World

ABUJA — Nigeria’s president said Thursday that Boko Haram’s mass abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls would mark a turning point in the battle against the Islamists, as world powers joined the search to rescue the hostages.

President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has struggled to contain Boko Haram’s bloody five-year uprising and experts have questioned whether Nigeria can end the violence without help.

“I believe that the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terror in Nigeria,” Jonathan told delegates at the World Economic Forum, thanking Britain, China, France and the United States for their offers of help to rescue the hostages.

The four world powers have pledged varying levels of assistance to track down the girls whose April 14 mass abduction from Chibok in northeastern Borno state has sparked global outrage.

Jonathan’s comments echoed those of US President Barack Obama earlier in the week.

Obama said the Chibok kidnappings “may be the event that helps to mobilise the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organisation that’s perpetrated such a terrible crime”.

In the latest massacre by the Islamists, hundreds of people were killed this week in the town of Gamboru Ngala, which like Chibok is in northeastern Borno state, Boko Haram’s historic stronghold.

Most of the insurgents’ recent attacks have targeted the remote and deeply impoverished northeast, but two car bombings on the outskirts of the capital Abuja in the last month underscored the grave threat the Islamists pose.

Jonathan had hoped that the World Economic Forum would highlight Nigeria’s economic progress and its recent emergence as Africa’s top economy, but headlines have remained focused on Boko Haram.

Holding the summit in Abuja despite the recent violence amounted to victory over the extremists, the Nigerian leader said.

“You are supporting us in winning the war against terror,” he told the more than 1,000 delegated from over 70 countries.

“If you had refused to come because of fear the terrorist would have jubilated,” he added, saying the conference going ahead was “a major blow to the terrorists”.

World joins hostage search

Nigeria has typically resisted security cooperation with the West, which analysts say has hampered efforts against the militants who have killed thousands since 2009.

American officials have acknowledged that the US military had relatively weak ties with Nigeria and unlike many other African states, the government in Abuja has shown little interest in major training programmes.

“In the past, the Nigerians have been reluctant to accept US assistance, particularly in areas having to do with security,” said John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria.

“Whatever assistance we might provide and might be welcomed by the Nigerian side is likely to be essentially technical,” Campbell said.

Some have voiced hope that collaborating on the hostage rescue may improve Nigeria’s broader capacity to defeat Boko Haram.

Washington plans to send a team of fewer than 10 military personnel as well as specialists from the Justice Department and the FBI, US officials said.

Britain said it will send experts in planning and coordination, France has offered a specialist team, while China said it would make available “any useful information acquired by its satellites and intelligence services”.

Bloodshed continues 

As concern grew worldwide over the fate of the 223 girls being held hostage and the rescue mission ramped up, the Islamists carried out another massacre near the northeastern border with Cameroon.

After storming Gamboru Ngala in armoured vehicles after midday on Monday, the gunmen burnt traders alive in their stalls and murdered entire families.

“We have been collecting bodies from all over the town, on the streets and in burnt homes,” resident Musa Abba said. “Nine members of a family were burnt alive in their home.”

Area Senator Ahmed Zanna put the death toll at 300, citing information provided by locals, in an account supported by other witnesses.

Zanna said the town had been left unguarded because soldiers based there had been redeployed north towards Lake Chad in an effort to rescue the schoolgirls.

Nigeria’s military has been repeatedly accused of leaving unarmed civilians to fend for themselves during the uprising, which Boko Haram says is aimed at creating an Islamic state in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria

“Some bodies are burnt beyond recognition,” Babagana Goni, another resident said. “Some of the bodies were shot while others had their throats slit, which made me sick. I couldn’t continue the count.”

GENEVA — Global access to safer drinking water and decent sanitation has hugely improved over the past two decades but the world’s poorest often remain sidelined, the UN said Thursday.

Providing better drinking water and sanitation is the bedrock of the battle against diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid.

“It’s really an issue of addressing excreta, faeces, poo, I can even say shit. This is the root cause of so many diseases,” said Bruce Gordon, coordinator of the water and sanitation arm of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Diarrhoea related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene kills 842,000 people every year, Gordon said.

In a report, the WHO and UNICEF said 89 per cent of the globe’s population had access to improved water supplies at the end of 2012, up 13 per cent on two decades ago.

In UN jargon, an “improved drinking water source” protects the supply from contamination, notably by faeces.

But despite the progress, 748 million people — roughly half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and most of the rest in Asia — still used unimproved water sources.

The bulk of them lived in rural areas.

The study also examined access to “improved sanitation facilities”, which separate excreta from human contact.

By the end of 2012, 64 per cent of the global population used such facilities, a rise of 15 per centage points since 1990, it found.

Open-air defecation 

a scourge 

Compounding the lack of access to decent sanitation, a billion people worldwide still defecate in the open air, including 600 million in India, the study found.

