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JAKARTA: At least 32 children died in Indonesia’s stadium disaster, an official said Monday, as the government ordered police to identify the “perpetrators” of one of the deadliest disasters in football history.
The tragedy on Saturday night in the city of Malang saw a total of 125 people killed and 323 others injured after officers fired tear gas in a packed stadium to quell a pitch invasion, triggering a stampede.
Dozens of children caught in the chaos lost their lives, an official at the women’s empowerment and child protection ministry told AFP on Monday.
“From the latest data we received, out of 125 people who died in the accident, 32 of them were children, with the youngest being a toddler age three or four,” said Nahar, who like many Indonesians only goes by one name.
As anger mounted against police, Indonesia’s chief security minister Mahfud MD announced that a task force had been formed for an investigation.
“We ask the national police to find the perpetrators who have committed crimes in the next few days,” he said in a broadcast statement.
“We asked them to… take action against them and we also hope the national police will evaluate their security procedures.”
The tragedy unfolded when fans of home team Arema FC stormed the pitch at the Kanjuruhan stadium after their loss 3-2 to bitter rivals Persebaya Surabaya.
Police responded by launching tear gas into packed terraces, prompting spectators to rush en masse to small gates where many were trampled or suffocated, according to witnesses.
“It felt like people were packed into a small tube with a tiny hole, and then they were smoked,” said 29-year-old spectator Ahmad Rizal Habibi, who escaped before the crush.
Police described the incident as a riot and said two officers were killed, but survivors accuse them of overreacting and causing the deaths of scores of spectators.
“One of our messages is for the authorities to investigate this thoroughly. And we want accountability. Who is to blame?” said 25-year-old Malang resident Andika, who declined to give his last name.
“We want justice for our fallen supporters.”
Investigators planned to question football officials on Monday as well as the 18 officers responsible for being “the carrier or the operator of the weapons,” national police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo told a press conference.
In a tearful live address, Arema FC president Gilang Widya Pramana apologized for the club’s role in the tragedy.
“I, as the president of Arema FC, will take full responsibility for the incident that occurred. I deeply apologize to the victims, their families, all Indonesians, and Liga 1.”
The squad visited the site of the tragedy on Monday donned in black shirts to pay their respects and lay flowers before gathering on the pitch to pray for victims.
Newspaper Kompas published a black front page with the word “tragedy” and a stadium bearing the names of victims.
Outside the Kanjuruhan venue on Sunday evening, people held a vigil to honor the victims beneath a roaring lion statue that is the club’s symbol.
Graffiti daubed on the walls revealed bubbling anger toward authorities.
“My siblings were killed. Investigate thoroughly,” read one message scrawled on the stadium’s shutters, accompanied by a black ribbon and the date of the disaster.
“ACAB,” an acronym for “all cops are bastards,” was sprayed on another wall.
In Jakarta, hundreds of football fans gathered outside the country’s biggest stadium on Sunday chanting “murderer, murderer.”
Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced a probe, but rights groups said officers should be held accountable for using tear gas in a confined area.
Mahfud said the task force for the investigation would consist of government officials, analysts, ministry representatives, football officials, academics and members of the media.
“It is estimated the task can be concluded in the next two or three weeks,” he said.
Human Rights Watch said it was not enough for the police and Indonesia’s football association to conduct their own probe as “they may be tempted to downplay or undermine full accountability for officials.”
Fan violence is an enduring problem in Indonesia.
Witnesses of Saturday’s episode say supporters of the home team invaded the pitch after their loss to Persebaya Surabaya.
Persebaya Surabaya fans were barred from the game, due to the fear of violence.
Mahfud said 42,000 tickets had been allocated for 38,000 seats.
After the stampede, Arema fans threw rocks at officers and torched vehicles including a police truck on the streets of Malang, according to police.
FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino called the tragedy a “dark day” for football.
