World

PERTH, Australia — Search crews sent a robotic submarine deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to begin scouring the seabed for the missing Malaysian airliner after failing for six days to detect any signals believed to be from its black boxes.

Meanwhile, officials were investigating an oil slick about 5,500 metres from the area where the last underwater sounds were detected, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search off Australia’s west coast.

Crews have collected an oil sample and are sending it back to Australia for analysis, a process that will take several days. Houston said it does not appear to be from any of the ships in the area, but cautioned against jumping to conclusions about its source.

The unmanned underwater vehicle, the Bluefin 21, was launched from the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, the US navy said. The autonomous sub can create a three-dimensional sonar map of any debris on the ocean floor.

The move comes after crews picked up a series of underwater sounds over the past two weeks that were consistent with signals from an aircraft’s black boxes, which record flight data and cockpit conversations. The devices emit “pings” so they can be more easily found, but their batteries only last about a month and are now believed dead.

“Today is day 38 of the search,” Houston told a news conference. “We haven’t had a single detection in six days, so I guess it’s time to go under water.”

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised hopes last week when he said authorities were “very confident” the four strong underwater signals that were detected were from the black boxes on Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board, mostly Chinese.

But Houston warned that while the signals are a promising lead, the public needs to be realistic about the challenges facing search crews in the extremely remote, deep patch of ocean — an area he called “new to man”.

“I would caution you against raising hopes that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not,” Houston said. “However, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. Again, I emphasise that this will be a slow and painstaking process.”

Houston, a retired Australian chief air marshal, called the search “one of the largest search and rescue, search and recovery operations that I’ve seen in my lifetime”.

The Ocean Shield had been dragging a US navy device called a towed pinger locator through the water to listen for any sounds from the black boxes’ beacons.

The Bluefin sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and the two devices can’t be used at the same time. Crews had been hoping to detect additional signals before sending down the sub, so they could triangulate the source and zero in on where the black boxes may be.

The submarine will take 24 hours to complete each mission: two hours to dive to the bottom, 16 hours to search the seafloor, two hours to return to the surface, and four hours to download the data, Houston said. In its first deployment, it will search a 40-square-kilometre section of seafloor.

The black boxes could contain the key to unravelling the mystery of what happened to Flight 370. Investigators believe the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and an analysis of its speed and fuel capacity. But they still don’t know why.

A visual search for debris on the ocean surface continued Monday over 47,600 square kilometres of water about 2,200 kilometres northwest of the west coast city of Perth. A total of 12 planes and 15 ships joined the search.

But Houston said the visual search operation will end in the next two to three days. Officials haven’t found a single piece of debris confirmed to be from the plane, and he said the chances that any would be found have “greatly diminished”.

“We’ve got no visual objects,” he said. “The only thing we have left at this stage is the four transmissions and an oil slick in the same vicinity, so we will investigate those to their conclusion.”

Complicating matters further is the depth of the ocean in the search area. The seafloor is about 4,500 metres below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive. Officials are looking for other vehicles that could help to retrieve any wreckage that might be located.

Searchers are also contending with a thick layer of silt on the bottom that is tens of metres deep in places, which could hide debris that has sunk.

US Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said the silt poses a challenge, but it does not make the mission impossible.

“Our experience shows that there will be some debris on top of the silt and you should be able to see indications of a debris field,” Matthews said. “But every search is different.”

A British vessel, the HMS Echo, has equipment that can help map the seafloor in the area, which is more flat and rolling than mountainous, Houston said.

VALPARAISO, Chile — A fire raging in this colorful port city has killed at least 11 people and destroyed 500 homes, President Michelle Bachelet said Sunday. More than 10,000 people have been evacuated, including more than 200 female inmates at a prison.

The fire began Saturday afternoon in a forested area above ramshackle housing on one of the city’s many hilltops, and spread quickly as high winds rained hot ash over wooden houses and narrow streets in the city of 250,000. Electricity failed as the fire spread and towering, sparking flames turned the night sky orange over the darkened remains of entire neighborhoods.

“It’s a tremendous tragedy, perhaps the worst fire” in the city’s history, said Bachelet. She announced that 11 people had been killed, and warned that the toll of death and damage would rise.

It was already the worst fire to hit the picturesque seaside city since 1953, when 50 people were killed and every structure was destroyed on several of the city’s hills.

