World

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan on Wednesday mourned 148 people — mostly children — killed by the Taliban in a school massacre that prompted global revulsion and put the government under new pressure to combat the scourge of militancy.

Across the country many schools closed as a mark of respect, while others held special prayers for those killed in Tuesday’s bloodshed in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The assault on an army-run school is the deadliest terror attack in Pakistan’s history. It brought international condemnation as well as promises of a decisive crackdown on militants from political and military leaders.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that a six-year moratorium on the death penalty would be lifted for those convicted of terror offences, while the army chief travelled to Kabul for talks on improving intelligence cooperation. 

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the attack, in which heavily armed militants rampaged through the school killing indiscriminately, as revenge for an ongoing military operation against their hideouts.

The six-month offensive against militants in North Waziristan has been hailed as a success by the army, but analysts warned that ending militancy would mean rooting extremist attitudes out of Pakistani society — a long and difficult task.

‘Do not leave
a single one’

The army’s main spokesman General Asim Bajwa told AFP the death toll from the attack had risen from 141 overnight to 148, including 132 students.

Schools, colleges, offices and markets were closed Wednesday across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the northwestern province of which Peshawar is the capital and which has suffered the worst of the TTP’s bloody seven-year insurgency.

Across the border in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put aside acrimony with Pakistan to ask schools to observe two minutes’ silence to honour the dead.

Funerals were held for the victims, many of whose bodies were pulled from the school still wearing their smart green uniforms drenched in blood.

The worst of the bloodshed came in a large auditorium where hundreds of teenage students were attending a lecture. Around 100 bodies were found there, the army said.

Books, ties, sweaters, notepads and spectacles lay scattered amid pools of blood, the walls pockmarked with bullet holes.

Survivor Ahmad Faraz, 14, described the carnage.

“There were kids under the desks. One gunman spoke and the other replied: ‘Do not leave a single one alive’,” Faraz told AFP from hospital.

“And then they begin killing us one by one, under the desks and under the benches. I was watching them with one eye and one came closer to me, it was like a nightmare.”

“He shot me in the shoulder and I thought ‘This is the end’. Then he turned to another desk. I heard the screaming with every bullet they fired.”

Poisonous ideology

The attack has caused revulsion even in a country as inured to violence as Pakistan and major political leaders met in Peshawar to discuss the response to Tuesday’s attack.

Sharif, reading a joint statement, said they “vowed to continue this war with all our strength until elimination of the last terrorist from this land”.

But previous terror attacks have also been hailed as watershed moments and drawn promises of action, only to be followed by more violence.

“Vows to crush militancy in the aftermath of a massive attack are quite meaningless,” leading English daily Dawn said in an editorial.

“Military operations... amount to little more than firefighting unless there’s an attempt to attack the ideological roots of militancy.”

Analyst Raza Rumi, a journalist and senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, warned that ending militancy would mean also putting an end to attitudes deeply ingrained in Pakistani society.

“Three decades of Islamisation and the espousal of Islamic ideology as the national ideology has resulted in a widespread acceptance of acts committed in the name of Islam,” he told AFP.

Pakistan has long been accused of playing a “double game” with militants, supporting groups it thinks it can use for its own strategic ends.

Sharif said there “would not be any distinction between good and bad Taliban at any level” and the army has vowed this year to wipe out militants “of all hue and colour”.

But security analyst Hasan Askari doubted there was the political will to follow through.

“Many parties fear that an across-the-board action against extremist groups may affect their vote banks, because support for militants is so deep rooted in the society,” he told AFP.

TTP spokesman Muhammad Khorasani claimed the school attack as revenge for the army operation, saying they wanted the army to “feel the pain” they had felt at losing loved ones.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Cuba made a historic breakthrough in their Cold War stand-off Wednesday, moving to revive diplomatic ties and launch measures to ease a five-decade US trade embargo.

In the wake of a prisoner exchange, President Barack Obama said the United States was ready to review trade ties and to re-open its embassy in communist Cuba that has been closed since 1961.

Cuba’s President Raul Castro, in a simultaneous address in Havana, confirmed that the former enemies had “agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties” after more than half a century.

Castro cautioned that the issue of the embargo — which he called a “blockade” — remained to be resolved.

In Washington, Obama admitted the US embargo had failed and said he would approach the US Congress to discuss lifting it alongside the advances in diplomatic and travel links.

