World

TOKYO — Japanese rescuers were digging through the rubble of buildings and mud on Saturday to reach dozens believed trapped after a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck a southern island, killing at least 32 people and injuring about a thousand.

The shallow earthquake hit in the early hours, sending people fleeing from their beds on to dark streets, and followed a 6.4 magnitude quake on Thursday which killed nine people in the area. Rain and cold were forecast overnight, adding extra urgency to the rescue effort.

Television footage showed fires, power outages, collapsed bridges, a severed road hanging over a ravine and gaping holes in the earth. Residents near a dam were told to leave because of fears it might crumble, broadcaster NHK said.

"I felt strong shaking at first, then I was thrown about like I was in a washing machine," said a Tokai University student who remains isolated in the village of Minamiaso in Kumamoto province on the island of Kyushu.

"All the lights went out and I heard a loud noise. A lot of gas is leaking and while there hasn't been a fire, that remains a concern," the student, who is sheltering in a university gym with 1,000 other students and residents, told Japanese media.

Many frightened people wrapped in blankets sat outside their homes while others camped out in rice fields in rural areas surrounding the main towns. About 422,000 households were without water and about 100,000 without electricity, the government said. Troops were setting up tents for evacuees and water trucks were being sent to the area.

The national police agency said 32 people were confirmed dead. The government said about 190 of those injured were in serious condition.

Heavy rain and wind were forecast, with temperature expected to drop to 13°C overnight. Firefighters handed out tarpaulins to residents so they could cover damaged roofs.

"The wind is expected to pick up and rain will likely get heavier," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a government meeting. "Rescue operations at night will be extremely difficult ... It's a race against time."

Self-defence forces personnel in the town of Mashiki, close to the epicentre, were providing food and water.

"I don't mind standing in line. I'm just thankful for some food," said a man in his 60s waiting for a meal.

Japan is on the seismically active "ring of fire" around the Pacific Ocean and has building codes aimed at helping structures withstand earthquakes.

A magnitude 9 quake in March 2011 north of Tokyo touched off a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, contaminating water, food and air for kilometres around. Nearly 20,000 people were killed in the tsunami.

The epicentre of Saturday's quake was near the city of Kumamoto and measured at a shallow depth of 10 km (six miles), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. The shallower a quake, the more likely it is to cause damage.

The quake triggered a tsunami advisory which was later lifted and no irregularities were reported at three nuclear power plants in the area, a senior government official said.

Tsunami alert lifted

The city's 400-year-old Kumamoto Castle was badly damaged, with its walls breached after having withstood bombardment and fire in its four centuries of existence.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, speaking at a G20 event in Washington, said it was too early to assess the economic impact but bank operations in Kumamoto were normal.

The USGS, which is a government scientific body, estimated that there was a 72 per cent likelihood of economic damage exceeding $10 billion, adding that it was too early to be specific. Major insurers are yet to release estimates.

Electronics giant Sony Corp said a factory producing image sensors for smartphone makers would remain closed while it assessed the damage from the quakes. One of its major customers is Apple which uses the sensors in iPhones.

Toyota Motor Corp. halted production at three plants producing vehicles, engines and trans axles in Fukuoka. Toyota said there was no damage at its plants, but it was checking the status of its suppliers. It will decide on Sunday whether to resume production.

Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. stopped production at its Fukuoka plant which produces vehicles including the Serena, Teana, Murano and Note.

South Korea said it had rented five buses to transport 200 South Korean tourists stranded in Oita, to the east of Kumamoto.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said nearly 80 people were believed trapped or buried in rubble. Rescuers managed to pull 10 students out of a collapsed university apartment in the town of Minami on Saturday.

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft Corp has sued the US government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their e-mails, the latest in a series of clashes over privacy between the technology industry and Washington.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in the Western District of Washington, argues that the government is violating the US Constitution by preventing Microsoft from notifying thousands of customers about government requests for their e-mails and other documents.

The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

The government's actions contravene the Fourth Amendment, which establishes the right for people and businesses to know if the government searches or seizes their property, the suit argues, and the First Amendment right to free speech.

Microsoft's suit focuses on the storage of data on remote servers, rather than locally on people's computers, which Microsoft says has provided a new opening for the government to access electronic data.

Using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the government is increasingly directing investigations at the parties that store data in the so-called cloud, Microsoft says. The 30-year-old law has long drawn scrutiny from technology companies and privacy advocates who say it was written before the rise of the commercial Internet and is, therefore, outdated.