Bachelet declared the entire city a catastrophe zone, putting Chile’s military in charge of maintaining order. “The people of Valparaiso have courage, have strength and they aren’t alone,” Bachelet said.

Valparaiso, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2003, is known for colorful neighborhoods hugging hills so steep that people have to use staircases rather than streets. About 120 kilometres northwest of the capital, Santiago, it has a vibrant port and is home to Chile’s national legislature.

But many homes in poorer areas above the city centre have been built without water supplies or access points would enable firefighters to intervene, so much of the fight was from the air. Chile mobilised 17 helicopters and planes to drop water on hotspots Sunday.

“This is the worst catastrophe I’ve seen,” said Ricardo Bravo, the regional governor. “Now we have to make sure the fire doesn’t reach the city centre, which would make this emergency much more serious.”

While 1,250 firefighters, police and forest rangers battled the blaze, 2,000 Chilean sailors in combat gear patrolled streets to maintain order and prevent looting.

Shelters were overflowing and hospitals treated hundreds of people for breathing problems provoked by the smoke.

As fires were contained in some areas, some people managed to return to discover that their homes had been destroyed.

“It’s frightening, everything is burned,” said Francisca Granados, who had spent the night with friends in the neighboring city of Vina del Mar.

Thick clouds of smoke surrounded the city’s prison, where nine pregnant inmates were transferred to a detention facility in the nearby city of Quillota. Another 204 female inmates were being evacuated to a sports arena. More than 2,700 male inmates will remain at the prison for now, prison guard commander Tulio Arce said.

KIEV/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s armed forces plan to launch a “full-scale anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Russian separatists, acting President Oleksander Turchinov said on Sunday, raising the risk of a military confrontation with Moscow.

Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two of his comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until Monday morning to lay down their weapons.

He blamed Russia, which opposed a pro-Europe uprising that forced Moscow-backed former president Viktor Yanukovych to flee, for being behind the rash of rebellions across Russian-speaking towns in eastern Ukraine.

“The blood of Ukrainian heroes has been shed in a war which the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine,” he said in an address to the nation. “The aggressor has not stopped and is continuing to sow disorder in the east of the country.”

Russia’s foreign ministry called the planned military operation a “criminal order” and said the West should bring its allies in Ukraine’s government under control.

“It is now the West’s responsibility to prevent civil war in Ukraine,” the ministry said in a statement.

It said it would put an urgent discussion of the situation in eastern Ukraine on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council.

With East-West relations in crisis, NATO described the appearance in eastern Ukraine of men with specialised Russian weapons and identical uniforms without insignia — as previously worn by Moscow’s troops when they seized Crimea — as a “grave development”.

Though the Ukrainian military did not resist the Russian takeover of Crimea with force, Turchinov threatened robust action against the rebels in the east.

“The National Security and Defence Council has decided to launch a full-scale anti-terrorist operation involving the armed forces of Ukraine,” he declared.

Ukraine has repeatedly said the rebellions are inspired and directed by the Kremlin. But action to dislodge the armed militants risks tipping the stand-off into a new, dangerous phase as Moscow has warned it will protect the region’s Russian-speakers if they come under attack.

One Ukrainian state security officer was killed and five were wounded on the government side in Sunday’s operation in Slaviansk, interior minister Arsen Avakov said. “There were dead and wounded on both sides,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

The Russian news agency RIA reported that one pro-Moscow activist was killed in Slaviansk in clashes with forces loyal to the Kiev government. “On our side, another two were injured,” RIA quoted pro-Russian militant Nikolai Solntsev as adding.

Russian TV broadcast grainy footage of what it said was the body of the militant. The images, which Reuters could not verify independently, showed a man in black clothes, slumped against the door of a car, with a pool of blood between his legs. A rifle lay next to him.

‘Undermining elections’

The separatists are holed up in the local headquarters of the police and of the state security service, while others have erected road blocks around Slaviansk, which lies about 150km from the Russian border.

However, details of the fighting remain sketchy. A statement from the administration of the eastern Donetsk region indicated the security officer may have been killed between Slaviansk and the nearby town of Artemivsk. Putting the number of wounded at nine, it said “an armed confrontation” was going on in the area.

