8, December 2019
4 dead after rock collapse at South African gold mine 0
Four mine workers were killed and one was seriously injured after a rock fall at a South African gold mine on Friday trapped five workers underground, the company and a mining union said on Sunday.
The collapse at the Village Main Reef’s Tau Lekoa gold mine in North West province followed at least one earth tremor.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was strongly critical of the mining company, saying in a statement that “there was no escape route in the working area where the four mineworkers were found dead”.
The union also said in the statement the mine’s proto team – a group of workers trained to perform underground rescues – did not act quickly enough to save the four miners and “deliberately stopped the team leaders and winch drivers from rescuing the four mineworkers.”
It did not give evidence for this but said it had been briefed by members working at the mine and present during the incident.
The mining firm, Village Main Reef, said it would not comment on the evacuation procedures until after an investigation was completed.
“There were two seismic events and then a rock fall occurred,” said James Duncan, a spokesman for the mine.
“Investigations on the causal factors are ongoing and we will be able to comment only once those are complete. We won’t be commenting at all on the accusations by NUM.”
NUM spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu said the rock collapse followed a “seismic event of 2.6 magnitude”.
The death toll in South Africa’s mines fell to 81 fatalities last year from 90 in 2017, the Mineral Resources Ministry said in March. This was a marked reduction from previous decades when the sector was marked by lax safety regulations and labor laws.
(Source: Reuters)
8, December 2019
Calls for halt to Saudi military training in US after attack 0
Key lawmakers called Sunday for a halt to a Saudi military training program after a shooting rampage at a US naval base in which a Saudi officer killed three American sailors.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he has ordered a review of vetting procedures while defending the training program that brought Mohammed Alshamrani to Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida.
Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Force, opened fire in a classroom at the base on Friday, killing the three sailors and wounding eight other people before being shot dead by police.
The FBI said Sunday the shooting was being investigated with the “presumption” it was an act of terrorism, but that authorities had yet to make a final determination.
Alshamrani was reported to have posted a manifesto on Twitter before the shooting denouncing America as “a nation of evil.”
“We need to suspend the program until we investigate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican on national security issues, said on Fox News.
“I like allies. Saudi Arabia’s an ally, but there’s something really bad here fundamentally. We need to slow this program down and reevaluate,” he said.
US media reported that six Saudi nationals also assigned to the base have been questioned, and that Alshamrani had shown videos of mass shootings at a dinner party the night before the attack.
In a pre-taped interview that aired on Fox News Sunday, Esper confirmed that several Saudis have been detained, including “one or two” who filmed the shooting on their cellphones.
He said it was unclear if they began filming before the shooting began or after it started.
– Vetting –
The attack has struck a live nerve in the United States with its echoes of the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Saudi citizens accounted for 15 of the 19 hijackers that flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Saudi Arabia remains one of the closest US allies in the Middle East, and US President Donald Trump has cultivated its controversial de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose Florida district includes the Pensacola base, warned the shooting “has to inform on our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.”
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” he called for the military training program to be halted “until we are absolutely confident in our vetting program.”
He said he told the Saudi ambassador “as clearly as I possibly could that we want no interference from the kingdom as it relates to Saudis that we have.
“And if there are Saudis that we do not have that may have been involved in any way in the planning, inspiration, financing or execution of this, that we expect Saudi intelligence to work with our government to find the people accountable and hold them responsible.”
“And I was given every assurance from the ambassador that that would occur,” he said.
– Relationship questioned –
Democrats questioned the broader security relationship under the Saudi crown prince, citing Riyadh’s role in the brutal war in Yemen and the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post.
Saudi Arabia has yet to account for Khashoggi’s murder at its Istanbul embassy, said Representative Zoe Loghren. “So yes, there are a lot of questions about Saudi Arabia,” she said on ABC.
“This is a relationship that has serious problems,” said Cory Booker, a senator and presidential candidate.
“And the fact that this president seems, in a very transactional way, doubling down on the relationship, and telling us it’s because of just financial interests, is unacceptable.”
Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was too early to say the shooting was an act of terrorism but that Congress would press for a full investigation by the Saudis.
“And I wish the president of the United States, rather than trying to speak for the Saudi government, were pressing the Saudi government for answers,” he added on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has denounced the shooting as a “heinous crime” and said the gunman “does not represent the Saudi people.”
Prince Khalid bin Salman, the king’s younger son and the deputy defense minister, offered his “sincerest condolences” to the victims’ families.
“I was trained in a US military base, and we used that valuable training to fight side by side with our American allies against terrorism and other threats,” Prince Khalid added on Twitter.
Trump said King Salman and the crown prince would “help out the families very greatly,” without specifying how.
Source: AFP