More than 50 bodies piled up in a hospital in the northern Nigerian city of
Kaduna on the second day of communal clashes in the volatile state capital,
witnesses said.
Despite troop deployments at the outset of the clashes on Monday, skirmishes
resumed on Tuesday in outlying districts of the city where hundreds had died
in devastating Moslem-Christian fighting in February, residents said.
But authorities discounted religious motives in the latest fighting, blaming
it on disputes between youths, "rumor mongers and miscreants."
A Reuters correspondent who visited the Barau Dikko Specialist Hospital
counted at least 50 bodies, some of them burnt beyond recognition. A tour of
southern suburbs showed fighting was still going on in Barnawa and other
districts.
Barnawa residents said some houses and cars had been torched by rampaging
youths on Tuesday. The fighting erupted on Monday between the neighboring
Barnawa and Nariyi communities following the discovery of the body of a
Christian in Nariyi.
Sources in the office of Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Makarfi told Reuters
the official car of his commissioner for finance, Alhaji Suleiman Hukunyi,
was set ablaze and his whereabouts were unknown.
Sporadic clashes were also reported in the mainly Moslem suburbs of Tudun
Wada and Rigasa.
"The difference between this unrest and the last one is that this time the
crisis is in the city's outskirts, which is unplanned and more difficult to
police," one resident said.
The center of town was relatively calm although shops, businesses and
schools, which closed hurriedly at the start of the unrest, largely remained
shut.

The final chapter of Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon ended
early Wednesday, as a column of Israeli tanks and troops rolled out of
Lebanon and crossed the border into Israel.
The Hezbollah flag was raised at historic Beaufort Castle as the Israelis
departed.
Scores of guerrillas picked through the remnants of the Israelis' abandoned
camp, looking for souvenirs.
By morning light, the Israeli Defense Force said its withdrawal from
southern Lebanon was complete, although it could not confirm that every
Israeli soldier had left a few may remain for security purposes during the
simultaneous pull-out of Israeli-backed SLA fighters and their families.
The final stages of the withdrawal came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
ordered troops to leave by night's end in accordance with U.N. resolution
425, a document drawn up in 1978 calling on Israel to pull its troops from
all Lebanese territory.
In the distance, shelling pierced the sky as the retreating Israeli troops
fired rounds to make sure Hezbollah fighters didn't attack during the
withdrawal.
Lebanese Hezbollah and Amal fighters rushed to move into Israel's
self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon after the troops left.
The Israeli Interior Ministry said it would issue one-year tourist visas,
work permits and health insurance benefits to any South Lebanon Army
soldiers and families who cross into Israel. After one year, those asylum
seekers would be allowed to apply for an extension to those benefits.

U.N. officials want to thoroughly examine the skeletal remains found Monday
in Sierra Leone clothed in the uniforms of the Zambian army, but they will
have to wait.
"We don't ourselves have forensic capability," said U.N. spokesman David
Wimhurst. "We have checked in Freetown, and there is no forensic laboratory
available, which makes our task somewhat difficult."
The remains were located Monday in Rogberi Junction the front-line position
in the battle against the rebel Revolutionary United Front in foxholes that
Zambian U.N. peacekeepers had dug weeks ago.
Authorities are concerned that the bodies might be those of the
peacekeepers, a finding that would make them the latest victims of the
rebels. Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneons were killed or intentionally
mutilated during an eight-year civil war.

Christians and Muslims clashed for a second day Tuesday in the northern city
of Kaduna, torching homes and places of worship as the death toll climbed to
over 100, police said.
Police, army and air force troops maintained a heavy presence in the city
Tuesday, but were unable to prevent fighting in several neighborhoods. Smoke
billowed up as houses and churches were set on fire, witnesses said.
Hundreds of residents carrying their belongings in bundles on their heads
fled south to cities such as Jos, Makurdi and Abuja. Others took refuge in
police and army barracks.
Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi met with religious and ethnic
leaders and imposed an 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew in a bid to contain the
violence. Shortly before the curfew took effect Tuesday, an uneasy calm
returned to the city as security forces continued to patrol.
Hospital and police officials, speaking on condition that they not be named,
said late Tuesday that the death toll had surpassed 100.

