World

GENEVA — As the world scrambles to stem the rapid spread of the killer Ebola virus, the World Health Organisation hosted a meeting on Monday to discuss the ethics of using experimental drugs.

The talks come as countries ravaged by the tropical disease in west Africa were gripped by panic, with drastic containment measures causing transport chaos, price hikes and food shortages, and stoking fears that people could die of hunger.

Liberia, where Ebola has already claimed over almost 370 lives, placed a third province, Lofa, under quarantine on Monday after similar measures in Bomba and Grand Cape Mount.

“From now on, no one will be allowed to go to Lofa, no one will come out of there,” President Ellen Johnson Sirfleaf said. “We want to protect areas that have not been yet affected.”

There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, and with the death toll fast approaching 1,000, the WHO has declared the latest outbreak a global public health emergency.

But the use of experimental drugs has opened up an intense ethical debate, and medical experts from around the world joined WHO-hosted discussions on Monday to draft guidelines for using non-authorised medicines in emergencies such as Ebola.

Two Americans and a Spanish priest infected with the virus while working with the sick in Africa are being treated with an untested drug called ZMapp, which has reportedly shown promising results.

But the drug, made by private US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals, is still in an extremely early phase of development and had only been tested previously on monkeys.

Ethical thing to do? 

ZMapp is in extremely short supply, but its use on Western aid workers has sparked controversy and demands that it be made available in Africa, where Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the hardest hit nations.

“Is it ethical to use unregistered medicines to treat people, and if so, what criteria should they meet and what conditions, and who should be treated?” said WHO assistant director-general Marie-Paule Kieny ahead of Monday’s meeting.

“What is the ethical thing to do?”

While impoverished Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone account for the bulk of the cases, the latest outbreak has spread further afield. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has so far counted two deaths.

Numerous countries have imposed a raft of emergency measures, including flight bans or screening of passengers.

In the latest such move, the Ivory Coast announced on Monday it was banning all flights from the three hardest-hit nations.

And it said in the past few days it had turned back around 100 Liberians trying to flee across the border into Ivory Coast, which not reported any Ebola cases.

Togo, which also has yet to confirm any cases, said it had strengthened health screenings, but people in the capital Lome are far from reassured.

‘Everyone is afraid’ 

“It’s a general psychosis. Everyone is afraid. For the past three days, I haven’t said greet anyone,” student Paul Magnissou told AFP.

Ebola causes fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding and can be fatal in 25 to 90 per cent of cases, according to the WHO.

The virus spreads by close contact with an infected person through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and tissue.

The latest outbreak — which the WHO says is by far the worst since Ebola was discovered four decades ago — has killed around 55-60 per cent of those infected.

On Saturday, the WHO said clinical trials of Ebola vaccines could begin within weeks and be ready for widespread use by early next year.

In the meantime, there is only a handful of available treatments and it remains unclear how quickly production could be ramped up.

As WHO engages with pharmaceutical companies and governments to try to speed up the development process of vaccines and drugs, it is faced with a range of pressing ethical questions.

Should anyone infected with the virus be given experimental treatments? And what about those who have been exposed, or who could easily become exposed due to their work, such as healthcare workers?

Monday’s meeting, whose conclusions are due for release on Tuesday, will also look at how far testing should progress before an experimental drug can be provided, said Kieny.

Kieny said the session would only address the principles and provide urgent guidance to the WHO, and that another meeting would be held to go into further detail.

ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won an outright victory in the first round of presidential election on Sunday.

Erdogan won 51.8 per cent of the vote, way ahead of his main opposition rival Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu on 38.6 per cent, according to official results based on a 99 per cent vote count.

The third contender, Kurdish candidate Selahattin Demirtas, won 9.6 per cent of the vote.

Erdogan's inauguration is set for August 28.

The result marked a personal triumph for Erdogan, 60, who has served as premier since 2003 and could potentially now be president for two mandates until 2024.

He has promised to be a powerful president with a beefed-up mandate, in contrast to the ceremonial role played by his recent predecessors.

The polls are the first time Turkey — a member of NATO and longtime hopeful to join the EU — has directly elected its president, who was previously chosen by parliament, and Erdogan hoped for a massive show of popular support.

As the results came out, Erdogan briefly addressed hundreds of supporters in Istanbul before praying at the historic Eyup Sultan Mosque built after the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans.

"As long as I am alive, I will continue our struggle to sustain a more advanced democracy," said Erdogan.

The president-elect has said he plans to revamp the post to give the presidency greater executive powers, which could see Turkey shift towards a system more like that of France if his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) succeeds in changing the constitution.

