone is getting sick and wet," said Fetih Zengin, a 38-year-old whose house was badly damaged.

"We have been waiting in line for four days and still nothing."

"We slept under a piece of plastic erected on some wooden boards we found. We have 10 children in our family," he told the Reuters news agency.

Another survivor, Zeki Yatkin, lost his father in the quake.

"They say we will get prefabricated houses in one-and-a-half months," he said, in an interview with Reuters.

"We can't tolerate the cold, but what else can we do?"

Gripped by fear

Some survivors have accused Turkey's governing AK party of handing out aid preferentially to the families of public servants and policemen, ignoring ordinary people.

The governor of Van province, Munir Karaloglu, has denied this.

He says 20,000 tents have already been distributed and he blamed fear for exacerbating the problems.

"Because of the psychology and the aftershocks, they don't use their undamaged house and ask for a tent" he said.

"This is why we have a problem."

South-eastern Turkey was hit by another strong aftershock on Thursday of magnitude 5.2, but there are no reports of any further casualties.

Seismologists say the epicentre was located near the border between Turkey and Iraq, south of Van province.

The Turkish government had initially said it did not need any help from abroad, but later changed its mind.

Ankara accepted an offer of clothes, blankets and other supplies from Israel, despite the recent deterioration in their relationship.

Reports say prefabricated homes from Israel are currently on their way to Van province.

"Three more planes loaded with aid supplies will come to Turkey within two days," an official from the Israeli embassy in Ankara told the Anatolia news agency.

Aid from several other countries is starting to arrive in Turkey too.

The United Nations says it is sending thousands of tents as well as blankets and mattresses.

Source-BBC

by RTC Director

UN votes to end Libya operations

The United Nations Security Council has voted to end international military operations in Libya next Monday.

In March the council voted to authorise "all necessary measures" to protect civilians, after then-leader Muammar Gaddafi launched a deadly assault on protesters against his rule.

Last week Nato and its partners, which had been conducting air strikes, said the campaign would end on 31 October.

Libya's new government declared the country liberated on Sunday.

On Thursday the council unanimously approved a resolution ending the mandate for foreign military action at 23:59 Libyan time on 31 October.

by RTC Director

Kenya-Somalia border attack: Al-Shabab suspected

Gunmen have ambushed a vehicle in Kenya near the border with Somalia, killing four people, reports say.

A school teacher and a government official were among the dead as the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade, police said.

Kenya blames Somalia's militant Islamist group al-Shabab for a spate of abductions on its territory.

Al-Shabab denies the allegations and has vowed to take revenge against Kenya for sending troops into Somalia.

The BBC's East Africa correspondent Will Ross says heavily armed gunmen ambushed a four-wheel-drive vehicle in Mandera district in north-east Kenya.

Two security guards who were in the vehicle exchanged fire with the gang which then launched a rocket-propelled grenade, he says.

It completely destroyed the car and killed all four passengers - among them a secondary school headmaster and a local government official.

'Banditry'

Kenyan soldiers have been sent to the area, our correspondent says.

Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe described it as a "banditry attack" about 110 km (70 miles) from Mandera town, the Reuters news agency reports.

But our correspondent says there is some suspicion that al-Shabab militants carried out the attack.

The group controls territory just across the border in Somalia and the use of such heavy weaponry makes local banditry less likely, he says.

Kenya sent hundreds of troops into Somalia on 16 October to attack al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda.

Al-Shabab has repeatedly threatened retaliatory attacks on Kenya.

On Wednesday, a Kenyan man arrested after two grenade blasts in the capital, Nairobi, admitted in court to being a member of the group.

Elgiva Bwire Oliacha pleaded guilty to carrying out the attacks on a nightclub and bus stop.

One person was killed and 29 others were wounded in the attacks on 24 October.

Security has been stepped up in Nairobi since the blasts, with many residents fearing there could be more attacks, correspondents say.

Three aid workers employed by the Danish Demining Group were abducted in north-central Somala on Monday.

Last week, the French authorities said a Frenchwoman suffering from cancer who was kidnapped from Kenya by Somali gunmen earlier in the month had died.

Other foreigners abducted from Kenya and being held in Somalia include a British woman abducted from a coastal resort, and a Kenyan driver and two Spanish aid workers seized from the Dadaab refugee camp near the Kenya-Somalia border.

by RTC Director

Israel transfers Egyptian prisoners towards border for swap

An Israel Prison Service (IPS) convoy carrying 25 Egyptian nationals freed in a prisoner swap to gain the release of an Israeli-American held in Cairo on Thursday noon headed towards Taba crossing point in the southern port city of Eilat.

