Around the World

U.S. troops surprise Serbs in dawn raid

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia - U.S. paratroopers swooped down on the Serb part of a divided Kosovo city at dawn yesterday, arresting eight people and seizing weapons in a surprise raid only three days after Serbs drove them away in a hail of stones.

As a further sign of NATO resolve to maintain control, peacekeepers announced plans to start moving ethnic Albanians back to their homes in the Serb-controlled part of Kosovska Mitrovica north of the Ibar River.

The peacekeepers also said demonstrations would be banned in a wide area encompassing both Serb and ethnic Albanian-dominated neighborhoods. But Serb leaders objected to the resettlement plan. One of them, Oliver Ivanovic, warned that the crisis in Kosovo's most multiethnic city would "peak within 10 to 15 days"unless the NATO-led Kosovo Force abandoned its plan.

As French troops surrounded the search area, about 300 troops of the U.S. 504th Airborne Infantry - backed by armored vehicles and in full battle gear - crossed the Ibar River at dawn and swept through "Little Bosnia,"an ethnically mixed neighborhood, searching house-to-house for weapons.

Mozambique seeks aid for flood damage

MAPUTO, Mozambique - Mozambique appealed yesterday for international aid after a cyclone and two weeks of torrential rains left much of the country under water and in danger of epidemics.

Aid workers flying over some of the worst-hit areas yesterday saw huge swaths of low-lying areas submerged, with just the tips of trees poking out of the muddy water. Much of southern Gaza and central Inhambane provinces was accessible only by air.

The toll inflicted on this impoverished southeast African country by two weeks of rains and Cyclone Eline, which churned through the country Tuesday before dissipating into a tropical storm, was staggering.

Foreign Minister Leonardo Simao, launching the aid appeal to diplomats here, said more than 70,000 acres of crops had been destroyed and an estimated 300,000 people lost their homes. About 30,000 cattle downed.

The World Health Organization warned that more than 800,000 people were at risk from epidemics - particularly cholera and malaria - as a result of the floods.

Scores of roads and bridges were washed out, hindering delivery of emergency supplies. On Wednesday, yet another bridge - one linking the capital Maputo to the town of Xai-Xai in neighboring Gaza province - collapsed.

"The main problem is the logistics of getting out to the people," said Inyene Udoyen, a spokesman for the World Food Program. "We have enough food for months, because we have a long-term development project we can draw from."

Simao put the preliminary death toll from the two weeks of flooding and the cyclone at 70, up from Tuesday's count of 67.

The government said $65 million dollars in aid was needed. The United Nations on Wednesday issued an appeal for $13.63 million to be used by eight agencies covering food, shelter, health, water and sanitation, education, communication and coordination, said the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva.

South African and French air force planes resumed aid flights Wednesday, mainly to the southern Gaza province.

The heightened risk of malaria was evident at a food aid depot north of Maputo where thousands of mosquitos - which carry the disease and thrive in stagnant water - coated the walls.

Many of the displaced have been in makeshift shelters for days. Some were housed in a disused railway shed with a roof over their heads but no walls to keep out the wind and rain.

Maputo resident Elisa Tembe said she had been sleeping when the flood waters came two weeks ago, tearing away parts of her brick house.

"It swept away the beds. There is nothing there. I took my three children, but did not even take any clothes," she said. "I am just waiting for the government or someone to do something."

Hundreds of newly homeless also took shelter in a former cashew nut factory in Maputo. On Wednesday afternoon they complained that they had not eaten since midday Tuesday.

Eline had lost much of its power by the time it reached neighboring Zimbabwe, but it swelled rivers that swept away a bridge on a main highway and damaged at least five other bridges, police said.

The bridge over the Changazi River collapsed, closing the highway between the eastern Zimbabwe city of Mutare and the southern provincial center of Masvingo.

Uprooted trees blocked streets and highways around Mutare. A woman and her dog died in the city when struck by a power cable blown down by high winds, police said.

In the southern district of Beitbridge, about 22,000 people were being moved from collapsed mud-and-pole huts on low ground to temporary tented camps, provincial administrator Angelous Dube said.