NICOSIA: Cypruss defense minister and army chief resigned after munitions dump blast that killed 12 people on Monday, government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said.
The commander of the Cypriot navy and the commander of a military base were among those killed, police said. The other victims were army officers and six firefighters.
The explosion happened at a military base where confiscated Iranian munitions were being held.
And that's why it's WoT related.
It shut down the islands largest power station, causing widespread power cuts. The explosion occurred in material held since 2009 by the Republic from an Iranian vessel which was sailing to Syria ... there are 12 dead and 62 injured, Stefanou said.
The early morning explosions devastated the adjacent Vassiliko power station in what Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides called a tragedy of Biblical dimensions for the small Mediterranean island. The plant produces almost 60 percent of the countrys electricity supply. Massive damage was caused to homes in the nearby village of Mari, forcing the evacuation of its 150 residents, the village headman said.
The Iranian armaments were in the cargo of the Monchegorksk, a ship Cyprus intercepted in 2009 sailing from Iran to Syria in violation of UN sanctions on Iran. Military sources said they believed all 98 containers of the Iranian arms, kept exposed in scorching temperatures, exploded.
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SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Thousands of grieving Bosnian Muslims on Monday buried hundreds of newly-identified victims of a notorious Balkan war massacre and expressed hope justice would finally be done now that Serb commander Ratko Mladic is on trial.
Survivors and relatives of the dead wept in scorching heat at the scene of the Srebrenica atrocity, where the remains of 613 Muslim men and boys shot and bulldozed into the earth by Bosnian Serb forces 16 years ago were being buried.
The bodies were only recently identified from mass graves.
Having him (Mladic) behind bars brings some comfort but the true relief will come only once I find the body of my 18-year-old son who was sent to death by Mladic, said Munira Subasic, a member of the Mothers of Srebrenica group.
Serb troops overran the eastern town, declared a United Nations safe haven, on July 11, 1995 and went on a week-long killing spree in nearby woods as a lightly-armed Dutch UN battalion protecting the town stepped aside.
Mladic was arrested in neighboring Serbia in May, after years in hiding, and handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal. He and his political master, Radovan Karadzic, are on trial for genocide over Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. Both have denied all charges.
Subasic said she had begged Mladic to spare her son as his soldiers separated men from women, children and the elderly. He promised he would but did not keep the promise. I wish him a long life in prison to pay for this, she said.
Subasic said she hoped a legal case brought by Srebrenica survivors against the Dutch state, now before that countrys supreme court, would finally be resolved. This will be yet another step forward in our fight for the truth, she said.
An appeals court ruled last week that the Dutch state was responsible for the deaths in Srebrenica of three Bosnian men whose families had filed a legal case. If confirmed by the supreme court, the ruling paves the way for financial compensation and similar legal action from other Srebrenica survivors.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
