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[OMEN]

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, facing the toughest election battle of his 28 years in power, handed out hundreds of cars to doctors in what opponents say is a vote buying campaign.

Mugabe's opponents said the veteran leader was plotting to rig Saturday's presidential election, in which he faces old rival Morgan Tsvangirai and ruling party defector Simba Makoni.

Both accuse Mugabe, 84, of wrecking what was once one Africa's strongest economies and pauperising its people.

On national television, Mugabe blamed Zimbabwe's troubles on Western sanctions imposed on him and allies to try to force reform. Mugabe said the measures had harmed health care in Zimbabwe, one of the countries worst affected by HIV/Aids.

"Our health sector (once) operated in a regional and international context that was free of the illegal sanctions which weigh us down today," Mugabe said in a ceremony to give 450 cars to senior and middle-level doctors at government hospitals.

He promised the doctors houses within two years.

In a procedural move, Mugabe told his ministers the cabinet was dissolved ahead of the election.

"I told them that some would return to government, others will be left behind. The good performers will continue," Mugabe told a rally in the town of Bindura, 70km northeast of Harare.

Tsvangirai's main wing of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Thursday it had more evidence of planned ballot rigging and believed Mugabe was planning to declare victory with almost 60 per cent of the vote.

Tsvangirai, Makoni and Arthur Mutambara, leader of the MDC's smaller faction, told reporters after holding talks that Mugabe had put the credibility of the election in doubt.

"We believe there is a very well thought out, sophisticated and premeditated plan to steal this election from us," said Makoni.

Mugabe has also handed out farm equipment and public buses in what critics say is an attempt to win political favour ahead of the vote in a country where many can no longer afford even basic needs and food and fuel are in short supply.

The health sector suffers a shortage of drugs and skilled workers because many have gone abroad in search of better pay.

Nurses and doctors have been on strike to demand more pay and all state workers were promised higher salaries by Mugabe during the campaign, but inflation of over 100,000 per cent quickly makes pay rises meaningless.

Critics say Mugabe's policies, particularly seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks, have led to ruin.

The March 29 presidential, parliamentary and local council polls are seen as the most important since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, but few expect a fair vote.

Mugabe, who must win over half the presidential vote to avoid a second round run-off that might unite his opponents, rejects accusations of rigging three elections since 2000.

Tsvangirai told a rally in Chitungwiza just outside Harare that Mugabe had lost touch with reality.

"What Mugabe does not realise is that his system has collapsed," he said.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

US forces have been drawn deeper into Iraq's four day-old crackdown on Shi'ite militants, launching air strikes in Basra for the first time and battling militants in Baghdad.

The fighting has exposed a deep rift within Iraq's majority Shi'ite community and put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose forces have failed to dislodge fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from Iraq's second largest city.

Iraqi authorities shut down Baghdad with a strict curfew on Friday which seemed to reduce the rocket and mortar barrages that have wreaked havoc in the capital this week. Lawmakers, including those loyal to Sadr, met to seek an end to the impasse.

The government says it is fighting "outlaws", but Sadr's followers say political parties in Maliki's Shi'ite-led government are using military force to marginalize their rivals ahead of local elections due by October.

The Iraqi ground commander in Basra, Major-General Ali Zaidan, said his forces had killed 120 "enemy" fighters and wounded around 450 since the campaign began.

But Reuters television footage from Basra showed masked gunmen from Sadr's Mehdi Army still in control of the streets, openly carrying rocket launchers and machine guns.

A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said US warplanes had opened fire in Basra for the first time in support of Iraqi units on the ground. British troops, which patrolled Basra until December, have so far remained on a base outside the city.

GUNMEN SEIZE NASIRIYA

A Reuters witness said Mehdi Army gunmen had seized control of Nassiriya, capital of the southerly Dhi Qar province. Mehdi Army fighters have held territory or fought with authorities in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kerbala, Diwaniya and other towns throughout the Shi'ite south over the past several days.

In Baghdad there have been clashes in at least 13 mainly Shi'ite neighborhoods, especially Sadr City, the vast slum named for the cleric's slain father where his followers maintain their power base.

"There have been engagements going on in and around Sadr City. We've engaged the enemy with artillery, we've engaged the enemy with aircraft, we've engaged the enemy with direct fire," said Major Mark Cheadle, spokesman for US forces in Baghdad.

In one strike before dawn, a US helicopter fired a hellfire missile at gunmen firing from the roof of a building, killing four of them, Cheadle said. A Reuters photographer there filmed windows blown out of cars and walls pocked with shrapnel.

US forces said they killed 27 fighters in operations in the capital on Thursday.

In Nassiriya, a Reuters reporter said he could see groups of fighters with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The sound of sporadic gunfire echoed through the streets. Police appeared to be staying in their stations.

Militants have also taken control of the town of Shatra, 40km to the north, he said, citing witnesses.

Maliki on Wednesday gave militants in Basra 72 hours to surrender. With that deadline looming on Friday, he announced they would be given until April 8 to hand over some weapons.

"All those who have heavy and intermediate weapons are to deliver them to security sites and they will be rewarded financially," he said in a statement issued by his office.