“We are all Americans,” Obama declared in Spanish, in a set-piece White House address marking a historic attempt to reassert US leadership in the Western hemisphere.

Obama hailed the support he said that Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, and the Catholic Church had provided in brokering better relations between the long-time enemies.

 ‘Outdated approach’ 

The breakthrough came after Havana released jailed US contractor Alan Gross and a Cuban who spied for Washington and had been held for 20 years — and whom Obama called one of the most important US agents in Cuba.

The United States in turn released three Cuban spies, and Obama said he had instructed the US State Department to re-examine its designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests and instead we will begin to normalise relations between our two countries,” Obama said.

“Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” he added.

The United States imposed a trade embargo against Cuba — the Cold War foe closest to its shores — in 1960 and the two countries have not had diplomatic relations since 1961.

The ensuing stand-off was marked by incidents that threatened to turn the Cold War hot, such as the 1962 missile crisis, in which US vessels blocked the island to prevent the delivery of Russian nuclear arms, and the earlier Bay of Pigs invasion by US-backed Cuban exiles.

The embargo hurt the Caribbean island state’s economy, but it failed to unseat the communist governments led by the Castro brothers.

Obama now has only two years left in office, Fidel Castro is 88 and ailing, and Raul is 83. With the window for the rival leaders to revive relations, both sides were under pressure to make a gesture.

Senior Democratic lawmaker Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, hailed the move.

“Opening the door with Cuba for trade, travel and the exchange of ideas will create a force for positive change in Cuba that more than 50 years of our current policy of exclusion could not,” he said.

But Republican Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio, a champion of the anti-Castro community in Florida, denounced the deal.

“The White House has conceded everything and gained little,” Rubio said, in a foretaste of the resistance that Obama will face as he tries to persuade Congress to back a full end to the embargo.

“All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power.”

Just before Obama spoke, Gross, a 65-year-old US contractor who had been held for five years on allegations of spying, was welcomed back onto US soil by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Swap of ‘intel assets’ 

Also returning was an unnamed intelligence agent who had caught working for the US in Cuba and held for two decades.

“This man, whose sacrifice known to only a few, provided America with the information that allowed us to arrest the network of Cuban agents that included the men transferred to Cuba today as well as other spies in the United States,” Obama said.

“This man is now safely on our shores.”

In exchange for this second prisoner, the United States released three alleged Cuban spies, in what a US official called a “swap of intel assets.”

Both sides had previously made the release of their nationals a precondition for opening negotiations on warmer ties.

Gross was arrested in 2009 for distributing communications equipment to members of Cuba’s Jewish community while working as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2011 after being convicted of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the Cuban state.”

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Taliban insurgents stormed an army-run school in Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 141 people, almost all of them children, in Pakistan's bloodiest ever terror attack.

Survivors described how the militants went from room to room shooting children as young as 12 during the eight-hour onslaught at the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The attack, claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as revenge for a major military offensive in the region, was condemned by the US, UN and major Western powers as well as Pakistan's arch-rival India.

The Pakistani government and military reaffirmed their determination to defeat the TTP, which has killed thousands since it began its insurgency in 2007.

Chief military spokesman General Asim Bajwa said 132 students and nine staff were killed, and 125 wounded. This exceeds the 139 killed in blasts targeting former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi in 2007.

Teenage survivor Shahrukh Khan described his narrow escape from the militants as they rampaged through the school, hunting for people to kill.

The 16-year-old said he and his classmates ducked below their desks when four gunmen burst into their room.

“I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches,” Khan told AFP from the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital

Khan decided to play dead after being shot in both legs, stuffing his tie into his mouth to stifle his screams.

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again,” he said.

“My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me — I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

There were around 500 students in the school when the attack started, and Bajwa said the attackers, equipped with ammunition and food to last “days”, only wanted to kill.

“The terrorists started indiscriminate firing as they entered the auditorium so they had no intention of taking any hostages,” he told reporters.

‘What is their sin?’ 

The Lady Reading Hospital was thronged with distraught parents weeping uncontrollably as children’s bodies arrived, their school uniforms drenched in blood.

Irshadah Bibi, 40, whose 12-year-old son was among the dead, beat her face in grief, throwing herself against an ambulance.