The world governing body’s safety guidelines prohibit the use of crowd control gas by police or stewards at pitchside.
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DHAKA: When poor eyesight forced Motiur Rahman to abandon his pulled rickshaw, there seemed to be no hope that he would find another livelihood — until last month, when Saudi doctors treated his cataract and gave him a new lease on life.
Rahman, 62, was one of hundreds of people who underwent eye surgery when ophthalmologists from the Kingdom arrived in the Chapainawabganj area of northwestern Bangladesh in late September.
“I was close to blind before the operation. But with the grace of almighty Allah, now I am completely ok with my (eyesight),” he said. “I feel like (I’m) reborn. I can see things like in my early days.”
The Saudi Noor Volunteer Program between Sept. 23 and Oct. 1 was organized by the Al-Basar International Foundation, a Saudi NGO working in the field of blindness prevention, with support from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center or KSrelief.
“A total of 15 doctors came from Saudi Arabia,” Dr. Ahmed Taher Hamid Ali, Al-Basar’s country director for Bangladesh, told Arab News. “They were very willing to provide quality eye care to underprivileged persons.”
The doctors’ work was facilitated by Al-Basar’s local partner, Al-Noor Eye Hospital in Dhaka, which organized a medical camp at its subbranch in Chapainawabganj, some 300 kilometers from the capital.
According to the hospital’s data, the Saudi doctors had examined and treated 4,610 patients and conducted 519 cataract surgeries over one week.
“They choose to help in Bangladesh on the basis of needs,” Ali said.
Cataracts are the main cause of vision loss in the South Asian nation where 1.5 percent of adults are blind and 21.6 percent have low vision.
The treatment involved the latest medical technology and was free for all who had reached out for help.
“It was completely free, and I didn’t spend a single penny for the surgery. I even received free medicines and ointments for post-surgery treatment,” said Fazar Ali, a 72-year-old who was forced to retire from his fresh produce business when he began losing his vision a few years ago.
“I have been suffering from poor eyesight for the last couple of years. I couldn’t even recognize the people’s faces,” he said. “After the surgery, now I can see better.”
Mohammad Naimul Huq, a 68-year-old farmer and another beneficiary of the Saudi program, was back working just days after lens-replacement surgery.
“I received very good care at the clinic. It was a successful operation in my right eye,” he told Arab News. “After the operation, now I can work again perfectly like before.”
FRANCE: Inside his French chateau on the riverbanks of the Loire, Xavier Leleve dreads to find out how much it will cost to heat the 12th-century building this winter.
Energy bills in France are expected to soar compared to last year, partly as a result of a hike in gas prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The prospect is particularly worrying owners and directors of large historical buildings dotted along the Loire.
Usually, Leleve pays $14,800 to $19,700 in heating, electricity and gas each winter to keep the Meung-sur-Loire castle up and running.
But this year, “it’ll be five to ten times more expensive. You simply can’t start spending that much on energy,” he said.
It would divert funds from other projects, including the much-needed conservation of some parts of the listed building.
In a wing of the castle closed off to the public, he pointed to the windows.
Some looked in bad shape, with duct tape covering some wooden frames and barely keeping out the outside cold. Other windows were brand new, put in place after long discussions with the regional cultural authority on what they should look like to best respect the castle’s original aesthetics.
“A window costs around 10,000 euros and we have 148 of them, so you can imagine how much the window budget is,” said Leleve.
An hour’s drive away down the river, Charles-Antoine de Vibraye has decided the best course of action to keep his huge family home heated this winter is to do nothing at all.
The Cheverny chateau, which inspired Captain Haddock’s family estate in “The Adventures of Tintin,” has belonged to the same family for six centuries, its website says.
Today some of the family still live in one wing of the stately home, but the rest of the building and its grounds include a restaurant and a Tintin exhibition, and are open to paying visitors.
De Vibraye says the business, one of the most visited Loire Valley castles, is successful enough for the family to be able to afford the extra cost of the 30,000 to 40,000 liters of heating oil needed each year.