An eyewitness in Slaviansk said a gunman walked up to a car in the city centre and fired four or five shots into it. Video footage from the scene later showed a man being pulled out of the car, either seriously wounded or dead. It was not clear what links the shooting had with the unrest in the town.

Kiev accuses the Kremlin of trying to undermine the legitimacy of presidential elections on May 25 that aim to set Ukraine back onto a normal path after months of turmoil.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Kiev was “demonstrating its inability to take responsibility for the fate of the country” and warned that any use of force against Russian speakers “would undermine the potential for cooperation”, including talks due to be held on Thursday between Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the European Union.

Well-organised attackers

Relations between Russia and the West are at their worst since the Cold War due to the crisis that began when Moscow-backed Yanukovych was pushed out by popular protests in February.

Moscow then annexed Crimea from Ukraine, saying the Russian population there was under threat. Some Western governments believe the Kremlin is preparing a similar scenario for eastern Ukraine, something Moscow has strenuously denied.

In Kramatorsk, about 15km south of Slaviansk, gunmen seized the police headquarters after a shootout with police, a Reuters witness said.

The attackers were a well-organised unit of over 20 men, wearing matching military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, who had arrived by bus. Video footage showed the men taking orders from a commander. Their identity was unclear.

Their level of discipline and equipment was in contrast to the groups who have occupied buildings so far in Ukraine. They have been mostly civilians formed into informal militias with mismatched uniforms.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed concern about similarities in some of the rebels’ appearance to that of the Russian troops who seized control in Crimea.

Calling on Russia to pull back its large number of troops, including special forces, from the area around Ukraine’s border, he said in a statement: “Any further Russian military interference, under any pretext, will only deepen Russia’s international isolation.”

NATO has effectively ruled out military action over Ukraine, which lies outside the Western alliance. However, Washington and NATO leaders have made clear they would defend all 28 member states, including former Soviet republics in the Baltic that are seen as the most vulnerable to Russian pressure.

NATO allies have beefed up their air and sea firepower in eastern Europe. The alliance has also cut off cooperation with Russia and stepped up work with Ukraine, including advising its military on reforms and promising to increase joint exercises.

With EU foreign ministers due to discuss the crisis on Monday, Britain called on Moscow to disown the rebels. “Assumptions that Russia is complicit are inevitable as long as Moscow does not publicly distance itself from these latest lawless actions,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.

Moscow insists its troops near the Ukrainian border are on normal manoeuvres, and Lavrov accused the Western-leaning government in Kiev, viewed by the Kremlin as illegitimate, of stoking the tensions.

Gas war risk

The crisis over Ukraine could trigger a “gas war”, disrupting supplies of Russian natural gas to customers across Europe. Moscow has said it may be forced to sever deliveries to Ukraine — the transit route for much of Europe’s gas — unless Kiev settles its debts.

For now, though, the focus of the crisis was in eastern Ukraine, the country’s industrial heartland, where many people feel a close affinity with neighbouring Russia.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, supporters of the revolution that brought the Kiev leadership to power clashed with opponents who favour closer ties with Russia. Police said 50 people were hurt, 10 of whom received hospital treatment.

In another eastern town, Zaporizhzhya, Interfax news agency said 3,000 pro-European supporters turned out in a unity rally and faced off with several hundred pro-Moscow supporters, many of them waving the Russian flag.

“We are ready to defend ourselves,” said separatist Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, who said he had taken over leadership of Slaviansk after the city’s mayor fled.

KIEV — Pro-Russian militants raised their flags over official buildings in two eastern Ukrainian cities on Saturday, deepening a stand-off with Moscow which, Kiev warned, was dragging Europe closer to a "gas war" that could disrupt supplies across the continent.

At least 20 men armed with pistols and rifles took over the police station and a security services headquarters in Slaviansk, about 150km from the border with Russia.

Officials said the men had seized hundreds of pistols from arsenals in the buildings. The militants replaced the Ukrainian flag on one of the buildings with the red, white and blue Russian flag.

Some local residents helped the militants build barricades out of tyres in anticipation that police would try to force them out, a Reuters photographer at the scene said.

But it was not clear how the authorities would tackle the militants after the police chief for the region quit.

Kostyantyn Pozhydayev came out to speak to pro-Russian protesters outside his offices in the regional capital, Donetsk, and told them he was stepping down "in accordance with your demands". Some of his officers left the building.