“O God, why did you snatch away my son? What is the sin of my child and all these children?” she wept.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced three days of national mourning and described the attack as a “national tragedy unleashed by savages”.

“These were my children. This is my loss. This is the nation’s loss,” he said.

Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, herself shot by the Taliban in 2012, said she was “heartbroken” by “the senseless and cold-blooded” killing.

US President Barack Obama condemned the attack as “heinous” and said America would stand by Pakistan in its struggle against violent extremism.

Narendra Modi, the prime minister of Pakistan’s neighbour and bitter rival India, phoned Sharif to offer condolences, Sharif’s office said.

‘Soft target’ 

The school on Peshawar’s Warsak Road is part of the Army Public Schools and Colleges System, which runs schools nationwide. Its students range in age from around 10 to 18.

Tuesday’s attack was seen as shocking even by the standards of Pakistan, which has suffered thousands of deaths in bomb and gun attacks since the TTP rose up in 2007.

TTP spokesman Muhammad Khorasani said Tuesday’s assault was carried out to avenge Taliban fighters and their families killed in the army’s offensive against militant strongholds in North Waziristan.

“We are doing this because we want them to feel the pain of how terrible it is when your loved ones are killed,” he said.

“We are taking this step so that their families should mourn as ours are mourning.”

The military has hailed the offensive as a major success in disrupting the TTP’s insurgency.

More than 1,600 militants have been killed since the launch of operation Zarb-e-Azb in June, according to data compiled by AFP from regular military statements.

Talat Masood, a retired general and security analyst, said the attack was intended to weaken the military’s resolve.

“The militants know they won’t be able to strike at the heart of the military, they don’t have the capacity. So they are going for soft targets,” Masood told AFP.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — It began like any other morning in Pakistan's Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Students pored over their books. Teachers ruffled through their notes and gave lectures.

In an instant, the peace was shattered — gunfire, smoke and dead bodies strewn across the school's halls and corridors, with crazed militants rushing from room to room shooting randomly at pupils and adults.

At least 130 Pakistanis, most of them children, were killed in the broad daylight attack on the military-run school on Tuesday, an assault lauded by Taliban insurgents as revenge for the killings of their own relatives by the Pakistani army.

Reuters interviews with witnesses showed most victims were shot in the first hours of the assault when gunmen sprayed the premises with bullets in an indiscriminate massacre.

It was possible that some were also killed in the ensuing gunfight with Pakistani armed forces who stormed the building.

The school in Peshawar, a Pakistani city on the edge of the country's turbulent tribal belt, is operated by the army. Although it enrols some civilian students, many of its pupils are children of army officials, the Taliban's intended target.

The assault began at around 10am local time (0500 GMT) as a group of nine militants, suicide vests tightly strapped to their bodies, burst into the building, according to witnesses. Some said they were wearing Pakistani army uniforms.

They bypassed the heavily guarded main entrance and slipped in through a less frequently used back entrance, the witnesses added.

Shahrukh Khan, 15, was shot in both legs but survived after hiding under a bench.

"One of my teachers was crying, she was shot in the hand and she was crying in pain," he said as he lay on a bed in Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital.

"One terrorist then walked up to her and started shooting her until she stopped making any sound. All around me my friends were lying injured and dead."

Suicide bombings

At least 500 pupils aged between 10 and 20 years old were inside the building when the attack started.

As the gunfight between the Taliban and Pakistani forces intensified, at least three of the militants blew themselves up, resulting in several charred bodies of bombers and victims.

A Reuters correspondent visiting the city's Combined Military Hospital said its corridors were lined with dead students, their green-and-yellow school uniform ties peeping out of white body bags.

One distraught family member was given a wrong body because the faces of many children were badly burned as a result of the suicide bomb explosions.

Khalid Khan, 13, told Reuters he and his class mates were in a first aid lesson in the main hall when two clean-shaven armed men wearing white clothes and black jackets entered the room.

"They opened fire at the students and then went out. The army doctor and soldiers managed to escape and we locked the doors from inside," he said. "But very soon they came, broke the doors and entered and again started firing."

He said many tried to hide under their the desks but were shot anyway, adding that there were around 150 students in the hall around the time of the attack.

"They killed most of my classmates and then I didn't know what happened as I was brought to the hospital," said Khan, breaking down in sobs.

