Tens of thousands rally in Tunis to support Islamists

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of supporters of Tunisia's Islamist-led government marched in the capital on Saturday, one of the biggest in a series of pro-government and opposition rallies sparked by the assassination of a secular politician.

The February 6 killing of Chokri Belaid, a human rights lawyer and opposition leader, has thrown Tunisia into political turmoil two years after it staged the first of the Arab Spring revolts.

Violent protests, in which one policeman was killed, swept Tunisia after the assassination, with crowds attacking offices of the rulingIslamist party Ennahda in Tunis and elsewhere.

Islamists have launched counter-rallies, up to now much smaller.

Lotfi Hidouri, a spokesman in the Interior Ministry, told Reuters that more than 100,000 took part in Saturday's rally, or about twice the number who turned out for Belaid's funeral. Security sources referred to tens of thousands of demonstrators.

After Belaid's death, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali promised to form a non-partisan, technocratic cabinet to run the country until an election could take place, despite complaints from within his own Ennahda party and a junior non-Islamist coalition partner that he had failed to consult them.

In the strongest reaction yet to the proposal, Islamist demonstrators flocked to central Tunis on Saturday to support the legitimacy of the government.

"The initiative of the prime minister is a coup against legitimacy, which gave power to Ennahda. That is a coup against the election results," said protester Omar Salem.

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi has rejected Jebali's proposal for a technocrat government but said it was essential Islamists and secular parties shared power now and in the future.

"Any stable rule in Tunisia needs a moderate Islamist-secular coalition," he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

The Islamist demonstrators carried banners reading: "We are loyal to the blood of the martyrs" and "The people want Ennahda again".

In a speech to his supporters on Saturday Ghannouchi said that the exclusion of Ennahda from government would threaten the national unity.

"Ennahda will not leave power as long as people want it," he said.

Belaid's killing by an unidentified gunman was Tunisia's first political assassination in decades and has shaken a nation still seeking stability after the overthrow of veteran strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

While the political transition has been more peaceful than those in other Arab nations such as Egypt, Libya and Syria, tensions are running high between Islamists and liberals who fear the loss of hard-won liberties.

Secular groups have accused the Islamist-led government of a lax response to attacks by ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamists on cinemas, theatres, bars and individuals in recent months.

Jebali met with representatives of Ennahda and secular parties on Friday to discuss the formation of a new government and said consultations would continue on Monday.

Afghan leader says he'll ban airstrike requests

An Afghan military officer poses a question to President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday he plans to issue a decree banning Afghan security forces from asking international troops to carry out airstrikes under "any circumstances.” The announcement came amid anger over a joint Afghan-NATO operation this week that Afghan officials said killed 10 civilians, including women and children, in northeast Kunar province.(AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Angry over civilian deaths, President Hamid Karzai announced plans Saturday to ban Afghan security forces from requesting international airstrikes on residential areas.

If he issues the decree as promised, the move would pose a significant new challenge to government troops who have relied heavily on foreign air power to give them an advantage against insurgents on the battlefield even as the U.S. and other countries prepare to end their combat mission in less than two years.

The declaration came as anger mounted over a joint Afghan-NATO operation this week that Afghan officials said killed 10 civilians, including women and children, in northeast Kunar province.

"I will issue a decree tomorrow that no Afghan security forces, in any circumstances, in any circumstances can ask for the foreigners' planes for carrying out operations on our homes and villages," Karzai said in a speech at the Afghan National Military Academy in Kabul.

Civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces, particularly airstrikes, have been among the most divisive issues of the 11-year-old war and have complicated negotiations for a bilateral security agreement that would govern the foreign presence in the country after 2014.

The U.S.-led coalition has implemented measures to mitigate them, but the Afghan military also relies heavily on air support to gain an upper hand in the fight against Taliban militants and other insurgents.

Many Afghan and international officials have expressed concern that the impending withdrawal of international combat forces by the end of 2014 will deprive government security forces of that crucial weapon. President Barack Obama has announced that he will withdraw about half of the 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan within a year.

Karzai has frequently denounced airstrikes and even demanded that they cease. But his speech Saturday was the first time he threatened to formalize his concern with a decree.

The U.S.-led military coalition already said in June that it would limit airstrikes to a self-defense weapon of last resort for troops. That followed a bombardment that killed 18 civilians celebrating a wedding in Logar province, which drew an apology from the American commander.

Afghan and coalition officials frequently offer differing accounts of military operations, with local residents claiming civilians were killed while foreign troops insist they targeted insurgents. The line is often blurred because insurgents don't wear a uniform and are usually part of the community, with airstrikes and night raids hitting areas where women and children also are asleep.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan said 83 civilians were killed and 46 wounded in aerial attacks by international military forces in the first half of 2012. That figure was down 23 percent from the same period of 2011, which was the deadliest year on record for civilians in the Afghan war. It said two-thirds of the casualties last year were women and children.

Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, declined to comment on Karzai's remarks because alliance officials had not seen the decree.

But Gen. John Allen, the former top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said before leaving that the coalition can provide air support to troops on the ground anywhere in Afghanistan within 12 minutes of a request. He said Afghan forces would have to get used to not having the same abilities in the future.

Karzai said Allen's successor, U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, told him that Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, had requested the airstrike late Tuesday in Kunar's Shigal district, which borders Pakistan. When Dunford met with Karzai two days later, the coalition said the general expressed "his personal condolences for any civilians who may have died or been injured as a result of the operation" and said investigators were trying to assess what happened.

Karzai said Afghan forces were ready to take over their own security despite concerns about persistent violence that have cast doubt on their capabilities.

"We are happy that foreign forces are withdrawing from our country," he said. "We are happy for all their help and assistance so far, but we don't need foreign forces to defend our country. We want our Afghan forces to defend their homeland."

However, former Afghan Gen. Amrullah Aman was surprised by the remarks, saying international air power is essential since one of Afghanistan's main weaknesses in defending itself is the lack of a fully developed air force.

"In a country like Afghanistan where you don't have heavy artillery and you don't have air forces to support soldiers on the ground, how will it be possible to defeat an enemy that knows the area well and can hide anywhere?" he asked.

"There must be air support to help all those ground forces on the battlefield."

The U.N. has said the number of civilian deaths and injuries attributed to foreign and Afghan forces, including airstrikes, has declined as both groups strengthened policies to protect civilians, but it also expressed concern there could be an uptick as the summer fighting season approaches.

Local Afghan officials claim five boys, four women and one man were killed in the bombardment. Four insurgents also were reported killed, but Karzai said that did not justify the loss of so many civilian lives. He said the public had complained not only about foreign forces but about Afghans as well.

"The people must not be afraid of you," Karzai told the military audience. "They must feel safe when they see you in their areas and villages."

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Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

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Follow Kim Gamel at http://twitter.com/kimgamel

Mother: Boy slapped on plane is now apprehensive

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minneapolis woman says her 2-year-old son was traumatized by a man accused of slapping the boy and calling him a racial slur during an Atlanta-bound flight.

The boy's mother, Jessica Bennett, said in a statement Saturday that her son has become "apprehensive to strangers" since the Feb. 8 flight from Minneapolis.

Joe Rickey Hundley, of Hayden, Idaho, has been charged with simple assault. His attorney said he will plead not guilty.

Bennett, 33, told authorities her son was crying as the Delta Air Lines flight prepared for landing.Hundley, 60, was sitting next to her and slapped the boy in his face, causing a scratch under his right eye, she said.

Hundley "told her to shut that (N-word) baby up," FBI special agent Daron Cheney said in a sworn statement. "Ms. Bennett received assistance from several people on the plane."

Bennett said the infant began crying louder after he was hit.

"Hundley's comments were racist and hateful," Bennett said in a statement to KARE-TV(http://kare11.tv/YyjZ58). "The family has numerous questions about how a passenger could get so violently out of control as to assault a toddler."

Hundley was suspended from his job as president of Unitech Composites and Structures, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported (http://bit.ly/Xg2aJQ).

Al Haase, president and chief executive of AGC Aerospace and Defense, Composites Group — Unitech's parent company — said the firm was taking the matter seriously.

"In accordance with our company's personal conduct policy, we have suspended the employee pending investigation," Haase said in a statement.

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Death toll in Pakistani bombing climbs to 81

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — The death toll from a horrific bombing that tore through a crowded vegetable market in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of southwestern Pakistan climbed to 81 with many of the severely wounded dying overnight, a Pakistani police official said Sunday.

Police official Fayyaz Saumbal said 164 people also were wounded by the explosion Saturday in the city of Quetta just as people shopped for produce for their evening meal. The bomb was hidden in a water tank and towed into the market by a tractor, Quetta police chief Zubair Mahmood told reporters.

It was the deadliest incident since bombings targeting Shiites in the same city killed 86 people earlier this year, leading to days of protests that eventually toppled the local government.

Shiites have been increasingly attacked by militant groups who view them as heretics and non-Muslims in the country, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims. Many of the Shiites in Quetta, including those in the neighborhood attacked Saturday, are Hazaras, an ethnic group that migrated to Pakistan from Afghanistan more than a century ago.

The remote-controlled bomb destroyed shops, caused a two-story building to collapse and left a massive crater where it exploded.

Local residents rushed the victims to three different area hospitals, often in private vehicles because there weren't enough ambulances to transport them.

