Plane crashes in Islamabad,Pakistan

A passenger plane carrying 152 people has crashed into the Margalla Hills near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, officials have said.
The accident occurred after the plane took off from Islamabad on Wednesday in bad weather.
"There were 146 passengers and six crewmen on board," Mubarik Shah,
a spokesman of the state-run Civil Aviation Authority, told Reuters news agency.
"We are gathering information. We have no more details."
Rescue workers were heading to the scene, where smoke was seen rising through heavy clouds, but difficult roads were complicating the operation.
The plane's destination had been the Pakistani city of Karachi.

source:Aljazeera

Dubai opens world's tallest tower

opening ceremony

Dubai has opened the world's tallest building as the emirate tries to re-establish some of the optimism it experienced prior to its financial crisis.

Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, on Monday inaugurated the tower - originally called Burj Dubai - as Burj Khalifa in honour of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the president of the United Arab Emirates.
At a height of 828 metres, Burj Khalifa soars over its nearest rival - the Taipei 101 in Taiwan which rises to only 508 metres.
Dubai, one of seven members of the United Arab Emirates, has gained a reputation for excesses with the creation of man-made islands shaped like palms and an indoor ski slope in the desert.
But the emirate suffered a real estate crash at the end of 2008 when the global financial crisis hit.
Investor confidence was badly dented again in November when the emirate's largest conglomerate announced it planned to delay debt repayments.
Burj Khalifa's opening is seen as a positive start to the year and analysts believe Dubai's financial troubles have not hurt sales of the approximately 1,100 residential units in the "super-scraper".

Higher and higher
The Burj, which was developed by Emaar Properties, is believed to have cost $1.5bn and taken about 12,000 labourers to build.
"The message is very simple ... we build for tens of years to come," Mohamed Alabbar, the chairman of Dubai's Emaar properties, said.

"Crises come and go and the world has gone through two years of difficult times," he said. "I hope that this is the beginning of a gradual move forward."
Bill Baker, the building's structural engineer, said Emaar kept pushing the design of the the tapering metal-and-glass spire higher.
"We weren't sure how high we could go," Baker, who works for Chicago-based architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, said.
"It was kind of an exploration ... a learning experience."

However, the building has come in for criticism over the treatment of labourers during its construction, its environmental impact and the signals it sends in a time of financial crisis.

"Nobody knows where the planning hubris of the sheikhs will lead," Christian Baumgart, the president of Germany's architect's association, said.

"One thing is sure though: what has become a glass and ferroconcrete desert hardly represents a sustainable contribution to building practices around the world."

Real estate bubble
At their peak, some apartments in the Burj were selling for more than $1,900 per square foot, though they now can go for less than half that, according to Heather Wipperman Amiji, chief executive of Dubai real estate consultancy Investment Boutique.

Al Jazeera's Dan Nolan, reporting from Dubai, said that about 95 per cent of the real estate in the tower was sold three years ago.

"That was at the top of the market and the real estate bubble has well and truly burst since then, so as for how many people will actually move in no one really knows," he said.
"Obviously most of those people were speculators who were never planning to move in."
Besides luxury apartments and offices, the Burj will be home to a hotel designed by Giorgio Armani.
The Burj is the centrepiece of a more than two kilometres squared development that officials hope will become a new central residential and commercial district.
It is flanked by dozens of smaller but brand-new skyscrapers and the Middle East's largest shopping mall.

Bitter weather continues in Europe

Severe cold weather conditions across Europe are continuing to disrupt travel plans for thousands of people over the Christmas holiday season, with snow and ice forcing air, rail and road closures.
Easyjet cancelled 180 flights on Tuesday, while Ryanair and British Airways warned of delays and cancellations due to heavy snow and freezing temperatures.

Eurostar resumed a partial rail service between Britain and France, after a three-day suspension stranded hundreds of passengers and cancelled the journeys of around 50,000 people.

