World briefs 10/13/03

Fire at Belarus mental hospital kills 30 patients

MINSK, Belarus -- A fire believed to have been set by a psychiatric patient engulfed a Belarusian mental hospital Sunday, killing 30 patients and reducing much of the century-old wooden building to ash.

One of the 62 patients who lived at the hospital in the village of Randilovshchina, some 150 miles west of the capital, Minsk, was missing. Emergency officials said they did not know whether he ran away or died in the pre-dawn blaze.

Another 31 patients had minor injuries, officials said. No hospital staff were in the building when the fire started.

A spokeswoman for President Alexander Lukashenko, Natalya Petkevich, said the fire was set by a patient who had tried to burn down the building twice before. The patient was among those killed.

U.S. soldier wounded in battle with Afghan rebels

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. troops fought a gunbattle with three suspected rebels on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, the U.S. military said Sunday. One American solder was slightly wounded and an insurgent was captured. The name of the wounded U.S. soldier was not released.

The firefight occurred Saturday near a training center for the Afghan army in the northeast part of Kabul, the U.S. military said in a statement from Bagram Air Base, the military headquarters north of the capital.

It said the U.S. troops were observing a training exercise at the center when insurgents attacked them. The American troops returned fire and called for backup from the International Security Assistance Force, a 5,500-strong NATO-led peacekeeping mission charged with keeping the peace in Kabul.

Demonstrations leave 16 dead in Bolivian city

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's government imposed martial law on a city outside the capital Sunday after clashes between troops and demonstrators angry about proposals to export gas to the United States and Mexico. Sixteen people have been reported killed.

Soldiers manned major intersections in El Alto, a poor, industrial city 10 miles outside the capital, La Paz. But the move didn't stop protesters who repeatedly clashed with the soldiers and police trying to disperse them.

There has been a total of 16 killed in El Alto since the clashes began. The government earlier reported that 11 people had been killed.

Hospital and human rights groups officials said some 30 people were hurt.

Police arrest more than 1,500 Hindu activists

LUCKNOW, India -- Police arrested 1,500 Hindu nationalists in India's largest state over the weekend for fear their new campaign to build a temple at the site of a razed 16th-century Muslim mosque could lead to violence, officials said Sunday.

Most of those arrested since Saturday were members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or the World Hindu Council, and the hard-liner Hindu political party, Shiv Sena, officials in Uttar Pradesh state said Sunday.

The council has called a rally on Oct. 17 to demand Hindus be allowed to build a temple in the city of Ayodhya, 300 miles east of New Delhi.

Hindu hard-liners believe the Babri mosque was built by Muslims on the site of an earlier Hindu temple honoring their supreme god, Rama. Muslims say there's no proof of that and oppose Hindu plans to build a temple there.-- From wire reports

On Friday, the High Court in Uttar Pradesh ordered the state government to prevent religious activity near the site in Ayodhya while the court reviews the decades-old Hindu-Muslim dispute.

At a huge gathering in 1992, thousands of Hindu activists razed the Babri Mosque with spades, crowbars and bare hands. That triggered a year of Hindu-Muslim violence that killed 2,000 people across India.

On Saturday nearly 1,300 Shiv Sena members were arrested as they tried to hold a meeting in Ayodhya, said Rajeev Sabarwal, senior superintendent of police. Police detained another 200 people traveling by trains to Ayodhya.

Many were wearing saffron bandanas and traveling in large, slogan-shouting groups, police said.

The arrested included two Shiv Sena lawmakers, a key constituent of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 19-party coalition.

Chief Secretary Akhand Pratap Singh, the state's top bureaucrat, told The Associated Press the detained would be sent home and prevented from attending the Oct. 17 meeting.

-- From wire reports