Sri Lanka's civil war spread east Wednesday as the nation's air force
attacked rebel positions following shelling at a government army camp and
air base.
There was no report of damage. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President Chandrika
Kumaratunga said the government was considering creating a third-party group
of nations to help resolve the conflict.
The Tamil Tiger rebels, meanwhile, said on the Tamilnet Internet site, that
heavy fighting began when they fired mortars on the two government
positions. The Vavunathivu army camp is a forward defense for the air base.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting 17 years for a
separate homeland in Sri Lanka. More than 62,000 people have died in the
conflict. The rebels have been trying during their latest offensive to
reclaim the city of Jaffna, which they consider to be their cultural
capital.

The Zimbabwe government has amended the country's land-ownership laws to
allow President Robert Mugabe to seize up to 841 white-owned farms by
proclamation and without compensation, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
"The amendment to the Land Act was gazetted yesterday in a special gazette,"
government press secretary Munyaradzi Hwengwere said.
The amendment was made possible by a constitutional amendment forced
through parliament on April 6, which passed the onus for compensating white
farm owners to "the former colonial power," Britain.
Hwengwere said the amendment would allow Mugabe, who has made the white
domination of land a central issue in the campaign for parliamentary
elections on June 24-25 to take over any or all of 841 designated farms by
proclamation.

Heavy fighting was reported on Tuesday at the Zalambessa border point
regarded as the most important goal for Ethiopia in its border dispute with
Eritrea.
Thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops pounded each other in what
analysts say could be the most ferocious battle of the war.
Special envoys from the European Union and the Organization of African Unity
started a second day of shuttling between the two countries, seeking a
diplomatic solution and a return to negotiations. But the Ethiopian
government has discounted the possibility of a cease-fire.

Eritrea marked the anniversary of its independence from Ethiopia in familiar
straits Wednesday, with its leader defiant and its soldiers in a fierce
battle with Ethiopian troops in a showdown that could determine the
war'soutcome.
At celebrations Tuesday on the eve of Eritrea's most popular public holiday,
President Isaias Afewerki told a crowd of about 15,000 in the capital city
of Asmara that Ethiopia plans to "destroy" the tiny Red Sea state.
"The situation is at its worst ... but the present situation is temporary.
It will not stay like this," Isaias told invited guests in Asmara's main
square.
Isaias acknowledged Tuesday the country faces "difficult circumstances" that
could worsen.
"There will be ups and downs, but Eritrea will win," a tired and drawn
Isaias told the crowd.
Eritrea has suffered heavy defeats at the hands of Ethiopia since fighting
erupted May 12 along the 992-kilometer (620-mile) border separating the two
Horn of Africa nations.
Eritrea won independence nine years ago from Ethiopia after Ethiopia's
Marxist regime government was overthrown.

Zimbabwe's government, facing parliamentary elections in June,has
enacted a new law to allow President Robert Mugabe to seize up to 841
white-owned farms without paying compensation for the land.
In response to a reporter's question, Mugabe issued his second call
Wednesday for an end to political violence that has claimed at least 23
lives and seen hundreds assaulted.
"We are all appealing for non-violence, for peace and stability in this
country. We don't want the divisions and disharmony to continue to exist,"
he said when asked about alleged attacks on political opponents of his
ruling party.
Mugabe has blamed white farmers and his political foes for violence linked
to the occupation of white-owned farms by veterans of the former Rhodesia's
1970s civil war.
Government press secretary Munyaradzi Hwengwere said a new law had been
enacted to allow an immediate start to the seizure of white-owned farms for
redistribution to landless blacks.

Ethiopia will not halt its war with Eritrea unless all of its opponent's
forces are withdrawn from Ethiopian territory, a spokeswoman  for the
Ethiopian government said early on Thursday morning.
After more than a week of casualties suffered at the hands of Ethiopian
troops, Eritrea agreed Wednesday to withdraw to the borders recognized
before war broke out between the neighbors two years ago.
The news followed a plea from the Organization of African Unity, which has
been trying to broker a cease-fire between the warring nations, and came as
the two armies spent a second day locked in combat near the border town of
Zalambessa, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) south of Asmara.
"Eritrea has decided, for the sake of peace, to accept the appeal ... for
de-escalation," the country's government announced late Wednesday. It said
the withdrawal would begin within hours.

Zimbabwe's opposition succeeded on Thursday in a last-ditch attempt to win
more time to nominate candidates for next month's parliamentary elections.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had gone to court to argue that a
postponement was vital if it was to field a full team of candidates in the
June 24-25 vote -- which could bring a real challenge to President Robert
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.
The government side told the court in Harare it had no objection to pushing
back the original May 29 closing date.
"By consent, the nomination date for elections...is moved from May 29 to
June 3," Judge Godfrey Chidyausiku said.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai welcomed the decision.
"It is the only logical thing to do. It gives us time to check the
boundaries and the voters' role," he told reporters, before addressing 5,000
supporters at a rally in Bulawayo.
Attorney General Patrick Chinamasa said the government was willing to
accommodate the opposition request. "I have no difficulty with June 3. There
are no intentions on the part of government to deny anyone from standing in
elections," he said.