But Erdogan's opponents accuse him of undermining the secular legacy of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who established a strict separation between religion and politics.

“A ballot paper with only one name does not represent the democracy, it does not suit Turkey,” said Ihsanoglu, 70, as he cast his ballot in Istanbul.

He complained that the campaign had been “unfair, disproportionate”, nonetheless predicting that the votes of the “silent masses” would help him to victory.

While many secular Turks oppose Erdogan, he can still count on a huge base of support from religiously conservative middle-income voters, particularly in central Turkey and poorer districts of Istanbul, who have prospered under his rule.

“He has helped feed the poor and reached out to a larger section of our society,” Zahide, 52, a retired nurse, after voting in Istanbul for Erdogan.

But Ozlem, 24, a university student, said she voted for Ihsanoglu. “Our country is at a turning point. It’s either democracy or dictatorship. Everyone should come to their senses.”

Regional breakdowns of the results showed a clear geographical polarisation of the country, with Ihsanoglu taking the strongly secular western coast, Demirtas the Kurdish southeast but Erdogan the Black Sea coast, Istanbul and the entire heart of the country.

Erdogan endured the toughest year of his rule in 2013, shaken by deadly mass protests sparked by plans to build a shopping mall on Gezi Park in Istanbul that grew into a general cry of anger by secular Turks who felt ignored by the AKP.

The future of outgoing president Abdullah Gul, a co-founder of the AKP who appears to have distanced himself from Erdogan, is unclear. 

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is tipped as a possible choice to be premier.

Recalling that he was the last Turkish president to be elected by parliament, Gul said after voting that he wished Turkey proceeds “on its path by keeping its democracy and law stronger and consolidating its economy”.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — West African countries Sunday lamented the knock-on effects of their fight against the Ebola epidemic as restrictions snarled transport, causing food shortages and price hikes.

“We are trying to cope,” said Joseph Kelfalah, the mayor of Kenema, an eastern district of Sierra Leone that is under strict quarantine along with nearby Kailahun, complaining of “escalating food prices”.

Under the country’s “Operation Octopus”, some 1,500 soldiers and police have been deployed to enforce the quarantines, turning people away at checkpoints and accompanying health workers searching for people who may have contracted the virus.

“Only essential officials and food items are being allowed in after intensive searches,” deputy police chief Karrow Kamara told AFP.

Tribal authorities are imposing huge fines for failure to report cases of Ebola, which has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in west Africa in the worst outbreak in four decades.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are the countries hardest hit by the epidemic, which the UN World Health Organisation has called an international health emergency.

In Sierra Leone and especially in neighbouring Liberia, the restrictions are curtailing trade and causing food shortages as well as price hikes.

Liberia declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, also deploying soldiers to restrict movement, notably from the worst-affected northern provinces to the capital Monrovia.

‘People will die 

of hunger’ 

Sando Johnson, a senator in the province of Bomi, northwest of Monrovia, said the restrictions were “severe” and warned people would die of starvation if they are not relaxed.

“My county has been completely quarantined because soldiers don’t allow anyone to get out of the area and they don’t allow anyone to go there,” he told AFP by telephone.

“A bag of rice that sold for 1,300 LD [$14, 11 euros] is now selling for 1,800 LD. The poor people will die of hunger for God’s sake.”

Health workers are also tasked with raising awareness about the disease, which is spread by close contact with an infected person through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and tissue.

In Sierra Leone, 10 motorcycle taxi drivers have been infected after unknowingly carrying Ebola patients, according to the president of the National Bike Riders Association, David Sesay.

The two-wheeled taxis are a popular and indispensable form of transport in remote areas of west Africa where most roads are unpaved.

Efforts to halt the epidemic have been stymied by ignorance, distrust of Westerners and false rumours.

Nigerian media reported Saturday that two people had died and about 20 have been hospitalised there after ingesting excessive amounts of salt which they believed could prevent Ebola, which causes fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan warned against spreading false information about Ebola “which can lead to mass hysteria, panic and misdirection, including unverified suggestions about prevention, treatment, cure and spread of the virus”.

Elsewhere, a Romanian man was admitted to a Bucharest hospital specialising in infectious diseases on suspicion of having contracted Ebola in Nigeria.

The 51-year-old patient who returned from Nigeria on July 25 exhibited symptoms of the virus but they could also indicate malaria or typhoid fever, a hospital source said Sunday.

Nigeria has reported 13 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola, whose incubation period ranges from two to 21 days.