Others said the gunmen addressed each other in a language they could only recognise as either Arabic or Farsi — a possible testament to the Taliban's network of hundreds of foreign fighters holed up with them in the remote mountains on the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Another student, Jalal Ahmed, 15, could hardly speak, choking with tears, as Reuters approached him at one of the hospitals.

"I am a biochemistry student and I was attending a lecture in our main hall. There are five doors in the hall. After some time we heard someone kicking the back doors. There were gun shots but our teacher told us to be quiet and calmed us down.

"Then the men came with big guns."

Ahmed started to cry. Standing next to his bed, his father, Mushtaq Ahmed, said: "He keeps screaming: 'Take me home, take me home, they will come back and kill me'."

One nine-year-old boy, who asked not to be named because he was too afraid to be identified, said teachers shepherded his class out through a back door as soon as the shooting began.

"The teacher asked us to recite from the Koran quietly," he said. "When we came out from the back door there was a crowd of parents who were crying. When I saw my father he was also crying."

SYDNEY — Two hostages and the lone Iranian-born gunman were killed as heavily armed Australian police late Monday dramatically stormed a central Sydney café to end a day-long siege sparked when the "self-styled sheikh" took 17 people hostage.

Police in SWAT-style gear hurled percussion grenades and opened fire, unleashing a flurry of loud bangs and flashes in the eatery in the heart of Australia's biggest city, after a number of the staff and customers managed to flee for their lives.

Police moved in after an exchange of gunfire, with the 50-year-old "lone gunman" shot and killed, New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said at a press conference.

A man, aged 34, and a woman, 38, were also pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.

"It was the act of an individual. This should never destroy or change the way of our life," Scipione said.

Channel Seven reporter Chris Reason, whose office is opposite the café, said a call came from police communications that there was a "hostage down", prompting officers to storm the building without warning.

An AFP photographer saw one body carried out.

Royal North Shore Hospital had admitted a 39-year-old policeman with a gunshot graze to his cheek, a woman in her 40s in a serious but stable condition with a gunshot wound to her leg, and a woman suffering from backpain, a spokeswoman told AFP.

A bomb robot was sent into the building as police declared the siege over and medics tended to hostages but no explosives were found.

The hostage­taker, who earlier had unfurled an Islamic flag, was named by ABC television and other media as a 49-year-old Iranian-born "cleric" called Man Haron Monis.

They published a photo of him sporting a beard and a white turban and said he was on bail for a series of violent offences.

The pre-­Christmas siege of the Lindt chocolate cafe began Monday morning and triggered a massive security lockdown in Sydney’s bustling financial district as hundreds of police surrounded the site.

‘A damaged goods individual’ 

Monis’ former lawyer Manny Conditsis said the public could be assured that the siege was not the work of an organised terrorist group.

“This is a one-off random individual,” he told broadcaster ABC. “It’s not a concerted terrorism event or act. It’s a damaged ­goods individual who’s done something outrageous.”

The Australian newspaper called Monis a “self­styled sheikh” who had sent offensive letters to the families of dead soldiers and was on bail on charges of being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.

It said he arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1996, lived in Sydney’s southwest and was “understood to be a fringe Islamist”.

Police declined to identity the gunman but would not deny reports naming him as Man Haron Monis.

Tehran swiftly condemned the hostage-taking by the Iranian-born gunman.

The Australian government said earlier there was no clear motivation. But the Islamic flag appeared to be one commonly used by jihadist groups bearing the shahada, or profession of faith in Arabic script ­­ “There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is his messenger.”

The gunman made a series of demands through Australian media but they were removed after police requested they not be made public.

Australia has been on high alert with the government raising concerns that citizens who have fought alongside Sunni jihadists in Iraq and Syria could return home radicalised and carry out “lone wolf” attacks.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott convened a national security meeting to deal with the “disturbing” development.

Some six hours into the siege, three men emerged from the cafe and ran for their lives. Around an hour later two distraught women employees also fled, and then several more people managed to run out late in the night.

One of the escapees was barista Elly Chen whose sister Nicole said on Facebook: “Yessss I finally see you. I’m so glad you’re safe!!!!”

‘Gunman rotating hostages’ 

Channel Seven’s Reason tweeted earlier: “We can see gunman is rotating hostages, forcing them to stand against windows, sometimes 2 hours at a time.”

