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LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistan will launch a paramilitary crackdown on militants in Punjab, the country's richest and most populous province, after an Easter Day bombing killed 70 people in the provincial capital Lahore, officials said on Monday.

Sunday's suicide bombing on a public park was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction, which once declared loyalty to the Daesh terror group. The group said it was targeting Christians.

The brutality of the attack, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar's fifth bombing since December, reflects the movement's attempts to raise its profile among Pakistan's increasingly fractured militants.

At least 29 children enjoying an Easter weekend outing were among those killed when the suicide bomber struck in a busy park in the eastern city of Lahore, the power base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan is a majority-Muslim state but has a Christian population of more than two million.

At the Vatican in Rome, Pope Francis condemned the attack as "hideous" and demanded that Pakistani authorities protect religious minorities.

It was Pakistan's deadliest attack since the December 2014 massacre of 134 school children at a military-run academy in the city of Peshawar that prompted a government crackdown on militancy.

Security and government officials told Reuters that the decision had been made to launch a full-scale paramilitary Rangers operation, giving them powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects in the same way as they have been in the southern city of Karachi for more than two years.

The move, which has not yet been formally announced, represents the civilian government once again granting special powers to the military in order to fight militants.

"The technicalities are yet to be worked out. There are some legal issues also with bringing in Rangers, but the military and government are on the same page," said one senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to share details of the plan.

One other military official and two government officials confirmed the decision on condition of anonymity.

Soft targets

Military spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said intelligence agencies, the army and Rangers had already launched several raids around Punjab following the attack, arresting an unspecified number of suspects and recovering arms caches.

Prime Minister Sharif toured hospitals full of victims, promising to bring justice.

"Our resolve as a nation and as a government is getting stronger and [the] coward enemy is trying for soft targets," Sharif said, according to a statement from his office.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack late on Sunday night and issued a direct challenge to the government.

"The target was Christians," a faction spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. "We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore."

Rescue services spokeswoman Deeba Shahnaz said at least 29 children, seven women and 34 men were killed and about 340 were wounded, with 25 in serious condition.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for several big attacks since it split from the main Pakistani Taliban in 2014.

While it mostly focuses attacks in its base of the northwestern Mohmand tribal area, it has previously carried out at least two major attacks in Lahore: one in 2015 that targeted two Christian churches and another at the Wagah border between India and Pakistan in late 2014.

Pakistan has been plagued by militant violence since it joined a US-led campaign against militancy after the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

While the army, police, government and Western interests have been the prime targets of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, Christians and other religious minorities have also been attacked.

Security forces have killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under an earlier crackdown launched after the 2014 Peshawar school massacre. Militant violence eased, but groups retain the ability to launch devastating attacks.

Most militants, like the Pakistani Taliban, are fighting to topple the government and introduce a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber killed at least 65 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore on Sunday in an attack claimed by a Pakistani Taliban faction which said it had targeted Christians.

More than 300 other people were wounded, officials said.

The explosion occurred in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park close to children's swings. The park is a popular site for members of Lahore's Christian community, many of whom had gone there to celebrate the Easter weekend holiday.

Witnesses said they saw body parts strewn across the parking lot once the dust had settled after the blast.

"When the blast occurred, the flames were so high they reached above the trees and I saw bodies flying in the air," said Hasan Imran, 30, a resident who had gone to Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park for a walk.

Officials said 65 people were killed and about 300 wounded. Police Superintendant Mustansar Feroz said most of the casualities were women and children.

The Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack.

"The target were Christians," a spokesman for the faction, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. "We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore."

"He can do what he wants but he won't be able to stop us. Our suicide bombers will continue these attacks."

Militants in Pakistan have attacked Christians and other religious minorities often over the past decade. Many Christians accuse the government of doing little to protect them, saying politicians are quick to offer condolences after an attack but slow to take any concrete steps to improve security.

Toll may climb

Salman Rafique, a health adviser for the Punjab provincial government, said many of the wounded were undergoing emergency surgery in hospitals.

"We fear that the death toll may climb considerably," he said.

TV footage showed children and women standing in pools of blood outside the park, crying and screaming as rescue workers, officials, police and bystanders carrying injured people to ambulances and private cars.

Dozens of women and children were wheeled into hospitals, covered in blood. Many of the injured were transported to hospitals on taxis and auto-rickshaws due to a shortage of ambulances. Hundreds of citizens arrived outside hospitals to donate blood.