Weather forecasters are expecting snow to continue falling in the UK, northern France and the Netherlands.
Winter storms across the continent have led to at least 90 deaths in recent days, including 42 mostly homeless people in Poland, where temperatures have plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius.
Long queues
The travel chaos began on Friday and Saturday when five Eurostar trains broke down, trapping more than 2,000 passengers inside.

Rory Challands, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the Eurostar terminal in London's Kings Cross station, said queues for the resumed service on Tuesday were "stretching around the lounges" and appeared to be growing longer. "Those travelling on Eurostar today are not people with tickets to travel today but those who were supposed to be travelling on Saturday and Sunday." Ian Nunn, a senior Eurostar executive, told Al Jazeera: "People are bearing with us. We are doing our level best to deal with the backlog. "We are asking people to only turn up if they have tickets for Saturday or Sunday. The priority is to deal with passengers who are stranded and have been so for two or three days. "[To our passengers] we say sorry. We are refunding tickets and trying to be practical." 'Big inconvenience' Warsaw, Poland's capital, has suffered temperatures of -15C below average, while Russia has also been feeling its heaviest snow of the season. Temperatures are expected to rise on Thursday, with westerly wind chills dropping and central European temperatures increasing by 5 or 6C. Some airports, including Frankfurt, are beginning to allow aircraft to take off, but flight disruptions are expected to continue. Flights have been cancelled in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal  and Spain and main highways were blocked across Europe where some regions had more than 50cm of snow. Al Jazeera's Challands said the weather "is not looking to get any better any time soon". "Mostly people are trying to get back for Christmas to see their families, so it is a big inconveniece for them." The French government has said that it will investigate the breakdown of Eurostar trains, which they believe may be due to more than the unusually dry snow sucked into train engines the firm has blamed.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Hopes rise for climate deal

The UN has expressed optimism over international talks on climate change that have opened in Denmark, billing it as a "turning point" in a bid to slow down global warming.
Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN framework convention on climate change, said he was confident the summit in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, would be a success.
"Copenhagen is already a turning point in the international response to climate change," he said.
The high-stakes talks are aimed at agreeing a deal for measures to help curb greenhouse gas emissions and the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries to help developing nations adapt to climate change over the coming years.
Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Copenhagen, said: "To get a 192 countries all pointing in the same direction, all with the same goal, it is, to use one phrase, 'like herding cats,' it's very difficult.
"But if you look around you can see why we need to do this, in Africa there is drought, there are people starving, and in one area, the Arctic Circle, we've seen temperatures rise there faster than anywhere else.
"In fact, they're talking about a rise in sea levels of somewhere between 5-7cm over the next 20 to 30 years."


Deep distrust

A major challenge facing the two-week conference, which ends with a meeting of 105 world leaders on December 18, is to overcome deep distrust between rich and poor nations about sharing out the burden of costly curbs on emissions.
But the planned attendance of heads of state and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters – led by China, the US, Russia and India – have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's climate expert panel, are among the speakers at Monday's opening session.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister whose country is the world's fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, announced on Saturday that he would attend the closing summit, joining 104 other leaders, including Barack Obama, the US president.
World leaders did not attend the last time the world's environment ministers agreed on the existing UN climate pact, known as the Kyoto Protocol, in 1997.
Copenhagen is the biggest climate change meeting in history, with 15,000 participants from more than 190 nations.

New money needed

De Boer said developing nations need to take new action to slow the rise of their emissions.
He also wants rich nations to accept deep cuts to their emissions by 2020 and come up with at least $10bn a year in aid to the poor countries to kick off a deal, saying it has to be "new money, real and significant".
On Sunday he tried to allay criticism among climate change sceptics after emails from climate scientists that appeared to cast doubt on their research were recently leaked to the public.
De Boer acknowledged the emails did serious damage, but said the review process by some 2,500 scientists of climate change research was thorough and credible.
China, India, Brazil and South Africa earlier rejected a Danish suggestion to set a goal of halving world emissions by 2050, saying rich nations which have burnt fossil fuels since the industrial revolution must first cut their own emissions.
But South Africa added new impetus on Sunday, saying it was willing to cut its carbon emissions to 34 per cent below expected levels by 2020, provided that rich countries furnish financial and technological help.

