Australians flee homes as grassfires hit southeast SYDNEY, March 18 (Reuters): Bush and grass fires sweeping across Australia’s southeast destroyed homes, killed cattle and forced hundreds to flee on Sunday as dry, hot winds fanned the flames. No deaths or serious injuries were reported as of Sunday afternoon. The fires, believed to have been sparked by lightning on Saturday, were raging out of control across the state of Victoria’s rural southwest. “We’ve been watching the weather now for a while. We’ve been 30 or 40 days without rain, so we knew we had a dry landscape ... we were ready in Victoria for what was a hot, dry and windy event,” said Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsley. About 280 firefighters were battling the blazes while 22,000 homes were without power after the high winds brought down trees, Lapsley said. About a dozen homes were destroyed. No deaths were reported. Bushfires are a common and deadly threat in Australia’s hot, dry summers, fuelled by highly flammable eucalyptus. The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria killed 173 people and injured more than 400. 4 dead in Manila casino fire Manila, March 18 (IANS): At least four people were killed and 14 others injured as a fire swept through a casino in a Manila hotel on Sunday morning, the authorities said. According to the Manila Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, four people, who had been critically injured during the fire, did not make it to the hospital, Xinhua reported. Earlier reports suggested that the four injured were “unconscious” when rushed to the hospital. The fire gutted the casino’s mezzanine up to the third floor. The Bureau of Fire Protection in Manila said the fire produced flames and thick smoke plume that engulfed the casino of the Manila Pavilion Hotel and Casino along United Nations Avenue in Manila City. The cause of the fire was still unknown. Israel says foiled Hamas bid to rebuild Gaza tunnel JERUSALEM, March 18 (Reuters): Israeli forces on Sunday knocked out a tunnel in the Gaza Strip dug by Hamas militants to mount cross-border attacks, the military said. The tunnel had been cut off during the 2014 Gaza war and Hamas had tried to put it back into operation, a military spokesman said. It had been dug inside the Hamas-ruled enclave several hundred metres away from Israel’s border fence. The Israeli forces did not cross the border to render the tunnel inoperable but used a new technique, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters. “We did not use explosives. It (the tunnel) was filled with a certain material, with a certain compound,” Conricus said. There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but still maintains tight control of its land and sea borders. During the 2014 war, Hamas fighters used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel’s superior forces. Since then, Israel has been working on advanced counter-measures including a sensor-equipped underground wall along the 60-km (36-mile) Gaza border, a $1.1 billion project it aims to complete by mid-2019. President says Zimbabwe to hold elections in July HARARE, March 18 (Reuters): Zimbabwe’s first presidential and parliamentary elections since the end of former strongman Robert Mugabe’s long rule will take place in July, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday. The polls will be the first major test of the new leader, who took power in November after a de facto military coup forced the 94-year-old Mugabe to resign. They will also be the first without Mugabe’s name on the ballot since independence from Britain in 1980. “As a nation, party and government, we are looking forward to very peaceful, transparent and harmonised elections in July this year,” Mnangagwa told reporters after a meeting with South Africans President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday night. Mnangagwa, 75, said the elections would be free of the violence that gripped previous polls and which was one of the reasons for strained relations between Zimbabwe and the West. The state-owned weekly Sunday Mail said a European Union pre-election team was expected in Harare on Monday. Sri Lanka lifts nationwide state of emergency COLOMBO, March 18 (Reuters): Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena said on Sunday he had lifted a nationwide state of emergency imposed on March 6 after Buddhist-Muslim clashes. “Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the State of Emergency from midnight yesterday,” Sirisena said on his Twitter feed. He declared a state of emergency to rein in the spread of communal violence after Buddhists and Muslims clashed in the Indian Ocean island’s central district of Kandy. Two people were killed and hundreds of Muslim-owned properties and more than 20 mosques were damaged, media reported. Tension has been growing between the two communities over the past year, with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites. Some Buddhist nationalists have also protested against the presence in Sri Lanka of Muslim Rohingya asylum-seekers from mostly Buddhist Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has also been on the rise.