Local television channels reported that many of the dead bodies were being kept in hospital wards as morgues were overcrowded.

"We were just here to have a nice evening and enjoy the weather," Nasreen Bibi said at the Services Hospital, crying as she waited for doctors to update her on the condition of her two-year-old injured daughter.

"May God shower his wrath upon these attackers. What kind of people target little children in a park?"

Soon after the attack, the Punjab government ordered all public parks to be closed and announced three days of mourning in the province. The main shopping areas were shut down and many of the city's main roads were deserted.

The army was called in to control crowds outside the park. Some distraught, sobbing relatives clashed with police and rescue officials.

The United States, a strategic ally of Pakistan, condemned the attack.

"The United States stands with the people and government of Pakistan at this difficult hour. We will continue to work with our partners in Pakistan and across the region ... to root out the scourge of terrorism," White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 190 million people, is plagued by a Taliban insurgency, criminal gangs and sectarian violence. Punjab is its biggest and wealthiest province but has traditionally been more peaceful than other parts of Pakistan.

Sharif's opponents have accused him of tolerating militancy in return for peace in his province, a charge he strongly denies.

Last year, a bomb killed a popular Pakistani provincial minister and at least eight others when it destroyed the minister's home in Punjab.

BRUSSELS — Belgian riot police fired water cannon on Sunday to disperse far-right football hooligans who disrupted mourners at a shrine for victims of the Brussels attacks, as police arrested several suspects in a series of new raids.

In scenes that compounded a week of grief for Belgians, black-clad protesters shouting anti-immigrant slogans moved in on the makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse where hundreds of people had gathered in a show of solidarity.

Under-fire Belgian authorities meanwhile detained four terror suspects after carrying out 13 raids as they seek to round up a web of militants with links to the carnage in the Belgian capital and to attacks and plots across the border in France.

The clashes between the far-right demonstrators and police underscored the tensions in Belgium after Tuesday's Daesh suicide attacks on the airport and the metro system in which 28 people died and 340 were wounded.

"This is our home" and "The state, Daesh accomplice" around 300 hooligans chanted, as they gathered near the square by the stock exchange building, AFP journalists witnessed.

Some trampled on the carpet of flowers, candles and messages left at the site by mourners in recent days while at least one wore a mask with a well-known far-right symbol.

'Fascists! Fascists!' 

Police urged the mourners, who included some Muslims, not to provoke the hooligans, but some chanted "Fascists! Fascists! We're not having it!"

Riot police with helmets and shields corralled the hooligans before dispersing them with high power water jets, and marshalling them onto trains out of the city.

Around 10 people were arrested, police told AFP.

Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said police had done "nothing" to stop the hooligans coming to Brussels despite having advance warning, adding that he was "appalled" that "such thugs have come to provoke residents at the site of their memorial”.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said he "emphatically" condemned the demonstration.

The mourners gathered despite the fact that organisers had earlier called off a "March Against Fear" in Brussels on Sunday at the request of Belgian authorities, who said police needed the resources for the attacks investigation.

In a homily at the medieval cathedral of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule in Brussels, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Malines-Brussels Jozef de Kesel said the attacks "defy understanding”.

"We are confronted with evil on an unimaginable scale which causes so much innocent and useless suffering," the Belga news agency quoted de Kesel as saying. 

"Easter celebrates victory over evil," he added.

'Urgency' to tackle Daesh 

Meanwhile, the Belgian Crisis Centre said 28 people had died in the airport and metro attacks, down from an initial toll of 31 which had included the three suicide bombers. 

Of the 28 who died, 24 have been identified, among them 13 Belgians and 11 foreign nationals, it said. A total 340 people from 19 countries were wounded, of whom 101 remain in hospital — 62 of them in intensive care.

As Belgium struggles to come to terms with the tragedy, recriminations continue over whether the authorities could and should have done more to prevent the carnage, as the links to the November Paris attacks by Daesh grow clearer by the day.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the Brussels attacks highlighted the "great urgency" facing Europe to tackle the problem of young jihadists returning from fighting in Syria to carry out attacks.

Police carried out 13 raids Sunday across Brussels and the towns of Duffel and Mechelen to the north, the federal prosecutor said, questioning nine people and holding four for further inquiries.