Open-air defecation — which the report noted is a matter not only of poor sanitation but also of cultural acceptability — can all to easily undermine efforts to improve water supplies.

“It’s a matter of demand by the community. They all demand water, but not all of them demand sanitation. What is shocking is the picture of someone practising open defecation and on the other hand, having a mobile phone,” said Maria Neira, the WHO’s public health chief.

Vastly reducing the number of people without access to improved water and sanitation was one of the Millennium Development Goals, a set of targets set for 2015 by the international community at the turn of the century.

“The MDGs were about poverty alleviation and their job is only half done. And in sanitation, the job is not even half done,” said UNICEF expert Rolf Luyendijk.

There has been major progress in narrowing the water and sanitation gap between urban areas — home to over half of the globe’s population — and the countryside.

In 1990, only 62 per cent of people in rural areas could drink improved water, compared to 95 per cent in urban areas. By 2012, the figures had jumped to 82 per cent and 96 per cent, respectively.

On the sanitation front, the proportion of urban dwellers with access rose by four points over the same period, reaching 80 per cent.

In rural areas, the proportion of inhabitants with access to improved sanitation, meanwhile, jumped from 28 per cent to 47 per cent.

But that figure masked major disparities.

“Progress on rural sanitation — where it has occurred — has primarily benefitted richer people, increasing inequalities,” said Neira.

In addition to the disparities between urban and rural areas, there are often also striking differences in access within towns and cities, with the poor far less likely to be covered, the study said.

DONETSK, Ukraine/MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin called on pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine to postpone a vote on secession just five days before it was to be held, potentially pulling Ukraine back from the brink of violent dismemberment.

It was the first sign the Kremlin leader has given that he would not endorse a referendum planned for Sunday by pro-Russian rebels seeking independence for two provinces in the east, and Russian analysts said they believed the rebels would heed Putin’s call to put off the vote.

In what could be a breakthrough in the worst crisis between East and West since the Cold War, Putin also announced he was pulling Russian troops back from the Ukrainian border.

However, NATO, the Pentagon and the White House said they had not seen any signs of a Russian pull-back from the frontier, where Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops, proclaiming the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian speakers.

“We call on the representatives of southeastern Ukraine, the supporters of the federalisation of the country, to postpone the referendum planned for May 11,” Putin said.

He said this would create conditions for dialogue between Ukrainian authorities in Kiev and the separatists.

“We’re always being told that our forces on the Ukrainian border are a concern. We have withdrawn them. Today they are not on the Ukrainian border, they are in places where they conduct their regular tasks on training grounds,” Putin said.

NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen said during a visit to Poland: “Russia should live up to its international commitments and stop supporting separatists and scale back troops from the border, so political solutions can be found.”

Putin spoke in Moscow after talks with the head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who said the security and rights body would soon propose a “road map” to defuse the Ukraine crisis.

People’s assembly

A pro-Russian separatist leader said the separatists would consider Putin’s call to postpone their referendum at a meeting of their self-proclaimed People’s Assembly on Thursday.

“We have the utmost respect for President Putin. If he considers that necessary, we will of course discuss it,” Denis Pushilin told Reuters in Donetsk, a city of 1 million people which the rebels have proclaimed capital of an independent “People’s Republic of Donetsk”.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk dismissed as “hot air” Putin’s call for the referendum to be postponed.

The White House said the “illegitimate, illegal” vote should be cancelled rather than postponed.

Since a pro-Russian president was ousted in an uprising in February, Putin has overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy by proclaiming the right to send troops to Ukraine and seizing and annexing Crimea.

A rebellion in the east has raised the prospect that Ukraine, a country of around 45 million people the size of France, could be carved up or even descend into civil war, pitting Russian-speaking easterners against pro-European Ukrainian speakers in the west.

Residents in areas held by the pro-Moscow rebels were stunned by Putin’s remarks at a time when the region seemed to be hurtling towards inevitable independence and a week of bloodshed had brought animosity towards Kiev to a fever pitch.

“Maybe Putin doesn’t understand the situation? There is no way this referendum isn’t happening,” said Natalia Smoller, a pensioner who has been bringing food to rebels manning a roadblock in Slaviansk, a town turned into a fortified redoubt where fighters withstood a government advance this week.

Nevertheless, experts predicted the separatists would heed Putin’s call to stand down for now.

“Among those confronting Ukrainian troops, a certain logic should prevail under which they understand that without the support of Russia and thereby the Russian army, they could be subjected to heavy military strikes,” said Yevgeny Minchenko, a political analyst friendly to the Kremlin.

Russian share prices surged after Putin’s remarks, seen as reducing the likelihood of damaging new sanctions. The MICEX index shot up 3.64 percent.

Military campaign

Ukrainian government troops have launched a military campaign to retake territory held by separatists this week. Troops briefly captured the rebel-held city hall in the eastern port of Mariupol overnight, but quickly abandoned it, leaving it back in the hands of the separatists.

