[Opening music] This is Wikinews News Brief, summarising the current news on [Day] [Date] [Month] 2008 at [HH]:[MM] hours UTC. I’m Nicholas Turnbull.
In the African nation of Chad, violent clashes have been reported between the military and rebel groups. Attacks have also been carried out on the United Nations Refugee Agency and personnel of other aid organisations, causing the UN High Commission for Refugees to evacuate the majority of their staff from the town of Guereda in eastern Chad, as reported in a press release from the UN. Rebel forces continue to advance towards N'djamena [pr: nnchameena] the capital of Chad. The country's military chief has said that the battle has ended with the rebels being destroyed entirely, whilst rebel leader Timan Edrimi [pr: tee-mon eh-dreamy] has made an opposing claim that the Chadian army attacked their forces but were driven back from outside the town of Massaguet [pr:massage-wey] by the rebels' counterattack. According to Agence France-Presse, the European Union force has suspended all flights to Chad, although it was made clear that this was only a temporary delay. The commander of the European Union forces in Chad stated that he did not feel that there was a danger presented by the rebels to European forces. Military action between the rebels and the Chadian military continues.
According to an Islamist website, high level leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan Abu Laith al-Libi has been killed. Speculations were made that he had been hit by a US missile, which has now been identified as a Predator drone, in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. Twelve further al-Qaeda militants have also been reported dead in the attack. Pakistani newspaper The News reported that the attack was aimed at the leader as well as Obadiah al-Masri. An unnamed Western intelligence official expressed a view that the individuals killed by the missile were not high enough in al-Qaeda's hierarchy, and were thus replaceable. However, al-Libi was said to be the third highest-ranking official in al-Qaeda. The Government of Pakistan claims to be unaware of his death, and official information is yet to be released.
An international manhunt has begun for a man referred to in the Indian press under the nickname "Dr. Horror", whose true identity is unknown, following suspicions that he is behind a ring that has been harvesting human kidneys involuntarily for the purposes of sale to wealthy clients both in India and abroad. On January the 24th, Indian police raided a clinic in Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi, where they found evidence that impoverished labourers were having kidneys removed, sometimes coerced at gunpoint. This is in violation of a law passed by the Parliament of India that made it illegal to donate organs except to close relatives, in an effort to curb the massive black market in transplanted organs. The accused is thought to have most recently used the pseudonym Amit Kumar; the Indo-Asian News Service has identified him as Santosh Rameshwar Raut, a former prominent nephrologist. A day labourer named Mohammed Salim reported to local television station NDTV that he had been approached by a stranger with an offer for a job and, on his acceptance, was taken to a room with gunmen who injected him with an anaesthetic; on regaining consciousness, Salim was told that his kidney had been removed. Gurgaon's police commissioner suspects approximately 400 to 500 kidney transplants have been done by these doctors over the last nine years. Two British citizens have been apprehended by Indian police but have not yet been charged. The investigation continues.
Thank you very much for joining me, Nicholas Turnbull, for this Wikinews News Brief. [Intro music] Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, and can be accessed at the following URL: http://en.wikinews.org. This recording is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/. Goodbye. [Outro music] [END]
Wikinews:Briefs/February 01, 2008