Meanwhile the Spanish government said a Spanish priest infected with Ebola will be treated with an experimental drug that has been used on two Americans.

The drug called ZMapp arrived at Madrid’s La Paz-Carlos III hospital where the 75-year-old missionary was being treated in isolation, the health ministry said in a statement Saturday.

The Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares, was one of three people who tested positive for Ebola at the Saint Joseph Hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia where he worked.

The World Health Organisation said Saturday that clinical trials of vaccines against Ebola should begin soon and will likely be ready for widespread use by early next year.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s army shelled the main rebel bastion of Donetsk Sunday as Russia called for a humanitarian ceasefire, which the West warned could be a pretext by Moscow to send in troops.

Shelling started early in the morning and continued throughout the day in the one-million strong eastern city, which pro-Russian rebels said was now surrounded by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s government reported four dead as troops and insurgents continued to clash for control of the industrial east.

Kiev also complained that Russian aircraft and drones were violating its airspace.

Amid a looming humanitarian crisis in rebel-held cities — where residents were without water, power and with little food — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a renewed push for a truce to be able to bring aid to eastern Ukraine.

The West fears however that Moscow, accused of supporting the insurgents, may want to use an aid mission as cover to send troops into its ex-Soviet neighbour.

US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron have warned that any unilateral move by Moscow into Ukrainian territory would be “illegal” and “unacceptable”.

Donetsk under fire 

In the renewed shelling of Donetsk Sunday, city authorities reported that a home and a clinic north of the centre had been hit, injuring at least one person.

AFP journalists on the ground heard more than 20 explosions in the early morning and witnessed the assault continuing during the day.

A maternity hospital had its windows shattered while mothers and babies huddled in the cellar for safety, one AFP journalist reported. Several women said they gave birth in the belowground area.

Ukrainian forces have been forging on with an operation to wrest back control of the main rebel-held cities in the east, cutting them off from the Russian border.

Central Donetsk has been repeatedly targeted in recent days. On Sunday, Ukraine’s military said it was “tightening its grip” on the city.

The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, admitted earlier that the city was surrounded and urged a ceasefire to avert a humanitarian crisis there.

But on Sunday he made it clear that a truce would require a complete withdrawal by Ukraine’s military from the east.

“As long as the Ukrainian army continues fighting, there cannot be a ceasefire,” he said.

Heavy fire also continued in the second largest rebel-held city of Lugansk.

Ukraine’s military reported three servicemen killed and 27 injured in the past 24 hours. Later, the interior ministry added another death and five more wounded to the toll.

National Security and Defence Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Ukrainian positions were under mortar fire from Russian territory, and two Russian helicopters and two drones had entered Ukrainian airspace overnight.

As the conflict worsened the humanitarian situation on the ground in the east, Russia’s foreign minister said a ceasefire was “not only possible but indispensable”.

Lavrov said Moscow was in talks with Ukraine, the Red Cross and UN aid organisations “on the need to send emergency humanitarian aid to the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk”, adding that President Vladimir Putin was following the matter closely.

The West however suspects that Moscow wants to use a humanitarian mission as a pretext to send troops into Ukraine.

NATO says Russia currently has some 20,000 troops on the border.

Kiev already said late Friday that it had scuppered a Russian “humanitarian convoy” moving towards the border accompanied by troops and military hardware — an allegation that Moscow denied.

In a round of telephone calls late Saturday, Obama, Merkel and Cameron agreed that any Russian intervention in Ukraine without Kiev’s authorisation and even under the guise of a humanitarian mission would be “unacceptable” and “unjustified and illegal”.

In a phone conversation with Merkel late Saturday, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko said he was ready to accept humanitarian aid for Lugansk and was already in talks with the Red Cross to organise a mission, but only if it is “an international one without any military escort”.

More than 285,000 people have fled their homes in the east and over 1,300 have been killed in four months of what the Red Cross has already deemed a civil war.

In Lugansk, local authorities said residents were without power and running water for an eighth day, while fuel had dried up and food supplies were running short.

Pensions, salaries and social benefits were also not being paid as many banks in the region were closed.

ANKARA — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to secure his place in history as Turkey’s first popularly elected president on Sunday, but his tightening grip on power has polarised the nation, worried Western allies and raised fears of creeping authoritarianism.

Erdogan’s core supporters, religious conservatives, see his likely rise to the presidency as the crowning achievement of his drive to reshape Turkey. In a decade as prime minister, he has broken the hold of a secular elite that had dominated since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic on the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy in 1923.

