Caribbean Times 99th issue - Thursday 28th April 2016

14 c a r i b b e a n t i m e s . a g
Thursday 28th April 2016
Female suicide bomber wounds 13 in Turkey
ATHENS - A sense of
mounting urgency has returned
to Greece with the
country’s financial predicament
igniting fears of a re-run
of last summer’s nail biting
drama. Rejecting a Greek request
for an extraordinary EU
summit to discuss its troubled
bailout programme, European
council president Donald
Tusk instead urged eurozone
finance ministers to resume
talks that would avert further
turmoil.
The nation faces default if
it fails to receive the necessary
loans to cover €3.5 bn in maturing
debt in July. “We have
to avoid a situation of renewed
uncertainty for Greece,” he
told reporters after speaking
with prime minister Alexis
Tsipras on Wednesday.
“We need a specific date
for a new Eurogroup meeting
in the not-so-distant future
and I am talking not about
weeks but about days.
In a repeat of last year’s
heady days, Athens’ leftist-led
government is scrambling to
raise funds to ensure payment
of salaries and pensions in
May. The reserves of state entities
and pension funds have
effectively been sequestered
with officials demanding deposits
be placed in the central
bank on short-term loan to
cover looming shortfalls.
ANKARA - A female suicide bomber
wounded at least 13 people when she
blew herself up near the main mosque
in the northwestern Turkish city of Bursa
on Wednesday, officials said, the fifth
suicide bombing in a major urban center
this year.
Photographs from the scene showed
the severed torso of what appeared to
be the bomber lying at the side of the
mosque. Police ushered dazed passers-by
out of surrounding streets as ambulances
and forensics teams arrived.
The local governor’s office said the
woman was thought to have detonated
a device she was wearing at 5:26 pm
near the western gate of Bursa’s Grand
Mosque. Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu
said 13 people were injured, none
critically. There was no immediate claim
of responsibility. “The attack was carried
out by a suicide bomber. It is a woman,”
a senior government official told Reuters.
Many of the wounded had light injuries
such as cuts from shattered windows and
some have already been discharged from
hospital.
Turkey has been hit by a series of suicide
bombings this year, including two
in its largest city Istanbul blamed on Islamic
State, and two in the capital Ankara
that were claimed by a Kurdish militant
group. It has also faced attacks from far
leftist groups, mostly on police and security
forces. The Bursa attack happened a
day after the United States warned American
citizens in Turkey about credible terrorist
threats to tourist areas.
Bursa is Turkey’s fourth-largest city,
an industrial hub directly south of Istanbul
across the Marmara Sea. While not
one of the country’s biggest tourist destinations,
it draws some foreign visitors
with its Ottoman-era architecture. (Reuters).
Tusk rejects Tsipras request for EU summit on Greece bailout
Several Egyptians killed in clashes with smugglers in Libya
CAIRO - Egypt’s Foreign Ministry says
at least a dozen Egyptians have been killed
in clashes with smugglers in central Libya.
Spokesman Ahmed Abu-Zeid said in a statement
Wednesday that 12 to 16 Egyptian illegal
migrants were killed in clashes in the town of
Beni Walid.
He says Egyptian officials are communicating
with Libyan authorities in the area to
identify those who were killed and repatriate
their bodies.
Libya has become a major conduit for migration
from Africa and the Middle East toward
Europe as smugglers have exploited the
country’s chaos.
Militias have mostly ruled Libya since the
2011 uprising that toppled Moammar Gadhafi.
(Fox News).
Greece’s embattled prime
minister appealed for the
emergency EU summit after
Athens and its creditors
failed late Tuesday to resolve
differences over the extent of
budget cuts and reforms the
debt-stricken state must make
in return for rescue loans.
The lack of headway
prompted Dutch finance minister
and Eurogroup chairman,
Jeroen Dijsselbloem,
who oversees negotiations, to
cancel a scheduled meeting at
which it was hoped the talks
would finally be concluded on
Thursday.
Negotiations have been
deadlocked for months. Initially
it was hoped the review
the first since Greece signed
up to a third, €86bn bailout
would be completed in October,
allowing badly needed
loan installments to be disbursed.
(The Guardian).