Protests

The climate talks have sparked protests in many European cities, adding to the pressure world leaders are under to reduce rising emissions that the UN says will cause desertification, mudslides, more powerful cyclones, rising sea levels and the extinction of species. The existing Kyoto pact obliges industrialised nations to cut emissions until 2012, and the idea behind the Copenhagen talks is to get action from all major emitters, including China and India, which were exempt from the Kyoto agreement. The meeting will test how far developing nations will stick to entrenched positions, for example that rich nations must cut their greenhouse gases by at least 40 per cent by 2020 – far deeper than targets on offer. On Monday some 56 newspapers from 45 countries published a joint editorial urging rich and poor nations to unite in Copenhagen. "At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world," it said. "Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets. Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles."

Iran releases British sailors

Iran has released five British sailors detained in the Gulf after their yacht reportedly strayed into Iranian waters.

The official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday that the yachtsmen were released after an interrogation by Iranian authorities found "that their illegal entry was a mistake".
In London, the foreign ministry said: "The Iranian ministry of foreign affairs have confirmed that the five yachtsmen have been released.
"We understand that they are being towed to international waters and will be met by a representative from the sailing company."
Iran had warned on Tuesday the sailors would be prosecuted if it was proven they had "bad intentions".
However, Britain said it was an innocent case of a vessel accidentally going astray into the Gulf.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards, whose naval forces patrol Gulf waters, said the men had been interrogated and "after investigation, it became evident that their illegal entry was a mistake."
"So they were freed after taking the needed written commitments."
Noaman al-Hassan, general secretary of the Bahrain Maritime Sailing Association in Manama, the Bahraini capital, told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that the boat would be towed to the Dubai International Marine Club.

Damaged propeller

The detentions, announced by Britain on Monday, came after The Kingdom of Bahrain yacht veered into Iranian waters while travelling from Bahrain to Dubai.
Britain had earlier called in Iran's ambassador to London on Tuesday to voice "increasing concern" over the detention of the five yachtsmen, as the sailors' boss said a mechanical problem had likely led to their being taken into custody.
Andrew Pindar, chairman of the Sail Bahrain team which owns the sailors' yacht, said it may have drifted into Iranian waters due to a damaged propeller.
"We received a call from the crew stating that they had been stopped by an Iranian navy vessel," he said in a statement.
"We understood that the crew believed they were in UAE waters, but due to a fault with the propeller, they may have inadvertently drifted into Iranian waters."
They were believed to have been intercepted near the Iranian-controlled island of Abu Musa, whose ownership is disputed by Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
The crew have been named as Oliver Smith, Oliver Young, Sam Usher, Luke Porter and David Bloomer, according to informed sources in London.

Uproar over India mosque report

The findings of an inquiry into the controversial destruction of a mosque by Hindu mobs that triggered bloody religious riots in the early 1990s has been tabled in the Indian parliament amid noisy disruptions from opposition members.
The cabinet approved the report in an emergency meeting earlier on Tuesday morning, India's NDTV reported, a day after the so-called Liberhan report was apparently leaked to a national newspaper.
The story, which appeared in the Indian Express newspaper, alleged the report "indicted" leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), prompting angry scenes by party members in parliament on Monday and causing the house to adjourn.
P Chidambaram, the interior minister, tabled the 900-page report in both houses of parliament - Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha - amid unruly scenes.

Leaders indicted
The report indicts 68 people for the demolition of the mosque - mostly leaders from the BJP and a few bureaucrats.
Among those named are AB Vajpayee, the former BJP prime minister, and LK Advani, the party's current leader in parliament.
The 1992 destruction of the Babri mosque in the Hindu pilgrimage town of Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state sparked some of the worst Hindu-Muslim violence since the partition of the Indian sub-continent.
More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

'Communal tension'
Rani Singh, a London-based South Asia analyst, said the report was sensitive because of India's religious make-up.
"Communal tension is simmering below the surface in India," she told Al Jazeera.