Opponents see him as a modern-day sultan whose roots in Islamist politics and intolerance of dissent are taking Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance and European Union candidate, ever further from Ataturk’s secular ideals.

Erdogan could, aides have said, serve two presidential terms and rule to 2023, the 100th anniversary of the secular republic. Such symbolism is not lost on a leader whose passionate speeches are frequently laced with references to Ottoman history.

“On the assumption that Erdogan wins, what we’re going to have is the beginning of a new era,” said Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Turkey and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe think tank.

Until now, Turkish presidents have been chosen by parliament but under a new law, the three candidates will face the national electorate as they compete for a five-year term.

Electoral rules ban the publication of opinion polls in the immediate run-up to the vote, but two surveys last month put Erdogan’s support on 55-56 per cent. This is 20 points ahead of the main opposition candidate, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, and enough to secure the simple majority needed to win in the first round.

Selahattin Demirtas, head of the pro-Kurdish left-wing People’s Democratic Party, was running a distant third.

Erdogan has made no secret of his ambition to change the constitution and establish an executive presidency; he has also made clear that in the meantime he will exercise the full powers of the post under Turkey’s existing laws.

They give him the authority to convene Cabinet meetings, as well as appoint the prime minister and members of Turkey’s top judicial bodies, including the constitutional court and supreme council of judges.

“When a man like Erdogan becomes the first popularly -elected president, even if the constitution remains unchanged, it will mean Turkey has switched to a semi-presidential system,” said a senior official from his ruling AK Party. “Starting this Sunday, there will be a new system.”

Ihsanoglu, a diplomat and academic who ran the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for nine years, is campaigning for a different style of presidency, avoiding the kind of bombastic podium speeches that Erdogan has been delivering at mass rallies around the country.

“The people are fed up with this divisive rhetoric and mistakes. They are looking for a calm, dignified way of ruling,” Ihsanoglu told Reuters in an interview.

“Supremacy of law and justice have taken a big blow in Turkey. The new president should work very hard to help restore the independence and impartiality of the judiciary,” he said.

Impulsive

A strong Erdogan victory would mark an extraordinary recovery from one of his most difficult years in office. He has bounced back from anti-government demonstrations last summer, a corruption scandal months later and a power struggle with his former ally, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan accuses Gulen, whose network of followers wield influence in the police and judiciary, of unleashing the graft scandal in a plot to oust him and has responded by purging institutions of those thought to be loyal to the cleric.

It is a battle he has vowed to pursue as president.

Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank in London, compares his tactical skills with those of past US and British leaders.

“Never bet against Erdogan, as he is simply a brilliant political operator — a Turkish version of Bill Clinton or Tony Blair in terms of their ability to feel and shape the mood of a majority of the nation,” Ash said in a recent note.

Turkish financial markets would, he said, welcome a first round win as a sign of continuity. Since founding the AK Party in 2001, Erdogan has overseen unprecedented growth and stability after a long period of economic chaos and political drift.

But there are longer-term concerns about too sharp a concentration of power in the hands of a man whose views on the economy can be unorthodox — such as his conviction that high interest rates cause high inflation.

Erdogan’s reactions when threatened can appear impulsive and autocratic. From a heavy-handed police crackdown on the protests last summer, to bans on YouTube and Twitter or comments in recent weeks likening Israel’s offensive in Gaza to the actions of Hitler, Erdogan has drawn growing criticism in Western capitals and looked isolated internationally.

“His heart and his tongue are very closely connected. That has its costs sometimes, but nobody can accuse him of not saying what he believes,” said one official in Ankara.

Turkey ranked second to Russia last year in the number of judgments against it at the European Court of Human Rights. More than a quarter of the 108 rulings concerned violations of the right to liberty and security.

“An almighty presidency implies polarising discourse, implies keeping the rule of law back... All of this is not EU- compatible,” Pierini said in a telephone briefing with journalists. “Despite all this, you have a Turkey which is heavily reliant on NATO for its security. It’s going to be a very difficult relationship.”

Turbulence ahead

In the weeks following his likely victory, Erdogan will chair AK Party meetings for the last time and oversee selection of a new party leader, likely to be his future prime minister.

Under the constitution, Erdogan would have to break with the party once he is inaugurated on August 28. It is therefore vital for him that a staunch loyalist heads the party he founded.

Should his influence over the party wane, Erdogan could struggle to force through the constitutional changes he wants to create an executive presidency, a reform which requires either a two thirds majority in parliament or a popular vote.

“Removing Erdogan from the post of prime minister and putting him in the position of president with a constitution he is unhappy with seems to be a recipe for instability,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies.