In the latest piece in the puzzle of the militant networks straddling France and Belgium, prosecutors said they had charged a second man with involvement in a terror group over a foiled plot to strike France. 

The third man 

Overnight, Italian police arrested an Algerian national in connection with the production of fake IDs used by the Paris and Brussels attackers, suggesting their networks spread far and wide and will not be easy to dismantle.

The suspect, named as Djamal Eddine Ouali, 40, was interrogated Sunday but refused to speak, a judicial source said.

On Saturday, a Belgian suspect identified as Faycal Cheffou, widely thought to be the fugitive third bomber from the airport, was charged in Brussels with terrorist murder and participation in a terrorist group.

There has been intense speculation he is the man wearing a dark hat and light-coloured jacket seen in airport surveillance footage alongside Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui who blew themselves up.

Brussels airport meanwhile said an examination of the wrecked departure hall showed the structure was stable and authorities will now see if temporary check-in desks can be installed, although it will not reopen before Tuesday.

Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday provided a little musical solace to Belgium late Saturday, holding a concert in Brussels despite the fact that US pop star Mariah Carey cancelled a gig citing security fears.

BRUSSELS — Belgium on Saturday charged a suspect thought to be the fugitive third Brussels airport bomber with terrorist murder, as a peace march for the victims was cancelled for security reasons after the attacks in the heart of Europe.

The postponement of the Easter Sunday rally underscored the tension in Belgium as police track members of Daesh cell linked to both Tuesday's Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and a similar assault on Paris in November.

The airport suspect officially identified as Faycal C and named by local media as freelance journalist Faycal Cheffou was arrested on Thursday night and investigators believe he could be the man pictured in airport surveillance footage alongside two other suicide bombers.

The third bomber, wearing a distinctive dark hat and white jacket, has been the subject of a massive manhunt after his device failed to go off in the attack at Zaventem Airport.

Brussels airport said it will not reopen before Tuesday at the earliest as it implements new security measures and repairs the departure hall wrecked by the bombers, believed to be from the Daesh group.

A march had been planned on Sunday from the central Place de La Bourse, which has become a shrine to the victims, but it was cancelled after authorities said it could draw much-needed resources away from the investigation.

“Let us allow the security services to do their work and that the march, which we too want to take part in, be delayed for several weeks,” Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said.

March organisers said the “security of our citizens is an absolute priority. We join the authorities in proposing a delay and ask people not to come this Sunday”.

‘Endless nightmare’ 

Ministers insist they did everything possible to prevent Tuesday’s attacks and track a network also linked to November’s Paris attacks, but the Belgian government is facing a torrent of criticism at home and abroad.

Many believe it failed to do enough to stop young Belgian fighters going to Syria, and two senior ministers have offered to resign after it emerged airport bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been deported from Turkey as a “terrorist fighter”.

“It is an endless nightmare for a country turned upside down,” said Le Soir daily in a front-page editorial.

Pop diva Mariah Carey on Friday cancelled a show in Brussels, saying she was advised to do so “for the safety of my fans, my band, crew and everyone involved with the tour.”

In contrast, veteran French rock star Johnny Hallyday was going ahead with two planned concerts in Brussels over the weekend.

Heavily armed soldiers and police patrolled Brussels and the airport on Saturday, underlining the tense atmosphere in the city that is home to the EU and NATO headquarters.

Prosecutors on Saturday charged three people including Faycal C, who is the first person formally accused over the suicide attacks on the airport and the Maalbeek Metro Station.

He was arrested on Thursday night outside the federal prosecutor’s office with three other people and “has been charged with taking part in a terrorist group, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder”, the prosecutor said.

Asked if he was the suspected third bomber dubbed the “man in the hat” alongside bombers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, a source close to the inquiry told AFP: “That is a hypothesis the investigators are working on.”

Nuclear fears 

Another man arrested in Belgium named as Rabah N. was also charged Saturday over a new plot to hit Paris, deepening the connections in what French President Francois Hollande has described as a single terror cell straddling both France and Belgium.

French police said Friday they had foiled a terror strike in France by 34-year-old Reda Kriket — previously convicted in Belgium in a terror case alongside Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud — and discovered explosives at his home.

A third man, Aboubakar A, was charged with taking part in terrorist activities but prosecutors gave no further details.

A suspect shot in the leg Friday at a tram stop in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels is being held for another 24 hours as investigations into the French plot continue. 