"Although with a Hindu majority population, there are Muslims, Jews, Christians and Sikhs and other religions all living perfectly happily side-by-side.

"But the Ayodhya massacre in 1992 is a terrible scar on India's history that hasn't really healed."
She said the BJP had tried hard to distance itself from the destruction of the mosque and the subsequent killings.
"The BJP has wanted to kind of neutralise its tone a bit and wants to get away from any the whole idea that it planned - or was behind, shall we say - the massacre and the destruction of the mosque in 1992," she told Al Jazeera.
"Having said that, LK Advani does say that his long-cherished dream is to have a Hindu temple erected on that site."

'Strong objection'
In the 1990s, Advani travelled across India to draw support for his campaign to install a temple on the site of the Babri mosque.
Following the report in the Indian Express, Advani accused India's ruling Congress party of deliberately leaking the inquiry's conclusions to the press and protested his innocence.
"I take strong objection as to how the government has suddenly leaked the report," he told parliament, describing the mosque's destruction as "the saddest moment of my life".

Chidambaram denied the report had been leaked to the press. But Tarun Vijay, the editor of BJP's official newspaper in New Delhi, said the Congress party appeared to be using the report to create a divide between the country's Hindus and Muslims. "I think the report very unfortunately comes at a time when the country was going to remember and resolve to fight against terrorism in the wake of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai," he told Al Jazeera, referring to last year's deadly attacks in the Indian commercial capital. "Perhaps the Congress is again planning to invoke a situation that creates a schism and a conflicting situation between the Hindus and Muslims that has always been a hallmark of the Congress politics. "It wants Hindus and Muslims again divided on a very, very extreme position so that it can reap the full consequences of it .. to keep Congress in power in the next election." Devout Hindus believe the Babri mosque was built on the ruins of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu warrior Lord Ram. The report, authored by Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, had been due to come before parliament in December, but the uproar over the paper's allegations prompted the cabinet to bring forward the date, Indian media said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Palestinians hurt in Gaza raid

At least seven Palestinians have been injured in a round of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian witnesses said.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the first strike hit a metal workshop in the al-Tufah district of Gaza city early on Sunday, while the second struck a workshop in al-Burij in central Gaza.
The Israeli army confirmed the strikes and said it was targeting two factories used to make weapons, as well as a smuggling tunnel under the border with Egypt.
Dozens of tunnels are said to criss-cross between southern Gaza and Egypt's Sinai desert, providing a lifeline to Gaza residents who are starved of basic supplies due to Israel's blockade of the territory.
Sources say there are more than 6,000 Palestinians employed in the clandestine industry.

Gaza rocket fire

An Israeli army spokesman said the strikes were in response to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
The rocket landed near the southern Israeli city of Sderot, causing no damage or casualties.
Israel launched an offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December and January last year, in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
There has been a significant reduction in the number of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air raids since both sides declared unilateral ceasefires following the war.
The strikes on Sunday came just hours after Hamas said it had reached an agreement with other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, to stop firing rockets into Israeli towns.
Fathi Hamad, the interior minister for Hamas, made the announcement on Saturday.
He said the move was aimed at preventing such retaliatory attacks to allow Gazans to rebuild the homes destroyed during Israel's three-week war on Gaza.
"The factions have agreed that nobody should in this time, do any actions of the resistance in the framework of firing rockets.
"But if, in the framework of a clash, if there was an incursion, then the possibility is open for response."

Source:

Al Jazeera and agencies

Global temperatures 'could rise 6C'

Scientists have warned that global temperatures could rise by six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, four degrees higher than previously predicted and at a level that could wipe out species and cause widespread natural disasters.