Senior AK officials say foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who has strong support within the party bureaucracy and has been Erdogan’s right-hand man internationally, is the top choice to succeed him, although former transport minister Binali Yildirim is also trying to position himself for the job.

Davutoglu has declined to be drawn on his future but dismisses any concerns about Turkey’s stability.

“Democracy is the backbone of our success,” he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. “A popularly elected president, a strong base of support for our party and a strong prime ministry, all these will motivate us... There shouldn’t be any worry about the future of Turkey.”

GENEVA — Nigeria became the latest country to declare a national emergency over the deadly Ebola virus on Friday, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) called the epidemic that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives a global health crisis.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ordered the immediate release of 1.9 billion naira ($11.7 million, 8.7 million euros) to fund the fight against the disease as Africa’s most populous nation confirmed two more Ebola cases, bringing the total number of infections to nine — including two deaths.

The WHO appealed for international aid to help afflicted countries after a rare meeting of the UN health body’s emergency committee, which urged screening of all people flying out of affected countries in west Africa.

It stopped short of calling for global travel restrictions, urging airlines to take strict precautions but to continue flying to the west African countries hit by the outbreak.

And it called on countries around the globe to be prepared to “detect, investigate and manage” Ebola cases if they should arise.

WHO director-general Margaret Chan appealed for greater help for those worst hit by the “largest, most severe and most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of this disease”.

“I am declaring the current outbreak a public health emergency of international concern,” Chan said, warning of the “serious and unusual nature of the outbreak, and the potential for further international spread”.

States of emergency had already been declared in the hardest hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria became the latest on Friday.

The Ivory Coast, which neighbours Guinea and Liberia, said it was declaring a “very high” level of alert, while Benin is also investigating a suspect patient.

ArcelorMittal said it had halted work to expand its iron ore mines in Liberia after staff were evacuated due to concerns over the epidemic.

In the first European case, Spain is treating an elderly priest who contracted the disease while helping patients in Liberia.

 ‘Out of control’ 

Defining the epidemic a public health emergency of international concern — a label only used twice before, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009 and last May for the reemergence of polio — “alerts the world to the need for high vigilance”, Chan said.

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, which has warned the virus is “out of control”, hailed the move, but said there needed to be immediate action on the ground.

“Lives are being lost because the response is too slow,” said head of operations Bart Janssens.

Ebola had by Wednesday claimed at least 961 lives and infected nearly 1,800 people since breaking out in Guinea earlier this year, with 29 people dying in just two days, the WHO said.

“The likelihood is that it will get worse before it gets better,” WHO health security chief Keiji Fukuda said, with the outbreak likely to last for months.

In Liberia, soldiers in Grand Cape Mount province — one of the worst-affected areas — have set up road blocks to limit travel to the capital Monrovia, as bodies reportedly lay unburied in the streets.

In Sierra Leone, which has the most confirmed infections, 800 troops were sent to guard hospitals treating Ebola patients. Two towns in the east were put under quarantine.

US health authorities said they would be sending extra personnel and resources to Nigeria, where doctors suspended a nearly five-week strike to help prevent the virus taking hold in sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country.

‘Africans should 

get new drug’ 

As African nations struggled with the scale of the epidemic, the scientists who discovered the virus in 1976 have called for an experimental drug being used on two infected Americans to be made available to Africans.

The two Americans, who worked for aid agencies in Liberia, have shown signs of improvement since being given ZMapp, made by US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals.

There is no proven treatment or cure for Ebola and the use of the experimental drug has sparked an ethical debate. The WHO is planning a special meeting next week to discuss the issue.

US regulators meanwhile loosened restrictions on another experimental drug which may allow it to be tried on infected patients in Africa.

In Canada, a hospital put a patient in isolation after he arrived in the country from Nigeria, local media said.

A doctor at the Brampton, Ontario hospital, near Toronto, said the patient had a fever and other symptoms similar to those seen in Ebola cases, the news channel CP24 said.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids, and people living with or caring for patients are most at risk.

Fatality rates can approach 90 per cent, but the latest outbreak has killed around 55-60 per cent of those infected.

The earlier the virus is discovered, the better the chances are of survival. Although air travel means Ebola cases could appear far beyond the epicentre of the crisis, Fukuda told AFP that large outbreaks further afield were unlikely.

“If you have health systems, you have awareness, you are ready for it, this is something that you can stop,” he said.

The strength of the current outbreak can largely be attributed to the dismal state of health services in the affected countries, which have far from enough doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and equipment to face the onslaught.