The protesters were occupying the ground floor of the Donetsk police headquarters and the black and orange flag adopted by pro-Russian separatists flew over the building, in place of the Ukrainian flag, a Reuters reporter said.

The occupations are a potential flashpoint because if protesters are killed or hurt by Ukrainian forces, that could prompt the Kremlin to intervene to protect the local Russian-speaking population, a repeat of the scenario in Crimea.

Moscow denies any plan to send in forces or split Ukraine, but the Western-leaning authorities in Kiev believe Russia is trying to create a pretext to interfere again. NATO says Russian armed forces are massing on Ukraine’s eastern border, while Moscow says they are on normal manoeuvres.

Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, said he had spoken in a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and demanded Moscow stop what he called “provocative actions” by its agents in eastern Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have been in confrontation since protests in Kiev forced the Moscow-backed president from office, and the Kremlin sent troops into Crimea.

Bad solution

While the crisis within Ukraine itself is still unresolved, the gas dispute threatens to spread the impact of the row to millions of people across Europe.

A large proportion of the natural gas which EU states buy from Russia is pumped via Ukrainian territory, so if Russia makes good on a threat to cut off Ukraine for non-payment of its bills, customers further west will have supplies disrupted.

Russia is demanding Kiev pay a much higher price for its gas, and settle unpaid bills. Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom and its Ukrainian counterpart, Naftogaz, are in talks, but the chances of an agreement are slim.

“I would say we are coming nearer to a solution of the situation, but one in the direction that is bad for Ukraine,” Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan said in an interview with the German newspaper, Boersenzeitung

“We are probably steering towards Russia turning off its gas provision,” he was quoted as saying.

That raised the spectre of a repeat of past “gas wars”, when Ukraine’s gas was cut off, with a knock-on effect on supplies to EU states.

The scope for compromise narrowed after the Naftogaz chief executive told a Ukrainian newspaper Kiev was suspending payments to Gazprom pending a conclusion of talks over a new deal.

Ukraine has de facto stopped payments already because it failed to make an instalment of over $500 million due earlier this month to Russian state gas giant Gazprom.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov, asked by Reuters about the statement by the Naftogaz chief, said: “What does suspending mean? They’ve not paid at all,” since mid-way through last month.

Moscow says it does not want to turn off Ukraine’s gas if it can be avoided, and that it will honour all commitments to supply its EU customers.

Kiev and Brussels are working out ways to keep supplies flowing to EU states, and for those countries to then pump the gas to Ukraine by reversing the flow in their pipelines.

Cold War

The crisis has been seized upon by some right-wing nationalists in the EU who are campaigning for next month’s European Parliament elections. They blame Brussels for antagonising Russia.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front was in Moscow on Saturday and met the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, one of the people on an EU sanctions list.

“I am surprised a Cold War on Russia has been declared in the European Union,” Russian media quoted her as saying.

The EU and the United States imposed sanctions on Russian officials and leading business figures in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and was part of Russia until 1954.

Moscow has so far scoffed at the Western measures and warned that, in the long run, the EU and Washington will come off worse by losing out on trade with Russia.

Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire oil and gas trader who is on the US list of people subject to asset freezes and visa bans, joined the chorus of Russian defiance.

“The fact that I was included in the list was a little surprising maybe, but it was quite an honour for me,” he said in an interview with the state-run Rossiya television station to be broadcast later on Saturday.

He said Russian natural gas would increasingly be sold to Asia, as part of a strategy of turning away from a Europe which the Kremlin considers unfriendly.

“It seems to me they [the Europeans] just don’t understand. The politicians are behaving... in a very short-sighted way.”

PATNA, India — Indian Maoist rebels killed 14 people in two separate attacks in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday as they continue a campaign of violence aimed at disrupting a five-week national election.

Five election officials and two bus drivers were killed when a landmine exploded under their vehicle in Bijapur district, where voting is due to take place next week, said the police director general, A.N. Upadhyay.

After the explosion, the rebels opened fire on the bus. Five people were also injured in the attack and were being treated in a hospital, Upadhyay said. The rebels fled into the surrounding forest when paramilitary forces began firing back.

In another attack Saturday, the rebels killed five paramilitary soldiers and two civilians in an ambush on the soldiers’ vehicle in the remote Darbha Forest in the south of the state, Police Inspector General R.K. Vij said. Three soldiers were injured in that attack.