"People do not give up their rights when they move their private information from physical storage to the cloud," Microsoft says in the lawsuit, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. It adds that the government "has exploited the transition to cloud computing as a means of expanding its power to conduct secret investigations”.

The lawsuit represents the newest front in the battle between technology companies and the US government over how much private businesses should assist government surveillance.

By filing the suit, Microsoft is taking a more prominent role in that battle, dominated by Apple Inc. in recent months due to the government's efforts to get the company to write software to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December massacre in San Bernardino, California. Apple, backed by big technology companies including Microsoft, had complained that cooperating would turn businesses into arms of the state.

In its complaint, Microsoft says over the past 18 months it has received 5,624 legal orders under the ECPA, of which 2,576 prevented Microsoft from disclosing that the government is seeking customer data through warrants, subpoenas and other requests. Most of the ECPA requests apply to individuals, not companies, and provide no fixed end date to the secrecy provision, Microsoft said.

Microsoft and other companies won the right two years ago to disclose the number of government demands for data they receive. This case goes farther, requesting that it be allowed to notify individual businesses and people that the government is seeking information about them.

Increasingly, US companies are under pressure to prove they are helping protect consumer privacy. The campaign gained momentum in the wake of revelations by former government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 that the government routinely conducted extensive phone and Internet surveillance to a much greater degree than believed.

Microsoft's lawsuit comes a day after a US congressional panel voted unanimously to advance a package of reforms to the ECPA.

Last-minute changes to the legislation removed an obligation for the government to notify a targeted user whose communications are being sought. Instead, the bill would require disclosure of a warrant only to a service provider, which retains the right to voluntarily notify users, unless a court grants a gag order.

BRASILIA —Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff resorted to the supreme court on Thursday in a last ditch attempt to avert likely defeat in a critical impeachment vote in congress that could lead to her removal from office.

Rousseff's attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, asked the top court for an injunction to suspend Sunday's lower house vote until the full court can rule on what he called procedural irregularities in the impeachment process.

Rousseff, already struggling with Brazil's worst economic crisis in decades and a historic corruption scandal, has lost support within her governing coalition. She faces the growing likelihood of defeat in the lower house vote, which would send her impeachment to the senate for trial on charges of breaking budget laws.

If the senate accepts her impeachment, Rousseff would be suspended and replaced by Vice President Michel Temer as soon as early May pending a trial that could last six months.

Brazil's largest political party, Rousseff's main coalition partner until it broke away two weeks ago, said most of its members in the lower house will back her impeachment.

Leonardo Picciani, the lower chamber leader for the party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, told reporters that 90 per cent of the 68 members of his caucus would vote to impeach Rousseff.

Rousseff met with her political advisers as her government scrambled to win over undecided voters to block impeachment, but defections by several centrist allies in her diminishing coalition have seriously compromised that effort.

Rousseff's opponents are just nine votes short of victory in the lower house, with 333 lawmakers backing impeachment, 124 opposed and 56 undecided or declining to respond, according to a survey by the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.

Cardozo asked the supreme court to annul the report to the lower house by a congressional committee that recommended on Monday that Rousseff be impeached. He said her defence had been obstructed in the committee and that testimony from a plea bargain by a former ally turned critic, Senator Delcidio Amaral, should not have been added to the case.

Rousseff had not been expected to resort to the supreme court until after Sunday's vote. Cardozo's request for an injunction was seen as a sign her government now expects defeat.

KIEV — Ukraine's parliament on Thursday appointed pro-Western speaker Volodymyr Groysman as prime minister in a bid to end months of political gridlock and unlock vital aid to the war-tornstate.

Lawmakers voted by 257 to 50 to approve the resignation of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — condemned by President Petro Poroshenko for losing the public's trust — and select Groysman in the first Cabinet overhaul since Ukraine's 2014 pro-EU revolt.

"We have to accelerate the pace of reforms. I would like to see this government restore the public's trust," the 38-year-old Poroshenko protege told deputies shortly before his confirmation.

Poroshenko himself called Groysman "a politician from a new generation" who could tackle "the real possibility of Ukraine turning into a state of chaos".

The appointment comes with Ukraine embroiled in a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in the east that has claimed nearly 9,200 lives and suffering an economic meltdown that has erased people's savings and seen inflation soar above 40 per cent last year.