Charity Save the Children warned that people carrying the virus, particularly children, were slipping through the cracks.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention signalled particular concern over Ebola’s spread to Nigeria.

“We are really concerned about Lagos, and the potential for spreading there given the fact that Lagos and Nigeria for that matter have never seen Ebola,” he said.

PHNOM PENH — Two Khmer Rouge leaders were jailed for life on Thursday after being found guilty of crimes against humanity, in the first sentences against top figures of a regime responsible for the deaths of up to two million Cambodians.

Neither “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, 88, nor former head of state Khieu Samphan, 83, betrayed any hint of emotion as the sentences were handed down.

But outside the UN-backed court, regime survivors applauded, many weeping after a 35-year wait for justice.

Judge Nil Nonn said the defendants, who are the most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, were “guilty of the crimes against humanity, of extermination... political persecution and other inhumane acts”.

Their lawyers swiftly announced an intention to appeal the verdict, but the judge said the gravity of the crimes meant the pair “shall remain in detention until this judgment becomes final”.

Prosecutors had sought the maximum life terms for the men, who played key roles in a regime that left around a quarter of the country’s population dead during the “Killing Fields” era from 1975-1979.

Led by “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, who died in 1998 without ever facing justice, the Khmer Rouge dismantled modern society in their quest for an agrarian utopia.

Regime atrocities affected virtually every family in Cambodia as Pol Pot’s peasant army — infamous for their red chequered scarves and dark clothing — slaughtered perceived enemies of their revolution, and emptied towns and cities at gunpoint to work in the fields.

The plan spectacularly backfired, leading to the collapse of the economy and mass starvation.

Nuon Chea, wearing his trademark sunglasses, sat in a wheelchair in the dock as the verdict was read, while Khieu Samphan stood impassive next to him.

Late in their two-year trial both men expressed remorse for the suffering the Khmer Rouge inflicted on Cambodia, but remained staunch in denying knowledge of its crimes at the time.

Justice at last 

The ruling is likely to bring a level of relief to those who survived the Khmer Rouge years, which saw much of Cambodia’s population wiped out by starvation, overwork, torture or execution by ruthless Khmer Rouge cadres.

“This is the justice that I have been waiting for these last 35 years,” said 70-year-old survivor Khieu Pheatarak, one of a few dozen survivors at the Phnom Penh-based court to hear the verdict.

“I will never forget the suffering but this is a great relief for me. It is a victory and an historic day for all Cambodians,” she said.

She was among tens of thousands forced from their homes in the capital in 1975 by gun-toting regime cadres.

Amnesty International called the verdict a “crucial step towards justice” more than three decades after the regime crumbled at the hands of Vietnamese invading forces.

But in spite of the verdict, many observers and victims fear the ageing Khmer Rouge leaders may not live to serve much time in jail — if their sentences are upheld.

Former foreign minister Ieng Sary died aged 87 last year while still on trial. His wife Ieng Thirith was released in 2012 after being ruled unfit for trial due to poor health.

The complex case against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan was split into a series of smaller trials in 2011 for reasons including their advanced age and the large number of accusations.

Considered one of the regime’s chief architects, Nuon Chea “planned, ordered, instigated, aided and abetted” extermination, and forced evacuations according to the trial judge.

He was Pol Pot’s deputy but after the fall of the regime he joined rebels in the forested Thai-border area but defected to the government along with Khieu Samphan in 1998.

After Thursday’s verdict the men were returned to their cells in a purpose-built detention centre next to the court.

In its breakthrough first trial, the court in 2010 sentenced former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, to 30 years in prison — later increased to life on appeal — for overseeing the deaths of 15,000 people.

FREETOWN/MONROVIA — The army blockaded rural areas hit by the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone on Thursday, a senior officer said, after neighbouring Liberia declared a state of emergency to tackle the worst outbreak of the disease, which has killed 932 people.

Worried Liberians queued at banks and stocked up on food in markets in the ramshackle capital Monrovia while others took buses to unaffected parts of the West African country after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced the powers lasting for 90 days late on Wednesday.

The state of emergency allows Liberia’s government to curtail civil rights and to deploy troops and police to impose quarantines on badly affected communities to try to contain an epidemic that has struck four West African nations.

“Everyone is afraid this morning,” civil servant Cephus Togba told Reuters by telephone. “Big and small they are all panicking. Everyone is stocking up the little they have.”

With troops setting up checkpoints outside Monrovia on the way to some of the worst-hit towns, Johnson Sirleaf justified the measures by saying the state of emergency was necessary for “the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people”.

