World

DONETSK, Ukraine — Separatists in eastern Ukraine held elections Sunday as claims of “intensive” troop movements crossing the Russian border cast new doubts over a truce.

The vote in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic was condemned by Kiev and the West, but backed by Russia, billed as bringing a degree of legitimacy to pro-Russian authorities already in control of the two main rebel-held cities.

However, the polls deepened an international crisis over the conflict and further undercut the teetering September 5 truce between Ukraine’s government and the heavily armed separatists.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blasted the ballot as a “farce that is being conducted under the threat of tanks and guns” and warned Moscow not to follow through on its intention to recognise the result.

The run-up to the vote saw a spate of shelling by rebels of government positions across the conflict zone, where according to UN figures more than 4,000 people have died since fighting started around seven months ago.

Ukrainian authorities announced Sunday the deaths of three soldiers and seven more wounded, adding to Saturday’s toll of seven dead and at least six wounded.

Kiev’s military also claimed it had detected “intensive” movement of troops and equipment “from the territory of the Russian Federation”.

The reported deployments, which would constitute a major escalation of Russian involvement, could not be verified.

AFP journalists in rebel-controlled Donetsk saw a column of about 20 trucks, some carrying heavy anti-aircraft guns, heading in the direction of the government-held airport, although there was a notable drop in fighting during the polling.

Other Western news outlets reported seeing much larger columns of unmarked military trucks and weaponry on roads in the separatist area.

The rebels — who deny being helped by Russia, but boast an arsenal that includes anti-aircraft missiles, tanks and heavy artillery — have threatened to expand their offensive to the Azoz Sea port city of Mariupol.

The Security Service of Ukraine said it was opening a criminal investigation into the separatist election, which it called “a power grab”.

But residents of rebel-held areas spoke of their hatred for the government in Kiev and their desire for the war to end.

“I hope that our votes will change something. Perhaps we will finally be recognised as a real, independent country,” Tatyana Ivanovna, 65, said as she waited to cast her ballot in Donetsk’s school number 104.

“We need to be able to live normally,” said Valery, 50. “It’s terrible being afraid for your family at every bombardment. I will vote hoping that this will help the authorities to defend our interests against Kiev.”

LAHORE, Pakistan — A suicide bomber killed at least 55 people Sunday at the main Pakistan-India border crossing, the blast tearing through crowds of spectators leaving after the colourful daily ceremony to close the frontier.

The explosion, which wounded more than 120, came at Wagah border gate near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore after the "flag-lowering" ceremony, a display of military pageantry that attracts thousands of spectators every day and is popular with foreign tourists.

The attack is a rare strike in Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province and powerbase of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which has been spared the worst of the bloody wave of Islamist violence that has assailed the country in recent years.

"It appears to have been a suicide attack. At least 55 people have been killed and more than 120 wounded. Women and children were also killed," Mushtaq Sukhera, the Punjab provincial police chief, told AFP.

It is the deadliest attack to hit Pakistan since a suicide bombing at a church in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed 80 people in September last year.

Sharif expressed "grief and sorrow" over the attack in a statement issued by his office and ordered those responsible to be brought to justice.

His Indian counterpart Narendra Modi condemned the "shocking" and "dastardly" attack. "My condolences to the families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured," he said on his Twitter account.

Huge crowds gather on both sides at Wagah each sunset to see the display of military pageantry that accompanies the formal closing of the border post. It appears the blast took place some distance from the border itself.

Tahir Javed, Punjab provincial commander of the Rangers paramilitary force that guards the frontier, said three of his men had been killed in the blast, which came around 500 metres from the post itself.

There are several security checkpoints on the road leading to the border post, which is equipped with a ceremonial gate and banked seating, and spectators are frisked before entering, though such searches are not always particularly rigorous.

The dead and wounded were taken to Ghurki hospital, where distressed relatives, weeping and hugging each other in grief, searched for their loved ones.

"We were here to watch the parade and the blast took place, the moment we left the venue," Muhammad Imran, aged 12, told AFP as he looked for his three brothers at the hospital.