Security forces have arrested more than 150 people in a bid to quell
Christian-Muslim fighting in a northern Nigeria town, where riots have left
up to 300 people dead, a newspaper reported Thursday.
With army and police units patrolling the streets of Kaduna, no new
outbreaks of fighting were reported overnight and life was gradually
returning to normal Thursday.
Authorities have been reluctant to give an exact death toll from the two-day
clashes that began Monday, fearing it will only further inflame passions.
However, two of the country's leading newspapers, Punch and the state-owned
Daily Times, put the number at between 200 and 300.
Those figures are in line with estimates by hospital and police sources in
Kaduna, as well as witnesses and journalists who have visited neighborhoods
where hundreds of homes were destroyed, many of them burned to the ground.
About 100 victims were placed in a mass grave Wednesday alongside a road
leading to the city's new airport, officials said.
At the gravesite, both Christian and Muslim leaders led prayers and pleaded
for peace in the troubled city, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of
the capital Abuja.
The latest clashes were a revival of bitter religious bloodletting in Kaduna
in February triggered by plans to implement Islamic law, or sharia, in some
northern Nigerian states that are divided between Muslims and Christians. Up
to 2,000 died in those clashes.

The green, yellow and red flag of Ethiopia fluttered over the town of
Zalambessa Friday morning, as jubilant soldiers celebrated the withdrawal of
Eritrean troops from territory seized soon after war broke out in May 1998.
But the Ethiopians' victory was bittersweet -- nothing but rubble remains of
the key mountain border town on the road between the capitals of Ethiopia
and Eritrea.
The Eritrean army destroyed every home in the little town, bulldozing their
rock walls to nothing. Shops, factories, the customs house all lie in ruins
along streets where Ethiopia soldiers now march toward other battles in the
two-year-old war.
Zalambessa saw limited fighting, however, instead holding a symbolic place
on the border between two countries whose leaders were once allies in the
fight against Ethiopian military dictator Haile Mengistu Mariam.
Eritrean rebels had battled Ethiopia for 30 years for an independent
homeland, finally gaining freedom in 1993, two years after Eritrea's Isaias
Afwerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi joined forces to oust
Mengistu. But the two never finished demarcating their borders, leading to
Eritrea's 1998 invasion of Ethiopian territory and the outbreak of war.

Defying the Tamil Tiger rebels' threat of a "bloodbath" if they refused to
surrender by Friday evening, government troops in northern
Sri Lanka launched heavy artillery fire at rebel positions.
The artillery attacks came in retaliation for sporadic rebel shelling and
mortar attacks on army defenses in the Chavakachcheri area north of Jaffna,
Sri Lankan spokesman and chief government censor Ariya Rubasinghe said
Thursday. The military, he said, had killed at least 13 rebels and wounded
seven others in clashes near Nargarkovli, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) east
of Jaffna.
While government officials had not commented on the rebels' ultimatum Lanka
had said it would never withdraw the nearly 40,000 troops roughly a third of
its army from the region.
"If you do not surrender, you will be responsible for your fate. There will
be a bloodbath," the rebels announced Thursday on the Voice of Tigers radio.

