World briefs 11/04/02

Volcano eruption forces closure of Ecuador airport

QUITO, Ecuador -- A volcano outside Ecuador's capital spewed a cloud of hot ash Sunday, forcing the closure of its airport and a nearby highway near, and showering Quito in white ash.

No injuries were reported from the eruption of Reventador -- an 11,775-foot volcano located 59 miles northeast of Quito on the eastern slope of the Andes.

Alexandra Avarado of the Geophysical Institute said the volcano began erupting at 7:30 a.m. with a larger blast at 9 a.m.

Quake shakes Pakistan villages, kills at least 10

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A moderate earthquake jolted northern Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 48, many of them critically, officials said.

The magnitude-4.5 quake hit near Gilgit, about 125 miles north of Islamabad, said Chaudhry Mehmood Arif, an official in the Seismic Center in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The tremor was an aftershock from quakes Saturday that shook the town of Skardu, 75 miles southeast of Gilgit, Arif said.

Four villages, with a total population of 1,500, were most affected by the tremors, Information Minister Nisar Memon said. Several homes were destroyed, and 10 bodies found in the rubble, he said.

A series of tremors have rumbled through northern Pakistan over the past 24 hours.

Party with Islamic roots wins Turkish elections

ANKARA, Turkey -- A party with Islamic roots declared victory Monday in Turkey's elections, and its leader immediately moved to calm fears of a shift away from secularism in this key U.S. ally.

To the cheers of his supporters, Justice and Development Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "From now on, we will celebrate victories on behalf of our nation and state."

With 72 percent of the ballots counted from Sunday's vote, Erdogan's party had 34 percent support and appeared likely able to form a government without coalition partners -- a rarity in Turkish politics. Its campaign was fueled by anger over Turkey's worst economic crisis in decades.

The party, which has its roots in Turkey's Islamic movement, sought to soothe the public and markets by pledging support for Turkey's traditional secularism, its EU bid and its commitment to an International Monetary Fund austerity program. In its campaign the party called itself a conservative movement and said it would not pursue an Islamic agenda.

Afghan president fires top provincial officials

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has fired between 15 and 20 top civil and military chiefs across the country, accusing them of corruption and abuse of power, officials said Sunday.

The move came after an emergency Cabinet meeting late Saturday, presidential spokesman Sayed Fazel Akbar told reporters in Kabul.

The decision targets high-ranking officials in Kandahar, Logar, Balkh, Paktika, Nimruz and Farah provinces, Akbar said. They include security and intelligence chiefs, brigade commanders, finance chiefs and a mayor.

But Karzai's government has little authority outside Kabul, despite a new national army numbering about 1,000 men. Most of the countryside is the realm of powerful warlords -- some tenuously allied to Karzai -- who command huge private armies of their own.-- From wire reports