Conflicting claims 

There were several conflicting claims of responsibility for the attack, reflecting the fragmentation the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement has undergone in recent weeks.

Abdullah Bahar, a spokesman for a TTP faction loyal to its dead chief Hakimullah Mehsud, said they carried it out to avenge Mehsud's killing in a US drone strike last year.

But the Jamat-ul-Ahrar faction, which broke away from the main TTP leadership in September, rubbished the claim and said they were behind the blast.

Group spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said in an e-mail statement the attack was revenge for those killed in the ongoing military operation in North Waziristan tribal area, on the Afghan border. Ehsan said they would soon release video footage of the attack.

TV channels also ran claims from a third militant faction, called Jundullah.

Pakistan has been wracked by a homegrown Taliban insurgency that has killed thousands of people in recent years, but attacks have declined since the army began its offensive in the northwest.

As well as being one of restive Pakistan's few tourist attractions, Wagah is also the main land crossing with India and much of their trade transits through it.

R. P. S. Jaswal, deputy inspector general of India's Border Security Force which guards Wagah, said their side of the border was secure, but security had been stepped up.

"A red alert has been issued keeping in view the blast across the border in... Pakistan," Jaswal told AFP by phone from his base near the city of Amritsar.

The neighbours have had frosty relations since independence from Britain in 1947, fighting three full wars, two over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

KANO, Nigeria — Boko Haram has claimed that the 219 schoolgirls it kidnapped more than six months ago have converted to Islam and been "married off", shocking their families and confirming their suspicions about a supposed ceasefire and deal for their release.

The Islamist group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, made the claim in a new video obtained by AFP on Friday in which he also denied government assertions of an agreement to end hostilities and peace talks.

The mention of the girls, who were abducted from the remote northeastern town of Chibok on April 14, is the first by Shekau since May 5, when about 100 of the teenagers were shown on camera.

Then, the girls were seen wearing the hijab and reciting verses from the Koran. The militant leader said then that not all had converted.

But he indicated that all of those held had now become Muslims and married, chiming with testimony from former hostages who say forced marriage and conversion is commonplace in Boko Haram camps.

"Don't you know the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls have converted to Islam? They have now memorised two chapters of the Koran," he said.

Shekau previously threatened to sell the girls as slave brides and also suggested he would be prepared to release them in exchange for Boko Haram prisoners.

In the latest message, he said while laughing: "We have married them off. They are in their marital homes."

The head of the Chibok Elders Forum, Pogo Bitrus, said on Saturday: "It [the claim about marriage] is shocking to us, although we know that Boko Haram is not a reliable group.”

"We were sceptical about the talks to release our girls and we never took the ceasefire seriously because since the announcement, they have never stopped attacking communities.

"Therefore the information that our girls have been married off is not surprising to us," said Bitrus, whose four nieces are among the hostages.

"We are only hoping the government will step up whatever efforts it is making to quell the insurgency."

Nigeria's government said on October 17 that they had reached a deal to end five years of deadly violence in the country's far northeast, as well as agreement to release the Chibok girls.

But violence has continued unabated, including a triple bomb attack on a bus station in the northern city of Gombe on Friday, which killed at least eight and injured dozens more.

Last weekend, about 30 children — some of them girls as young as 11 and boys aged 13 upwards — were abducted from another village in Borno state.

At least 40 women were abducted the previous weekend not far from Chibok.

Human Rights Watch said in a report published this week that upwards of 500 women and girls had been abducted since 2009, although some put the figure at more than 1,000.

Forced conscription of boys and young men is also a common tactic.

Shekau's claim about the girls will give little cheer to supporters around the world, who mobilised for a social media campaign and street protests calling for their release.

But back channel talks are stalled and he appeared to also rule out any negotiations.

"We have not made ceasefire with anyone," he said in Hausa in the 12-minute video, flanked by 15 armed fighters in an undisclosed scrubland location.

"We did not negotiate with anyone... It's a lie. It's a lie. We will not negotiate. What is our business with negotiation? Allah said we should not."