The Franco-Belgian links deepened on Friday when it emerged airport attacker Laachraoui’s DNA was found on bombs at the Bataclan concert hall and Stade de France sites in the Paris attacks.

Belgium’s ageing nuclear power plants meanwhile came under scrutiny as a possible terror risk, with the EU’s anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove telling La Libre Belgique newspaper they face the threat of a terrorist cyber-attack over the next five years.

Prosecutors confirmed on Saturday that a security guard at a medical research facility that used radioactive isotopes had been murdered on Thursday but denied there was any terror link.

Officials said Saturday that 24 of the victims from on Tuesday’s attacks have been formally identified and 101 injured people are still in hospital.

SEOUL — North Korea released a new propaganda video Saturday showing a nuclear strike on Washington and then threatened South Korea with a "merciless military strike" for slandering leader Kim Jong-un.

Pyongyang has been ramping up the bellicose rhetoric and propaganda for weeks, since the launch of annual South Korea-US war games that it views as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

Seoul and Washington made the already large-scale joint drills bigger than ever this year in response to the North's nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

Menacingly titled "Last Chance", the video released on Saturday shows a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington and concludes with the US flag in flames.

The four-minute video romps through the history of US-Korean relations and ends with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a missile surging through clouds, swerving back to Earth and slamming down in front of Washington's Lincoln Memorial. 

The US Capitol building explodes in the impact and a message flashes up on the screen in Korean: "If US imperialists budge an inch toward us, we will immediately hit them with nuclear [weapons]."

Video wars 

The North has issued similar videos in the past, including one in 2013 showing the White House in a sniper's crosshairs and the Capitol building exploding in a fireball.

The latest offering was published on the North's propaganda website DPRK Today and shows images from the Korean War, the capture of US spy ship Pueblo in 1968 and the first crisis over North Korea's nuclear programme in the early 1990s.

North Korea has been pushing to acquire a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability which would take its nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

It has conducted a number of what it says were successful tests of an SLBM, but experts have questioned the claim, suggesting Pyongyang had gone little further than a "pop-up" test from a submerged platform.

Tensions always rise on the Korean peninsula during the annual South-US military exercises, but have reached a particularly elevated level this year.

That is partly due to the nuclear test and the UN sanctions that followed, but also because of the first-time inclusion in the drills of an operation that envisages strikes to "decapitate" North Korea's top leadership.

Getting personal 

Pyongyang has taken that as a direct threat to leader Kim Jong-un and responded with increasingly abusive personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

On Thursday, Kim presided over a huge, long-range artillery drill simulating a strike on Park's office and official residence in Seoul.

And on Saturday, the artillery section of the Korean People's Army (KPA) issued an "ultimatum" demanding Park apologise and punish those who formulated the decapitation strategy.

"If matchless traitor Park Geun-Hye and her group do not respond... the long-range artillery force of the KPA large combined unit on the front will move over to merciless military action," it said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency. 

The warning came hours after KCNA published a statement by the North's "reconciliation council" that referred to Park as "dog-like", "chicken-like" and a "dirty old woman" who grants sexual favours to the leaders of South Korea's allies.

The insults have multiplied as Park has hardened her stance with the North in recent months, accusing Kim of leading his country along a path of self-destruction and vowing harsh retaliation to any military provocations.

South Korean activists on Saturday launched three balloons carrying tens of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border into North Korea.

One balloon was strung with a large banner printed with a Pyongyang-published picture of Kim Jong-un smiling against the backdrop of a missile being assembled. 

"Bring down a firestorm on nuclear maniac Kim Jong-un", read the slogan.

BRUSSELS — Belgian police were on Thursday hunting for a third man filmed with two Daesh suicide bombers at Brussels airport as evidence piled up that the same extremist network was involved in the deadly Paris attacks last November.

With pressure mounting on Europe to improve cooperation against terrorism, EU interior and justice ministers were to hold emergency talks on a joint response to Tuesday's bombings in Brussels, which killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls led calls for a "strong European response", but officials say many states, including France, withhold their most cherished data despite a mantra of willingness to share intelligence.

The chief surviving suspect linking the Paris and Brussels attacks, French national Salah Abdeslam, 26, arrested in the Belgian capital last week, was remanded in custody until April 7 with two other suspects. The public prosecutor said Abdeslam, who is in detention in a prison in Bruges in western Belgium, did not appear in person.

