14A
Monday, August 18, 1997
UN I V E R S I T Y D A I L Y K A N S A N
Allied bombs from World War II still pose danger to German cities
Building boom increases risks
The Associated Press
BERLIN — Hidden bombs stop urgent dike repairs along the swollen Oder River. Another bomb forces Merck Pharmaceuticals to evacuate laboratories and a computer center. Even President Roman Herzog has had to clear out of his Berlin palace — twice in two weeks.
The explosives found this summer weren't planted by criminals or terrorists, but fell from the air more than 50 years ago.
Although millions of unexploded
bombs and artillery shells have been cleared and defused since World War II, officials estimate thousands remain buried all over Germany. Most are still live and potentially explosive.
It's hard to comprehend that such a danger still exists, said Peter Jung, who heads a special Berlin fire department unit in charge of defusing the lethal leaf-overs.
Experts estimate 5 percent of the 440,000 Allied bombs dropped on Berlin failed to explode due to faulty fuses, poor assembly, bad angle of impact and other reasons.
The Germans dispatched units of engineers after each bombing run to defuse the duds. But many buried deep in the rubble were missed.
building sites, anywhere from six feet to 40 feet underground.
They turn up now most often at
More than 1,700 bombs have been recovered in western Berlin since the war. The emphasis is now on the east, where construction is booming because of the government's plan to move the capital back to Berlin by 2000.
"In the western half of the city, a lot of munitions were found and cleared away in the last 40 or 50 years," said Hans-Juergen Gembus, head of Berlin's munitions removal department. "This still lies before us in the east."
To make matters worse, the duds become more unstable as they age and corrode. "With certain ignition mechanisms, they can also go off by
themselves." Gembus said.
After 1983, Berlin started using Allied aerial photos to help locate possible duds. Four people in Gumbus' 14-man office are still poring over such pictures, laying them over other shots to produce three-dimensional images.
"It's not easy," he said. "You have to imagine, the impact crater of a bomb that doesn't go off is about the size of a pinhead in such a picture."
When a bomb is found, the actual defusing is usually quick — 30 minutes or so, said Jung, the Berlin squad leader.
The unit, set up in the 1950s, has not had a fatality in 40 years.
Gembus and Jung both expect to be kept busy for at least another 10 years.
Forces push forward in Cambodia
Hun Sen's soldiers nearer to O'Smach, enemy's final fort
The Associated Press
P'ONG VILLAGE, Cambodia—Forces loyal to Cambodian coup leader Hun Sen pushed to within four miles of the last opposition stronghold yesterday, pounding that enclave with artillery and rocket fire.
Soldiers at the front said they had been ordered to seize the town of O'Smach within three days. More than 15,000 resistance fighters and civilians have fled to the besieged town on the Thai border.
First Premier Prince Norodom Ranardidh was deposed July 5-6 in a bloody coup led by Second Premier Hun Sen, with whom he had shared power. Soldiers and civilians loyal to Ranaridh d飞 Phnom Penh and other areas, heading into Cambodia's jungled north. O'Smach is their last stronghold.
Villages along Highway 68, the main route towards O'Smach, have fallen like dominoes to Hun Sen's.
forces despite artillery fire from the opposition and a multitude of homemade mines and booby traps.
Despite those successes, the campaign in northern Cambodia has been tough going and Hun Sen's troops could not meet his order to capture O'Smach by last Friday.
Sporadic shelling around O'Smach from Hun Sen gunners continued yesterday, but civilians were calmer than the day before, when shell bursts sparked a panicked rush towards the border.
Thai authorities have strung barbed wire along the border to prevent such a stampede, but say they will grant temporary asylum to unarmed Cambodians whose lives were in danger.
Many families have loaded up wooden carts with belongings in preparation of fleeing to Thailand.
The hospital at Samrong, the main town in the region and now in Hun Sen's hands, was overflowing with patients suffering from land mine explosions, malaria and tuberculosis. Samrong is 20 miles from the Thai border.
ical supplies and equipment needed for operations when they withdrew.