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades for a greater share of wealth from the area’s natural resources and more jobs for the poor.

Typically they target government and law enforcement officials in hit-and-run ambushes before disappearing into remote and poorly surveyed jungles within a wide swath of central India. Though they have a presence in 20 of India’s 28 states, they are most active from their strongholds in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.

Thousands have died on both sides in the conflict. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called them India’s greatest internal security threat, though none of India’s major political parties has said much about the rebel threat during this year’s election campaign.

The multiphase election runs for five weeks and ends May 12, with results for the 543-seat lower house of parliament announced May 16. Voting took place Saturday in the west coast resort state of Goa as well as some parts of the northeastern states of Assam, Tripura and Sikkim.

The main Hindu opposition Bharathiya Janata Party has strong momentum on promises of a surge in economic growth and is threatening to unseat the governing Congress Party after 10 years in power.

Vowing to prevent the rebels from disrupting the vote, the government has deployed tens of thousands of police and paramilitary soldiers to guard polling booths in insurgency-wracked areas. But the rebels have only stepped up their attacks while also asking citizens to boycott the vote.

PERTH, Australia — There was no let-up in the air and sea search for the missing Malaysian airliner off Australia on Saturday as Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that locating Flight MH370 would still likely take a long time.

Abbott appeared to step back from his comments Friday when he voiced great confidence that signals from the black box had been detected — his most upbeat assessment so far that triggered speculation that a breakthrough was imminent.

Retired air chief marshal Angus Houston who heads the hunt from Perth, had quickly issued a statement clarifying that there had been no breakthrough.

On Saturday, Abbott repeated his confidence in the search, but put the accent on the challenges ahead.

“We do have a high degree of confidence the transmissions we have been picking up are from Flight MH370,” Abbott said on the last day of his visit to China.

But he added, “no one should under-estimate the difficulties of the task ahead of us.”

“Yes we have very considerably narrowed down the search area but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean about a thousand kilometres from land is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come.”

The Australian-led search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is racing to gather as many signals as possible to determine an exact resting place before a submersible is sent down to find wreckage.

On Saturday’s operations, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said: “Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield continues more focused sweeps with the towed pinger locator to try and locate further signals related to the aircraft’s black boxes.”

‘No major breakthrough’ 

Ocean Shield has picked up four signals linked to aircraft black boxes, with the first two analysed as being consistent with those from aircraft flight recorders.

The beacons on the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders have a normal battery lifespan of around 30 days. MH370 vanished on March 8.

AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft were also carrying out acoustic searches in conjunction with Ocean Shield, the statement said, adding that the British oceanographic ship HMS Echo was also working in the area.

Saturday’s total search zone covers 41,393 square kilometres and the core of the search zone lies 2,330 kilometres northwest of Perth.

“This work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is deployed,” JACC said.

In Kuala Lumpur, a report citing unnamed investigators said MH370’s co-pilot had tried to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished.

The call ended abruptly possibly “because the aircraft was fast moving away from the [telecommunications] tower”, The New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

But the daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid’s “line was reattached”, there was no certainty that a call was made.

The story — headlined a “desperate call for help” — did not say who he was trying to contact.

Fariq and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously disappeared.

Investigators last month indicated that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a police investigation that has revealed little so far.

The fate of Flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery, with a number of theories put forward including a hijacking or terrorist attack and a pilot gone rogue.

There have been unconfirmed reports in the Malaysian media of calls by the captain before or during the flight.

Speaking on Friday in China, home to two-thirds of the 239 people on board the flight, Abbott suggested the mystery might soon be solved.

“We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box,” Abbott said, although the transmissions were “starting to fade”.

“We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres,” Abbott had said.

Abbott later met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Houston struck a much more cautious note just afterwards, saying “there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370”.

Abbott said that he hoped to update Xi on MH370 developments again before leaving China later Saturday.

No floating debris from the plane has yet been found, the JACC said again on Saturday, despite three weeks of searching in the area by ships and planes from several countries.

Up to 10 aircraft and 14 ships were taking part in the hunt on Saturday.

Houston has stressed the need to find the wreckage to be certain of the plane’s fate, and has repeatedly warned against raising hopes for the sake of victims’ relatives, whose month-long nightmare has been punctuated by false leads.