The nine vehicles are due to arrive at the crossing and the Egyptians will be handed over at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT), IPS Spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told Xinhua.

In parallel, Egyptian authorities will put Ilan Grapel, 27, on a flight to Tel Aviv, after being held four months on espionage charges, which were later lessened. Grapel, who is to be accompanied by his mother, will be returned to Israel, and travel to Jerusalem for a short meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister's Office said in a statement earlier in the week, when the deal was agreed upon, that the Egyptians, which include three minors, were not held on security charges. They were convicted on drug and smuggling charges, according to the IPS.

by RTC Director

UK Border Agency criticised over convict deportations

More than 5,000 foreign criminals who should have been deported remain in the UK, an official report has said.

The number who are not deported or cannot be deported at the end of their sentence is increasing, the independent inspector of the UK Border Agency said.

John Vine said the majority of successful appeals against deportation were made on human rights grounds.

The Home Office said it was deporting foreign criminals more quickly and changing immigration rules.

Mr Vine's report found "significant disparity" between the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and the courts' interpretation of whether a foreign prisoner should be able to remain in the UK on human rights grounds.

A total of 425 cases had been overturned, "the overwhelming majority on human rights grounds", compared with just 151 cases in which the offenders had been granted permission to stay in the first instance, it found.

'Cycle of appeals'

Mr Vine said action had to be taken to reduce the number of deportation decisions overturned because they fell foul of the Human Rights Act.

"More must be done to actively manage these cases - they represent a growing cost to the taxpayer and cannot be ignored."

Failure to act, Mr Vine said, would result in a continuing "cycle of appeals, at considerable cost to the taxpayer even though the outcome will eventually be that the foreign national prisoner is entitled to remain in the UK".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the border agency needed to increase its casework with individual prisoners and start some proceedings earlier.

"Some of the circumstances which allow people to resist deportation can be predicted," Mr Vine said. "The border agency needs to concentrate on those cases and I didn't find find during the inspection that they were prioritising those cases in a systematic way."

More than 1,600 foreign national prisoners remained in detention, having completed their prison sentence, while 12 were missing after being released directly from court or referred incorrectly, inspectors found.

Meanwhile, some 3,775 former foreign national prisoners who should have been deported had been released from custody and were living in the community.

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to family life and a private life - was the most common reason for foreign national offenders not being deported.

Mr Vine told Today the UKBA needed to "really get a grip of this figure because it's a growing figure and it's not going away".

The report recommended that the UKBA:

• Reduce the number of decisions to deport that are overturned on appeal
• Ensure that foreign national prisoners are provided with the reasons why they are being deported at the time the decision is made
• Develop clear time scales for obtaining travel documentation in individual cases to ensure that deportation action can be taken more quickly where appropriate
• Actively manage all cases where foreign national prisoners have yet to be deported, and consider regularly whether deportation can be enforced or a person is entitled to remain in the UK
• Ensure that each individual decision to detain or release a foreign national prisoner at the end of their sentence takes full account of the risk of reoffending
• Change the level of authorisation required to release foreign national prisoners at the end of their sentence
• Analyse whether the frequency and nature of contact between case owners and foreign national prisoners can improve the quality and timeliness of decisions
• Ensure that files contain data relevant only to the subject of that file; and ensure the timely destruction of data in the case of acquittals

Mr Vine assessed the UKBA between February and May 2011 for the report.

Human rights claims

At the Conservative Party conference, Home Secretary Theresa May attacked what she said were excessive uses of Article 8, saying it had been used to prevent the removal of foreign national prisoners and illegal immigrants.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said the government was removing foreign criminals "quicker then ever".

He added: "For too long Article 8 has been used to place the family rights of foreign criminals above the rights of the British public, which is why we will change the immigration rules to ensure a better balance."

The report found foreign prisoners were also being held for longer, up to 190 days in January 2011 from 143 days in February 2010.

One in four who were held after the end of their jail term had been detained for longer than a year.

Mr Vine said there was "genuine fear and reluctance to release, given the potential implications of a foreign national prisoner committing a further offence, but no evidence that a detailed assessment of the risk of reoffending had taken place in each case".

The figures also showed that between 2007 and 2010, 20,360 foreign national prisoners were deported from the UK - 5,235 last year alone.

Source-BBC

by RTC Director