A doctor, Keo Kim Son, said that royalist soldiers had taken all med-
Hundreds of villagers who had fled to Samrong were beginning to return to their villages by oxcarct or on foot to try to save rice that should have been harvested a month ago.
About 600 Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the terror of Cambodia in the mid-1970s, have allied themselves with Ranarddh's forces, said Thai Border Patrol Police officers. The guerrillas are based in Anlong Veng. 35 miles east of O'Smach, which has served as the headquarters of the now splintered and much weakened Khmer
Rouge.
Troops loyal to Hun Sen said a major offensive also was being planned against Anlong Veng, but this could not be independently confirmed.
Thai officers said the warring sides held negotiations yesterday but these were broken off by Ranariddh's forces. It was not known whether the Hun Sen forces were pressing for their opponents' surrender.
Ranariddh, meanwhile, arrived in the Philippines yesterday as part of an effort to gain support for his fight against Hun Sen. He was scheduled to meet President Fidel Ramos and other officials today.
Ranariddh, who flew in from Bangkok, Thailand, said he would speak to the press only after meeting Ramos.
Ranardidh had earlier met the leaders of Singapore and Indonesia but Thailand's prime minister refused to receive him.
Ranariddh next plans a tour of Southeast Asian nations, and then hopes to visit Japan, Germany and Brussels, seat of the European Commission, the 20-member governing panel of the European Union.
Congo president ready to mediate local conflict
The Associated Press
KINSHASA, Congo — With his country of Congo directly affected by fighting in the neighboring Republic of Congo, President Laurent Kabila said he is willing to try to mediate an end to the crisis that has killed hundreds and caused a refugee exodus.
State-run television said Kabila's decision followed a meeting Saturday afternoon with Republic of Congo president Pascal Lissouba. Lissouba's forces have been fighting militiamen loyal to that country's former military ruler, Gen. Denis Sassou-Nguesso, since June 5.
Thousands of refugees have fled across the river to escape the fighting. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates some 20,000 refugees are in Congo's capital of Kinshasa, most of them staying with friends and family members and not in dire need of assistance.
But several thousand are housed at a refugee camp north
of the capital, and others have set up a makeshift camp outside the Congolese Embassy in downtown Kinshasa.
Kabilla called for a cessation of hostilities and said he also was open to talks with Sassou-Nguesso.
"Why not?" he said in a television interview broadcast on the state-run news. "One must meet, discuss things, listen."
Mediation attempts so far have failed to make substantial headway or bring Lissouba and Sassou-Nguesso together for direct talks.
Kabila also said he supported the idea of an African intervention force playing a role in bringing peace to the country.
Lissouba has accused Sassou-Nguesso of using outside help, including forces from the old army of former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Kabila ousted from power when he seized Kinshasa in May. Many of Mobutu's soldiers fled to Brazzaville after Kabila's victory.
Pakistani singer dies at age 49 career spanned three decades
Musician was known to Western audience
The Associated Press
LAHORE, Pakistan — Beating their chests and wailing in anguish, hundreds bid farewell yesterday to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose mesmerizing, spiritual singing brought the devotional music of Islam to the West.
vesterday morning.
Students, friends and family members embraced and cried at Khan's unfinished house in Lahore, where his body was taken
Khan, whose songs appeared in the films "Dead Man Walking" and "Natural Born Killers," was Pakistan's most popular musician.
Soaked in sweat, anguished men and women knelt before his body, running their shaking hands over the casket or lightly touching their foreheads to the wood.
"I have lost my world," said his younger brother, Farukh Ali Khan. "There is nothing left here."
Khan, considered one of the world's greatest singers of Sufi devotional music, died at a London hospital Saturday of a heart attack. He was 49.
Sufis are Islamic mystics, and music plays a key role in many of their rituals.
Khan's career spanned three decades and in recent years had drawn a growing Western audience to the music's fierce passion.