6
MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2004
Mine blast in Russia kills 42
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
OSINNIKI, Russia - The coal
blackened faces of exhausted res
cuers and the red-rimmed eyes of
anxious relatives told a grim story
of disappearing hope Sunday, a day
after a methane blast tore through
a Siberian mine, killing at least 42
miners.
Five miners remained missing
in the latest disaster to strike
Russia’s hardscrabble coal country.
“Most likely, they will all be
corpses,” said the head of a com
mission dealing with the disaster.
The blast occurred early
Saturday about 1,840 feet down in
the Taizhina mine in a coal-rich
strip of western Siberia called the
Kuzbass.
On Sunday, emergency officials
plotted rescue and recovery strate
gies at one end of the mine’s Soviet
era administration building, which
is topped by a red star, while griev
Israel: Hezbollah backs Palestinians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM - The Islamic
group Hezbollah has become a key
sponsor of Palestinian violence,
funding suicide bombings that
have killed dozens of Israelis in
recent months, Israeli intelligence
sources, Palestinian Authority offi
cials and militants have told The
Associated Press.
The Iranian-backed group,
based in Lebanon, first earned a
foothold in the 3 1/2-year-old
Palestinian uprising by giving
money to Hamas and Islamic
Jihad, ideological allies that also
seek the destruction of Israel.
In recent months, it has pulled
off something akin to a hostile
takeover of some of cells of the Al
Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, wrenching
them away from Yasser Arafat’s
secular Fatah movement and turn
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ing relatives sat or milled nervous
ly in a rundown auditorium domi
nated by a painting of a strong,
smiling miner carrying flowers.
“They told me to wait,” said
Tatyana Fatykhova, 34, whose hus
band, Rashid, was underground
when the blast occurred.
“They’ve pulled up some bodies,
but they haven’t identified them
yet.”
Her husband’s name was not on
the list of identified victims posted
by the stairwell.
The head of a government com
mission created to deal with the
disaster, Sergei Ovanesyan, said it
was “practically impossible” that
any of those still missing would be
found alive.
“Most likely, they will all be
corpses,” he said.
Of the 42 bodies found, 36 had
been retrieved, and 29 of those had
been identified, said officials over
ing them into a proxy army.
Al Aqsa members in the West
Bank city of Nablus say they speak
with their Hezbollah handlers by
phone almost daily. Israeli security
officials say Hezbollah trains some
Palestinian militants abroad,
instructing them in weapons and
bomb-making.
Hezbollah does not seem to be
issuing specific instructions about
targets or timing. One Al Aqsa
member said his Hezbollah contact
urges him to carry out attacks
whenever the opportunity arises, in
“any way possible.”
Israeli officials say Hezbollah
helps coordinate joint shootings
and bombings by the three
Palestinian militant groups and has
been trying to spin- Israel’s Arab cit
izens, who have mostly stayed out
of the uprising, to join in.
seeing the recovery effort.
More than 600 miners work at
the mine in the city of Osinniki,
according to ITAR-Tass. Taizhina
opened in 1998 but was built on
the foundation of a closed mine,
and the equipment shown on
Russian television stations
appeared to be run-down.
Rescue workers dug under
ground toward the blast site from
two sides: Taizhina and an adja
cent mine in Osinniki, a sprawling
community of ramshackle homes
and crumbling, derelict buildings
set amid barren hills streaked with
snow.
A handful of rescue workers dis
carded oxygen tanks and lit up cig
arettes after a shift underground.
Asked if there was hope of find
ing anyone alive, one of the res
cuers shook his head to mean “no.”
The men refused to talk about the
conditions underground, but the
Israel’s Shin Bet security service
says that since 2003, six Hezbollah
cells have been discovered among
Israeli Arabs.
Hezbollah doesn’t elaborate on
what support it gives, but after the
assassination of Hamas founder
Sheik Ahmed Yassin in March, it
promised to do whatever possible
to help Hamas exact revenge.
A senior Israeli military official,
speaking on condition of anonymi
ty, described Hezbollah’s involve
ment in the Palestinian intefadeh,
or uprising, as “immense.”
“They are all over the place and
they give a lot of money,” the offi
cial said, adding that Iran might be
using Hezbollah to fund
Palestinian militants. Many
Palestinians admire Hezbollah,
crediting its 18-year guerrilla war
with having forced Israel to with
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Interfax News Agency said the area
was filled with carbon dioxide, and
Ekho Moskvy radio said work was
hampered by heavy smoke.