Angry members of the minority Shiite sect protested in the streets, blocking roads with burning tires and throwing stones at passing vehicles. Some fired into the air in an attempt to keep people away from the area in case of a second explosion. Sometimes insurgents stagger the explosions as a way to target people who rush to the scene to help those killed or wounded in the first, thus increasing the death toll.

On Sunday morning, the city was completely shut down as people observed strike called by theHazara Democratic Party as a way to honor the dead and protest the repeated slaughter of members of their ethnic and religious community.

Bostan Ali, the Quetta chief of the Hazara Democratic Party, said the group is planning another protest in the city similar to one held in January after twin bombings in Quetta killed at least 86 people. During that protest, Hazaras refused to bury their dead for four days, instead protesting in the streets alongside coffins holding their loved ones.

"We will not bury our dead until stringent action is taken against terrorists who are targeting and killing Shiites," Ali said.

The rally in January sparked similar events across the country and an outpouring of sympathy for Shiites. The prime minister flew to Quetta and after meeting with protesters dismissed the local government.

But Saturday's massive blast indicated that the militant groups are still capable of targeting Shiites.

The police chief said investigators were not certain who was behind the bombing but a local television station reported that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni extremist group that has targeted Shiites in the past, had called to claim responsibility.

Most of the Shiites in the area are Hazaras, and they were quick to blame Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

"This evil force is operating with the patronage of certain elements in the province," said Qayum Changezi, the chairman of a local Hazara organization.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, the country's largest but also the one with the smallest population.

The province is facing challenges on many fronts. Baluch nationalist groups are fighting an insurgency there to try to gain a greater share of income from the province's gas and mineral resources. Islamic militants, like the sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, are also active in the province. And members of the Afghan Taliban are believed to be hiding in the region.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi took its name after a firebrand Sunni cleric who gave virulently anti-Shiite sermons.

Pakistan's intelligence agencies helped nurture Sunni militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in the 1980s and 1990s to counter a perceived threat from neighboring Iran, which is mostly Shiite. Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2001, but the group continues to operate fairly freely.

Last year was particularly deadly for Shiites in Pakistan. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 were killed in targeted attacks across the country. The human rights group said more than 125 were killed in Baluchistan province, most of whom belonged to the Hazara community.

Rights groups have accused the government of not doing enough to protect Shiites in the country.

Russian Meteor Blast Bigger Than Thought, NASA Says

What appears to be a meteor trail over eastern Russian is seen in this image released Feb. 15, 2013, by the Russian Emergency Ministry. The meteor fall included a massive blast, according to Russian reports.

The meteor that exploded over Russia Friday was slightly larger than previously thought and more powerful, too, NASA scientists say.

The Russian meteor explosion over the city of Chelyabinsk, on Friday (Feb. 15), injured more than 1,000 people and blew out windows across the region in a massive blast captured on cameras by frightened witnesses. Friday afternoon, NASA scientistsestimated the meteor was space rock about 50 feet (15 meters) and sparked a blast equivalent of a 300-kiloton explosion. The energy estimate was later increased to 470 kilotons.

But late Friday, NASA revised its estimates on the size and power of the devastating meteor explosion. The meteor's size is now thought to be slightly larger — about 55 feet (17 m) wide — with the power of the blast estimate of about 500 kilotons, 30 kilotons higher than before, NASA officials said in a statement. [See video of the intense meteor explosion]

The meteor was also substantially more massive than thought as well. Initial estimated pegged the space rock's mass at about 7,000 tons. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., now say the meteor weighed about 10,000 tons and was travelling 40,000 mph (64,373 km/h) when it exploded.

"These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world - the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk," JPL officials explained in the statement. The infrasound stations detect low-frequency sound waves that accompany exploding meteors, known as bolides.

The meteor entered Earth's atmosphere and blew apart over Chelyabinsk at 10:20 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (03:20:26 GMT on Feb. 15). The meteor briefly outshined the sun during the event, which occurred just hours before a larger space rock — the 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 — zoomed by Earth in an extremely close flyby.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 approached within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of Earth Friday, but never posed an impact threat to the planet. The asteroid flyby and Russian meteor explosion had significantly different trajectories, showing that they were completely unrelated events, NASA officials said.

Late Friday, another fireball was spotted over the San Francisco Bay Area in California. That event, also unrelated, occurred at about 7:45 p.m. PST (10:45 p.m. EST/0345 Feb. 16 GMT) and lit up the nighttime sky. Aside from the unexpected light show, the fireball over San Francisco had little other effect.

NASA scientists said the Russian meteor event, however, is a rare occurrence. Not since 1908, when a space rock exploded over Russia's Tunguska River in Siberia and flattened 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of uninhabited forest land, has a meteor event been so devastating.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL said. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

According to the Associated Press, search teams have recovered small objects that might be meteorite fragments and divers are searching the bottom of a lake where a meteorite is thought to have landed.