Ukraine's youngest-ever premier will also have to show quick returns on a fight against corruption that has permeated all levels of government and was one of the factors behind three months of protests that brought down the Russian-backed leadership in February 2014.

EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called Groysman's appointment "a crucial development at a time when new momentum in the country is badly needed”.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hoped the new government "will not be guided by some sort of phobias or act in the interest of foreign agencies" — a veiled reference to Brussels and Washington.

'Coalition builder' 

The fast-rising new Cabinet chief is a lawyer by training who only two years ago was a relative unknown serving as mayor of the small western Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia.

He moved to Kiev and joined the government after the 2014 ouster of Ukraine's Moscow-backed leadership and the country's decision to strike a landmark EU trade and political association pact.

Groysman was elected to parliament on Poroshenko's party ticket in October 2014 and became speaker the following month.

He is seen as a coalition builder who has gained stature by keeping the notoriously rowdy parliament in relative peace.

But some economists worry that the mild-mannered Groysman may lack the toughness needed to stand up to a handful of tycoons who have dominated Ukrainian politics and made the former Soviet republic a breeding ground for graft.

"I do not believe that this government will drive reforms forward," Kiev's International Centre for Policy Studies analyst Anatoliy Oktysyuk told AFP.

"There are too many obstacles standing in his way."

The new government may draw further concern from investors because it no longer features the respected US-born former finance minister, Natalie Jaresko, or two other foreign technocrats Poroshenko enlisted in December 2014 to help stem Ukraine's economic nosedive.

Jaresko's post has been filled by Oleksandr Danylyuk — the deputy head of Poroshenko's administration whom Nomura International strategist Timothy Ash described as "progressive/technocratic".

Both Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak retain their posts in a government that will have a whopping six deputy premiers.

Yatsenyuk's fall from grace 

Yatsenyuk became prime minister days after the downfall of the Kremlin-backed regime and won renown for his scathing criticism of Russia during its March 2014 annexation of Crimea and the pro-Moscow insurrection that broke out weeks later.

But he saw his party's approval plunge to around 2 per cent due to a broad public perception that he was working in tandem with the very oligarchs who had enjoyed enormous clout under previous administrations and whose wings he had vowed to clip.

Yatsenyuk announced that he was quitting on Sunday — almost two months after surviving a no-confidence vote in parliament.

The Ukrainian government has been paralysed since the failed motion because Yatsenyuk's days seemed numbered and intense backroom battles raged over who would fill the new Cabinet's seats.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in February she could not see how funding — suspended since the end of last year because of Ukraine's failure to follow through on some of its economic pledges — could resume until a united new government is formed.

LAGOS — Nigeria's government on Thursday said it was studying a "proof of life" video showing 15 of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, as parents and their supporters marked the second anniversary of the kidnapping. 

The footage, shown on CNN, is the first time any of the missing girls have been seen since a previous Boko Haram video in May 2014, when about 100 were seen in Islamic dress reciting the Koran.

A total of 276 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, on April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath. 

Three mothers and a classmate of the 219 schoolgirls still missing confirmed the identities of the girls in the images broadcast on Wednesday night. 

A senior government source told AFP it had received the video, which shows the girls in black hijabs, stating their names, that they were abducted from Chibok and saying they were "all well".

The video was said to have been shot on December 25 last year.

But the source said they were keen to avoid the problems encountered by the previous administration, which prematurely announced talks with Boko Haram elements and even a ceasefire. 

"Our intelligence and security authorities... received a similar video in July last year and when they followed the lead it led to a cul-de sac," he revealed.

Contact could not be made and it was impossible to determine the identities of the purported Boko Haram members who sent it or if the move had the blessing of the group's leadership, he added.

Factionalised 

Boko Haram has long been known to be factionalised, comprising groups of ideologically sympathetic fighters who do not always act under the direct orders of senior commanders.

In an indication the latest video and the previous unpublicised message may have come from one of these factions, the source also said the government had received a ransom demand last July.

The group asked for 1 million euros ($1.1 million) for 10 of the girls, the source disclosed. 

That lends weight to theories the Chibok girls were split up following the abduction and were being held separately in different locations, complicating any possible talks or rescue bid.

AFP has also seen photographs of five girls that were sent to the government in mid-January this year as part of the same bid for negotiations.

Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau has previously said the girls would be released in exchange for militants held in Nigerian custody.