The scene of the drama, Martin Place, is Sydney’s financial centre and houses several prominent buildings, including the New South Wales parliament, the US consulate, the country’s central bank and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Many shops and offices in the area shut early due to the scare, with only a trickle of people walking along usually bustling streets.

At the nearby Sydney Opera House, which police had swept earlier Monday, evening performances were cancelled.

“It’s sad to think this is my home and that it could happen anywhere,” said onlooker Rebecca Courtney.

More than 40 Australian Muslim groups jointly condemned the hostage­-taking and the use of the flag, which they said had been hijacked by “misguided individuals that represent no one but themselves”.

The government in September raised its terror threat level and police conducted large­scale counter­terror raids across the country. Only two people were charged.

More than 70 Australians are believed to be fighting for Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. At least 20 have died.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday launched a stinging attack on the European Union over its criticism of police raids on opposition media, bluntly telling Brussels to “mind its own business”.

Turkey has come under fire at home and abroad over the lightning arrests on Sunday of over two dozen journalists, television producers and police linked to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who has emerged as Erdogan’s arch-foe.

The European Union led the criticism with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemning the raids as “incompatible with the freedom of media”.

But Erdogan lashed out at the criticism and indicated that he did not care what impact the arrest would have on Turkey’s long-stalled membership bid to join the EU.

“The European Union cannot interfere in steps taken... within the rule of law against elements that threaten our national security,” Erdogan said in a televised speech in the western Turkish city of Izmit.

“They should mind their own business,” he added, in his first comments after Sunday’s raids.

“I wonder if those who keep this country at the EU doorstep for 50 years know what this step means?” Erdogan said, referring to the arrests. 

“When taking such a step we don’t care what the EU might say, or if the EU is going to accept us.

Among a total of at least 27 people arrested in the nationwide raids were Ekrem Dumanli, the editor-in-chief of the Zaman daily newspaper which is closely linked to Gulen and Hidayet Karaca, the head of the pro-Gulen Samanyolu TV (STV).

Also detained were staff including a producer, a director and scriptwriters on popular TV drama series Tek Turkiye (One Turkey) broadcast on STV. The director and two scriptwriters for the TV series were released overnight. 

The Zaman daily reported that two more detainees were set free on Monday, including the newspaper’s columnist Ahmed Sahin. The other suspects were still being questioned by the Istanbul police. 

The state Anatolia news agency said chief public prosecutor Hadi Salihoglu ordered the arrests on charges of forgery, fabricating evidence and “forming a crime syndicate to overtake the sovereignty of the state”.

Several police were also detained, including Tufan Erguder and Mutlu Ekizoglu, former heads respectively of the Istanbul anti-terrorism and organised crime police departments.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington urged Turkey to make sure the raids did not violate its “own democratic foundations”.

US-based rights group Freedom House said the arrests were “a threat to free expression in Turkey and to anyone critical of its government”. 

Press freedom group the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said they were “appalled by this brazen assault on press freedom and Turkish democracy”.

The Zaman newspaper itself headlined, “Black day for democracy,” in black fonts.

Thousands of journalists and supporters had gathered at the Zaman headquarters Sunday to give Dumanli a hero’s send-off as he was led away by plain-clothes police.

‘Crocodile tears’

A defiant Erdogan pledged to pursue what he called “enemies of the state” at home and abroad and portrayed the raids as part of “normalisation process”.

“We know the dimension of the crimes they have committed,” he said in a second speech. “Nobody should shed crocodile tears.”

Markets reacted with anxiety to the news as the domestic currency lira lost 1.42 per cent in value against the dollar — the lowest since January this year.

Erdogan has accused Gulen, who is based in Pennsylvania, of running a “parallel” state using influence in the police, judiciary, media and schools. 

The Turkish government has repeatedly asked Washington to extradite Gulen, 73, but to no avail. 

The crackdown came almost a year to the day after Erdogan’s government was rocked by stunning corruption allegations that the authorities denied and blamed on Gulen.

The corruption probe — opened on December 17, 2013 — saw the arrests of dozens of leading businessmen and political figures close to Erdogan, then prime minister. 

SYDNEY — Religious leaders and ordinary Australians sought to defuse communal tensions on Monday, after a siege at a Sydney cafe by a gunman who forced hostages to display an Islamic flag raised fears of a backlash against the country's Muslim minority.