In a boost for the rebels, one of their leaders, Pavel Gubarev, was released in exchange for three members of the Ukrainian security services, a spokesman for the separatists’ military headquarters in Slaviansk said.

The United States and European Union, which have so far imposed limited sanctions on Russian individuals and small firms, have threatened to impose much wider sanctions if Moscow took further steps to interfere in Ukraine. Sunday’s planned referendum was seen as a potential trigger.

Moscow has denied Western accusations that it was orchestrating the rebellion in Ukraine’s east, where Ukrainian forces have been largely unable to reassert control.

In Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces briefly recaptured the rebel-held city hall overnight, witnesses said the soldiers left after smashing furniture and office equipment. The smell of tear gas hung in the air inside the building which was largely empty in the morning, with activists in gas masks clearing debris.

Pro-Russian activists were rebuilding barricades outside the building where separatist flags flew and patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers.

The prospect that further sanctions might be imposed on Moscow has already hurt Russia’s economy indirectly by scaring investors into pulling out capital and forcing the central bank to raise interest rates to protect the rouble.

A range of European companies that do business in Russia — as diverse as Italian appliance maker Indesit, Danish brewer Carlsberg, Finnish tyre maker Nokian Tyre and Swedish cosmetics firm Oriflame — announced results on Wednesday that blamed the crisis for hurting their bottom lines.

French bank Societe General wrote down the value of its Russian arm Rosbank by $730 million, blaming the economic uncertainty caused by the Ukraine crisis.

BANGKOK — A Thai court ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step down on Wednesday after finding her guilty of abusing her power, prolonging a political crisis that has led to violent protests and brought the economy close to recession.

The decision is bound to anger supporters of Yingluck, but the court did allow ministers not implicated in the case against her to stay in office, a decision that could take some of the sting out of any backlash on the streets.

After the ruling, the Cabinet said Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan, who is also a deputy prime minister, would replace Yingluck, and the caretaker government would press ahead with plans for a July 20 election.

“The caretaker government’s responsibility now is to organise an election as soon as possible,” said Niwatthamrong, a former executive in a company owned by Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother and himself a former prime minister who was ousted by the military in 2006.

“I hope the political situation will not heat up after this,” Niwatthamrong said of the court ruling.

Thailand’s protracted political crisis broadly pits Bangkok’s middle class and royalist establishment against mainly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and Thaksin, who lives in exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for abuse of power.

Yingluck, who faced six months of sometimes deadly protests in the capital, Bangkok, aimed at toppling her government and ending the considerable political influence of her brother, thanked the Thai people in a televised news conference.

“Throughout my time as prime minister I have given my all to my work for the benefit of my countrymen... I have never committed any unlawful acts as I have been accused of doing,” Yingluck said, smiling and outwardly upbeat.

“From now on, no matter what situation I am in, I will walk on the path of democracy. I am sad that I will not be able to serve you after this.”

Despite her removal from power, there is no obvious end in sight to the turmoil in Thailand, with protesters opposed to Yingluck and her government still pushing for political reforms before new elections.

The judge who delivered the verdict at the constitutional court said Yingluck had abused her position by transferring a security chief to another post in 2011 so that a relative could benefit from subsequent job moves.

The court ruled that nine ministers linked to the case should step down but others could remain, leaving Yingluck’s ruling party in charge of a caretaker government.

Yingluck, a businesswoman until entering politics to lead her party to victory in a 2011 election, was not in court on Wednesday. Thaksin, based in Dubai, was unavailable for comment.

Financial markets took the ruling in their stride. The stock market had fallen as much as 1.1 percent early on as investors worried about unrest if Yingluck’s whole Cabinet had been forced out, but the index ended down just 0.1 per cent. The baht was barely changed at 32.37 per dollar.

Protests will go on

Yingluck’s supporters accuse the constitutional court of bias in ruling against governments loyal to Thaksin. In 2008, the court forced two prime ministers linked to Thaksin from office.

“We were bracing ourselves for this verdict. Everything our enemies do is to cripple the democratic process,” said Jatuporn Prompan, the leader of pro-Shinawatra “red shirt” activists. “The court chose a middle way today.”

Asked about a vow to resist Yingluck’s removal that had raised fears of violence, Jatuporn replied: “There is no reason why we should take up arms. We will rally peacefully as planned on May 10.”

In Thailand, the prime minister is normally elected by the lower house of parliament, but that was dissolved in December when Yingluck called a snap election to try to defuse protests.

From that point, she headed a caretaker administration with limited powers. The election in February was disrupted and later declared void by the constitutional court.

Yingluck and the election commission agreed last week a new ballot should be held on July 20, but the date has not been formally approved and it is bound to be opposed by protesters.

Thaksin or his loyalists have won every election since 2001 and would probably win again.