His lawyer, Sven Mary, who requested the adjournment, said Abdeslam was no longer opposed to being extradited to France.

"Salah Abdeslam has asked me to inform you that he wishes to leave for France as quickly as possible," Mary told reporters at the courthouse, saying his client "wants to explain himself".

Mary said Abdeslam was not aware of the plan to attack Brussels.

Turkey's president criticised Belgium for failing to track Brahim El Bakraoui, a convicted armed robber whom it expelled last year and who blew himself up at Brussels airport on Tuesday an hour before his brother Khalid, a fellow convict, killed about 20 people at Maelbeek Metro Station in the city centre.

Deported

A Turkish government official said Bakraoui was deported twice from Turkey in July and August after re-entering the country. His initial deportation was based on police suspicion, conveyed to the Belgian and Dutch authorities, that he was a foreign militant fighter, another official said.

Since he had committed no offence in Turkey he was deported to the country of his choice, the Netherlands. Belgium's inner security Cabinet was meeting on Thursday to discuss the matter. Opposition lawmakers demanded an explanation in parliament.

Belgium’s interior and justice ministers offered to resign on Thursday over a failure to track militants.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Prime Minister Charles Michel had asked him to stay on. “In time of war, you cannot leave the field,” Jambon told VTM television. Justice Minister Koen Geens would also stay on, a ministry spokesperson said.

Security sources told Belgian media the other suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Belgian fighter in Syria suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed by Brussels-based militants.

The third suspect captured on airport security cameras pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Brahim El Bakraoui is now the target of a police manhunt. He has not been named.

The bespectacled man wearing a cream jacket and a black hat ran out of the terminal, federal prosecutors said, and a third suitcase bomb, the biggest of the three, exploded later as bomb disposal experts were clearing the area, causing no casualties.

Public broadcaster RTBF said investigators now believed a second bomber was involved in the metro attack close to European Commission headquarters. The man was spotted on security cameras carrying a heavy bag, but his identity was unknown and it was not clear if he had died or escaped.

A computer-generated image showed a young man with hollow cheeks, a tiny goatee beard and thick black eyebrows.

US criticism

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the bloodshed in the capital of the European Union, not far from NATO headquarters, showed Washington’s European allies should do more to fight Daesh alongside American efforts in the Middle East.

Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticised the lack of cooperation among European countries, saying the EU lacked a system for exchanging air passenger data or a joint intelligence centre to share information.

Opinion polls suggest support in Britain for leaving the European Union in a referendum set for June 23 is gaining ground since the Brussels attacks, which fanned security fears that some politicians have linked to immigration.

US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has suggested torture could be used on militant suspects, said he expected Britain would vote to leave the EU because of concerns about high levels of migration.

Casualties from Tuesday’s attacks came from about 40 nations, drawing an international outpouring of support for Brussels during three days of mourning. Washington said Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday.

Flemish public broadcaster VRT said the elder Bakraoui brother had been released from a Belgian prison in 2014 after serving four years of a 10-year sentence for armed robbery. He skipped two probation meetings last June and was ordered to return to prison in August, but police could not find him.

The case highlighted Belgium’s problem with some 300 locals who have fought in Syria, the biggest contingent from Europe in relation to its national population of 11 million.

At the time of the Paris attacks, its security service had fewer than 600 staff. The government has since raised spending on police and intelligence.

Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, leading efforts to counter international criticism of Belgian policies toward containing violent extremists among its Muslim community, which makes up about 5 per cent of the population, said security had to be balanced with civil rights.

Brussels airport will remain shut until at least Saturday, with the departure hall sealed off by investigators. Travellers on the busy Easter weekend were diverted to Antwerp, Liege and the northern French city of Lille.

Brussels Airlines advised passengers to arrive up to three hours before their flight because of security measures. There were long lines outside the terminal in Liege as people waited in the rain to put baggage through new outdoor scanners, VRT reported.

BUENOS AIRES — President Barack Obama said the United States was too slow to condemn human rights atrocities during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship as he honoured victims of the "Dirty War" on Thursday, but he stopped short of apologising for Washington's early support for the military junta.

Obama's state visit to Argentina coincided with the 40th anniversary of the coup that began a seven-year crackdown on Marxist rebels, labour unions and leftist opponents, during which security forces killed 30,000 people.