Prayers, vigils 

Thursday's two-year anniversary was marked across Nigeria with vigils and protest marches, including at the site of the abduction involving many of the missing girls' parents, wearing black.

In the commercial hub, Lagos, and in the capital, Abuja, hundreds of protesters from the #BringBackOurGirls movement gathered to renewed calls for the release of the girls and other victims.

Boko Haram has used kidnapping as a weapon, seizing thousands of women and young girls, and forcibly conscripting men and boys, in a conflict that has killed an estimated 20,000 since 2009.

The men and boys have been forced to fight in Boko Haram's ranks, while the girls and women have been turned into sex slaves and even suicide bombers.

Amnesty International's Nigeria director M.K. Ibrahim called for the release of all captives and said the Chibok girls symbolised "all the civilians whose lives have been devastated by Boko Haram".

"[President] Muhammadu Buhari's government should do all it lawfully can to bring an end to the agony of the parents of the Chibok girls and all those abducted," he added.

Buhari was on a visit to China on the anniversary but has said the return of the girls is central to the government's success against Boko Haram.

The International Crisis Group said the anniversary was an opportunity to address the conflict's effect on children as the military frees more areas from Boko Haram's control.

Human Rights Watch said this week some 952,000 of the 2.6 million people displaced by the violence were children, who had been "robbed" of their right to education by attacks on schools.

UNICEF said separately there had been a sharp rise in the use of abducted children as human bombs. Three-quarters of the child bombers in attacks from January 2014 to February 2016 were girls.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's grip on power was slipping Wednesday after more allies abandoned her in the fight against an impeachment drive which she has branded a coup.

The 68-year-old leader moved closer to being driven from office in a political and economic crisis rocking Latin America's biggest country less than four months before it hosts the Olympic Games.

With pressure rising after two blocs in Rousseff's ruling coalition announced they would vote to impeach her, she canceled her appearance at a ceremony to light the Olympic flame on Wednesday.

Tuesday's defections swelled the number of lawmakers likely to back a motion against her when the lower house of congress votes Sunday on whether an impeachment trial should be launched.

Polls published in the Brazilian media indicate opposition parties are closing in on securing the 342 votes needed to approve the impeachment motion and send it to the senate for a further vote.

Leading newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo on Wednesday calculated on Wednesday that the number of lawmakers who have now decided to support impeachment has risen to 302 — but dozens have yet to state a position.

Analysts say the desertion on Tuesday of two of Rousseff's key allies, the PP and PRB parties which have 69 lawmakers between them, could prompt a stampede.

"If all the medium-sized parties abandon her, Rousseff will have no way to survive impeachment," said political scientist David Fleischer of Brasilia University.

One of Rousseff's last remaining coalition allies, the PSD party with 36 votes, called a meeting in Brasilia on Wednesday to decide on its position.

Another party, the PR, was scheduled to meet on Thursday. It has 40 seats. Between them, the two parties could swing the vote against Rousseff in the 513-seat congress.

‘Traitor' in 'coup' 

Rousseff is in the final stretch of a bruising attempt to save her presidency over charges that she illegally manipulated government accounts to mask the effects of recession during her 2014 re-election.

On Tuesday she branded her vice-president Michel Temer a traitor and coup-plotter after an audio recording was leaked in which he was heard practicing the speech he would make if Rousseff is impeached.

"The conspirators' mask has slipped," she said.

"We are living in strange and worrying times — times of a coup, and of pretending, and betrayal of trust."

Protesters both for and against Rousseff have called for demonstrations this weekend in Brasilia. Security forces have put up fences to protect government buildings from possible disturbances.

Lawmakers who have yet to declare their position were facing fierce lobbying, including from Rousseff's top ally and predecessor as president, Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva.

But he too faces pressure: the courts have suspended his appointment as Rousseff's chief of staff over a corruption case against him.

Rousseff a risky bet 

Brazil's political system has been paralysed by a huge corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras. The charges against Lula are linked to that case.

The country has sunk meanwhile into its worst recession in decades.

"Deputies are thinking about their chances of being re-elected" in the next elections, scheduled for 2018, said Fleischer.

Backing Rousseff is highly politically risky since her popularity has plunged so much, he added.

If the lower house votes by two thirds to move forward with the motion, the senate must then hold a vote on whether to hold an impeachment trial.

"In the senate it will be even harder to stop impeachment, because the PMDB (Temer's party) is the strongest there," said Michael Freitas Mohallem, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.

