A12 Devastating forest fire in northern Israel
EZ SU
KLMNO THE WORLD
Aidworker was killed by U.S. soldier accidentally
BY ANTHONY FAIOLA
london— U.S. soldiers have been disci- plined for not disclosing details of an explosion that killed a British aid worker in Afghanistan in October, British and U.S. officials said Thursday, after the re- lease of the results of a joint investigation into thewoman’sdeath. According to the report, Linda Nor-
grove was accidentally killed by a U.S. soldier during an attempt to rescue her. The36-year-oldaidworker,whohadbeen taken hostage Sept. 26 while traveling througharemoteareaof easternAfghani- stan,was initially thought to have died at the hands of her captors during theOct. 8 rescue mission. But U.S. officials, upon reviewing a videotape of the incident, concluded days later that a grenade thrown by one of her American rescuers may have been responsible and launched aninvestigation. OnThursday,BritishForeignSecretary
NIR ELIAS/REUTERS
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men watch as fire rips through the Carmel forest, left tinder-dry by drought. At least 36 people died, most of them prison guards racing to evacuate inmates. Thousands of Israelis fled their homes as the nation sought aid. “This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions,” said PrimeMinister BinyaminNetanyahu.
William Hague said investigators had concludedthatNorgrovehaddiedof inju- ries caused by a grenade. Speaking in Parliament,he saidU.S. soldiershad been disciplinedfornot reportingdetailsof the grenade explosion immediately after the failedmission. “Members of the rescue team have
Drug wars break out
into open in Marseille ‘SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL’
Youths use assault rifles smuggled in from E. Europe
BY EDWARD CODY
marseille, france — The hit squad drove up about 10 p.m. in a pair of sporty cars, one Italian the other German, and opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles smuggled in from Eastern Europe. When the dry crack of gunfire went
silent, a 16-year-old drug-runner lay mortally wounded and an 11-year-old boy who had gone out with his sister for pizza was bleeding profusely from rounds that slammed into his foot and, after piercing his arm, ripped a hole in his throat. With that attack, on
the evening of Nov. 19 in the dark alleys be- tween low-rent public housing blocks at Clos La Rose on the north- eastern edge of the city,Marseille’s long- discreet drug wars suddenly went public. Local officials said they were aghast to see teenagers being executed and ex- pressed fear that in some neighborhoods drug gangs might be spinning out of control. InteriorMinister BriceHortefeux flew
in from Paris and announced that 250 extra police officers, including paramili- tary troops, wereontheirway to help this boisterous Mediterranean port track down the traffickers and bring law and order to its poor suburbs. The dramatic and widely reported
killing constituted a stain on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reputation as a law- and-order leader, particularly at a time when he is seeking to consolidate right-
wing supporters behind an all-but-cer- tain candidacy for a second term in 2012 elections.Hortefeux, a longtime political ally, has been assigned to make sure the voting public is aware of Sarkozy’s fight against crime; gang wars on page one were not what he had in mind. The killing of the 16-year-old, identi-
fied only as Jean-Michel, was the 18th this year attributed to disputes over territory among Marseille’s hashish gangs, according to a police tally. David- Olivier Reverdy, regional delegate of the Alliance Police union, said that repre- sented a doubling of the city’s traditional rate of drug-gang assassinations. Marseille, France’s second-biggest city
with 860,000 inhabitants, has long en- dured a reputation of lawlessness and corruption; it was home to the infamous French Connection drug smuggling ring in the 1970s. In fact, however, in recent times it has experi- enced nowhere near the drug violence of northernMexico’s bor- der cities, where traf- fickers openly chal- lenge government au- thority, or the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where Brazilian sol- diers in battle gear ar- rive aboard armored personnel carriers to attack entrenched and
well-armed gangs. But the dramaof Jean-Michel’s killing,
and thoughts of the 11-year-old still unconscious in a hospital bed, have convinced many that the situation could also get out of hand here. Authorities are particularly worried, Reverdy said, be- cause in recent years smuggling from Eastern Europe has placed military- strength automatic weapons routinely in the hands of young hashish wholesalers. They are so plentiful, he said, that the
price of an AK-47 Kalashnikov has dropped to between $400 and $650. Their availability, along with young traf- fickers’ willingness to use them at the slightest provocation, has changed the equation for police seeking to impose control over the most drug-infested
been disciplined for failing to provide a complete and full account of their actions in accordance with U.S. military proce- dure,”Hague said. He described the team as coming un-
der heavy fire soon after their helicopters landed on a dark mountainside. In the heat of the fighting, Hague said, “a gre- nade was thrown by a member of the rescue team who feared for his own life andthoseof theteamtowardsagullyfrom which some of the insurgents had emerged.” Hague said the rescue team did not
realizeNorgrove had been killed until the areawas searchedlater. U.S. Central Command, the military
JEAN-PAUL PELISSIER/REUTERS Police raid an apartment building in Clos La Rose, a poor area of the French port.