"There has been controversy about the policies of the United States early in those dark days," Obama said while visiting a memorial park in Buenos Aires dedicated to victims of the dictatorship.

"Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don't live up to the ideals that we stand for. And we've been slow to speak out for human rights and that was the case here," he said.

Obama's trip, winding up later on Thursday, is part of a wider effort to deepen ties and bolster US influence with Latin America after years of frosty relations with left-leaning governments in the region.

With South America's leftist block now in disarray amid graft scandals and economic recession, Argentina's new centre-right leader, Mauricio Macri, offers Obama a new ally in one of the Americas' biggest economies.

Obama travelled to Argentina from Cuba, where he became the first sitting US president to visit in 88 years and opened a new chapter in engagement with the Communist-ruled island after decades of hostilities.

That policy shift has boosted Washington's standing in a region long wary of being treated as the US "backyard", although US foreign policy under Obama has still been dominated by the Middle East.

Death flights

At the memorial on the banks of the La Plata River, Obama and Macri walked along a stark wall that is known as the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism and is inscribed with 20,000 names.

In bright sunshine, they walked down to a pier that overlooks the river, dropping white roses into the water to commemorate the dead. Obama bowed his head and stood with Macri in silence.

Survivors of the crackdown say one of the military rulers' tactics was so-called "death flights", where political opponents were tossed into aircraft, stripped and then thrown alive into the river and the Atlantic Ocean to drown.

Washington's early support for the military rulers reflected Cold War thinking, which sometimes put the United States on the side of brutal right-wing governments in Latin America. In a gesture toward Argentines still angry over that legacy, Obama has promised to declassify US military and intelligence records related to the dictatorship-era.

But the US leader was criticised by some rights activists. One group of victims' relatives said the timing of his visit was a provocation.

"We will not allow the power that orchestrated dictatorships in Latin America and oppresses people across the world to cleanse itself and use the memory of our 30,000 murdered compatriots to strengthen its imperialist agenda," the Buenos Aires-based Centre for Human Rights Advocates said in a statement.

Some Argentines welcomed Obama's gestures. "Obama is not going to say outright 'forgive us', but he's saying it through his actions," said Daniel Slutzky, a 75-year-old college professor.

Obama said on Wednesday it was "gratifying to see Argentina champion our shared commitment to human rights", Yet Macri's opponents balk at the suggestion the socially conservative leader is a rights defender.

"It takes courage for a society to address uncomfortable truths about the darker parts of its past. Confronting crimes committed by your own leaders, by your own people — that can be divisive and frustrating, but it is essential to moving forward," Obama said.

Speaking after Obama, Macri said: "We have to reaffirm our commitment to the defense of democracy and human rights. Every day, somewhere in the world they are jeopardised."

Obama's visit to Argentina is a show of support for Macri's sharp turn away from the nationalist policies of his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez, who frequently railed against the United States and Wall Street. Obama praised Macri on Wednesday for his rapid economic reforms.

During his trip to Cuba, the US president challenged President Raul Castro on human rights and political freedoms even as the two men sought to move on from more than half a century of animosity that began soon after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

Obama has been travelling with his family and later on Thursday they were to switch briefly into vacation mode, travelling to the lakeside town of Bariloche in Patagonia for the afternoon before returning to Washington.

THE HAGUE — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted by UN judges of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime in Europe since World War II, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Karadzic, 70, the former president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic, was found guilty on 10 out of 11 charges brought by war crimes prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He would appeal the decision, his legal adviser said.

"The accused was the sole person within Republika Srpska [the Bosnian Serb Republic] with the power to prevent the killing of the Bosnian Muslim males," said presiding judge O-Gon Kwok, in a reference to the 8,000 killed at Srebrenica.

"Far from preventing it, he ordered they be transferred elsewhere to be killed," the judge said.

Karadzic was acquitted of one count of genocide in various towns across Bosnia during the war of the 1990s.

The three-judge panel said Karadzic was "at the apex of power", heading the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and Supreme Commander of its armed forces, when crimes were committed by his troops.

Judges said the 44-month siege of Sarajevo could not have happened without his support; that he committed crimes against humanity in an attempt to purge Muslims and Croats from parts of Bosnia; and that he had intended to eliminate the Bosnian Muslim males of the town of Srebrenica.

Karadzic's legal adviser Peter Robinson said Karadzic was "disappointed by the verdict, astonished by the reasoning and he wants to appeal".

