Mali military enters fabled town of Timbuktu

SEVARE, Mali (AP) — Backed by French helicopters and paratroopers, Malian soldiers entered the fabled city of Timbuktuon Monday after al-Qaida-linked militants who ruled the outpost by fear for nearly 10 months fled into the desert, setting fire to a library that held thousands of manuscripts dating to the Middle Ages.

French Col. Thierry Burkhard, chief military spokesman in Paris, said that there had been no combat with the Islamists but that the French and Malian forces did not yet control the town.

Still, there was celebration among the thousands of Timbuktu residents who fled the city rather than live under strict and pitiless Islamic rule and the dire poverty that worsened after the tourist industry was destroyed.

"In the heart of people from northern Mali, it's a relief — freedom finally," said Cheick Sormoye, a Timbuktu resident who fled to Bamako, the capital.

Timbuktu, a city of mud-walled buildings and 50,000 people, was for centuries a seat of Islamic learning and a major trading center along the North African caravan routes that carried slaves, gold and salt. In Europe, legend had it that it was a city of gold. Today, its name is synonymous to many with the ends of the earth.

It has been home to some 20,000 irreplaceable manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century. It was not immediately known how many were destroyed in the blaze that was set in recent days in an act of vengeance by the Islamists before they withdrew.

Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation, called the arson a "desecration to humanity."

"These manuscripts are irreplaceable. They have the wisdom of the ages and it's the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls," he said.

The militants seized Timbuktu last April and began imposing a strict Islamic version of Shariah, or religious law, across northern Mali, carrying out amputations and public executions. Women could be whipped for going out in public without wearing veils, while men could be lashed for having cigarettes.

Just over two weeks after the French began their military intervention in Mali, French and Malian forces arrived in Timbuktu overnight, the French military spokesman said Monday.

"The helicopters have been decisive," Burkhard said, describing how they aided the ground forces who came from the south as French paratroopers landed north of the city.

But the French have said Mali's military must finish the job of securing Timbuktu. And the Malians have generally fared poorly in combat, often retreating in panic in the face of well-armed, battle-hardened Islamists.

During their rule in Timbuktu, the militants systematically destroyed cultural sites, including the ancient tombs of Sufi saints, which they denounced as contrary to Islam because they encouraged Muslims to venerate saints instead of God.

The mayor said the Islamists burned his office as well as the Ahmed Baba institute, a library rich in historical documents.

"It's truly alarming that this has happened," Mayor Ousmane Halle told The Associated Press by telephone from Bamako. "They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people."

Some manuscripts had been removed from Timbuktu or hidden away for safekeeping from the Islamists.

"UNESCO is very concerned about the reports coming out of Timbuktu as to damage on cultural heritage there," UNESCO chief spokeswoman Sue Williams said from Paris.

The destruction recalls tactics used by the Taliban in 2001 when they dynamited a pair of giant Buddhas carved into a mountain in Afghanistan. The Taliban also rampaged through the national museum, smashing any art depicting the human form, considered idolatrous under their hardline interpretation of Islam. In all, they destroyed about 2,500 statues.

Mali's Islamists still control the provincial capital of Kidal farther north and are believed to have dug a network of tunnels, trenches and caves from which they can launch attacks.

Nana Toure, a native of Timbuktu now living in the capital, said she was delighted to hear that the French had arrived but worried how long the Malian soldiers could hold the town without help.

"French troops must not leave us alone then because those who fled may come back and cause problems for us," she said. "French troops have to stay a bit to stabilize the place."

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

Neglect, errors to blame in Brazil nightclub fire

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (AP) — There was no fire alarm. There were no sprinklers or fire escapes. And when a band member tried to put out a fire that had been started by pyrotechnics, the extinguisher didn't work.

All the elements were in place for the tragedy at the Kiss nightclub early Sunday. The result was the world's worst fire of its kind in more than a decade, with 231 people dead and this southern Brazilian college town in shock and mourning.

Funerals began on Monday, as reports continued to emerge about the accumulation of neglect and errors at the packed night spot.

According to state safety codes here, clubs should have one fire extinguisher every 1,500 square feet as well as multiple emergency exits. Limits on the number of people admitted are to be strictly respected. None of that appears to have happened at the Santa Maria nightclub.