neighborhoods or to infiltrate the gangs. “People are saying they’ve had it, that
this situation is spiraling out of control,” Reverdy said. “This is not reasonable.”
Into the public eye Ronald Perdomo, a veteran right-wing
figure inMarseille’s tumultuous politics, noted that drug gangs here have been settling accounts and waging turf wars for years. Because of the high number of North African immigrants, he said, hash- ish smuggling from Morocco has long been a feature of the city’s underground economy, for local consumption or re-ex- porting to other French cities. But the violence traditionally has been
limited to poor areas inhabited mainly by immigrants, he said, andmostly involved one gang member getting assassinated by another far from the public eye. This tended to keep public concern at a low level. “As long as they were killing each other, that created less of a ruckus,” Reverdy said. “Before, we police came along afterward, picked up the pieces and tried to understandwhat happened.” Since Hortefeux’s announcement,
however, daily raids have been carried out in neighborhoods where hashish trafficking has been a way of life — and part of the economy — for thousands of poor youths who have given up on school or legitimate employment.
Raids to continue According to reports in Marseille, the
Clos La Rose killing and several others that preceded it stemmed from an at- tempt by one group of hashish wholesal-
DIGEST CHINA
Beijing protests plan forU.S.-Japan drills China on Thursday criticized planned
military exercises by more than 40,000 Japanese andU.S. troops as anobstacle to easing tensions on theKorean Peninsula, and it reiterated its call for increased diplomatic efforts. “Brandishing of force cannot solve the
issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokes- woman Jiang Yu said. “Some are playing with knives and guns while China is criticized for calling for dialogue. Is that fair?” The maneuvers represent the latest
show of deterrence following North Ko- rea’s Nov. 23 shelling of a South Korean island, in which four people were killed. Japan and theUnited States joined South Korea in condemning the attack, reject- ing China’s call for talks and urging the government inBeijing to reininits ally. South Koreawill sendmilitary observ-
ers to the drills for the first time, in a signal that North Korea’s provocations
are tightening U.S. military and political alliances inthe region. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clintonwillhost JapaneseForeignMinis- terSeijiMaeharaandSouthKoreancoun- terpart Kim Sung-hwan in Washington onMonday to discuss regional security. —BloombergNews
IVORYCOAST
Borders sealed after release of vote results IvoryCoastsealeditsbordersThursday
after its election commission declared challenger Alassane Ouattara the provi- sionalwinner of a presidential runoff. But the Constitutional Council, faced
withratifyingtheresult that judgedPresi- dent Laurent Gbagbo loser of the vote, said the commission’s announcement was illegal. Ivory Coast’s military gave no reasons
for sealing air, land and sea borders. The country’s media regulator said it
had suspended the signal for French broadcaster Canal PlusHorizon. Satellite
channel France24 and Radio France In- ternational FMwere also off air. After repeated delays due towrangling
within his organization over the results, the election commission chairman, Yous- souf Bakayoko, announced thatOuattara had won Sunday’s runoff with 54.1 per- cent of the vote. “The electoral commission has, in ac-
cordancewiththe law,handedover to the Constitutional Council the results it has received and validated, accompanied by the result sheets,” Bakayoko said at a hastily organizednews conference. Paul YaoN’dre, a staunch ally of Gbag-
bo’s who heads the Constitutional Coun- cil, respondedby saying the electioncom- mission had missed a Wednesday dead- line to issue provisional results.
—Reuters
12 killed aswinter hitsNorthern Europe: Freezing temperatures and often-blind- ing snow killed 12 more people and caused travel chaos across Northern Eu- rope, while some of the worst floods in a century devastated parts of the Balkans. In Poland, the cold claimed 10more lives,
Egyptian opposition party to abandon seats: Egypt’s second-biggest opposition bloc said it will refuse to take up the two seats itwon in parliamentary elections it saidwere faked, inadditionto refusing to take part in a second round. The liberal Wafd Party and Egypt’s biggest opposi- tiongroup, theMuslimBrotherhood, said
bringing the overall deaths there to 18, and two deaths were reported in Germa- ny. Meanwhile, authorities declared a state of emergency in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro and were evacuating hun- dreds of people after heavy rain caused severe flooding along theDrinaRiver.