He also said he did not know Ahmadu Danladi, whom the government claimed was a Boko Haram envoy and had been present at supposed talks in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena.

German hostage 

The latest video also saw Boko Haram claim responsibility for the kidnapping of a German national from the northeastern state of Adamawa on July 16.

Armed gunmen seized the man, who was said to be a teacher at a government school, after apparently lying in wait outside his house.

The German foreign ministry in Berlin said it did not want to comment.

Kidnapping for ransom by armed gangs is common in Nigeria's wealthier, oil-producing south and just this week, another German national working for a construction was released after being seized.

His colleague, also German, was shot dead.

In the Adamawa kidnapping, suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly from Hausa as "Western education is forbidden".

They have previously attacked students, teachers and schools perceived to have a Western-style curriculum.

MOJAVE, United States — British tycoon Richard Branson insisted Saturday his dream of commercial space travel remained alive but warned his company would not "press on blindly" without knowing what caused the spacecraft crash that killed one pilot and seriously injured another.

Speaking to reporters after arriving in the California facility which had been the hub of Virgin Galactic's space programme, Branson said safety remained his paramount concern.

"We owe it to our test pilots to find out exactly what went wrong, and once we've found out what went wrong, if we can overcome it, we'll make absolutely certain that the dream lives on," Branson told reporters.

"We do understand the risks involved, and we're not going to push on blindly," he said. "To do so would be an insult to all those affected by this tragedy.

"Safety has always been our number one priority," he added before heading off to rally grieving Virgin Galactic staff.

Branson's comments at the Mojave Air and Space Port came as a team of federal investigators began probing the causes of Friday's accident, which dealt a devastating setback to the cause of commercial space tourism.

Unknown territory 

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) acting chairman Christopher Hart told reporters investigators were entering unknown territory but hoped to find clues to the accident in data gathered by Virgin Galactic.

"This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch that involved persons on board," Hart said.

It was not immediately known if a black box flight data recorder was installed on the doomed suborbital craft, Hart said.

However, "this was a test flight and test flights are typically very well documented in terms of data", he noted.

"We may have lots of evidence that will help us with the investigative process."

Branson headed to California within hours of Friday's crash, which saw the company's suborbital SpaceShipTwo break apart and hurtle to earth shortly after it had detached from a mothership at an altitude of around 13,700 metres during a test flight.

The crash was the second disaster to rock the private space industry in the space of a few days, after an Antares rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded after take-off in Virginia in Tuesday.

Space tourism grounded 

Experts say the accident will delay the advent of commercial space tourism by several years.

Virgin Galactic had hoped to start ferrying wealthy customers to the edge of space in 2015, charging $250,000 per person for a ticket on the company's six-seater vehicle.

Around 500 people, including a slew of celebrities such as Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio, had already reserved tickets on the first wave of Virgin Galactic flights, according to reports.

Branson said Saturday anyone who wanted to cancel their reservation would be refunded.

"Of course, anybody who ever wants a refund would be able to get a refund," he said.

As investigators launched their probe, early attention had been focused on a new kind of fuel being used in Friday's flight, the 35th by SpaceShipTwo.

The plastic-based fuel had been tested on the ground before but not in flight.

But Branson hit back at early theories surrounding what may have caused the accident.

"To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they're saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments," he said.

Friday's accident was not the first tragedy to strike the Virgin Galactic programme.

In 2007, three people were killed after a rocket designed for use in SpaceShipTwo exploded during testing.

Witnesses to Friday's accident said there was no obvious sign of an explosion from the ground.

"If there was a huge explosion, I didn't see it," said Mojave Air and Space Port chief Stu Witt. "From my eyes and my ears, I detected nothing that appeared abnormal."

Private companies are rushing to fill the gap left by NASA, which ended its 30-year shuttle programme in July 2011 with a final Atlantis mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Analysts said the latest accident is a huge blow to the nascent industry.

"You are not going to see any commercial space tourism flight next year or probably several years after that," said Marco Caceres, an analyst and director of space studies for the Teal Group, a defence and aerospace consultancy.

