Israel: Biggest yet Gaza militant tunnel found

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military announced Friday it has uncovered another tunnel — the biggest so far — dug from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, stretching into Israel and intended for militant attacks or abducting soldiers and civilians.

According to military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the opening of the "terror tunnel" was hundreds of meters (yards) inside Israel.

Israel has found several such tunnels in recent years but this was the biggest found to date, Lerner said. He said parts of the tunnel were still uncovered and that there are concerns it could be booby-trapped. He said it was near several Israeli border communities but did not give a more exact location.

Another part of Gaza's border, that which adjoins Egypt, is honeycombed with tunnels used for smuggling.

The tunnel into Israel was found this week by Israeli intelligence and the military, Lerner said, saying the structure was lined with concrete and describing it as very sophisticated, resembling a subway tunnel.

"This advanced tunnel was intended to pose a direct link and threat to Israeli territory, and enable Hamas terrorists to reach and harm Israeli civilians," Lerner said.

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This undated photo released by the Israel Defense Forces on Friday, March 21, 2014, that they claim …

An electric generator and tools, along with fresh tracks, were found in the tunnel, indicating that it had been worked on recently, he added.

Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said he blamed the tunnel's discovery on recent rains that exposed its opening, insisting the tunnel itself was old.

"Our mujahedeen (holy warriors) worked to fix it," he said, offering a possible explanation of the fresh tracks. "The enemy's allegations about intelligence efforts behind the discovery are a big lie."

Israel has for years banned cement from entering Gaza, arguing it could be used by militants. But since 2010, it has allowed some construction materials in for internationally funded construction projects.

Israel and Hamas are bitter enemies. Palestinians have been deeply divided since Hamas overran Gaza in 2007, ousting forces from the Fatah party, led by the Western-backed secular Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in bloody street battles.

Abbas has since ruled only in parts of the West Bank, and the Islamic Hamas has held sway in Gaza. Israel is engaged in peace talks with Abbas while shunning Hamas.

Gaza militants have fired thousands of rockets and mortar rounds at Israel over the past decade. Attacks have declined since an eight-day Israeli offensive in 2012 against Gaza militants aimed at stopping what was almost daily fire at the time. But rocket fire still persists.

Last week, Gaza militants fired the heaviest rocket barrage at Israeli communities since 2012, and Israel responded with air strikes on militant targets.

Earlier this month, Israeli special forces captured a ship in the Red Sea carrying rockets and other weapons that Israel said were supplied by Iran and destined for militants in Gaza.

Massive 'terror tunnel' uncovered, Israel says

The largest structure found to date is lined with concrete and could be booby-trapped, an official says.
Hamas response

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea test-fired 30 short-range missiles into the sea on Saturday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the latest in a series of launches despite calls from Seoul and Washington to stop "provocative actions".

"North Korea fired off 30 short-range missiles between 4:00 am and 6:10 am (1900-2110 GMT Friday) this morning from its east coast into the Sea of Japan (East Sea)," said a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs.

"The missiles are estimated to have flown about 60 kilometres (37 miles)," he added.

Analysts said the missiles had been launched from the same location as 25 projectiles on Sunday, near the eastern port of Wonsan. The projectiles were Soviet-era short range Frog missiles from the 1960s, they said.

"This is an expression of anger at the joint military exercises" South Korea has been staging with its ally the United States, Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP.

It is not unusual for Pyongyang to carry out such tests but there has been a spate of them in recent weeks. Saturday's launch was the sixth in just over a month.

South Korea urged North Korea earlier this week to stop what it called "provocative" and potentially dangerous tests.

"The North should stop actions that cause military tension and unnerve its neighbours," Seoul's defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok told reporters on Monday.

"Provocative action made without any prior notifications... can pose significant danger to sea vessels and aircraft passing by the area," he added.

The US State Department had also called on Pyongyang to refrain from "provocative actions that aggravate tensions".

Beijing expressed concern earlier this month after the North test-fired a rocket into the flight path of a Chinese airliner.

- 'Low-level provocation' -

But Yang downplayed the danger.

"North Korea apparently decided to get rid of its rusting stockpile of some 100 Frog missiles by lobbing them into the sea as a show of force," he said. "This is merely a low-level provocation."

"The North is likely to test-fire all the remaining Frog missiles in the near future", he added.

The annual South Korean-US military drills started in late February and will run until mid-April.

The North has habitually criticised the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises, along with other military drills south of the border, as rehearsals for an invasion.

Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

Earlier this month, the North's powerful National Defence Commission threatened to demonstrate its nuclear deterrent in the face of what it called US hostility.

But Seoul's defence ministry said there was no sign of an imminent nuclear test by the North, which staged three atomic tests in 2006, 2009 and last year.

The latest missile tests came as South Korea and Japan said Friday that their leaders will hold a summit with US President Barack Obama next week, in a breakthrough after Washington urged the pair to mend badly strained ties.