In addition, the study by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) said on Wednesday, that the ability of the world's forests and oceans to absorb carbon emissions was declining.
The paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, comes in the run up to UN talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, aimed at crafting a pact to combat climate change from 2013.
It said pollution "continued to track the average of the most carbon-intensive family of scenarios" put forward by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Extreme scenario

Professor Corinne Le Quéré, the lead author of the study from the British Antarctic Survey, said: "The projections of climate that have been made before are always based on scenarios of climate change, so they tell that if the emissions are such and such you get 2C, if they are such and such you get six or seven.
"What our study is doing is identifying that the trend in the CO2 emissions, particularly from fossil fuels in the past decades, is so large it is at the higher end of the emissions scenario and this is why I am saying that we are on the scenario for a 6C warming," she told Al Jazeera.


Under the IPCC's most extreme scenario, the Earth's surface will warm by around four degrees Celsius by 2100 compared with 2000 - a rise consistent with a wipeout of species, widespread hunger, flooding, drought and homelessness.

The new report highlighted the situation in emerging economies, such as China and India, where emissions have more than doubled since 1990 and now emit more greenhouse gases than developed countries.

"The emerging economies in developing countries are getting out of poverty and that is associated with more CO2 emissions," Le Quéré said.
"We have also analysed why that is the case and of their growth one quarter of it is due to the production and international trade of goods that are consumed in the West.
"There is an issue of equity. The actual emissions that have been put in the atmosphere, 80 per cent of them are from rich countries, but if other countries are allowed to emit as much CO2 as the rich countries have in the past we are going to go to this six degrees warming.

Emissions commitments

Sarah Clifton of Friends of the Earth told Al Jazeera: "This is yet more evidence, if any more was needed, of a strong and fair deal at Copenhagen in December in order to help us reduce emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change.
"Politicians are hiding behind each other, no one wants to step up and take the action, and what we actually need to see is political leadership by the rich countries. We need emission reductions, commitments from the the rich countries of at least 40 per cent by 2020.
"We also need to see the rich countries committing the finance to developing countries so they can grow cleanly, tackle emissions and adapt to the challenges of climate change."
Le Quéré's team of researchers also warned that the world's natural carbon absorbing "sinks" - the oceans and forests - were failing to keep up with the amount of emissions being pumped into the atmosphere.
In the last 50 years, the proportion of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere that remains there has risen from about 40 to 45 per cent, fuelling the greenhouse effect.
"This is of concern, as it indicates the vulnerability of the sinks to increasing emissions and climate change, making natural sinks less efficient 'cleaners' of human carbon pollution," Pep Canadell, GCP Executive Director, said.
C02 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels increased by 29 per cent from 2000 to 2008, and 41 per cent between 1990 and 2008, the GCP said.
It added that despite the global economic downturn, emissions increased by two per cent during 2008.

Breaking news!!! Sri Lankan defence chief 'resigns'

Sri Lanka's most senior general, Sarath Fonseka, the architect of the army's victory over Tamil Tigers, has quit, according to a military source.

Fonseka, who is widely expected to challenge Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan president, in elections next year, submitted his resignation as chief of defence staff after a ceremony welcoming Myanmar's junta leader at the airport, the source said on Thursday.

"He gave his letter of resignation this afternoon and expects the government to ensure his security because he was the main figure responsible for crushing Tamil Tigers," the source close to him said.

Fonseka, 58, the country's only four-star general, has been at loggerheads with the government in recent months after he was removed as army chief and made chief of defence staff, which has no command responsibilities.

There was no immediate word from the government.

Fonseka declared during a visit to the US last month that he was willing to shed his uniform and take up "social work" if politicians did not take advantage of the end of the conflict to ensure economic revival.

The source said he had asked for his resignation to be effective from December 1.

Sri Lanka is set for parliamentary and presidential elections before April 2010.

The government announced it would bring forward the presidential election in a move to gain from strong public support after its defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May.

Source :Aljazeera

German convicted of Muslim murder

A man who stabbed a pregnant Egyptian woman to death in a German courtroom in front of her husband and three-year-old son has been sentenced to the maximum penalty of life in jail.


