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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 2001)
'mar)' Ij;, hursday, February 1,2001 WORLD THE BATTALION Page 3B l2Furviyors found as bulldozers begin cleaning up rubble d the trip wrote Et t was tie her. ally fes- BHACHAU, India (AP) — Rescue work- irs pulled out more survivors Wednesday just as bulldozers began breaking down the walls ol wrecked buiIdings — raising fears that peo ple buried alive by a devastating earthquake could be killed by machines and explosives. The confirmed death count reached 12,000. I State officials said they believe 13,000 ad ditional dead are buried in the rubble. Much ol the relief effort now has turned to caring for t|ie living, with volunteers setting up a huge Red Cross field hospital. At least 29,000 peo- aillUiL pie were injured in the 7.9 magnitude quake . Biat hit the western state of Gujarat on Friday. Haren Pandya, the Gujarat home minister, ibyan entenced o life for errorism said his toll of 25,000 dead was based on re ports gathered from government agencies of bodies recovered, people reported missing and the estimated number still lying under debris. Heavy construction equipment and ex plosives experts have been brought in to clear debris as rescuers give up hope of finding more survivors. Many experts say few peo ple could survive more than 100 hours buried in the rubble — a mark that was crossed Tuesday afternoon. Still, rescuers working in the rubble, dust and the stench of decaying flesh found a few survivors Wednesday. Just as bulldozers smashed into the wall of a damaged three-story apartment building in Bhachau, Russian rescuers heard a woman screaming. The 71-member-Russian team stopped the bulldozers and began searching, and saw her hand grabbing at them from un der a flattened concrete wall. One Russian rescuer held the woman’s hand until the masonry was moved, then pulled Kuntal Thakkar, 22, to safety. She was rushed to a hospital. Her brother-in-law, Anil Thakkar, then crawled into the hole in the rubble. He emerged, saying Kuntal’s husband had replied from inside the ruins, “I can see the light. I’m OK.” “He’s telling me he wants water, that he’s safe, only his left hand is blocked so he can’t come out,” Thakkar said while the Russians worked to free his br,other. “For six days, they talked to each other,” he said of the couple after the husband was pulled out, put on a stretcher and announced he was “feeling fine.” A block away, the same Russian team res cued another man earlier in the day. In Bhuj, the town closest to the epicenter, an army team rescued a 12-year-old girl named Prianka. A demolition team hammering its way through a destroyed apartment block in Ahmed- abad discovered 55-year-old Joytosna Gandhi still alive, next to the body of her teen-age son. A search team based in Wales headed for India on Wednesday. “In other disasters we’ve been to we’ve al ways found this to be the case, that people have come out days and days after most teams have given up and gone home. So we feel that there is so much that hasn’t been searched, we should give it a go,” Russ Vaughan, leader of the eight-man team, said at Heathrow airport near London. The international response included vol unteers from Germany, Finland, Belgium, In dia and the United States who put up tent poles Wednesday for what will soon be the largest field hospital the Red Cross has ever run. l! ie crari e same j Jay’s lindsitil ts ma; .icritice: srai ieOiloj Bowlrsf 1 Jeffirej lean. 2 sed er tok ■eceivt' quarte: ys wbei lerBou. ie want ed a job MW ve at- •ind#, ml pb': ugelfa j play: g repn four"- ,A0 CAMPZE1ST, Netherlands (AP) In a verdict that linked Libya to terrorism, a Scottish court gave a life Sentence Wednesday to a Libyan in telligence agent for the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 but acquitted a^second Libyan. I Tears andjubilation from victims’ relatives greeted the guilty verdict read out by presiding judge Lord Ranald Sutherland. The three-judge Court said it was allowing Abdel Bas- |et Ali al-Megrahi, 48, the prospect jof parole in 20 years in view of his Ige and the fact that he was serving his sentence in a foreign country. I The court said it accepted “the ev idence that (al-Megrahi) was a mem ber of the JSO, occupying posts of fairly high rank.” The JSO is the Libyan intelligence service. 1 It convicted al-Megrahi of charges that he carried out a “crimi nal purpose to destroy a civil passen ger aircraft and murder the occupants in furtherance of the purposes of said Libyan intelligence services.” ; The statement bolstered claims of victims’ relatives that Libyan Col. <( Al-Megrahi being found guilty, that to lme shows and points all the evidence to Gadhafi's feet” - M ■ Bert Ammerman brother of victim s: he :s: ute & Moammar Gadhafi and his govern ment are responsible for the bombing of the New York-bound flight over (Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. The conviction could also give impetus to civil actions that the rela tives have filed against Libya. I “Al-Megrahi being found guilty, that to me shows and points all the e\ idence to Gadhafi’s feet,” said Bert Ammerman of Riverdale, N.J., the brother of victim Tom Ammerman. He watched the telecast with about 85 others in New York. | The verdict was the climax of an $80 million trial and nearly nine months of hearings at a special court in the Netherlands. The White House said U.N. and U.S. sanctions on Libya would remain in place, and U.S. and British officials said they will keep investigating the bombing. | President Bush said at a Cabinet Room meeting with members of Congress that Libya should remain isolated until Gadhafi agrees to “ac cept responsibility for this act and to compensate the families.” I Jeremy Greenstock, the British U.N. ambassador, said the main focus of coming discussions between the United States, Britain and Libya will be on compensation and the Libyan government’s accepting responsibili ty for the actions of its officials. I Libya stuck to its denials of offi cial involvement. State television cast the trial as a triumph for the Libyan people “over arrogance, ag gression and imperialism and all at tempts to make them bow down.” Many people in downtown Tripoli, Libya’s capital, sat around television and radio sets. |! Abuzed Dorda, Libya’s ambas sador to the United Nations, said Libya respected the verdict. But in an interview with the Associated Press, he added that the case in no way im plicated the government, saying Libya “has nothing to do with the Libyan officials.” Verizon Ulireless M I | ^ Ns . ^ S S ■* * •• N v ^ ts N *: ^s S V 'V 5, % s s s s s % v Now you can chat without talking v:- Loud concert? No problem. Quiet libraries? R cinch. Now you can send and receive teKt messages right from your uureless li"* fSt. feny, pnune without losing your voice or disturbing a soul You can exchange messages one on one, or to a group of friends—whether they're across the room or across the country. So now nothing can keep you from staying connected illllliPf illliil A Simple. Affordable. National. 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