The former telecoms tycoon won huge support in rural areas and among the urban poor with populist policies such as cheap healthcare and loans. But his enemies say he is a corrupt crony capitalist who buys elections and harbours republican sympathies, which he denies.

The anti-government protesters say they want to end Thaksin’s hold over politics and are demanding reform of the electoral system before new polls.

The main leader of the protests, Suthep Thaugsuban, later told supporters to prepare for a big rally on Friday. “We can no longer let this illegitimate party rule this country,” he said.

Ongoing turmoil would make matters worse for Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, already suffering from weak exports, a year-long slump in industrial output, a drop in tourism and a caretaker government with curtailed powers.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africans voted in the first “Born Free” election on Wednesday, with the image of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) as conqueror of apartheid likely to appeal even to those with no memory of white-minority rule.

Voters young and old wrapped up against the early winter chill to stand in long lines across the country, evoking memories of the huge queues that snaked through streets and fields for South Africa’s historic all-race elections in 1994.

“It is great voting for the first time. Now I have a say in the country’s election and what is happening. It is something new in my life,” said 18-year-old Mawande Nkoyi — a so-called post-apartheid “Born Free” — in the Cape Town township of Langa.

Chief Election Commissioner Pansy Tlakula said turnout was “extremely high” but voting was proceeding smoothly at all the 22,263 polling stations, which were due to close at 1900 GMT.

A firm idea of the outcome should emerge by the afternoon of May 8 although there is little doubt about the overall result.

Polls put ANC support near 65 per cent, only a shade lower than the 65.9 per cent it won in the 2009 election that brought President Jacob Zuma to power.

The ANC’s enduring popularity has surprised analysts who had said the party could suffer as its glorious past recedes into history and voters focus instead on the sluggish economic growth and slew of scandals that have typified Zuma’s first term.

Africa’s most sophisticated economy has struggled to recover from a 2009 recession — its first since 1994 — and the ANC’s efforts to stimulate growth and tackle 25 per cent unemployment have been hampered by powerful unions.

South Africa’s top anti-graft agency accused Zuma this year of “benefiting unduly” from a $23 million state-funded security upgrade to his private home at Nkandla in rural KwaZulu-Natal province that included a swimming pool and chicken run.

Zuma has denied any wrongdoing and defended the upgrades as necessary for the protection of a head of state. He confidently told reporters on Monday the Nkandla controversy was “not an issue with the voters”.

His personal approval ratings have dipped this year, but Zuma appeared relaxed and assured as he voted at a school near Nkandla, ending what he called a “very challenging” campaign.

“I hope that all voters will cast their votes free,” he told reporters. “This is our right that we fought for.”

Besides being easy fodder for cartoonists who have revelled in the freedom of speech enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution, Nkandla has exposed the gulf between current and former ANC leaders, in particular Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president who died in December.

It has also become the rallying cry for those who feel the ANC’s dominance as it enters its third decade in power has damaged the soul of the 102-year-old former liberation movement.

“It is not necessarily the huge sum paid by the public that is the most corrupt aspect of Zuma’s palatial rural estate,” the Business Day newspaper said in an editorial this week.

“It is how voraciously this wretched business has sucked in so many others: ministers, bureaucrats, party officials and, as the election hots up, ordinary loyalists.”

Barring a major upset, the stock market and rand should take the vote in their stride and could even gain if South Africa’s reputation for stability relative to other emerging markets such as Brazil, Ukraine or Turkey is affirmed.

“Overall, the election is reassuringly boring,” said Simon Freemantle, an economist at Standard Bank in Johannesburg. “We know who’s going to win and we know there are not going to be any radical policy changes. That is reassuring.”

The ANC’s nearest rival, the Democratic Alliance, polled 16.7 per cent nationwide in 2009 and, even though it has been gaining ground, is still seen too much as the political home of privileged whites to have mass appeal.

Instead, the most spirited challenge has come from the ultra-leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by expelled ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who models himself on Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, right down to the jaunty red beret.

In his final rally at a Pretoria football stadium, Malema, who wants to nationalise banks and mines and seize white-owned farms without compensation, lambasted everything from the Nkandla issue to foreign investors and former colonial powers.

“London must know that we’re not scared of the queen,” he said to thunderous applause. “We shall not report to London. We will report to the people. The people of South Africa will decide how business is conducted in South Africa. We are taking everything.”

However, even the EFF’s noisy emergence is likely to have minimal overall impact, with polls putting its support at 4-5 per cent.

The silver-tongued Malema himself is also likely to barred from public office this month if a court confirms a provisional sequestration order imposed in February because of 16 million rand ($1.4 million) owed in unpaid taxes.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s constitutional court said it will rule on Wednesday whether to remove Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office on abuse of power charges, a verdict that could plunge the country deeper into crisis.

The premier appeared at the court on Tuesday to deny the allegation, filed by a group of senators who said that then-national security chief Thawil Pliensri was replaced after her 2011 election for the benefit of her party.