Deputy Prosecutor General
Valentin Simuchenkov said the
blast occurred after the concentra
tion of methane gas in the mine
increased by roughly 10-fold in a
short period of time.
Investigators will try to deter
mine what made the methane level
increase so quickly and what trig
gered the blast, Simuchenkov said,
adding that an earthquake or the
shifting of coal plates were among
the potential causes of the buildup.
A criminal investigation was
opened into suspicions of safety
violations, he said. Accidents are
common in the Russian coal indus
try, but Saturday’s disaster was the
deadliest in the Kuzbass since
1997, when a methane blast nearby
killed 67 people.
draw from southern Lebanon in
2000, a model Palestinian mili
tants would like to emulate.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, mean
ing “Party of God,” is seen not only
as a militant group, but also as an
influential and legitimate political
force, with schools, clinics, a TV
station and Parliament members.
Hezbollah still launches occa
sional attacks on Israel over a
minor border dispute, but the issue
inspires little passion. Its search for
new relevance has led it to the
Palestinians, said Ibrahim Bayram,
an analyst with Lebanon’s An-
Nahar daily.
“Whether here or in Palestine,
Hezbollah considers resisting the
Israeli occupation to be part of its
own struggle,” he said. “If the inte
fadeh ends, the justification for its
(military) existence ends too.”
9-11 panel probes
old FBI divisions
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The
legal wall that for years divided FBI
intelligence and criminal agents is
blamed largely for the government’s
failure to grasp the threat posed by
al-Qaida inside the United States
before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
One FBI agent, frustrated at his
inability to track two soon-to-be
hijackers known to be in the United
States, wrote in an August 2001 e
mail that “someday someone will
die, and wall or not, the public will
not understand why we were not
more effective and throwing every
resource at certain problems.”
The problem, since resolved, is
expected to be among the topics
when current and former Justice
Department and FBI officials tes
tify Tuesday and Wednesday
before the independent commis
sion investigating the Sept. 11
attacks.
Former FBI Director Louis
Freeh, former Attorney General
Janet Reno, Attorney General
John Ashcroft and FBI Director
Officials, families wait for
release of hostages in Iraq
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO Japan waited anx
iously Monday for the release of
three Japanese civilians taken
hostage in Iraq as the government
struggled to determine whether
the gunmen holding them planned
to set them free.
In the United States, relatives of
Thomas Hamill, a U.S. civilian
held by militants in Iraq, said they
were praying for his safe return.
At least one hostage was
released Sunday, and more were
expected to be freed. Britain’s
Foreign Office said Gary Teeley, a
British man who reportedly had
been kidnapped in the southern
city of Nasiriyah, was safe and in
the hands of coalition forces.
Al-Jazeera reported Sunday that
kidnappers said they would release
eight other foreign hostages: two
Thrks, three Pakistanis, a Nepalese,
a Filipino and an Indian. Their cap
tors claimed the men were truck
drivers for the U.S.-led coalition.
In a video of the eight hostages,
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Robert Mueller are among those
scheduled to appear.
In the months after the Sept, li
attacks, the wall was dismantled by
the USA PATRIOT Act and a court
ruling allowing the FBI to seek spe
cial warrants allowing agents to
wiretap phones and conduct other
secret surveillance inside the United
States of suspected foreign terror
ists, government agents and spies.
Former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-
Wash., a commission member, said
Sunday the FBl’s lack of internal
communication, not just the intel
ligence-criminal wall, will be the
principal topic of this week’s hear
ings.
Exhibit A will be President
Bush’s daily briefing of Aug. 6,
2001, which the White House
declassified and made public
Saturday night, he said.
“The most important feature of
the PDB... is the line that the FBI
is conducting 70 full field investi
gations,” Gorton said on “Fox News
Sunday.” “I don’t know where those
70 full field investigations were.”
a spokesman for the kidnappers
said they were being released. But
it was unclear if the men actually
were freed.
Japanese officials in Jordan said
they were talking with unidentified
people in Iraq to gain the Japanese
hostages’ release. A negotiator told
the Japanese government the three
civilians were unharmed, held near
Fallujah, Kyodo News reported,
citing unidentified government
sources.
The American, Hamill, 43, was
snatched Friday by gunmen who
attacked a fuel convoy he was
guarding. His captors threatened
to kill him unless U.S. troops
ended their assault on the city of
Fallujah. The deadline passed
Sunday morning with no word on
Hamill’s fate.
Hamill, a Mississippi native,
works for the Houston-based
engineering and construction
company Kellogg, Brown & Root,
a division of Halliburton, his wife,
Kellie, told The Associated Press.