As the judges described the siege of Sarajevo, Karadzic looked pained and his face tightened into a grimace.

Victims' tears

Victims' families in the courtroom, some of then elderly, listened intently when the genocide at Srebrenica was discussed. One wiped away tears as the judge described men and boys being separated from their families.

When Karadzic was ordered to stand for sentencing, he listened with eyes mostly downcast. After judges departed, he sat back heavily in his chair.

Victims' families embraced before quietly leaving the courtroom.

Outside, Hatidza Mehmedovic, who lost her entire family at Srebrenica, said she was enraged by the verdict, and no punishment could have been harsh enough.

"He can live in a cushy prison while I have to live in Srebrenica, where his ideology is still in place," she said.

"I have no sisters, no brothers, no husband."

Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run, following a war in which 100,000 people were killed as rival armies carved Bosnia up along ethnic lines that largely survive today.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said he would stand by the Serbs of Bosnia.

"We will stand by our people and we will protect their existence and their right to have their own state," he said.

Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, said he hoped the ruling would make populist politicians in the region more reluctant to hail convicted war criminals as heroes.

"There is nothing heroic about raping persons, about sexual abuse in camps," he said. "There is nothing heroic about executing 7,000 prisoners which have been detained in impossible circumstances. There is nothing heroic to kill with snipers children who are playing."

He said prosecutors may appeal Karadzic's acquittal on the second genocide charge.

The only more senior official to face justice before the Tribunal was the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody a decade ago before a verdict was reached.

Ratko Mladic, the general who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, was the last suspect to be detained over the Srebrenica slaughter and is also in a UN cell awaiting judgment.

The Srebrenica massacre and the Serb siege of Sarajevo were events that turned world opinion against the Serbs and prompted NATO air strikes that helped bring the war to an end.

Karadzic defended himself through his 497-day trial and called 248 witnesses, poring over many of the millions of pages of evidence with the help of a court-appointed legal adviser.

Rejecting the charges against him, Karadzic sought to portray himself as the Serbs' champion, blaming some of the sieges and shelling on Bosnian Muslims themselves. He says soldiers and civilians who committed crimes during the war acted individually.

Opponents of the ICTY say its prosecutors have disproportionately targeted Serbs as 94 of 161 suspects charged were from the Serbian side, while 29 were Croat and nine Bosnian Muslim. 

Prosecutors have been criticised for not bringing charges against two other leaders of that era who have since died — Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.

Many Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia, regard the court as a pro-Western instrument, say Karadzic is innocent and believe his conviction is an injustice for all Serbs.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the conviction on Thursday of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide as a "historic day for international criminal justice".

UN war crime judges in The Hague sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison after finding him guilty of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities during the Bosnian conflict.

"This judgement sends a strong signal to all who are in positions of responsibility that they will be held accountable for their actions and shows that fugitives cannot outrun the international community's collective resolve to make sure they face justice according to the law," Ban said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the UN rights chief hailed the genocide conviction of Karadzic on Thursday as "hugely significant", saying it showed "no-one is above the law".

"Twenty-one years after Karadzic was indicted, this verdict is a forceful manifestation of the international community's implacable commitment to accountability," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights HH Prince Zeid said in a statement.

He said the verdict was "hugely significant, as it also strips away the pretence that what he did was anything more than political manipulation, and exposes him for what he really was: the architect of destruction and murder on a massive scale".

The UN rights chief said Karadzic's conviction was "symbolically powerful — above all for the victims of the crimes committed during the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and across the former Yugoslavia, but also for victims across the world". 

He added that the verdict showed that "no matter how powerful they are, no matter how untouchable they imagine themselves to be, no matter what continent they inhabit, the perpetrators of such crimes... will not escape justice".

Prince Zeid, who served in the UN Protection Force in the Former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1996, acknowledged that the verdict could still be appealed.

But he said the ruling nonetheless should send a clear message "that no-one is above the law".

The trial, he said, "should give pause to leaders across Europe and elsewhere who seek to exploit nationalist sentiments and scapegoat minorities for broader social ills".

BRUSSELS — Belgium's chief prosecutor named two brothers on Wednesday as Daesh suicide bombers who killed at least 31 people in the most deadly attacks in Brussels' history but said another key suspect was on the run.

Tuesday's attacks on a city that is home to the European Union and NATO sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport. It also rekindled debate about lagging European security cooperation and flaws in police surveillance.