In Geneva, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts were due to hold a second day of meetings to agree on emergency measures to tackle the highly contagious virus and whether to declare an international public health emergency.

After a trial drug based on the tobacco plant was administered to two US charity workers infected in Liberia, Ebola specialists have urged the WHO to offer Africans the chance to take such experimental drugs. The UN agency has asked medical ethics experts to explore this option next week.

Many in Liberia — a nation founded by the descendants of freed American slaves, whose capital is named after former US president James Monroe — look to the United States in time of crisis, as the country did during a brutal 1989-2003 civil war that killed nearly a quarter of a million people.

“We need help from America. We need help,” said Nancy Poure, a small trader in the suburb of Johnsonville. “This is the beginning of hardship. Ninety days of fear and suffering.”

Among the most deadly diseases, Ebola kills up to 90 per cent of those infected, causing internal and external bleeding, diarrhoea and vomiting in its final stages. Discovered in Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, near the Ebola river, it is believed to have been carried to the west of the continent by fruit bats, which are eaten as a delicacy in the region.

Fears for Lagos

Though most cases are in the remote border area of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, alarm over Ebola’s spread grew last month when a US citizen died in Nigeria of the virus after arriving from the region.

A nurse who treated Patrick Sawyer has now also died in Lagos and at least five other people have been isolated with symptoms, raising fears of an outbreak in the city of 21 million people, Africa’s largest metropolis.

In Saudi Arabia, a man suspected of contracting Ebola during a recent business trip to Sierra Leone also died on Wednesday in Jeddah. Major airlines, such as British Airways and Emirates, have halted flights to affected countries, while many expatriates are leaving.

In eastern Sierra Leone — the worst-hit area of the country — the police chief said security forces deployed last night “to establish a complete blockade” of Kenema and Kailahun districts, setting up 16 checkpoints on major roads.

“No vehicles or persons are allowed into or out of the districts,” Alfred Karrow-Kamara told Reuters, saying the measures would last for an initial 50-day period.

Traders who had registered with security agencies would be able to bring in food and medicines. Security forces would mount foot patrols to ensure civilians did not slip past their road-blocks through the bush.

Hospital closed, 

doctors flee

In Liberia, where the death toll is rising fastest, authorities on Wednesday shut a Monrovia hospital after its Cameroonian director died of Ebola and six other staff tested positive, including two nuns and a 75-year-old Spanish priest.

Miguel Pajares, the first European infected, was in a stable condition in a Madrid hospital after being repatriated with his co-worker, nun Juliana Bohi, on Thursday. The two were escorted by police out-riders on their arrival in Madrid to the Carlos III hospital, which cleared its entire sixth floor for their treatment.

The Liberian military deployment — Operation White Shield — is expected to be fully in place by Friday, officials said. In the chaotic, ocean-front capital, residents greeted the announcement with fear and concern, though the precise details of the emergency powers have not yet been made public.

Liberian authorities have said they are willing to authorise in-country clinical trials of experimental drugs. However, US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he lacked enough information to approve their use, adding that Ebola could be controlled with a strong public health response.

Lacking the medical equipment and training to handle the new disease, some 32 health workers had already died of Ebola in Liberia and many sick people were going untreated after doctors deserted their posts, Johnson Sirleaf said.

The outbreak is costing its war-scarred economy millions of dollars as airlines cancel flights. Schools across the country were shut last week and non-essential government workers sent home.

Ebola has now been reported in eight of Liberia’s 15 counties and the only two treatment centres — in northern Lofa County and Montserrado County near Monrovia — are unable to cope. In other areas, patients are simply being kept in improvised holding centres, aid workers say.

BEIJING — A city in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has banned people with head scarves, veils and long beards from boarding buses, as the government battles unrest with a policy that critics said discriminates against Muslims.

Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language, has been beset for years by violence that the government blames on Islamists or separatists.

Authorities will prohibit five types of passengers — those who wear veils, head scarves, a loose-fitting garment called a jilbab, clothing with the crescent moon and star, and those with long beards — from boarding buses in the northwestern city of Karamay, state media said.

The crescent moon and star symbol of Islam features on many national flags, besides being used by groups China says want to set up an independent state called East Turkestan.

The rules were intended to help strengthen security through August 20 during an athletics event and would be enforced by security teams, the ruling Communist Party-run Karamay Daily said on Monday.

“Those who do not comply, especially those five types of passengers, will be reported to the police,” the paper said.