NEW DELHI — Voters went to the polls in New Delhi on the first major day of India’s marathon national election Thursday, with the capital a key battleground for a new anti-corruption party which shot to fame last year.

Almost a fifth of the parliament’s 543 seats are up for grabs on Thursday, the third of nine phases of voting in the world’s biggest election that will end when results are published on May 16.

As well as the capital and its 17-million residents, ballots were cast in densely populated rural constituencies in northern India where the Hindu nationalist frontrunner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to poll strongly.

But Thursday was of particular importance for the 18-month-old anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which triumphed in the Delhi state election last December and is now contesting more than 400 parliamentary seats nationally.

Seen as a potential challenge to India’s established political parties earlier this year, there were signs of disillusionment among some early voters after AAP’s troubled time running the Delhi government.

The party has struggled to shake the “quitter” tag used by critics following the dramatic resignation of party chief Arvind Kejriwal just 49 days after he came to office as the capital’s chief minister.

“We need stability. So I won’t waste my vote on him,” Jitender Singh, a 38-year-old rickshaw driver in a purple turban, told AFP in the old part of the city. “For now it is Modi, Modi, Modi for me. For the country actually.”

Polarising figure 

He was referring to BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, the controversial hardline Hindu nationalist tipped to become prime minister at the head of a coalition led by his party.

His links to anti-Muslim riots in his home state of Gujarat and his uncompromising public statements make him a polarising figure, particularly for religious minorities.

But many voters have been swayed by his promises of economic development, strong leadership and clean government after a decade of rule by the scandal-tainted Congress Party and the Gandhi political dynasty.

Kedarnath Agarwal, a 79-year-old speaking as shopkeepers rolled up their shutters and the first voters trickled into a nearby polling station, said he would abandon Congress for the first time in 50 years.

“All my hopes are pinned on Modi. He is a real leader, strong, decisive and experienced — that’s what we need this time,” he said.

The 63-year-old politician made headlines Thursday after declaring for the first time that he was married, ending one of the biggest mysteries about his closely guarded private life.

Media reports had previously described how he walked away from a marriage arranged by his parents when he was a child, but this has never been confirmed by the man himself who has portrayed his single status as a virtue while campaigning.

Riot victims 

In Uttar Pradesh state, a key battleground that sends 80 MPs to parliament, voters in an area hit by religious riots last August also went to the polls, including those still living in refugee camps.

The riots left more than 50, mostly Muslims, dead and tore apart communities in the district of Muzaffarnagar, with local politicians facing charges of inciting the violence.

The unrest is seen as having polarised the electorate in Uttar Pradesh along religious lines, with the BJP seen as benefiting from greater support from Hindus while secular-rooted parties promise to protect religious minorities.

“I will commit suicide, kill my children but not vote for Modi. He is so ferocious,” Adisa Khatoon, a 35-year-old mother from one of the camps, told AFP.

The BJP has fielded two candidates from the area who have been charged with inciting the attacks which drove 50,000 people from their homes.

Elsewhere on Thursday, a second attack by Maoist rebels targeting security forces guarding pollings booths left two paramilitary policemen dead in eastern Bihar state, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

On Wednesday, three policemen were killed in the insurgency-wracked central state of Chhattisgarh, parts of which were poll-bound on Thursday.

Back in Delhi, early voting took place peacefully and slowly after authorities declared a public holiday, with voters making their way to polling stations in bright spring sunshine.

Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi, dressed in a green sari, and her son Rahul, who is leading campaigning for a national election for the first time, cast their votes on Thursday morning.

The first two rounds of voting in India took place Monday and Wednesday in the remote northeast of the country where only 12 constituencies went to the polls.

PERTH, Australia — The hunt for “pings” from the missing Malaysian airliner’s black box narrowed in the remote Indian Ocean on Thursday after fresh signals were detected, raising hopes that wreckage will soon be found.

With the beacon on Flight MH370’s data recorders due to fade more than a month after the Boeing 777 vanished, the Australian-led search continued trawling for signals, seeking to pinpoint an exact location before sending down a submersible to take a look.

The Perth-based Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) announced Thursday that the search area off western Australia had been significantly pared down to 57,923 square kilometres, 10 times smaller than its previous size.

