World briefs 11/11/02

Airplane crashes into Manila Bay after takeoff

MANILA, Philippines -- An airplane with 34 people on board crashed into Manila Bay shortly after takeoff early Monday, killing at least three people. Officials said 17 survivors were taken from the murky water.

Divers were searching for the 14 passengers and crew still missing in the wreckage of the Fokker 27, which sank in about 60 feet of water.

One of the survivors, a 25-year-old Australian identified as Steve Thompson, said he saw smoke coming from the left side of the plane just before the pilot told passengers to brace for impact. Several other foreigners were aboard the Fokker 27, he told DZZM radio.

Witnesses said the plane sounded like it was having engine trouble as it tried to gain altitude before plunging into the water.

Report: Al-Qaida chief planned attack on pope

LONDON -- A top al-Qaida official suspected of having planned the Sept. 11 terror attacks also plotted to kill Pope John Paul II during a trip to the Philippines in 1999, a British newspaper reported Sunday.

Quoting documents from Philippines intelligence services, The Sunday Times said Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, planned on killing the pope with a pipe bomb planted in a park where John Paul was to speak, or if that failed, with rifles equipped with scopes.

The plot was aborted when the pope's visit was canceled, the newspaper said.

Philippines police have already named Mohammed as the prime suspect behind a 1995 plot to kill the pope. Abdul Hakim al Hashim Murad, a Pakistani, was arrested in Manila in 1995 for his alleged involvement.

Gunman kills five in Israeli community

KIBBUTZ METZER, Israel -- A Palestinian man broke into an Israeli farming community late Sunday and went on a shooting rampage, killing five people, including two children, Israeli officials said.

Two hours later, Israeli helicopters fired rockets into a large auto body shop in downtown Gaza City, touching off a huge fire, witnesses said. The workshop was believed to be empty at the time of the attack, shortly before 2 a.m.

The Israeli military declined immediate comment, though it has frequently targeted metal workshops in the past, saying Palestinian militants use them to manufacture weapons.

In the shooting attack, the gunman entered Kibbutz Metzer, a collective farming community in northern Israel, just across the border from the West Bank Sunday.

The Israeli rescue service, Magen David Adom, said at least five people were killed, including two children.

Congo refugees flee Central African Republic

BANGUI, Central African Republic -- U.N. workers ferried more than 1,000 Congo refugees to their native lands across central Africa's Oubangui River to save them from mob reprisals for looting and rape by Congo rebel fighters imported to defend the Central African Republic president from a coup attempt.

The Congo refugees say they are now more threatened by the uprising in the Central African Republic than in their own troubled country.

"They killed my best friend on Wednesday. I was on my way to meet him when I saw his body on the side of the road," said Papy Nzanoa Mondulu, 23, who came to the Central African Republic two years ago to escape war in the Congo.

An estimated 400,000 refugees from Congo live in the Central African Republic. Many came to escape the Congo war -- a four-year, six-nation conflict that has left some 2.5 million dead.

Anti-war protest turns violent in Brussels

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Twenty-nine people were arrested Sunday after dozens of demonstrators clashed with riot police and attacked American businesses during a march to protest possible war in Iraq.

No injuries were reported.

Police said up as many as a hundred youths, many of them of Arab origin, broke away from the main body of the march through the city center. Masked, stone-throwing youths broke windows at a McDonald's, a Marriott hotel, and a temporary employment agency.

-- From wire reports