The meeting on the sidelines of an international nuclear conference taking place in The Hague on Monday and Tuesday will mark the first formal talks between President Park Geun-Hye and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since they took office more than a year ago.

"At the three-way summit, North Korea's nuclear programmes and the issue of nuclear non-proliferation will be discussed," Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement.

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South's warning ignored

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Fred Phelps Sr. led his small Topeka church for more than two decades in a bellicose crusade against gays and lesbians, saying they were worthy of death and openly declaring — often at military funerals — that the U.S. was doomed because of its tolerance of homosexuality.

But in targeting grieving families of troops killed overseas, taunting people entering other churches and carrying signs with anti-gay slurs and vulgar language or symbols, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist congregation created public circuses that may have helped the gay-rights movement.

Following Phelps' death Wednesday at age 84, some gay-rights advocates suggested that he and his church created sympathy for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the transgendered. Religious leaders who oppose gay marriage also said the pastor's tactics clouded the debate over such issues and put them on the defensive in discussing both policy and faith.

"The world lost someone who did a whole lot more for the LGBT community than we realize or understand," said Cathy Renna, a longtime consultant to LGBT groups. "He has brought along allies who are horrified by the hate. So his legacy will be exactly the opposite of what he dreamed."

Phelps founded the church in the 1950s, and it has drawn much of its small congregation from his extended family. Its rise to national and even international notoriety began in the early 1990s, as it picketed against gays and lesbians, then protested funerals of AIDS victims and, eventually, fallen soldiers.

The protests sparked outrage, with the federal government and lawmakers in more than 40 states passing specific laws to limit the protests and local residents using various tactics — including lining up to block views of the protesters — to protect grieving families.

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In this July 1, 2007 file photo, the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. prepares to protest outside the Kans …

Conservative religious leaders regularly denounced Phelps, worried that his relentless attacks would be perceived as representing the Christian case against same-sex relationships. At the 2003 annual Southern Baptist Convention, leaders spent a session drawing a distinction between their opposition to same-sex unions and Phelps' protests.

Phelps called his church Baptist but had no ties with the Southern Baptist Convention or any other mainstream Baptist group.

"Westboro Baptist is to Baptist Christianity what the 'Book of Mormon' Broadway play was to the Latter-Day Saints," said the Rev. Russell Moore, who leads the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission. "They were kind of a performance art of vitriolic hatred rather than any kind of religious organization."

Phelps professed not to care what anyone thought of his church. He said in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press that no minister could "preach the Bible" without preaching God's hate. Westboro spokesman Steve Drain said in an email a few days before Phelps' death that the church's doctrines weren't changing.

"The church of the Lord Jesus Christ does not rise or fall with any man — in fact, the Lord doesn't need ANY of us," Drain wrote. "Any nation that embraces that sin as an 'innocent' lifestyle can expect to incur the wrath of God."

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This Nov. 18, 1989 file photo, Fred Phelps Sr. announced his plans to run for the Democratic nominat …

Phelps often reserved especially caustic comments for evangelical Christians and Catholics who view homosexual behavior as sinful but also preach that God also loves and reaches out to gays and lesbians. Phelps dismissed them as "enablers," and his congregation often picketed their churches.

The Rev. Terry Fox, a Southern Baptist minister who's pastor of Wichita's non-denominational-leaning Summit Church, once felt compelled to apologize for Phelps' shocking behavior on television. Fox called Phelps "a false prophet" and said Satan "greatly used him." Fox was prominent in a successful effort in 2005 to persuade voters to amend the Kansas Constitution to ban gay marriage and said Phelps "was an embarrassment" but had "become the face of Christian work in Kansas."

Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, said Phelps and his congregation still represent "an easy device" for gay-marriage supporters to "short-circuit the conversation" on that and related issues in recent years.

"People were justifiably, appropriately outraged by the things that they did," Schuttloffel said of Phelps and his church. "As soon as someone, then, is able to tar you as being related to them or thinking the same way as them, right away you're starting behind the eight ball."

Gay-rights advocates, meanwhile, were assessing Phelps' place in the history of their movement.

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This July 1, 1991 file photo, Fred Phelps Sr., demonstrates in Topeka's Gage Park in Topeka, Kan …

"An obscene footnote" is how Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, the state's leading gay-rights group, believes Phelps and his followers will be remembered. Witt said progress began well before Westboro's protests and will continue long after Phelps' death.

However, James Esseks, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, acknowledged that he eventually saw Phelps' protests as helping his own movement.

"He would show up with his extreme anti-gay views, and a bunch of people in the middle would think, 'If that's what it means to be anti-gay, I want no part of it,'" Esseks said.

___

David Crary and Associated Press writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report from New York.

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'Horrified by the hate'

BELBEK AIR BASE, Crimea (AP) — Pro-Russian forces stormed a Ukrainian air force base in Crimea, firing shots and smashing through concrete walls with armored personnel carriers. At least one person was wounded, the base commander said.