Washington announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday to demonstrate support.

The Belgian federal prosecutor told a news conference that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, one of two men who blew themselves up at Brussels airport on Tuesday, had left a will on a computer dumped in a rubbish bin near the militants' hideout.

In it, he described himself as "always on the run, not knowing what to do anymore, being hunted everywhere, not being safe any longer and that if he hangs around, he risks ending up next to the person in a cell" — a reference to suspected Paris bomber Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last week.

His brother Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, detonated a bomb an hour later on a crowded rush-hour metro train near the European Commission headquarters, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.

Both men, born in Belgium, had criminal records for armed robbery but investigators had not linked them to militants until Abdeslam's arrest, when police began a race against time to track down his suspected accomplices.

That seems to have prompted the bombers to rush into an attack in Belgium after months of lying low, according to the testament found on the laptop.

At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in the attacks, the prosecutor said. That toll could increase further because some of the bomb victims at Maelbeek Metro Station were blown to pieces and victims are hard to identify. Several survivors were still in critical condition.

The Bakraoui brothers were identified by their fingerprints and on security cameras, the prosecutor said. A second suicide bomber at the airport had yet to be identified and a third man, whom he did not name, had left the biggest bomb and ran out of the terminal before the explosions.

Belgian media named that man as Najim Laachraoui, 25, a suspected Daesh recruiter and bomb-maker whose DNA was found on two explosives belts used in last November’s Paris attacks and at a Brussels safe house used by Abdeslam.

De Standaard newspaper, however, citing an unidentified source, named Laachraoui as the second suicide bomber at the airport.

Khalid El Bakraoui rented under a false name the apartment in the city’s Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week. He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount the Paris attacks.

‘Black days’

Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border last year and deported him to the Netherlands before he was briefly held in Belgium, then released. “Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter,” President Recep  Tayyip Erdogan said.

The Brussels attacks came days after a suspected Daesh suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul’s most popular shopping district, killing three Israelis and an Iranian.

The Syrian-based extremist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, warning of “black days” for those fighting it in Syria and Iraq. Belgian warplanes have joined the coalition in the Middle East, but Brussels has long been a hub of militants who operated elsewhere.

A minute’s silence was observed across Belgium at noon. Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a trip to China and reviewed security measures with his inner Cabinet before attending a memorial event at European Commission headquarters with King Philippe, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

“We are determined, admittedly with a strong feeling of pain in our stomachs, but determined to act,” Michel told a joint news conference with Valls. “France and Belgium are united in pain more than ever.”

Valls played down cross-border sniping over security, saying: “We must turn the page on naivete, a form of carefreeness that our societies have known.

“It is Europe that has been attacked. The response to terrorism must be European.”

EU justice and interior ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the Dutch EU presidency said.

More than 1,000 people gathered around an improvised shrine with candles and street paintings outside the Brussels bourse.

Belgium’s crisis coordination centre kept the level of security alert at the maximum as the man hunt continued. Some buses and trains were running but the metro and the airport were closed, along with key road tunnels in Brussels.

The blasts fuelled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants.

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November’s US election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks. He also said in a British television interview that Muslims were not doing enough to prevent that kind of violence.

After a tip-off from a taxi driver who unwittingly drove the bombers to the airport, police searched an apartment in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek late into the night, finding another bomb, a Daesh flag, 15 kg of the same kind of explosives used in the Paris attacks and bomb-making chemicals.

An unused explosive device was also found at the airport.

Closing in

Security experts believed the blasts were probably in preparation before Friday’s arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the November 13 Paris attacks.

He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shootout at an apartment in the south of the city, after which another Daesh flag and explosives were found.

About 300 Belgians are estimated to have fought with militants in Syria, making the country of 11 million the leading European exporter of foreign fighters and a focus of concern in France and other neighbours over its security capabilities.

Reviving arguments over Belgian security policies following the Paris attacks, in which 130 people died in an operation apparently organised from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of “naiveté” on the part of “certain leaders” in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders retorted that each country should look to its own social problems, saying France too had rough high-rise suburbs in which militants had become radicalised. Valls said France had no place teaching Belgium lessons and had problems with its own communities.

Brussels airport seemed likely to remain shut for several days over the busy Easter holiday weekend, since the departure hall was still being combed as a crime scene on Wednesday and repairs can only begin once investigators are finished.