Financial markets have been betting against Rousseff, with stock prices in Brazil rallying as her chances of being impeached have risen.

MADRID — Spanish police said Wednesday they had detained a Frenchman suspected of heading a weapons trafficking ring that supplied arms to one of the militants that killed 17 people in Paris in January 2015.

In a statement, police said Antoine Denevi, a 27-year-old from a small town in northern France, was detained on Tuesday in the southern Malaga area after Paris issued a Europe-wide arrest warrant.

He "left the neighbouring country [France] weeks after the Paris attacks to escape police action, and settled in the province of Malaga from where he continued his illegal activities using fake papers," the police said.

"It's also been determined that his activities were linked with people of Serbian origin, who may have facilitated his access to arms and munitions."

Police suspect that Denevi's alleged trafficking ring armed Amedy Coulibaly, who shot dead a policewoman and took hostages in a Jewish supermarket, where he killed four people.

An expert in arms trafficking in France told AFP that the weapons used by Coulibaly — a Czech-made Scorpion submachinegun and a Kalashnikov rifle — were "very easily" available.

Coulibaly was an accomplice of the Kouachi brothers, who killed 12 people in an attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo two days before Coulibaly held up the supermarket. All three were shot dead by police.

Both Spanish and French police participated in Tuesday's operation in the seaside resort of Rincon de la Victoria, during which two other people were detained — one from Serbia and another from Montenegro.

Denies selling arms to militant 

Denevi, who hails from the small town of Sainte-Catherine, was immediately taken to Madrid, where he was brought before a judge in the National Court.

The National Court, which hears cases related to extremism, has charged Denevi with arms trafficking. 

So far no terrorism charges have been brought against him, which could indicate he was unaware of the use for which the weapons were intended.

A judicial source, who wished to remain anonymous, said the suspect had denied selling weapons to militants and accepted to be extradited to France. 

The three-day attacks in January 2015 shook France, prompting much soul-searching as to how three French youths could gun down 17 fellow citizens in cold blood.

The trio had very specific targets — the cartoonists who had mocked the Prophet Mohammed in Charlie Hebdo's pages, the police and Jews.

Coulibaly was shot dead in the Jewish supermarket on January 9 in a dramatic raid by French special forces.

The Kouachi brothers were also killed by special forces in a near simultaneous assault on a printing factory just outside Paris where they had holed up.

The three-day killing spree was, at the time, the worst extremist attack on European soil in nearly a decade, but militants hit Paris again in November, killing 130 people.

THE HAGUE — A homeless Pole triggered a major security scare and partial evacuation of Amsterdam airport after claiming to be a terrorist, Dutch military police said on Wednesday.

Dozens of heavily armed military police had swooped on Schiphol Airport late Tuesday, when the alarm was raised three weeks to the day after the deadly suicide bombings in Brussels.

One man who was arrested was "a 25-year-old Polish man without fixed address... who told officers he was a terrorist," police said in a statement on their official Facebook page.

"He had two bags with him which were checked by the bomb squad but no explosives were found," the statement added.

The man, whose name was not given, appeared before a judge on Wednesday where he "confessed to have been under the influence of alcohol". 

Military police were investigating the wide-scale security alert triggered after a bystander phoned police about a "suspicious situation", a military police spokesman had said.

The scare at one of Europe's busiest travel hubs, with flight links to 319 destinations around the world, came exactly three weeks after the March 22 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro that left 32 people dead and hundreds wounded.

The Netherlands tightened security and stepped up border controls in the wake of the suicide bombings in its southern neighbour, which also followed the coordinated attacks in Paris in November.

Tensions have been high since last month's bombings in Belgium, which like the Paris attacks in which 130 people died, were claimed by the Daesh terror group.

There have been concerns that the Netherlands could be targeted in a terror attack, due to its proximity to both Belgium and France, and its role in the US-led bombing campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.

Schiphol is Europe's fourth-largest airport, and welcomes some 55 million passengers through its gates every year.

No flights or train traffic were disrupted during Tuesday's operation, which saw balaclava-clad and sub-machine gun-toting officers cordoning off a square at the entrance to the airport's shopping plaza, which leads to the arrivals and departures halls.

Hundreds of passengers, many of them on long-haul flights, waited for hours until the all-clear was given at around 1:30 am on Wednesday (2330 GMT).

Last month, at the request of French authorities, Dutch police carried out raids on an apartment in Rotterdam, uncovering about 45kg of ammunition.