Within hours of the attack on the Lindt Cafe in the centre of the city, a Muslim group reported that women wearing the hijab had been spat on and the right-wing Australian Defence League called on followers to protest at two major mosques.

The protests did not materialise and little is known about the true motives of the gunman.

But in the harbourside city, home to half of Australia's 500,000 Muslims, police moved on a man shouting anti-Islamic abuse at the scene of the ongoing siege.

The man strode up to a police cordon and shouted: "Someone is going to die here because of Islam! There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Wake up and smell the coffee."

He was confronted by another man who shouted back: "Muslims are welcome here." Police urged the first man to leave, to a mix of catcalls and claps of support.

The siege coincides with growing concerns in Australia about the dangers posed by Islamist militants, with the country's security agency raising its national terrorism public alert to "high" in September.

The same month, anti-terrorism police said they had thwarted an imminent threat to behead a random member of the public and days later, a teenager in the city of Melbourne was shot dead after attacking two anti-terrorism officers with a knife.

‘Shock and horror’

New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said he was working closely with community groups and there would be an increased police presence in the city to "ensure that everyone is kept safe".

The Australian National Imams Council, together with the grand mufti of Australia, issued a statement saying it "condemns this criminal act unequivocally".

An umbrella organisation encompassing all of the major Muslim groups in the country called for calm and expressed "utter shock and horror".

The group stressed that the black-and-white flag, displayed by tense hostages in the window of the cafe and juxtaposed against the "Merry Christmas" sign stencilled beneath it, was a statement of faith, not politics.

"We remind everyone that the Arabic inscription on the black flag is not representative of a political statement, but reaffirms a testimony of faith that has been misappropriated by misguided individuals that represent nobody but themselves," the group said in a statement.

News of the hostage drama flashed around Sydney shortly after most of the city had begun the working day, shattering what should have been a quiet Monday in the sunny Australian commercial capital just over a week before Christmas.

Samier Dandan, a spokesman for the imams council, said the group had already received reports of women wearing the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, being spat on and harassed.

"We are sending out the message to our community to be vigilant about where they are going because we don't want any incidents to fuel the fire," Dandan said.

Those reports bore out concerns of locals like Mohamad Hasan, a computer engineer who emigrated to Australia from Jordan 20 years ago, who said he was deeply worried that Muslims like his wife could be attacked simply for wearing traditional clothing.

"I am worried because maybe I don't look like a Muslim, but my wife like, [is] wearing a headscarf, so she might be affected by this," Hasan said, speaking a few metres from the scene of the hostage crisis.

"Some stupid people... think 'this is a Muslim, we should get revenge [on] everyone looking like a Muslim'."

But many Australians took to social media to express their support for Muslims.

The Twitter hash tag "#illridewithyou", expressing support for Muslims who felt vulnerable on public transport in the wake of the siege, attracted tens of thousands of messages of supporters within a few hours.

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday vowed he would try to persuade a sceptical public of the need to revise Japan's pacifist constitution, the day after scoring a thumping election victory.

The premier, who was re-elected by a landslide in Sunday's polls, pledged to pursue his nationalist agenda while promising to follow through on much-needed economic reforms.

"Revising the constitution... has always been an objective since the Liberal Democratic Party was launched," Abe told reporters.

"I will work hard to deepen people's understanding and receive wider support from the public."

Abe's desire to water down Japan's constitution, imposed by the US after the end of World War II, has proved divisive at home and strained already tense relations with China.

His attempt earlier this year was abandoned, with the bar of a two-thirds parliamentary majority and victory in a referendum thought too high.

The conservative leader has also said he wants reforms to education that would instill patriotism in schoolchildren and urges a more sympathetic retelling of Japan's wartime misdeeds.

His ruling LDP and its junior partner Komeito swept the ballot on Sunday with a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament.

The coalition won a combined 326 of the 475 seats, crushing the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan. Their slightly improved tally of 73 did not include leader Banri Kaieda, who fell on his sword on Monday.

Abe is expected to reappoint a broadly similar Cabinet after he is formally named prime minister again by the lower house on December 24.

Abenomics go-ahead 

He insisted the election had been a necessary plebiscite on his big-spending, easy-money policies, known as Abenonmics, although critics said the record low turnout of around 52 per cent tarnished his mandate.

"We must go ahead with Abenomics swiftly, this is exactly what has been shown in the vote. We have to respond to that," Abe said, pledging to "compile an economic stimulus package immediately, within this year".

