Indian police ready to file charges against 6 accused of gang-rape, murder of student

NEW DELHI - Indian police say they are ready to file murder, rape and kidnapping charges against six people accused in the gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old university student.

New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat says the charges against the suspects were expected to be presented to a court in south Delhi on Thursday.

The Dec. 16 rape triggered outrage across India and sparked demands for stronger laws, tougherpolice action against sexual assault suspects and a sustained campaign to change society's views on women.

Media reports say 30 witnesses have been gathered, and the charges have been detailed in a document running more than 1,000 pages.

Israeli undercover raid sets off violent protests

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian officials say Israeli undercover troops broke into a West Bank house in a failed arrest raid, igniting a violent protest and signaling that Israeli-Palestinian security coordination may be in trouble.

The Israeli military says some 500 Palestinians threw stones and firebombs at troops near the town of Jenin. Palestinian officials say a Palestinian was shot in the hand by army fire and an elderly woman was bitten by an army dog.

In recent years, the West Bank has been relatively calm as a result of coordination between Israel's military and Palestinian security forces in tracking down militants. However, Palestinian officials say Israel has stepped up unilateral actions, such as surprise arrest raids, since the Palestinians won U.N. recognition of a state of Palestine late last year.

Indian rape accused charged; victim's father calls for hanging

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five Indian men were formally charged in court on Thursday with the gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in a case that has generated widespread anger about the government's inability to prevent violence against women.

The December 16 attack on the 23-year-old student and a male companion provoked furious protests close to the seat of government in New Delhi and has fuelled a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual crime in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

The woman died of her injuries in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, on Saturday.

The five are accused of assaulting the woman on a bus in New Delhi, leaving her with such severe injuries that she died two weeks later. They were not present in court.

A sixth accused is under 18 and is due to be tried separately in a juvenile court.

A public prosecutor read out charges including murder, gang rape and criminal conspiracy. The court will examine the charges on Saturday, duty magistrate Surya Malik Grover said.

Murder carries the death penalty in India.

The father of the woman said earlier he backed the chorus of calls for those responsible to be executed.

"The whole country is demanding that these monsters be hanged. I am with them," the father told reporters in his home village of Mandwara Kalan in Uttar Pradesh state. The woman was born in the village but the family later moved to New Delhi.

She has not been identified and nor have members of her family, in accordance with Indian law.

In a sign of the depth of feeling surrounding the case, the bar association at the court said none of its members was willing to represent the accused. The court is expected to assign a defense lawyer for the men.

Advocates dressed in black robes protesting outside the court called for fast justice. In the northern state of Kashmir, school girls marched with black ribbons over their mouths and demanded harsh punishment for the accused.

The case is due to be processed by a new, fast-track chamber set up in response to the crime.

While the fast-track procedure has broad support, many lawyers worry new that legislation written in haste could be unconstitutional and oppose introducing the death penalty for rape.

"A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said on Wednesday.

ANGER

Police have said the accused have admitted to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson". She fought back and bit three of them, a police source told Reuters, and the bite marks are part of the evidence against them.

After throwing her from the private bus, the driver tried to run the victim over but she was pulled away by her companion, a senior police official told Reuters.

Police have prepared a dossier of evidence and charges against the accused, which is believed to run to 1,000 pages, including testimony from the woman's friend who survived the hour-long attack and a man who said he was robbed by the same gang prior to the rape.

Days of protests in New Delhi and other cities followed the attack. Many of the protesters have been students, infuriated by what they see as the failure of the government to protect women.

In the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday, village women beat a politician and handed him to police for what they said was the attempted rape of a woman, police said. Anti-rape protests have also broken out in neighboring Nepal.

The government has set up two panels headed by retired judges to recommend measures to ensure women's safety. One of the panels, due to make recommendations this month, has received some 17,000 suggestions from the public, media reported.

India's chief justice inaugurated the first fast-track court for sexual offences on Wednesday - a long standing demand of activists to clear a court backlog.

A review of India's penal code, which dates back to 1860, was presented to parliament last month, before the attack, and widens the definition of rape, another demand of activists.

