Author: Himalaya Post

TAIPEI – Nine people were killed and 30 injured in a blaze that broke out early Monday at a hospice for the terminally ill near Taiwan’s capital Taipei, fire officials said. All of the 44 people inside, including 33 patients, were evacuated after the fire started at the hospice on the seventh floor of a nine-storey government hospital in New Taipei city. Sixteen patients had cardiac arrests and seven were revived. The other nine died with the cause of death given as smoke inhalation, according to the local fire department. New Taipei fire department official Hung Liang-chien told reporters an initial probe showed that the fire was likely caused by the short circuit of an electrical device. “We are clarifying whether it’s the power cable of the hospital’s electric bed or an air cushion bed brought in by relatives” of a patient, he said. One caregiver working in the hospice reported seeing a spark on the bed where the fire started, according to local media. Local fire chief Huang Te-ching earlier denied reports the sprinkler system had malfunctioned. “The sprinkler device was on but there’s some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldn’t be immediately put out,” he told reporters. He added that authorities were also examining why there was a nine minute delay by the hospital in reporting the fire. CCTV footage...

KABUL –  At least 100 security forces have been killed in the ongoing struggle to push the Taliban from the embattled Afghan city of Ghazni, a government minister said Monday, four days after the fighting began. The announcement came as fresh reinforcements were deployed to the provincial capital and air strikes targeted Taliban positions, according to defence minister Tariq Shah Bahrami. “About 100 security forces have lost their lives and between 20 and 30 civilians have been killed,” Bahrami told a press conference in Kabul. “194 enemy fighters, including 12 of their key commanders, have also been killed,” he added. At least 95 Taliban combatants were killed in the air strikes, Bahrami said. Communication networks remained mostly down, and officials have been reticent to speak about the situation in the city, making any information difficult to verify. The onslaught on Ghazni is the latest attempt by the Taliban to overrun an urban centre, and comes as pressure increases on the insurgents to begin peace talks with the government to end the nearly 17-year-old war. It is also the largest tactical operation launched by the Taliban since an unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the Taliban to a temporary pause, providing war-weary Afghans some welcome relief. Ghazni lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway, effectively serving as a gateway between Kabul and the militant strongholds in the...

SHEBAA, Lebanon – Dozens of Syrian refugees left Lebanon by bus on Monday in the latest of a wave of returns to their war-torn country, Lebanese authorities said. An AFP photographer in the southern town of Shebaa saw women and children wait to board buses, while men loaded belongings on the back of a large pick-up truck. Lebanon’s General Security agency “secured the voluntary return of 137 displaced Syrians from the areas of Shebaa and central Bekaa through the Masnaa border crossing towards Syria,” it said it a statement. Lebanon hosts around 1.5 million Syrians who fled the civil war across the border, many of them in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country. Lebanese state news agency NNA said “several refugees returned to Syria with their own private vehicles” through Masnaa, without giving a figure. Syrian state news agency SANA said the returnees had begun arriving in Syria. It earlier said preparations had been made to “receive hundreds of displaced returning from Lebanon to their homes in the Damascus countryside”. Since April, more than 2,000 Syrians have headed home from Lebanon in such returns coordinated by the authorities in Beirut and Damascus, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Human rights groups have warned that Syrians returning to their homeland should do so voluntarily and with full knowledge of the risks. According to the UN...