Alex Wiens, 28, stabbed Marwa el-Sherbini, who was wearing a hijab, at least 16 times on July 1, in the same courthouse in the eastern city of Dresden where the trial took place.

The case of Wiens, who has admitted holding anti-Islamic and xenophobic views, shocked Germany and incensed the Muslim world, sparking protests from Egypt to Iran.

Prosecutors said the attack was motivated by "a pronounced hatred of non-Europeans and Muslims".

Husband shot

Elwy Ali Okaz, el-Sherbini's husband, who was stabbed as he tried to protect his wife during the attack, was then shot in the leg by police who apparently took him for the attacker.

Egyptian media quickly dubbed el-Sherbini a martyr and there were huge protests against the murder in several Muslim countries.

El-Sherbini and the defendant met in August 2008, when she asked him to clear a playground swing where he sat smoking a cigarette so Mustafa, her son, could use it.

He refused, calling el-Sherbini an "Islamist", a "terrorist" and a "whore". She pressed charges for defamation and he was fined $1,170.

An appeal against the conviction brought them together again in July.

The defendant allegedly plunged an 18cm kitchen knife into the chest, back and arm of el-Sherbini, 31, three months pregnant at the time with her second child.

Wiens, who arrived in Germany from Perm in the Urals in 2003, reportedly struggled with bouts of depression.

Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in western Europe after France and some groups criticised the German government for taking several days to condemn the murder.

Floods ravage storm-hit El Salvador

At least 124 people have been killed by floods and mudslides in El Salvador after the central American nation was battered by Hurricane Ida.

Humberto Centeno, the country's interior minister, said on Monday that the toll was likely to rise since dozens of people were still missing.

"There are 60 people missing in just the province of San Vicente ... we have been through disaster zones, including a fly-over of Verapaz [in San Vicente], it is a real tragedy there."

The capital city San Salvador was hit hardest, with 61 people reported dead after mudslides buried homes, according to the Red Cross.

A spokesman for the aid agency, Carlos López Mendoza, said most of the victims were buried by mudslides or swept away by raging rivers.

And Ernesto Zelayandia, the deputy interior minister said a river in Verapaz had overflowed its banks and swamped 300 homes.

Marcela Mayen, a journalist with Channel 6 El Salvador, told Al Jazeera: "The problem here is that there are many rivers across the whole country and these rivers are just overflowing affecting all those who live alongside them.

"The impact has been felt in about 60 per cent of the country."

The rains unleashed massive rock slides from the Chichontepec volcano that buried several houses, the mayor, Antonio Cerritos, told Radio Nacional.

Powerful storm

Heavy rains began falling on El Salvador on Saturday night as the storm moved through the area, causing rivers to burst their banks and mudslides in the hilly interior to bury homes and roads.

Ida strengthened to a category two storm on Sunday as it made its way across the Gulf of Mexico, where it is expected to pick up steam moving over open waters.

Meanwhile, forecasters at the US national hurricane centre in Miami said Ida's winds were near 100mph and could get stronger overnight.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only terminal in the United States capable of handling the largest tankers, said it would stop unloading ships due to stormy seas.
A quarter of US oil and 15 per cent of its natural gas are produced from fields in the Gulf and the coast is home to 40 per cent of the nation's refining capacity.

The hurricane centre set a hurricane watch – meaning hurricane conditions are expected in the area within 36 hours - from Grand Isle, Louisiana to Mexico Beach in northwestern Florida, but did not include the city of New Orleans.

In the US state of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, the governor, declared a state of emergency as a precaution, and the US National Guard was put on high alert.

Nearly 1,400 residents in Louisiana are still living in federally issued trailers and mobile homes after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

Deaths in US army base shooting

A mass shooting at the largest army base in the US has left 13 people dead and at least 28 wounded, military officials say.