The Australian ship Ocean Shield, bearing a special US Navy “towed pinger locator”, is now focused on a far smaller area of the Indian Ocean 2,280 kilometres northwest of Perth where it picked up two fresh signals Tuesday.

Those transmissions matched a pair of signals logged over the weekend.

“When you put those two [sets of pings] together, it makes us very optimistic,” US Seventh fleet spokesman commander William Marks said, adding that the search was getting “closer and closer”.

“This is not something you find with commercial shipping, not something just found in nature — this is definitely something that is man-made, consistent with what you would find with these black boxes.

“So we are looking pretty good now.”

He told CNN he expected the pings to last “maybe another day or two”.

No floating debris from the aircraft, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people aboard, has yet been found despite days of exhaustive searching by ships and aircraft from several nations.

Renewed optimism 

Officials had feared that the signals which were initially picked up might not be detected again, particularly since the batteries on the “black box” tracking beacons have a normal lifespan of about 30 days.

Australia confirmed Wednesday that the first signals were consistent with black box recorders.

JACC chief Angus Houston said the high-tech underwater surveillance was meant to define a reduced and more manageable search area in depths of around four kilometres, but he acknowledged that time was running out.

“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370,” he said Wednesday.

Houston again urged against unduly inflating hopes, for the sake of the families of missing passengers and crew who have endured a month-long nightmare punctuated by a number of false leads.

But he voiced renewed optimism.

“They [experts] believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder,” he said.

No other ships will be allowed near the Ocean Shield as it must work in an environment as free of noise as possible, but up to 10 military aircraft, four civil planes and 13 ships were to take part in surface searches in the region on Thursday, the JACC said.

Houston said it would not be long before a US-made autonomous underwater vehicle called a Bluefin-21 would be sent down to investigate.

“I don’t think that time is very far away,” he said.

The pinger locator can search an area six times that which can be scanned by the Bluefin-21’s sonar.

In Malaysia, Home Minister Zahid Hamidi said there was “no conclusive evidence yet” from the continuing investigation into what caused the plane to divert from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route.

Zahid, who oversees law enforcement, said around 180 people had been interviewed, including relatives of passengers and crew as well as airline ground staff and engineers.

“We are filtering all the information. When the evidence is conclusive then we will let the media know about it,” he said.

A number of theories have been put forward to explain MH370’s baffling disappearance.

They include a hijacking or terrorist attack, a pilot gone rogue or a sudden catastrophic event that incapacitated the crew and left the plane to fly for hours until it ran out of fuel in its suspected Indian Ocean crash site.

But no evidence has emerged to bolster any theory.

MOSCOW — Dragging much of Europe into his fight with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged European leaders Thursday to quickly help Ukraine settle its gas debt to Russia to prevent an imminent shutdown of Russian natural gas supplies to the continent.

Putin’s letter to 18 leaders, released Thursday by the Kremlin, is part of Russia’s efforts to retain control over its struggling neighbour, which is teetering on the verge of financial ruin and is facing a pro-Russian separatist mutiny in the east.

A large Russian military buildup alongside the Ukrainian border has also raised fears that the Kremlin could use the tensions in eastern Ukraine as a pretext to invade, following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea last month.

Putin’s move raises the spectre of a new gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine that could affect much of Europe. In 2009, Moscow turned off supplies to Kiev, leading to the shutdown of Russian gas moving across Ukrainian pipelines to other European countries.

The amount that Putin claims Ukraine owes is growing by billions every day. In the letter, Putin said Ukraine owes Russia $17 billion in gas discounts and potentially another $18.4 billion incurred by Ukraine as a minimal take-or-pay fine under their 2009 gas contract.

He added, on top of that $35.4 billion, Russia also holds $3 billion in Ukrainian government bonds.

The amount is far greater than the estimated $14 billion bailout that the International Monetary Fund is considering for Ukraine.

Putin warned that Ukraine’s mounting debt is forcing Moscow to demand advance payments for further gas supplies. He warned that if Ukraine failed to make such payments, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant Gazprom will “completely or partially cease gas deliveries”.

Putin told the leaders that a possible shutdown of Russian gas supplies will increase the risk of Ukraine siphoning off gas that intended for Europe and will make it difficult to accumulate sufficient reserves for next winter. He urged quick talks between Russia and European consumers of Russian gas to prevent a looming shutdown of supplies.