But the court’s president Charoon Intachan said the nine-member bench had heard enough evidence and was ready to rule.

“The hearing is over... the court has decided to rule on May 7 at noon,” he said.

The case, one of two potential knockout legal moves against her premiership, comes as Thailand’s political crisis reaches a critical juncture.

Anti-government protesters are still massed on Bangkok’s streets — although in diminished numbers — and Yingluck’s supporters are also threatening to rally to defend her.

“I didn’t violate any laws, I didn’t receive any benefit from the appointment,” a composed Yingluck told the court.

Under the constitution — forged after a 2006 coup that ousted Yingluck’s billionaire brother Thaksin Shinawatra as premier — such an offence could lead to her removal.

The court could also extend its verdict to Cabinet members who endorsed the decision to remove Thawil, potentially dislodging a layer of ruling party decision makers with ties to Thaksin, who lives overseas to avoid jail for corruption convictions.

Pro-government “Red Shirts” have vowed to defend Yingluck from being toppled and any decision to remove the premier will kindle fears of deadly clashes between rival political sides.

At least 25 people have died and hundreds more have been wounded in political violence linked to the six-month protests.

End game near? 

If Yingluck alone is dismissed then a deputy prime minister can replace her until a new government is formed through elections.

But observers say a ruling to sack Yingluck and her Cabinet could send the kingdom into uncharted territory.

“Thailand will enter a legal limbo,” according to Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs at Chiang Mai University.

“There will be no Cabinet, prime minister and no lower house. Only the senate.”

The Thai senate is part appointed, part elected and it is unclear which side of the political divide holds sway over the chamber — which could be given a role in appointing a new premier.

The Constitutional Court, which oversees cases of violations of Thailand’s charter rewritten in the wake of Thaksin’s removal, has played a key role in recent chapters of Thai politics.

Critics accuse it of rushing through Yingluck’s case and allege previous rulings show that it is politically biased against the Shinawatras.

In 2008, the court forced two Thaksin-linked prime ministers from office.

It also annulled a February election called by Yingluck to shore-up her flagging administration, citing widespread disruption by opposition protesters.

The chairman of the pro-government “Red Shirts” accused the court of being bent on “overthrowing democracy”.

“We Red Shirts will not allow any undemocratic change,” Jatuporn Prompan added, confirming a mass rally in the Bangkok suburbs on Saturday.

The backdrop to the current crisis is an eight-year political rupture since Thaksin was booted out of office by an army coup.

The kingdom has become fractured since then, split between the Bangkok-based elites and middle-classes, backed by the royalist south — and the rural north and northeast and urban poor who have powered Thaksin-led or allied governments to office in every election since 2001.

Street protests, sparked by a bungled bid to push through an amnesty that could have allowed Thaksin to return, have so far failed to force Yingluck from office.

Yingluck has also been charged by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) with neglect of duty in connection with a costly rice subsidy scheme that critics say fomented rampant corruption.

If indicted on those charges, Yingluck would be suspended from office and face an impeachment vote in the upper house of parliament that could lead to a five-year ban from politics.

Election authorities and the ruling party have agreed on July 20 for new polls, but the date has been rejected by the opposition Democrat Party, and still requires a royal decree to be carried out.

KRAMATORSK/ODESSA, Ukraine — Both sides have been burying their dead as Ukraine slides further towards war, with supporters of Russia and of a united Ukraine accusing each other of tearing the country apart.

Tuesday morning was quieter than past days in eastern and southern Ukraine, but the deadliest week since the separatist uprising began has transformed the conflict, hardening positions and leaving little room for peace.

In Kramatorsk, a separatist-held town in the east that saw an advance by Ukrainian troops at the weekend, the coffin of 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova was carried through streets stilled by barricades of tyres and tree trunks on Monday. Scattered red carnations traced the route.

At the Holy Trinity Church, seven priests led mourners in prayer for a woman killed by large calibre bullets, which the townsfolk believe were fired by Ukrainian troops.

“They shoot at us. Why? Because we don’t want to live with fascists?” asked 58-year-old passport photographer Sergei Fominsky, standing with his wife among the mourners. “We’re not slaves. We kneel to no one.”

In Odessa, a previously peaceful, multi-ethnic Black Sea port where more than 40 people were killed on Friday in the worst day of violence since a February revolt toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, pall-bearers carried Andrey Biryukov’s open casket from a van to the street corner where he was shot.

A pro-Ukrainian activist, Biryukov, 35, was killed during a day that began with hundreds of pro-Russian sympathisers armed with axes, chains and guns attacking a Ukrainian march, and ended later that night with the pro-Russians barricaded inside a building that was set on fire, killing dozens.

A small crowd of about 50 people stood around the body, covering it with carnations and roses. A Ukrainian flag fluttered in the wind and a patriotic song about dead heroes was played from a sound system.