"A problem in Brazil is that there is no control of how many people are admitted in a building," said Joao Daniel Nunes, a civil engineer in nearby Porto Alegre. "They never are clearly stated, and nobody controls how many people enter these night clubs."

Santa Maria's mayor, Jose Fortunati, told Radio Gaucha that dozens of night spots were closed last year for failing to meet norms.

"At that time, we had lots of protest from those who frequented them, but I think that today people understand it better and that at times hard stands must be taken so that steps are taken to not put people's lives at risk," Fortunati said.

Brazilian police said they detained three people in connection with the blaze, while the newspaper O Globo said on its website that a fourth person had surrendered to police. Police Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Junior said the detentions were part of the ongoing police probe and those detained can be held for up to five days.

Vieira declined to identify those detained, but the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora quotes lawyer Jader Marques saying his client Elissandro Spohr, a co-owner of the club, had been held. Globo reported that the fourth person detained was another club co-owner. G1, Globo Television's internet portal, reported that Spohr acknowledged the club's operating license was not up to date but said the pyrotechnics show started the blaze.

Zero Hora said police also detained two members of the band. The band's guitarist told Brazilian media he saw flames lick the ceiling after the group's spark machine was deployed.

More than 100 people remained hospitalized for smoke, local officials said.

National Health Minister Alexandre Padilha cautioned that the death toll could worsen dramatically. Speaking to media in Santa Maria, he said that 75 of those injured were in critical condition and could die.

However, Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a doctor helping coordinate the emergency response, said he was optimistic at least some of those injured would pull through.

"It's impossible to predict what will happen, because they are all in a very delicate state, but there's hope for all of them," said Beltrame, adding that more than 40 survivors had been sent to neighboring cities for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation. "One of the problems we're having here is that all these people need to be on respirators and we don't have enough respirators in the city."

The event raises questions of whether Brazilian authorities are up to the task of ensuring safety in such venues ahead of it hosting next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

Some critics have said conditions in many Brazilian bars and clubs are ripe for another deadly blaze. In addition to modernizing sometimes outdated safety codes and ensuring sufficient inspectors, people have to change their way of thinking and respect safety regulations.

Funeral services were held for several of the 231 victims, most of them college students 18 to 21 years old. Some of the victims were minors. Most died from smoke inhalation rather than burns.

Witnesses said security guards who didn't know about the blaze initially blocked people from leaving without paying their bills. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they're allowed to leave. Many of the dead were found in the club's two bathrooms, where the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.

Rodrigo Martins, a guitarist for the group Gurizada Fandangueira, told Globo TV network in an interview Monday that the flames broke out minutes after the deployment of a pyrotechnic machine that fans out colored sparks, at around 2:30 a.m. local time.

"I felt that something was falling from the roof and I looked up and I saw the fire was spreading, and I shouted 'Look, it's catching on fire, man, it's catching fire,'" Martins said. "Then the drummer tried to throw water on it, and it looked like the fire spread more then. Then the security guards came with an extinguisher, tried to use it, but it didn't work."

He added that the club was packed and estimated the crowd at about 1,200-1,300 people.

"I thought I was going to die there. There was nothing I could do, with the fire spreading and people screaming in front."

Martins confirmed that the group's accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other band members made it out safely. Martins said he thought Jacques made it out of the building and later returned to save his accordion.

Martins said the group nearly always used the so-called Sputnik pyrotechnics machine and that it had never before caused any problem, even in smaller venues. An electrical short circuit could also possibly have been to blame for the fire, he suggested.

Still, police were leaning toward the pyrotechnics as the likely cause of the tragedy. Police inspector Antonio Firmino, who's part of the team investigating Sunday's blaze, said it appeared the club's ceiling was covered with an insulating foam made from a combustible material that ignited with the pyrotechnics. He said the number and state of the exits is under investigation but that it appeared that a second door was "inadequate," as it was small and protected by bars that wouldn't open.

Television images from Santa Maria showed black smoke billowing out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who attended the university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside. Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. About half of those killed were men, and another half women.

The party was organized by students from several academic departments at the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.

"This shook the whole town," said Ocimar Franco, neighbor of fire victim Taize Santos, before her funeral Monday. "I feel the whole world is watching our town. I wish it were for another reason."