“The fact that our European partners have unilaterally withdrawn from the concerted efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, and even from holding consultations with the Russian side, leaves Russia no alternative,” Putin said.

He said Russia may decide to help its struggling neighbour “not in a unilateral way, but on equal conditions with our European partners”.

“It is also essential to take into account the actual investments, contributions and expenditures that Russia has shouldered by itself alone for such a long time in supporting Ukraine,” he wrote in the letter. “Only such an approach would be fair and balanced and only such an approach can lead to success. “

Putin has been tightening the economic screws on the cash-strapped Kiev government since it came to power in February, after Ukraine’s Russia-leaning president fled the country after months of protest.

Starting this month, Russia state energy giant Gazprom scrapped all discounts on gas to Ukraine, meaning a 70 per cent price hike that will add to the debt figure.

Russia argues that a gas discount was tied to a lease for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea, a Ukrainian region that Russia annexed last month. And Ukraine has promised the IMF that it will cut energy subsidies to residents in exchange for the bailout. That means gas prices were set to rise 50 per cent on May 1 even before the latest salvo from Putin.

PERTH, Australia — Two fresh signals have been picked up in the search for missing Malaysian flight MH370, raising hopes Wednesday that wreckage will be found within days even as black box batteries start to expire.

Australian ship Ocean Shield detected the signals Tuesday to match a pair of transmissions picked up over the weekend that have been analysed as consistent with signals from the plane’s flight data recorder, the head of the search said.

“Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire the signals on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and later last night,” said Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

The Australian ship has now picked up four transmissions, crucial information as searchers try to pinpoint the crash zone for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Officials had feared that the signals which were initially picked up might not be detected again, particularly since the batteries on the black box tracking beacons have a normal lifespan of about 30 days.

The new transmissions, found in the same broad area as the previous two, lasted for five minutes and 32 seconds and about seven minutes respectively, Houston said.

“Yesterday’s signals will assist in better defining a reduced and much more manageable search area on the ocean floor,” Houston said.

“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370.”

Houston, however, again urged caution for the sake of the families of those aboard the flight which mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and said the search for more signals would go on.

“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area and... in a matter of days we’ll be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370,” Houston told reporters.

Agonising wait 

For families of MH370 passengers, who marked the one-month anniversary of the plane’s disappearance on Tuesday, the suspense has been excruciating.

“Let’s wait and see. I want to see the evidence that the plane is at the bottom of the sea,” said Malaysian Tan Tuan Lay, whose daughter, 31-year-old bank employee Chew Kar Mooi, was one of the passengers on board.

“I am really sad [about]what has happened but I am prepared to accept what ever comes,” Tan said when asked to comment on the fresh signals.

Australia confirmed Wednesday that the first signals were consistent with black box recorders and that the search was narrowing.

“The analysis determines that a very stable, distinct and clear signal was detected at 33.331 kHz, and that it consistently pulsed at a 1.106 second interval,” Houston said.

“They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder.”

Authorities have been searching a linear arc produced from satellite data and believed to represent the last stretch of the plane’s flight path.

While China’s Haixun 01 vessel initially reported some acoustic signals at the southern end of this trajectory, these have not occurred again, Houston said.

No other ships will be allowed near the Ocean Shield, as its work must be done in an environment as free of noise as possible, but a modified RAAF AP-3C Orion was parachuting sonar buoys into the vicinity.

These will float on the surface and have a hydrophone attached dangling 305 metres below to hopefully pick up any emissions, although officials warned these could be dulled by thick silt on the seabed.

With the clock ticking on how long the black boxes could feasibly continue to transmit, Houston said it would not be long before a US-made autonomous underwater vehicle called a Bluefin 21 would be sent down to investigate.

Houston said officials were probably close to using this device because the last acoustic signal was very weak, indicating the batteries were running down.

“I don’t think that time is very far away,” he said.

Up to 11 military aircraft, four civil planes and 14 ships were searching Wednesday over a zone covering 75,423 square kilometres, Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

The focus of the search area is 2,260 kilometres northwest of Perth.

The case of the missing jet has baffled aviation experts and frustrated the families of those on board, two-thirds of whom were Chinese.

Despite extensive searches on the ocean surface, no debris has yet been found, but Houston voiced optimism that the aircraft will be found “in the not too distant future”.