In July, authorities in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi banned bus passengers from carrying items ranging from cigarette lighters to yoghurt and water, in a bid to prevent violent attacks.

Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say the government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including controls on Islam, have provoked unrest, a claim Beijing denies.

“Officials in Karamay city are endorsing an openly racist and discriminatory policy aimed at ordinary Uighur people,” Alim Seytoff, the president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association, said in an e-mailed statement.

While many Uighur women dress in much the same casual style as those elsewhere in China, some have begun to wear the full veil, a garment more common in Pakistan or Afghanistan than in Xinjiang.

Police have offered money for tips on everything from “violent terrorism training” to individuals who grow long beards.

Hundreds have died in unrest in Xinjiang in the past 18 months, but tight security makes it almost impossible for journalists to make independent assessments of the violence.

About 100 people were killed when knife-wielding attackers staged assaults in two towns in the region’s south in late July, state media said, including 59 “terrorists” shot dead by police. A suicide bombing killed 39 people at a market in Urumqi in May.

LAGOS — The death toll of the Ebola epidemic neared 1,000 Wednesday as fears rose that the disease is now taking hold in Africa’s most populous nation of Nigeria after a second death among seven confirmed cases in Lagos.

The spread of the disease comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) met in an emergency session in Geneva to decide whether to declare an international crisis.

The latest official toll across West Africa hit 932 deaths since the start of the year, it said Wednesday, with 1,711 confirmed cases, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The death of a nurse in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million people, came as 45 deaths were confirmed across West Africa between Saturday and Monday, with aid agencies, including Doctors Without Frontiers, saying the terrifying tropical disease is out of control.

In Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, where the dead have been left unburied on the streets or abandoned in their homes, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appealed for divine intervention and ordered three days of fasting and prayer.

And in Sierra Leone, which has the most confirmed infection cases, troops were sent to guard hospitals to “deter relatives and friends of Ebola patients from forcefully taking them from hospitals without medical consent”, a presidential aide told AFP.

The closed-door WHO meeting was not expected to make a decision until Friday. But the session itself underscored the severity of the threat the disease, which causes severe fever and unstoppable bleeding, poses.

Meanwhile, a Spanish air force plane left for Liberia on Wednesday to bring an infected Spanish missionary priest home for treatment.

Lagos outbreak raises stakes 

The outbreak in Nigeria remains minor compared to the other affected West African nations, but rising cases in Lagos — sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous city — poses unique challenges to health workers.

Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said all seven confirmed cases in his country had “primary contact” with Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian finance ministry employee who brought the virus to Lagos on July 20.

Sawyer, who travelled to Nigeria from Monrovia via Togo’s capital Lome for a regional meeting, was visibly sick upon arrival at the international airport in Lagos.

Officials said he was immediately transferred to a hospital next to the bustling Obalende market, where thousands of Nigerians shop for basic goods.

Sawyer died in quarantine on July 25 after infecting several hospital staff, including a nurse who died Tuesday night.

Chukwu had previously said that Nigeria was monitoring 70 people believed to have come into contact with Sawyer.

A Lagos state health official, who requested anonymity, said health workers were trying to track down all potential contacts of the six other patients, but he could not estimate how people now needed to be monitored.

“There is no number yet,” the official said.

 ‘Worth fighting’ 

The Spanish victim in Liberia, Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest, had worked in the Saint Joseph Hospital in the capital Monrovia for seven years before falling sick with Ebola.

News that he would be evacuated on a specially equipped Spanish military Airbus A310 had lifted his “spirits”, he told the online edition of daily Spanish newspaper ABC by telephone.

“I am very happy, it is worth fighting,” he said.

Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia were brought back to the United States for treatment in recent days.

Both patients were flown home on a private jet which had been fitted with a collapsible, mobile isolation unit designed to transfer employees from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention exposed to contagious diseases.

British Airways said Tuesday that it had suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone following concerns about the spread of the virus.

Possible Saudi case 

A Saudi Arabian who had travelled to Sierra Leone and had Ebola-like symptoms died Wednesday of a heart attack, the health ministry said.

Officials did not disclose the results of the Ebola tests conducted abroad, but said he would be buried in an Islamic manner under precautions laid down by the world health authorities.

Aside from medical workers caring for those infected, people who bury Ebola victims are among the most at risk.

First discovered in 1976 and named after a river in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ebola spreads through contact with body fluids such as blood, saliva and sweat.

It has killed around two-thirds of those it has infected over the last four decades, with two outbreaks registering fatality rates approaching 90 percent. The latest outbreak has a fatality rate of around 55 per cent.