Relatives wept and a young woman fell on her knees crying loudly. The corner where the man died was decorated with flowers and small Ukrainian flags.

“The government has failed to protect its own people. The police have failed miserably,” said Nikita, a grizzled 56-year-old with a Ukrainian yellow and blue arm-band.

Sergei, in his 40s, who also came to mourn, said violence “was imported to Odessa”.

“We were proud of Odessa as a unique place where people used to live in peace, regardless of their beliefs and religion and race,” he said. “Now this is all gone.”

The surge in violence has changed the tone of international diplomacy, with even cautious European states speaking increasingly of the likelihood of war in a country of around 45 million people the size of France.

“The bloody pictures from Odessa have shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in interviews published in four European newspapers.

Government offensive

The next few days could prove decisive: separatists in the eastern Donbass region say they will hold a referendum on secession on Sunday May 11, similar to the one that preceded Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Two days earlier, Friday May 9, is the annual Victory Day holiday celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Moscow has been openly comparing the government in Kiev to the Nazis and Ukrainian officials say they are worried that the day could provoke violence. In Moscow, there will be a massive parade of military hardware through Red Square, a Soviet-era tradition revived by President Vladimir Putin.

The past few days have seen government forces press on with an offensive but make little progress in the east, where separatist rebels have so far held firm at their main outpost in the town of Slaviansk and shot down three Ukrainian helicopters.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Tuesday more than 30 separatists had been killed in fighting around Slaviansk, but there was no confirmation of such a figure. The rebels, who triggered fighting in the area on Monday by ambushing government troops, said four of their number had been killed.

At roadblocks in the town, some armed fighters have been replaced by civilians, like Alexandra, in her late 20s, who said she leaves her 10-year-old daughter at home each morning, puts a starting pistol in her belt and walks to the barricades. The tactic of putting civilians at the front could make a government offensive more difficult.

“We have two options — to use heavy artillery... wipe everything out, put the flag up and report that everything has been done. The second option is a gradual blockade, destroying provocateurs and sabotage to prevent injuries among the population. We are carrying out the second scenario,” said acting defence minister Mykhailo Koval, explaining why the operation has taken so long and achieved so little.

Since a pro-European government took power after the uprising that toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, Putin overturned diplomatic convention by declaring Moscow’s right to send troops across borders to protect Russian speakers.

In March, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region, and in the weeks that followed, armed separatists have taken control of most of the eastern Donbass coal and steel region, which accounts for around 15 per cent of Ukraine’s population and a third of industrial output.

Moscow has tens of thousands of troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern frontier. The outbreak of violence in Odessa, hundreds of kilometres away near a Russian-occupied breakaway region of neighbouring Moldova, means the unrest has spread across the breadth of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Western countries say Russian agents are directing the uprising and Moscow is stoking the violence with a campaign of propaganda, broadcast into Ukraine on Russian state channels, that depicts the government in Kiev as “fascists”.

“Russia sometimes sounds as if it’s refighting WW2. Fascism all over the place. Enemies everywhere. Ghosts of history mobilised,” tweeted Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

LImited sanctions

However, so far Western concern has not been matched by any serious action that might dissuade Putin. The United States and the European Union have imposed limited sanctions on lists of individual Russians and small firms, but have held back from measures designed to hurt Russia’s economy broadly.

NATO has made clear it will not fight to protect Ukraine, instead beefing up defences of its nearby member states. NATO’s top military commander, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said on Monday Russia had used special forces in eastern Ukraine and he now believed Moscow might be able to achieve its goals without resorting to a conventional invasion.

Western leaders have threatened to impose tougher sanctions on Russia if it interferes with presidential elections in Ukraine set for May 25 and most of their diplomacy has been centred around that date.

“If [the election] doesn’t take place, there will be chaos and the risk of civil war,” French President Francois Hollande said. “The Russians, Vladimir Putin, at the moment want this election not to happen so as to maintain the pressure. It’s up to us to convince them.”

Petro Poroshenko, a Ukrainian confectionery baron who is front-runner in the presidential election, said the vote would go ahead despite the unrest: “We hope that we will be able to complete the anti-terrorist operation before the election. And where we cannot do so — we will surround [those places] and not allow them to interfere with the election.”

But Moscow has increasingly dismissed the prospect, suggesting it will not accept the winner of the vote any more than it accepts the interim government in power since February.

“Holding elections at a time when the army is deployed against part of the population is quite unusual,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference.

ODESSA/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter in fierce fighting near the eastern town of Slaviansk on Monday, and Kiev drafted police special forces to the southwestern port city of Odessa to halt a feared westward spread of rebellion.

Ukraine said the Odessa force, based on “civil activists”, would replace local police who had failed to tackle rebel actions at the weekend. Its dispatch was a clear signal from Kiev that, while tackling rebellion in the east, it would vigorously resist any sign of a slide to a broader civil war.