Oil exports from Basra of more than 1.5 million barrels a day provide 80 per cent of Iraq's government revenue. An explosion at a pipeline damaged exports on Thursday, but they were back to normal on Friday.

Parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani said representatives of Shi'ite and Sunni parties, including those loyal to Sadr, had agreed to attend a special session at 3pm (1200 GMT).

Sadr, who helped install Maliki in power after an election in 2005 but later broke with him, has called for talks with the government. But Maliki has vowed to battle what he calls criminal gangs in Basra "to the end".

The clashes have all but wrecked a truce that Sadr imposed on his Mehdi army last August, which Washington had said helped curb violence.

US President George W Bush has praised Maliki's "boldness" in launching the operation, the largest military campaign carried out yet by Maliki's forces without US or British combat units. Bush said it showed the Iraqi leader's commitment to "enforce the law in an even-handed manner".

Sadr's followers have staged a "civil disobedience" campaign, forcing schools and shops to shut, and Sadr has threatened a "civil revolt" if the crackdown is not halted.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

Sectarian violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims has intensified in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan, with at least 22 people reportedly killed in gunbattles, a senior official said.

"Dead bodies are lying inside houses and in fields," said Qalb-e-Hassan, a newly elected provincial legislator from Kohat town.

Fighting overnight was concentrated in three villages of Kohat district of North West Frontier Province.

The tribesmen were armed with semi-automatic weapons, machine guns, mortars and rockets, and the civil authorities have asked for the army to help restore order.

"I have reports that at least 22 people were killed in fighting overnight," said Kamran Zeb, a senior administrator in Kohat, though he added it was too unsafe to verify how many people have been killed.

The latest clashes, between men from the Mishti and Kachai tribes, brought the toll to more than 50 in an outbreak of sectarian violence that began last week.

Some media reports put the toll higher.

At least six people were killed on Thursday in a suspected militant attack on a ambulance in Kohat's neighboring Kurram tribal region, which also has a long history of violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

While Kohat is plagued with sectarian unrest, al Qaeda-linked militants have unleashed a wave of violence on the rest of Pakistan. Nearly 600 people have been killed since the start of the year, many of them victims of suicide attacks.

Pakistani security forces are battling militants in several parts of NWFP, including Kohat, and in seven semi-autonomous tribal regions on the border with Afghanistan.

While ordinary Sunni and Shi'ite Pakistanis live together peacefully in most parts of the country, radicals from the two sects have inflicted a bloody toll in tit-for-tat assassinations and bomb attacks in recent years.

Reuters

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An Israeli minister said that the Jewish state was trying to revive peace talks with Syria and that the price of a deal was the occupied Golan Heights.

The comments by Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer came after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated this week that Israel was willing to make peace with its Arab neighbour and hinted at behind-the-scenes talks.

"Every effort is being made to bring Syria to the negotiating table," Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio.

"We know that sitting at the negotiating table is not to sing Hatikva (Israel's national anthem) but to sign an agreement, and we know very well the price of this agreement."

Asked if the price was to relinquish control of the Golan Heights, Ben-Eliezer said: "Exactly."

Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau, from neighbouring Syria during the 1967 Middle East War and annexed it in 1981 in a move that has not been internationally recognised.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria collapsed in 2000 over the extent of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. Tensions have risen since then with Israel accusing Syria of supporting the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizbollah and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas.

Russia has offered to host a Middle East peace conference this year to try to relaunch talks between the two countries.

Olmert on Wednesday appeared to signal reluctance about attending such a summit but said Israel was willing to make peace with Syria and that he hoped the two sides would be able to hold talks.

"That doesn't mean that when we sit together you have to see us," Olmert told foreign journalists in a news conference.

Israel has also raised concerns over Syria's close ties with Iran, the Jewish state's arch foe.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

Reagan Williams, left, the pilot of the plane which crashed near Wainwright, Alta., on Friday, with his father, Allen, who was killed in a plane crash in October 2007.
Five people died Friday morning when a small airplane owned by an Edmonton engineering company and piloted by its president crashed while travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg.

The wreckage was located shortly after noon MT approximately 12 kilometres northeast of Wainwright, Alta., RCMP said.
"Unfortunately, all five have been confirmed deceased," RCMP Cpl. Darren Anderson told CBC News from Edmonton.

Four males and one female on board the airplane were killed in the crash, he added.

The plane was en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton's City Centre Airport when it disappeared from radar at 8:12 a.m.

A.D. Williams Engineering spokesperson Sue O'Connor confirmed that the plane, a Piper PA-46 Malibu, was being flown by Reagan Williams, the company president.

Two of the others on board were staff members, the other two were contract employees, she said.

Reagan took over the company from his father, Allen Williams, 65, who was himself killed when he crashed his Cessna 172 in rugged terrain near Golden, B.C., in October 2007.

Searchers found his three-year-old granddaughter, Kate, safely strapped into a child seat in the upside-down plane's wreckage.

The company's chief financial officer, Steven Sutton, 49, was also killed in that crash.

CBC

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