Kashmir Holds Vote Amid Violent Protests
SRINAGAR, India -- Violent protests erupted as thousands of people voted Tuesday in municipal elections held for the first time in 25 years in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir.
Separatist and rebel groups had called for a boycott of the vote and some rebel groups threatened to attack those who participated.
Crowds of young men burned tires, attacked police vehicles and pelted officers with stones until police chased them away. A mob attacked one polling station in Srinagar, throwing bricks and shattering windows, police said.
EUROPE
• LONDON -- An Egyptian held by Britain for three years without trial on suspicion of leading a militant group linked to al Qaeda has been released from prison, the government said.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke said he had decided to free the Egyptian, known only as "C," from a maximum security facility after a review of his case. "I concluded . . . that the weight of evidence in relation to 'C' at the current time does not justify the continuance" of his detention, Clarke said in a statement.
The release follows a ruling by Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, that anti-terrorism legislation rushed through after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States violated basic rights.
• TBILISI, Georgia -- A car bomb exploded outside a police station, killing three policemen, injuring nearly two dozen others and raising fears of renewed violence in the nearby breakaway region of South Ossetia. The blast in the town of Gori shattered windows in the three-story regional police headquarters, leaving a crater 10 feet wide in the street.
No group immediately asserted responsibility.
THE AMERICAS
• BOGOTA, Colombia -- Marxist rebels, in a struggle for control of a jungle river used for cocaine trafficking, fired rockets into a Colombian marine post, killing at least 14 marines and wounding 25, the Colombian navy commander said.
The assault on the outpost in the southwestern village of Iscuande was the most deadly rebel attack in two years. Government forces are waging an offensive in south-central Colombia against the guerrillas.
AFRICA
• HARARE, Zimbabwe -- President Robert Mugabe has set March 31 for parliamentary elections, the official government gazette announced. The elections may test how far Mugabe's government has yielded to international pressure for a fair vote and measure the popularity of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The MDC alleges that Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party robbed it of victory in the last parliamentary contest, in June 2000, and in the presidential vote of 2002 through fraud and a violent campaign against the opposition.
Mugabe, 80, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies rigging the elections. He says he is being targeted for retribution by Western powers opposed to his policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.
-- From News Services