The incident took place inside the Fort Hood military base in Texas as soldiers were awaiting medical and dental treatment at a processing centre for troops being deployed on missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lieutenant-General Bob Cone, the base's commanding officer, said the shooting took place at about 1:30pm local time (1930 GMT) on Thursday at a Soldier Readiness Facility.
The suspect has been named as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist.
"There was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene. He was not killed as previously reported. He is currently in custody and in stable condition," Cone said.
Hasan was born in the US to Muslim Palestinian parents who had emigrated from a small town near Jerusalem, US media said.

'Quick reaction'


Further bloodshed was narrowly prevented when Hasan was apparently blocked from reaching a graduation ceremony attended by some 600 people, just metres away from the scene.
"Thanks to the quick reaction of several soldiers, they were able to close off the doors to that auditorium," Cone said.
Josh Rushing, Al Jazeera's correspondent at Fort Hood, Texas, said: "[Hasan] is a first-generation American. He joined the army after high school and went to the Virginia Tech university to get a psychiatry degree through a military programme.


"He became a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington ... where he counselled soldiers coming back from war.
"Every day, he heard how horrible those stories were and he really started to question the wars, according to what his cousin and sources who knew him said.
"Hasan became more devout in his religion and started arguing with soldiers about whether the wars were right or not, to the point where he received disciplinary action and negative work reviews.

"He was transferred to the medical facility here at Fort Hood, where apparently these feelings continued.
"It raises a major question - how can a person responsible for the mental health of soldiers returning [from war] be allowed to continue in this profession when he has these kinds of questions himself?"

The rampage occured at a time of stress for the US armed services burdened by two wars, with commanders struggling to ease the effect of repeated combat tours on troops and their families.
Barack Obama, the US president, on Friday ordered flags at federal buildings to fly at half-staff until Veterans Day on November 11.
"This is a modest tribute to those who lost their lives even as many were preparing to risk their lives for their country," he said.
"We don't know all of the answers yet. I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all of the facts."

Repeated deployments


Suicides in the army hit a record level last year, with at least 128 taking their lives, and are on track to set a new high this year - surpassing the rate among the wider civilian population.
US commanders believe repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have played a role in the spike in suicides, as well a surge in post-traumatic stress and depression.
Hasan faced his own imminent deployment for military service, officials said.
Nader Hasan, a cousin, said Hasan was "mortified by the idea of having to deploy" and that he had been harassed by other soldiers for being a Muslim.
He told the New York Times newspaper that Hasan had retained a lawyer and sought to get out of the army before the end of his contract.

Security tightened


Fort Hood was locked down after the attack, which occurred on the same day as a graduation ceremony was due to go ahead at the facility.

Recent US mass shootings

April 3, 2009: Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant, opens fire at an immigrant community centre in Binghamton, New York, killing 11 immigrants and two workers. Wong killed himself at the scene  March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people, including his Mother and four other family members in Alabama before himself committing suicide.  February 14, 2008: Former student Steven Kazmierczak, 27, kills five students and wound 18 more in shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. He then killed himself.  December 5, 2007: Robert A. Hawkins, 19, opens fire in a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska killing eight people before taking his own life.  April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, kills 32 students and staff at Virginia Tech before killing himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Some other bases across the US also stepped up security in the wake of the shootings.
Barack Obama, the US president, called the attack a "horrific outburst of violence".
"It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil," he said in Washington.

Patty Culhane, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Washington, said that the attack had come in spite of rigorous security protocols at the base.

"At every US military base since September 11, they do something that is called '100 per cent ID check' - that means that when you pull up to the gate, there are armed soldiers and also contractors there, and you have to have a special sticker in your car," she said.

"You also have to have a military ID. If you do not have that, you have to pull over to the side, and your car is usually swept for explosives, and you need an escort.
"Family members [of service personnel] do have ID, so they are allowed to go on to the base."
Fort Hood is home to about 50,000 troops, although Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas senator, said there were about 35,000 troops at the base at the time.
"Our dedicated military personnel have sacrificed so much in service to our country, and it sickens me that the men and women of Fort Hood have been subjected to this senseless, random violence," she said.