That bill is now likely to be revised further, with chemical castration and the death penalty in rape cases among proposals under consideration.

"We want the laws to be amended in such a stringent way that before a person even thinks of touching a girl, he should feel chills down his spine," said lawyer Suman Lata Katiyal, protesting at the southDelhi courthouse.

Hanging is only allowed in the "rarest of rare" cases according to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. It was used for the first time in eight years in November when the lone surviving gunman from a 2008 militant attack on Mumbai, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab from Pakistan, was executed.

(Additional reporting by Diksha Madhok, Annie Banerji and Satarupa Bhatgtacharjya in NEW DELHI; and Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Fighting rages around Syrian military air base

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops and rebels fought intense battles Thursday around a strategic air base in the country's north and a suburb of the capital that government forces have been trying to capture since last month, activists and state media said.

The fighting is part of the escalating violence in a Syrian civil war that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 60,000 people since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels stormed parts of the Taftanaz air base in the northwestern province of Idlib before withdrawing. The state-run SANA news agency said government forces protecting the base "repelled the terrorists' attempt to attack the airport" and inflicted heavy losses. The Syrian regime routinely refers to rebel forces as "terrorists."

The Observatory said rebels resumed their assault early Thursday in an attempt to capture the base, which has resisted several opposition efforts to take the facility in recent months.

The rebels have been pursuing a strategy of attacking airports and military airfields, targeting five air bases in Idlib and the nearby province of Aleppo, trying to chip away at the government's air power, which poses the biggest obstacle to advances by opposition fighters.

With its troops struggling to make headway — let alone gain ground — against the rebels in the field, the government has increasingly relied on its warplanes and helicopters to target opposition forces.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, reported clashes, air raids and shelling in several suburbs of the capital Damascus, including Daraya, which the regime has been trying to capture from hundreds of opposition fighters for weeks.

The pro-government al-Watan daily said Thursday that the army destroyed rebel strongholds in Daraya and inflicted heavy losses, adding that the area would be declared safe later in the day.

Daraya lies in a key location, and a government takeover there would provide a boost to the regime's defense of Damascus.

The suburb is just a few kilometers (miles) from the strategic military air base of Mazzeh in a western neighborhood of the capital. It borders the Kfar Sousseh neighborhood that is home to the government headquarters, the General Security intelligence agency head office and the Interior Ministry, which was the target of a recent suicide bombing that wounded the interior minister.

Al-Watan said thousands of rebel fighters from the extremists Jabhat al-Nusra group have holed up in Daraya in preparation to storm Damascus. Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and which Washington claims is affiliated with al-Qaida, has been among the most effective fighting forces on the rebel side.

One of the airstrikes hit a building in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Amateur videos showed the top floor of the building heavily damaged as wounded were rushed away in cars and pickup trucks. Many of the wounded were covered with dust.

People rushed to rescue the wounded in a street that was covered with debris and mangled metal. The Observatory and the LCC said eight people were killed Thursday in Douma and nearby areas. Damascus.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded with other AP reporting on the events.

In another air raid, the Observatory said dozens of people were killed or wounded in the town of Hayan in Aleppo province.

The Observatory reported that rebels attacked a power station in the central province of Hama. Syrian TV said troops protecting the station repelled the attackers.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees reported fighting and shelling in different areas of the southern province of Daraa, which borders Jordan. Daraa was the region where the anti-Assad uprising began in March 2011.

In Jordan, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday that there has been a steady increase of Syrians fleeing into Jordan over the past two weeks.

UNHCR reporting officer Danita Topcagic said in the past three days, an average of 1,200-1,300 crossed the border, mainly due to fighting and skyrocketing prices of basic commodities.

Topcagic said refugees told UNHCR that the Free Syrian Army was also encouraging them to flee due to increased fighting in the area. Also, markets and shops are often shuttered making it difficult for people to find food, electricity and water supplies are intermittent and hospitals in many places have shut.

She said that in mid-December a daily average of 757 Syrians had crossed Jordan's northern frontier, while in November the average number daily was around 600.

Syria's civil war has turned more than half a million Syrians into refugees. Most have sought safe haven in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

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