The 60-year-old stormed to power in 2012, pledging to revive the animal spirits of Japan's flagging economy with a blend of monetary easing, government spending and structural reforms to cut red tape.

The printing presses at the Bank of Japan have run hot ever since, pushing down the value of the yen — to the delight of exporters — and giving the stock market a huge boost, as stimulus programmes have provided an economic shot in the arm.

But the premier has shied away from tough reforms that economists say are vital if Japan is to get back on a firm footing, including employment deregulation and tackling the entrenched interests of the agriculture lobby.

A sales tax rise in April snuffed out consumer spending, sending Japan into the two negative quarters of growth that make a recession.

"From now on, he has to show results in line with his promises," said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

"If he fails to improve the economy, his political capital will be reduced easily. A crucial phase is still ahead."

On the diplomatic front, his election victory may temper frayed relations with China, which has painted him as a dangerous revisionist, said Gerald Curtis, a veteran Japan watcher and professor at Columbia University

Relations began to thaw last month after more than two years of chill, which Beijing blamed on Abe's provocative nationalism, including a visit to a war shrine and equivocations on Japan's wartime record of enslaving women for sex.

Beijing said it had "noted" the outcome of the election, and offered a familiar call for Japan to "learn its lessons from history [and] play a constructive role in regional peace and stability".

"In the short term, at least, Sino-Japanese relations are on a better track... signals coming from Beijing and from Abe [are aimed at trying] to improve the relationship," Curtis said.

Masaru Kohno, a politics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, said despite his professed desire to retell the history of Japan's aggressive warring — an instinct largely unshared by the Japanese public — Abe will be pragmatic.

"Many of the issues Japan is facing such as depopulation and women's advancement should be resolved with liberal policies," he said. 

BRUSSELS — Trade unions brought Belgium to a standstill Monday as the biggest general strike in years grounded flights, cut international rail links and shut seaports in protest at the new government’s austerity plans.

In the climax to a month of industrial action against new Prime Minister Charles Michel’s policies, striking workers stopped public transport while most schools, businesses and government offices shut down.

The tension boiled over in isolated incidents of violence as union members clashed with riot police outside the offices of a hardline Flemish nationalist party that is part of the coalition, and torched a car in the port city of Antwerp.

Pickets also blocked traffic outside the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, a 28-nation bloc that has seen years of protests against austerity aimed at cutting debts that threatened the euro currency.

The Belgian strike came days after a day of protest in Italy against Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s ambitious reform plans, while there have been similar demonstrations in Spain and Greece in recent months.

“There has never been a strike this strong,” Marie-Helene Ska, the head of the Christian CSC union, was quoted as saying by the Belga news agency.

Belgian trade unions launched their movement last month with a march of more than 100,000 people in Brussels, which ended in violent protests that left dozens of police officers injured.

Unions went ahead with Monday’s general strike after Premier Michel’s right-of-centre government refused to budge on plans to save 11 billion euros ($13.7 billion) over five years.

His coalition, which took office in October, intends to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 from 2030, scrap plans for a usually automatic cost-of-living raise next year and introduce public sector cutbacks.

French-speaking Michel — who at 38 is Belgium’s youngest prime minister since 1840 — heads a coalition of three Flemish-speaking right-leaning parties and his own Francophone liberals.

The government formed five months after elections had hoped to calm a nation deeply divided between the richer Flanders and the poorer French-speaking Wallonia, but instead has led to weeks of industrial action.

The last national strike in Belgium was in 2012 against the government of socialist prime minister Elio di Rupo.

Belgian airspace was closed after air traffic controllers joined the strike, preventing flights from landing or taking off from airports in Brussels, Charleroi, Liege, Antwerp and Ostend for 24 hours from 2100 GMT Sunday.

Some 50,000 passengers have been affected as a total of 600 incoming and outgoing flights have been cancelled at Brussels international airport, spokeswoman Florence Muls said.

‘A real disaster’

“All flights are cancelled. Everything is immobilised,” Muls told AFP, adding that it had affected some travellers trying to get away early for the Christmas holidays.

“It’s a real disaster” for the airports and passengers, Jean-Jacques Cloquet, managing director of Charleroi said on the RTBF news website, adding there would be a knock-on effect during the busy holiday period.