Among the dead were also brothers Pedro and Marcelo Salla, who were both buried Monday.

Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity, and the crowds and thickness of the smoke made it hard for people to find their way out.

"Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 percent of the victims died of asphyxiation," Beltrame said. "The toxic smoke made people lose their sense of direction so they were unable to find their way to the exit. At least 50 bodies were found inside a bathroom."

Beltrame said people who were inside the club and thought they made it out safely have started to turn up at area hospitals with symptoms of smoke inhalation, which he said can take hours or even days to appear. He estimated that around 15 people have sought out help in the past few hours and said some have had to be intubated.

Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period, and Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, said officials were investigating the cause of the disaster.

The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.

Sunday's fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub anywhere in the world since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.

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Mexican church sparks debate on forgiving killers

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An order of Roman Catholic priests in Mexico has produced a video urging relatives of drug cartel victims to adopt a Christ-like forgiveness by pardoning even the killers, hitting a sensitive nerve in a country that has suffered an estimated 70,000 estimated drug gangkillings or more.

The 10-minute video entitled "Brother Narco," presented this week, tells the story of Miri, a 13-year-old girl who cowers in her bedroom as a gunman and his gang kill her parents one night. The killer in a black cowboy hat later bursts with his henchmen into the church where her parents' funeral is being held. The gunmen carry a funeral wreath for the couple, and the killer lays a hand on the coffin, and then turns to leave.

Miri walks up to him in the church and hugs him.

"My uncles and aunts told me .... that when I grow up, I have to do the same thing to your children," Miri says to him, speaking of revenge. Instead, she decides to forgive him, reasoning, "Maybe somebody did the same thing to your parents, or maybe they never hugged you."

The killer is shown returning the embrace, but it is unclear what he does next.

The scriptwriter of the short film, Pauline Father Omar Sotelo, said he won't reveal if the killer ever repents of his crime. Sotelo says his group is already in pre-production for the second of a planned 12 short features, filmed in high-definition video, which will be distributed on the Internet and on social networks.

Sotelo acknowledged that such a scene might be improbable in real life, but insisted that "as mystical and utopic as it may seem, this project comes out of real-life stories."

He told of one woman he met who decided to forgive her sons' killer.

"She said "I don't want to see anyone else's children killed. That is why I pardoned my son's killer'," Sotelo recalled.

Anti-crime crusader Isabel Miranda de Wallace had a different view: "I don't think people can forgive if they don't even know what happened to the victims, if justice hasn't been done."

Miranda de Wallace led a decade-long fight to bring to justice the gang that kidnapped and killed her son. But they haven't been sentenced yet, and they delayed so long in telling where they left her son's body that the lot was built over by the time authorities could search it.

She said even getting answers is hard in a country where drug gangs have routinely dissolved the bodies of their victims in chemicals or dumped them in unmarked mass graves.

"There are a lot of people who cannot even mourn, because we haven't found the bodies of our relatives, " she said, "so how are you going to go through the process of loss and reach forgiveness if you can't even get justice?"

To some extent, it is surprising how much tolerance victims' relatives have shown. In 2011, when victims banded together to form the Movement for Peace and Justice With Dignity, the relatives of dead drug gang suspects and the relatives of drug gang victims often marched and rallied side by side, to demand answers about their loved ones' fates.

Sotelo hardly thinks his production is the last word on the debate. But in a nation where tens of thousands of young men have been recruited to drug gangs, he said forgiveness is something the nation is going to have to deal with. The only other alternative would be to arrest or kill all of the gunmen, and — apart from humanitarian concerns — Mexican authorities haven't proven very capable at doing either.

"By attacking the criminals with guns, what we have done is taken violence and produced more violence," he said.

"What we have found is that these criminals have undergone a process of dehumanization," Sotelo said. "What we need to do is to reverse that process of dehumanization. How you re-humanize someone, is, well, by treating them as what they are, a human being."

Miranda de Wallace, too, acknowledged Mexico will one day face the task, but in a country where an estimated 98 percent of crimes go unprosecuted, said that day has not yet arrived.

"Without doubt, we will have to reach forgiveness," she said, "but I don't think we are at that stage yet in the national process."