Odessa, with its ethnic mix from Russians to Ukrainians, Georgians to Tatars a cultural contrast to the pro-Russian east, was quiet on Monday. Ukrainian flags flew at half mast for funerals of some of the dozens killed in clashes on Friday.

But in the east, fighting intensified around the pro-Russian stronghold of Slaviansk, a city of 118,000, where rebel fighters ambushed Ukrainian forces early in the day.

The interior ministry said five Ukrainian paramilitary police were killed. Separatists said four of their number had also been killed.

The sound of an air-raid siren could be heard in the centre of Slaviansk, and a church bell rang in the main square.

Russia’s foreign ministry called on Kiev to “stop the bloodshed, withdraw forces and finally sit down at the negotiating table”. It also published an 80-page report detailing “widespread and gross human rights violations” in Ukraine over the past six months for which it blamed the new government and its Western allies.

Russia denies Ukrainian and Western accusations it is seeking to undermine the country of 45 million and using special forces to lead the insurgency across the border, as it did before annexing Crimea in March.

The self-declared pro-Russian Mayor of Slaviansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev told Reuters by telephone: “[The Ukrainians] are reinforcing, deploying ever more forces here. Recently there was a parachute drop... For us, they are not military, but fascists.”

Ukraine’s defence ministry said rebels had shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter, the fourth since Friday, with heavy machinegun fire. The helicopter crashed into a river and the crew were rescued alive, but there were no details of their condition.

Diana, 15, who lives near Slaviansk in a single-storey house at the strategic junction of the road between Kharkiv and Rostov, said she saw Ukrainian tanks fire on rebel cars. A fuel tank at a petrol station exploded and fighters fired at houses.

“My father was injured in the head by glass splinters. It’s terrifying. There’s just nowhere to live now. Everything is broken, our television, our computer; they shot at our car.”

The violence in Odessa marked a watershed for Ukraine.

It increased fears that trouble could spread to the capital in the approach to Friday’s celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War II, an event that could kindle tensions over Kiev’s relations with its former communist masters in Moscow.

Over 40 people were killed in Friday’s clashes, the worst since pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Moscow in February amid protests by Ukrainians demanding closer ties to Europe. Most were pro-Russians killed when the building they occupied was set ablaze by petrol bombs.

It is not clear who started the fire, but Moscow accuses Kiev of inciting violence.

On Sunday, hundreds besieged a police station where fellow pro-Moscow activists had been held since the shooting and fighting that led up to the house blaze. Police then freed 67 of them, infuriating Kiev.

“The police in Odessa acted outrageously,” Interior Minister Arseny Avakov wrote on his Facebook page. “The ‘honour of the uniform’ will offer no cover.”

He said he had sent the newly formed Kiev-1 force of “civil activists” to Odessa following the sacking of the entire Odessa force leadership.

The units Avakov referred to emerged partly from the uprising against Yanukovych early this year.

That could fuel anger among the government’s opponents, who accuse it of promoting “fascist” militant groups, such as Right Sector, that took part in the Kiev uprising over the winter.

Odessa’s economic importance

Loss of control of Odessa would be a huge economic and political blow for Ukraine, a country the size of France that borders several NATO countries and harbours aspirations to join the military alliance, a primary source of concern for the Kremlin.

Many on the streets said they were shocked by the violence.

“People who brought this to our city were not and are not and will not be true citizens of Odessa,” said Alexey, 40, an ethnic Russian. “We are Odessa, and this is a special place.”

Rabbi Fichel Chichelnitsky, a, official with Odessa’s 70,000-strong Jewish community, said: “I’m hoping these deaths serve as a stern warning to everyone that this is not a game.”

Odessa, a city of a million people, with a grand history as the cosmopolitan southern gateway for the tsars’ empire, has two ports, including an oil terminal, and is a key transport hub.

Unrest there would also heighten Western concern that Ukraine, already culturally divided between an industrial, Russian-speaking east and a more westward-looking west, could disintegrate. As well as the humanitarian problems that could entail, neighbouring NATO and EU countries would face a deep crisis in relations with Moscow, which supplies much of Europe’s gas via Ukraine.

The chant “Odessa is a Russian city!” was heard at pro-Russian demonstrations through the weekend.

Many Russians agree. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great, it has played a key role in Russian imperial history.

Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein set scenes of a massacre of civilians during a 1905 uprising on the grand steps that sweep down to the port. The images from “The Battleship Potemkin” are among the most famous in cinema history.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy continued over the weekend.

Germany said on Sunday it was pressing for a second meeting in Geneva to bring Russia and Ukraine together with the United States and European Union. Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of wrecking an earlier accord on April 17.

Berlin said on Monday it was doing what it could to make sure a presidential election planned for May 25 went ahead.

“The election would be not just a means for stabilisation but also a strong signal for a better future for Ukraine,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

He said a referendum planned by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, where rebels have proclaimed a “Donetsk People’s Republic”, would increase tensions.