30 dead after floods, landslides in Vene- zuela: President Hugo Chavez said more than 30 people have been killed in floods and landslides in Venezuela, and he pledged to speed construction of public housing to help thousands of evacuees. Chavezsaidthegovernmentwasassisting more than 15,000 families that fled their homes amid torrential rains, which have continued well past the usual end of the wet seasoninVenezuela.
they will boycott runoffs scheduled for Sunday.
Plan for new Israeli homes denounced: Palestinians criticized an Israeli decision to push forward plans for 625 newhomes in East Jerusalem, saying the project shows that Israelhas chosen“settlements and not peace.” Israel’s Interior Ministry confirmed Thursday that the new hous- ing project in Pisgat Zeev, a sprawling areaof50,000residents,waspermittedto proceed by a district planning committee late lastmonth.
DeathsentencereviewedinCuba:Cuba’s Supreme Court has begun reviewing the death sentence of a Salvadoranman con- victed of terrorism for a series of hotel bombings
in1997.AgovernmentWebsite did not give details of the process or a timetable regarding the sentence of Raul ErnestoCruzLeon.Heconfessedtoplant- ing bombs in five Cuban hotels and a restaurant in a plot to scare away tourists andhurt a prime source of income for the island.
—Fromnews services
ers to set up operations in a neighbor- hood recently brought under the domi- nation of another
group.The area was up for grabs, the reports said, because police last June arrested leaders of the drug family that long had controlled its busi- ness. The police raids, most of them at night
with television cameras in tow, last week led to the discovery of what prosecutor Jacques Dallest described as “Ali Baba’s cave.” In it, he said at a news conference, police found 220 pounds of hashish, worth between $350,000 and $400,000 in street sales, along with a half-dozen weapons including an M-16 assault rifle. “We will continue to carry out these
operations day after day in all the Mar- seille neighborhoods,” pledged the re- gional government security director, Philippe Klayman. “What I want is to destabilize the illegal drug business.” The cars used in the attack, a gray Audi
TT and a red Alfa Romeo 147, were found burned in a nearby forest along with three AK-47s and their empty magazines. But so far, the killers of Jean-Michel have not been captured. Reverdy said sticking with it is the key
to whether Hortefeux’s operation will have a lasting effect. If the extra police go home at Christmas or are called off to another crisis, he said, wholesalers will come out of their hiding places and the drug business will return to Marseille neighborhoods as before. What the city really needs, he added, is
funds to hire another several hundred full-time police officers.
codyej@washpost.com
command with responsibilities that in- clude the Afghanistan war, released a statement saying it “sincerely regrets the loss of life that resulted fromthis terrible incident, and we extend our deepest con- dolences to the Norgrove family for their tragic loss.” “Although Ms. Norgrove’s death is a
terrible tragedy, the insurgents who kid- nappedher bear theultimate responsibil- ity forherdeath,” the statement said. Lt. Cmdr. William H. Speaks, a Cent-
comspokesman, said in an e-mail: “Non- judicial punishment was given to three service members for failing to fully dis- close informationrelatedto actions inthe rescue operation.” Norgrove,who had spent several years
in Afghanistan, worked with DAI, a Bethesda-based contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Working out of the eastern city of Jalala- bad with a staff of about 200 Afghans, Norgrove was regional director of a $150 million development project to build roads and bridges and improve agricul- ture. She was kidnapped while traveling through Konar province with three Af- ghancolleagues to visit anirrigationproj- ect. Shewas driving in an unarmored car withoutasecurityguardandwasaccosted on the road by men in Afghan army uni- forms. Hague had said earlier that the men
were Salafists, who subscribe to a strict interpretationof Islamandarealliedwith Taliban groups in Konar. Worried that Norgrove would be passed to other and possibly even more militant insurgent factions inmore inaccessible locations in Pakistan,Hague said he authorized a res- cue attempt, if the circumstances were right. Hague reiterated Thursday that a rescue attemptwas the right thing todo.
faiolaa@washpost.com
StaffwriterCraigWhitlock inWashington contributed to this report.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010
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