French suspect Anis Bahri was arrested at the flat suspected of trying to take part in a foiled plot in France. He is now fighting his extradition to Paris.

Investigators have uncovered extensive links between the Paris and Brussels attacks, with many of the same people involved.

Adding to the jitters in The Netherlands, one of the suicide bombers in Brussels, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, was found to have been expelled from Turkey to the Netherlands last year, before he slipped back across the border to Belgium.

KABUL — The Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive on Tuesday, pledging to launch large-scale offensives against government strongholds backed by suicide and guerrilla attacks to drive Afghanistan's Western-backed government from power.

The announcement of the start of "Operation Omari", named after the late Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, came just days after Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kabul and reaffirmed US support for a national unity government led by President Ashraf Ghani.

"Jihad against the aggressive and usurping infidel army is a holy obligation upon our necks, and our only recourse for re-establishing an Islamic system and regaining our independence," the Taliban said in a statement.

The insurgency has gained strength since the withdrawal of international troops from combat at the end of 2014 and the Taliban are stronger than at any point since they were driven from power by US-backed forces in 2001.

As well as suicide and tactical attacks, the offensive would include assassinations of "enemy" commanders in urban centres, the Taliban said.

"The present operation will also employ all means at our disposal to bog the enemy down in a war of attrition that lowers the morale of the foreign invaders and their internal armed militias," they said.

In line with recent statements, the militants also said they would establish good governance in areas they controlled, and avoid civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.

The seasons have long shaped violence in Afghanistan with fighting easing off in the winter, when mountain passes get snowed in, and picking up again in the spring and summer.

How far the announcement will lead to an immediate escalation in fighting, which caused 11,000 civilian casualties last year, remains unclear. However, NATO and Afghan officials have said they expect very tough combat in 2016.

US embassy warning

While there was no sudden surge in violence, officials said at least five members of Afghanistan's border police had been killed overnight when one police officer turned his weapon on his colleagues.

The "insider attack" happened at a frontier post in southern Kandahar province and the attacker fled into Pakistan. The Taliban claimed seven police had been killed and that the attacker had gone over to join the militant group.

Hours before the Taliban announced their offensive, the US embassy in Kabul issued an emergency warning to US citizens, saying it had received reports that insurgents were planning attacks on a major hotel in Kabul.

Heavy fighting has continued for months across Afghanistan, from Kunduz, the northern city that fell briefly to the insurgents last year, to Helmand province bordering Pakistan in the south.

In Helmand, where thousands of British and American troops were killed or wounded fighting the Taliban, government forces have pulled back from many areas and are struggling to hold centres close to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Understrength Afghan security forces, struggling with heavy casualties and high desertion rates and short of air power, transport and logistical support, have struggled in their first year fighting largely alone.

According to NATO commanders, the Taliban exert control over only 6 per cent of Afghanistan but up to a third of the country is at risk from the insurgents and government forces control no more than 70 per cent of territory.

US General John Nicholson, who took over as commander of international troops in Afghanistan last month, is conducting a strategic review, including plans to cut US troops in Afghanistan from 9,800 to 5,500 by the end of the year.

Unless the plan is changed, the reduction would mean the end of most of NATO's training and assistance operation, leaving the remaining US troops focusing on counter-terrorism operations against radical groups such as the Daesh terror group.

SEOUL — North Korea accused South Korea Tuesday of kidnapping its citizens after Seoul said 13 of them had defected to the South from China, where they worked in a Pyongyang-operated restaurant.

In its first reaction since Seoul announced the defections, the North's Red Cross spokesman accused the South of committing a crime on an "unparalelled" scale by "kidnapping" them.

The spokesman called for the South to apologise and return them immediately or face "unimaginable consequences and strong countermeasures".

"We know in detail how they were abducted to the South under connivance from the country concerned and how they passed through a certain country in Southeastern Asia," the spokesman was quoted as saying on the North's propaganda website Uriminzokkiri.

China said Monday that the 13 people — a male manager and 12 young female employees — had legitimate passports and had freely exited China.

The defectors arrived in the South last Thursday, the unification ministry said.

The North operates such restaurants overseas to earn much-needed hard currency.

There have been defections by individual restaurant workers in the past, but this is the first time so many staff from one establishment have defected en masse.

Seoul Monday also announced that a North Korean colonel involved in espionage operations and a diplomat in Africa had fled to the South last year.