Eurostar rail services from Brussels to the British capital London and trains to the French capital Paris, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the German city of Cologne have also been halted until early Tuesday.

The strike also paralysed activity in the port of Antwerp with 28 ships waiting to enter and 23 ships waiting to leave, a spokeswoman told AFP, although there were fewer problems at the port of Zeebrugge.

Belgian rail SNCB said domestic inter-city train services were cancelled and trams, buses and metro services were all cancelled, leading many people to take the day off work and stay home.

Most post offices were able to stay open despite the strike which also affected schools, nurseries, prisons and hospitals, where consultations and non-urgent operations were cancelled.

ISTANBUL — Turkish police on Sunday arrested the editor of the country’s biggest selling newspaper and at least two dozen other media figures in a new crackdown on supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s exiled rival, Fethullah Gulen.

At least 25 people were held in raids across Turkey, including Ekrem Dumanli, the editor-in-chief of Zaman whose arrest in Istanbul was broadcast live on television. 

The round-up came just two days after Erdogan warned of a new blow against the “evil forces” of Gulen, who the president accused of orchestrating a corruption probe almost exactly a year ago against members of his inner circle. 

Those held include an executive of Samanyolu television, also seen as close to Gulen, as well as a TV director, producers, scriptwriters and some police officers. Arrest warrants were issued for a total of 32 people, the official Anatolia news agency reported.

Erdogan has repeatedly vowed vengeance on Gulen’s alleged “parallel state” within the police, media and judiciary and branded the massive corruption inquiry — which threatened to touch his own family — “an attempted coup”. 

He warned Friday he would “pursue them [Gulen supporters] in their lairs”.

“We are not just faced with a simple network, but one which is a pawn of evil forces at home and abroad,” he said. “We will go into their lairs again. Whoever is beside them and behind them, we will bring down this network and bring it to account.”

Gulen, 73, who lives in the United States, is the spiritual leader of the Hizmet movement, which controls media outlets, schools and cultural centres. He was a key backer of Erdogan before falling out with him over the government’s plans to shut down his schools.

Hizmet has denied being behind the corruption probe, which dragged down four ministers and prompted a Cabinet shake-up, posing the most serious challenge to Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government since it came to power in 2002.

Raids predicted on Twitter

Early Sunday a huge crowd — made up of newspaper staff and readers — gathered outside Zaman’s offices on the outskirts of Istanbul, preventing the police from entering the building to make arrests. 

But plain clothes officers returned a few hours later, detaining a defiant Dumanli, as the crowd chanted: “The free press cannot be silenced.” 

Hidayet Karaca, the head of Samanyolu TV, called the raids “a shameful sight for Turkey”, before he himself was detained elsewhere. 

“Sadly in 21st century Turkey this is the treatment a media group with tens of television and radio stations, internet media and magazines receives.”

Anatolia reported that the suspects are accused of a number of offences including “forming a gang to try and seize state sovereignty”.

As in almost all the previous raids — which targeted mostly police officers suspected of backing Gulen — the details of the swoop were leaked by a mysterious Twitter user named Fuat Avni before it was even carried out. 

Last week Fuat Avni, believed to be a government official, warned his followers that police were set to detain some 400 people, including 150 journalists. Late Saturday, he went on to publish the names of those journalists, some of whom were among those rounded up. 

‘This is a coup’

Main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu denounced the operation as “a coup” that “we cannot accept under any circumstances”.

“The process that we are going through is not something faced in healthy democracies. This is a coup process,” he told reporters, vowing to be on the side of the victims.

In an apparent reference to Gulen supporters, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Sunday: “Today is a day of test. Everyone will pay for what they have done and their anti-democratic behaviour.” 

Health Minister Mehmet Muezzingolu echoed Davuoglu and said: “Turkey is a state of law. If someone does wrong, they pay a price.” 

The swoop was the latest in a series of raids since July against Gulen supporters as the government cracks down on what Erdogan has described as a “parallel state” within the security forces seeking to topple his government. 

It came a year after the vast corruption probe was launched on December 17, 2013, that saw the arrests of dozens of leading businessmen and political figures close to Erdogan — then prime minister. 

The president, accused by critics of becoming increasingly authoritarian, managed to stall the investigation by sacking thousands of police and scores of judges and pushing through laws tightening state control over the judiciary and the Internet.