Certainly, failure by Kiev authorities to conduct the election in rebel-controlled eastern cities would give Moscow grounds to question the legitimacy of any government emerging, just as it challenges the present administration.

ABUJA — The Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility on Monday for the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria last month and threatened to “sell them on the market”, the French news agency AFP reported, citing a video.

Boko Haram on April 14 stormed an all-girl secondary school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state, then packed the teenagers, who had been taking exams, onto trucks and disappeared into a remote area along the border with Cameroon.

The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack shocked Nigerians, who have been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.

“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in the video, according to AFP, which is normally the first media outlet to get hold of Shekau’s videos.

It did not immediately give further details.

Boko Haram, now seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer, is growing bolder and extending its reach. The kidnapping occurred on the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.

The militants, who say they are fighting to reinstate a mediaeval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, repeated that bomb attack more than two weeks later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya.

The girls’ abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to completely overshadow its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa on May 7-9.

Nigerian officials had hoped the event would highlight their country’s potential as an investment destination since it became Africa’s biggest economy after a GDP recalculation in March.

Protester arrested

The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has triggered anger and protests in the northeast, and in Abuja.

On Sunday, authorities arrested a leader of a protest staged last week in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls. The arrest has further fuelled outrage against the security forces.

Naomi Mutah Nyadar was picked up by police after a meeting she and other campaigners had held with President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience, concerning the girls.

Nyadar was taken to Asokoro police station, near the presidential villa, said fellow protester Lawan Abana, whose two nieces are among the abductees.

Police were not immediately available to comment on the incident, but a presidency source said Nyadar had been detained because she had falsely claimed to be the mother of one of the missing girls. Abana said she had made no such claim.

In a statement, Patience Jonathan denied local media reports that she had ordered Nyadar’s arrest but urged the protesters in Abuja to go home, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria said.

“You are playing games. Don’t use school children and women for demonstrations again. Keep it to Borno, let it end there,” the agency quoted her as saying.

More protests are planned from 3pm (1400 GMT) on Monday. These could become a major headache for the government if they continue and coincide with the WEF event, where security arrangements will involve some 6,000 army troops.

In a televised “media chat” late on Sunday, President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but also admitted he had no clue where they were.

“Let me reassure the parents and guardians that we will get their daughters out,” he said, adding that extra troops had been deployed and aircraft mobilised in the hunt for the girls.

SYDNEY — Australia, China and Malaysia pledged on Monday not to give up searching for a Malaysia Airlines jetliner that disappeared almost two months ago, despite lingering questions about how to proceed and who will pay.

No trace of Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished on a scheduled service from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, despite the most intensive search in commercial aviation history.

With the air and surface search now halted, a new search phase costing around A$60 million ($55 million) will begin after existing visual and sonar search data is analysed and a contractor is found to lease the sophisticated equipment needed, officials said after meeting in Canberra.

Financial responsibility is a major focus of the talks and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss seemed to open the door to manufacturers including Boeing, which produced the 777-200ER jet, and engine maker Rolls Royce, to contribute financially.

“They also have a vested interest in what happened on MH370 so they can be confident about the quality of their product, or take remedial action if there was some part of the aircraft that contributed to this accident,” he told reporters.

“So, I think we will be looking for increasing involvement from the manufacturers, and their host countries.”

Boeing said it was providing technical expertise to the investigation.

“Boeing provides experts who assist on site as well as many more within the company who, because of the detailed knowledge of the airplane, its performance and behaviour, are called upon to contribute,” the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

Experts have narrowed the search area where the plane is presumed to have crashed to a large arc of the Indian Ocean about 1,600km northwest of the west Australian city of Perth.

Last week, Malaysia released its most comprehensive account yet of what happened to Flight MH370, detailing the route the plane probably took as it veered off course and the confusion that followed.

The officials have said the focus will be on 60,000sqkm. of seabed in the Indian Ocean that could take a year to search.

US President Barack Obama had publicly promised to commit more assets, but government sources say the United States is keen to begin passing on the costs of providing the expensive sonar equipment the officials say they are trying to source.

The United States said over the weekend that it would only contribute its sophisticated Bluefin-21 underwater drone for one more month, placing pressure on Australia, China and Malaysia to find funding for the next phase of the search. A majority of the 239 people on board were Chinese nationals.

“At the request of the Australian government, the US navy will continue supporting the MH370 sub-surface search effort with the Bluefin-21 side scan sonar for approximately 4 more weeks,” US Navy Commander William Marks of the 7th Fleet said.

For now the search is on hold as the Ocean Shield, an Australian naval vessel carrying the drone, resupplies and conducts maintenance at a military base in western Australia.

The officials will meet again in Canberra on Wednesday, they said, where they will begin thrashing out the details of how to proceed and who precisely will shoulder the costs of doing so.