He does not plan to increase the building’s insulation either.
“If you trap in the heat, you just help the possible fungi and insects that will eat up your wood,” he said.
“You need to limit heating to a bare minimum to not upset this healthy cycle of thermal exchanges inside a historical building,” he added, though admitting a constant temperature was better for old furniture.
He said two-thirds of the building was heated, “especially in the rooms that people visit and where there is historical furniture.”
A little further south, four large logs burn in the chimney at the bottom of a sweeping staircase in the state-owned Chateau of Chambord, the only source of heat for visitors.
But its offices, shops and some 40 houses on its estate are heated.
“The budget has doubled in two years. We’ve gone from 260,000 euros to more than 600,000 in the budget for 2023,” said Jean d’Haussonville, the director of the surrounding estate.
The castle, one of several on the section of the Loire Valley listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, usually works with an annual budget of 30 million euros a year.
Of that, the energy bill is now expected to be equivalent to the cost of two temporary exhibitions and a festival, he said.
LONDON: Former prime minister Boris Johnson pulled out of the contest to become Britain’s next leader on Sunday, saying he had the support of enough lawmakers to progress to the next stage but far fewer than front-runner former finance minister Rishi Sunak.
“There is a very good chance that I would be successful in the election with Conservative Party members — and that I could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday,” Johnson said in a statement.
“But in the course of the last days I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do. You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.”
Johnson, who never formally announced his bid to return to Downing Street, has spent the weekend trying to persuade Conservative lawmakers to back him and said on Sunday that he had the support of 102 of them.
He needed the backing of 100 by Monday to proceed to the next stage, which would have seen him going head-to-head against Sunak in a vote by the Conservative Party’s 170,000 members.
Sunak, whose resignation as finance minister in July helped precipitate Johnson’s fall, had cleared the threshold of 100 lawmakers needed to progress to the next stage, securing 142 declared supporters on Sunday, according to Sky News.
He will be named leader of the Conservative Party and become prime minister on Monday unless candidate Penny Mordaunt reaches the threshold of 100 backers to force a run-off vote by party members. She had 24 declared supporters on Sunday.
ROME: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that Ukrainians will decide when peace is possible, speaking at the start of a peace summit in Rome.
Since the beginning of the conflict in February, Macron has differed from other Western leaders in pushing to keep talks open with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“Let’s not let peace be hostage to Russian power,” Macron said during a speech at the start of the gathering organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic charity based in Rome.
“Peace is possible, but only they (Ukrainians) will decide when they decide it.”
“Peace will be built with the other, who is today’s enemy, around a table,” he said at the summit in front of hundreds of political and religious leaders from around the world.
Macron also justified Western support for Kyiv “so that at some point the Ukrainian people can choose peace… in the terms they will have decided.”
MADRID: Author Salman Rushdie lost vision in one eye and was left “incapacitated” in a hand after he was stabbed in the United States in August, his agent said in an interview published this weekend.
The 75-year-old writer, who had received several death threats after the publication of his “The Satanic Verses,” was stabbed several times in the neck and abdomen before he was due to give a talk in the state of New York.
Rushdie was then air-lifted to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery but his condition had improved in the weeks after.
“He’s lost the sight of one eye… He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso,” Andrew Wylie told Spanish daily El Pais, providing an update on Rushdie’s health.
The injuries “were profound… it was a brutal attack,” Wylie added.
He would not give any information about the writer’s whereabouts, or whether he was still in hospital, but said: “He’s going to live.”
The British author had lived in hiding for years after Iran’s first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of “The Satanic Verses.”
The main suspect, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey with roots in Lebanon, was arrested immediately after the attack on Rushdie and he then pleaded not guilty during a hearing in New York state in mid-August.
The attack sparked outrage in the West but was praised by extremists in Iran and Pakistan.