The Fiji army chief, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, imposed martial law on
Monday and declared himself head of government after turmoil in the wake of
a coup on May 19.
  The U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Osman Siddique, said Bainimarama had
dismissed Fiji's president.
Talks to end the armed rebellion in Fiji's parliament had resumed earlier
Monday, just hours after a mob rampaged through Suva, the capital, and
killed a policeman.
Amid concerns that violence could flare again Monday night, Fijian army
officials, who support the government, had urged reservists to report for
duty. The call went out to men aged 55 and under. It was not immediately
clear how the new imposition of martial law affected the call-up.
Military officials also had announced earlier Monday that a 48-hour curfew
would be imposed effective from 6 p.m. in the Suva area. Further details
were to be announced later in the day. The police currently administer a
curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Ethiopia's warplanes bombed a military airstrip on the outskirts of Asmara
Monday, taking its 2-week-old offensive to the Eritrean capital on the
opening day of peace talks.
It was the first attack on Eritrea's capital since June 1998, near the
outset of the two-year-old border war between the Horn of Africa neighbors.
Four Ethiopian MiG-23s swept in over Asmara's international airport at
midday, bombing and firing rockets at a military airstrip 400 yards (364
meters) to the west.
Two Eritrean MiG-29s screamed off a runway in immediate pursuit, as white
smoke curled from the airstrip, sirens wailed and fire trucks rushed to the
scene.
The attack ignited a grass fire, and sent clods of dirt flying over the road
to the airport, which soldiers immediately closed to vehicles.
A Boeing 707 chartered by the International Committee to the Red Cross to
deliver donated food rushed into the air minutes after the attack, fleeing
before any further bombing.
Damage at the airstrip appeared minimal; several Eritrean MiGs and
Russian-built Hind helicopters still sat there untouched.
The attack came hours after delegations from Eritrea and its much larger
neighbor flew to Algiers for new talks on resolving their resurgent conflict
over the disputed border.
Eritrea is believed to have installed an extensive air-defense system around
the capital after Ethiopian airplanes attacked there in 1998, allegedly in
retaliation for a bombing then that killed civilians in northern Ethiopia.
Any air-defense system was silent Monday, however. The surprise and the ease
with which Ethiopia attacked was sure to increase what would likely be a
substantial impact to the country's economy, and morale.
There was no immediate comment from officials of either country.
The attack overshadowed intensifying peace talks pushed by the Organization
of African Unity.
Teams led by each country's foreign minister headed to the Algerian capital
for indirect talks mediated by the OAU -- the exact setup and venue of talks
that broke off May 4 over technicalities of implementing a peace accord.
Eight days after those talks failed, on May 12, Ethiopia launched a
full-scale offensive into Eritrea to force an end to the war by military
means aiming to retake all land seized by Eritrea since 1998 and break the
Eritrean army as a threat.
The two weeks since then have seen the fiercest fighting of the war, with
Ethiopia forcing its adversary from the disputed border and sending hundreds
of thousands of Eritrean civilians fleeing.
Eritrea agreed late last week to fully withdraw from all disputed territory.
There has been no mention since then of the country's often-repeated
insistence that any talks take place only during a cease-fire.
Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, accusing Eritrea of duplicity,
adamantly rejects a cease-fire for talks.
"We shall negotiate while we fight and we shall fight while we negotiate,"
Meles declared before African diplomats in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian
capital.
U.S. mediators, led by President Bill Clinton's special envoy, Anthony Lake,
the former national security adviser, and a European Union delegation were
also sent to Algiers to take part in the talks.
Fighting also was reported Monday on Eritrea's central plains near the
southern city of Tsorena and near the eastern town of Bure. The two forces
have been locked in combat for days in the south as Eritrea tries to block
its adversary's march north into the country.

Ten days after gunmen stormed Fiji's parliament and took the prime minister
and other government officials hostage, the island nation's army chief
declared martial law on Monday, dismissing the president and taking over as
head of government.
Army officials, who support the beleaguered government, had imposed a
48-hour curfew four hours before Commodore Frank Bainimarama's announcement
of his "reluctant" decision.  which the country has fallen during the last
week," Bainimarama said in a statement. "I have
therefore, with much reluctance, assumed executive authority."
There was no immediate reaction from coup leader George Speight.

GOOD NEWS
Northern Ireland's provincial power-sharing government resumed operation on
Tuesday after Britain transferred power back to the regional body at
midnight (2300 GMT) Monday.
The government, with representatives from four parties representing both
Catholic and Protestant communities, was suspended after 72 days by Britain
in February to forestall a walkout by pro-British Ulster Unionists angry
over the failure of the Irish Republican Army guerrillas to disarm in line
with the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.

  Ethiopia said Tuesday it had withdrawn its troops from western Eritrea
because they had accomplished their military objectives.
However, there was no immediate confirmation of the withdrawal from either
Eritrea or other sources.
Selome Taddesse, a spokeswoman for Ethiopia's government, said Ethiopia's
troops were withdrawn from the western front after recovering occupied
territory and dealing a "humiliating and devastating defeat" to Eritrean
forces.
"As the Ethiopian government has reiterated on numerous occasions, it has no
interest in occupying sovereign Ertitrean territory and, having achieved its
goals, it has withdrawn its troops accordingly," Selome said.
Yemene Gebremeskel, a spokesman for Eritrea's president, said he had heard
Ethiopian troops were beginning to withdraw from western Ertirea but was
still trying to confirm the reports.
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