An APC also smashed open the front gate of the Belbek base near the port city of Sevastopol, according to footage provided by the Ukrainian Defense ministry. Two ambulances arrived and then departed shortly after, and at least one of them was carrying what appeared to be a wounded person, an Associated Press journalist said.

The Ukrainian commander of the base, Yuliy Mamchur, said there was at least one injury. He called his men together, they sang the Ukrainian national anthem and then stood at ease. He said they are going to turn over their weapons.

Russian forces have been seizing Ukrainian military facilities for several days in the Black Sea peninsula, which voted a week ago to secede and join Russia.

Elsewhere, more than 5,000 pro-Russia residents of a major city in Ukraine's east demonstrated in favor of holding a referendum on whether to seek to split off and become part of Russia.

The rally in Donetsk came less than a week after the Ukrainian region of Crimea approved secession in a referendum regarded as illegitimate by Western countries. After the referendum, Russia formally annexed Crimea.

With Crimea now effectively under the control of Russian forces, which ring Ukrainian military bases on the strategic Black Sea peninsula, concern is rising that Ukraine's eastern regions will agitate for a similar move.

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Ukrainian soldiers drink energy drinks while guarding the entrance to the Belbek airbase outside Sev …

Russia has brought large military contingents to areas near the border with eastern Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there is no intention to move into eastern Ukraine, but the prospect of violence between pro- and anti-secession groups in the east could be used as a pretext for sending in troops.

Eastern Ukraine is the heartland of Ukraine's economically vital heavy industry and mining. It's also the support base for Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president who fled to Russia last month after three months of protests in the capital, Kiev, triggered by his decision not to sign an agreement with the European Union.

Russia and Yanukovych supporters contend Yanukovych's ouster was a coup and allege that the authorities who then came to power are nationalists who would oppress the east's large ethnic Russian population.

"They're trying to tear us away from Russia," said demonstrator Igor Shapoval, a 59-year-old businessman. "But Donbass is ready to fight against this band which already lost Crimea and is losing in the east."

Donbass is the name for the region of factories and mines that includes Donetsk.

About an hour after the Donetsk rally began, the crowd marched through the city center and assembled before the regional administration building chanting: "Crimea! Donbass! Russia!"

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Two Lieutenants, Galina Volosyanchik, center left, and Ivan Benera, center right, react as they are …

Demonstrators waving Russian flags were faced off by lines of shield-wielding riot police. Inside, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was meeting with local officials.

The demonstrators erected several tents, an ironic echo of the massive tent camp that was established on Kiev's central square after the protests against Yanukovych broke out in late November.

"I'm ready to live in a tent, but I'm not ready to submit to the West, to dance to their tune," said Viktor Rudko, a 43-year-old miner.

The local parliament on Friday formed a working group to develop a referendum analogous to the one in Crimea. Activists on Saturday passed out mock ballots, although no referendum has been formally called.

A number of leading pro-Russian activists have already been detained by police on suspicion of fomenting secessionist activities. The country's security services said Saturday that they have arrested Mikhail Chumachenko, leader of the self-styled Donbass People's Militia, on suspicion of seeking to seize authority.

As tensions roil in the east, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is deploying an observer team aimed at easing the crisis.

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Ukrainian soldiers drink energy drinks while guarding the entrance to the Belbek airbase outside Sev …

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on Friday that Moscow hopes that the 200-strong team "will help to overcome the internal Ukrainian crisis" and ensure the respect for human rights there.

It is unclear whether the team will be allowed into Crimea. Russian forces last week stopped OSCE military observers from entering Crimea. The organization on Friday did not specify whether the observers will go to Crimea.

Lukashevich said on Saturday that the OSCE's mission "will reflect the new political and legal order and will not cover Crimea and Sevastopol which became part of Russia."

Sevastopol, a city in southwest Crimea, is the home of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Daniel Baer, the United States' chief envoy to OSCE, said the observers should have access to the territory because Crimea remains Ukrainian to the rest of the world.

The seizure of military facilities and navy ships by pro-Russian forces in Crimea has been proceeding apace since the peninsula was nominally absorbed by Russia.

On Saturday, a crowd stormed the Novofedorivka base, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Simferopol, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said.

Ukrainian television station TSN said troops inside the base hoisted smoke grenades in an attempt to disperse groups of burly young men attempting to break through the front gates.

TSN reported that there were children among the crowd attempting to seize the base.

The Russian Defense Ministry says that as of late Friday less than 2,000 of 18,000 Ukrainian servicemen in Crimea had "expressed a desire to leave for Ukraine." The ministry, however, stopped short of saying the remainder of the troops would serve in the Russian army.

___

Jim Heintz and Peter Leonard in Kiev and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report. Karmanau reported from Donetsk, Ukraine.

At least one person is wounded when pro-Russian forces storm and seize a military facility in Crimea.
Weapons surrendered