KOSLANDA — Hundreds of desperate Sri Lankan villagers dug with barehands through the broken red earth of a deadly landslide Thursday, defying police orders after a top disaster official said there was no chance of finding more survivors at the high-elevation tea plantation.

There were conflicting reports of how many people were missing in the slide, which struck Wednesday morning in the island nation's central hills after heavy monsoon rains.

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said the number of dead at the Koslanda tea plantation would be fewer than 100. But Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre — which Amaraweera oversees — reported 190 people missing.

Villagers, meanwhile, said the death toll could easily exceed 200.

"I have visited the scene and from what I saw I don't think there will be any survivors," Amaraweera told The Associated Press on Thursday. "But that number is less than 100."

Frustrated relatives who had watched the search from the sidelines tried to follow a politician into the search site but were stopped by police. However, the politician argued with police and took villagers with him who joined hundreds of soldiers searching through the mud for survivors.

The search was suspended Thursday evening because of heavy rain.

President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the disaster site on Thursday and spoke to residents who are taking shelter in schools and temples. According to his website, Rajapakse ordered officials to expedite rescue and relief for the victims.

Television reports showed Rajapakse inspecting the disaster from the air and meeting with relief officials. Later he was seen distributing sleeping mats and boxes with essential items to the displaced people and consoling weeping men and women.

Amaraweera said the government had asked the National Child Protection Authority to take charge of children orphaned by the disaster.

Many children had left for school before the slide and returned to see their homes buried with their parents. A government minister told parliament that they have found 75 orphaned children.

"The government will be fully responsible for them, we will not give them to anyone other than somebody from immediate family because they can be sent for child labour," he said.

A large number of children in Sri Lanka's tea plantations drop out of school and work as domestic helpers or waiters in tea boutiques. Many times parents send children to work due to poverty or alcoholism.

Displaced people spent their second evening Thursday crammed inside a dark, cold school classroom atop a misty mountain. Government officials had begun a survey of the dead and missing and doctors attended to the sick and wounded.

A 48-year-old truck driver who gave his name only as Raja said he lost all five members of his household — his wife, two sons, daughter-in-law and his 6-month-old grandchild.

"I left for work early morning and got a call asking me to rush back," Raja said, weeping. "I came back and there was no trace of my home, everyone was buried."

A local government officer familiar with the tea plantation said he believes 200-250 people may have been buried, based on the number of people usually in the area at the time. There were many houses, a big Hindu temple, a playground and two milk collection centres where farmers brought their milk to sell.

The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because government rules prevent him from speaking to the media.

The tea plantation in Badulla district, about 220 kilometres east of Colombo, was one of many in the higher altitudes of Sri Lanka, formerly called Ceylon, one of the world's leading tea producers.

Most of Sri Lanka has experienced heavy rain over the past few weeks, and the Disaster Management Centre had issued warnings of mudslides and falling rocks. The monsoon season here runs from October through December.

Vettiyan Yogeswaran, who lives in part of the tea plantation not affected by the landslide, said authorities had warned people that the area was vulnerable to mudslides and they should move. But he said no housing alternatives were offered.

The US Embassy in Colombo offered to help with the relief efforts.

"We stand ready to assist the government and victims as they mourn the loss of loved ones, treat the injured, and address the extensive losses and damage caused by this natural disaster," it said in a statement Thursday.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Liberia is making some progress in containing the Ebola outbreak while the crisis in Sierra Leone is going to get worse, the top anti-Ebola officials in the two countries said.

The people of both countries must redouble efforts to stop the disease, which has infected more than 13,000 people and killed nearly 5,000, the officials said. Their assessments underscore that Ebola remains a constant threat until the outbreak is wiped out. It can appear to be on the wane, only to re-emerge in the same place or balloon elsewhere if people don't avoid touching Ebola patients or the bodies of those who succumb to the disease.

"We are in a crisis situation which is going to get worse," Palo Conteh said late Wednesday in the Sierra Leone capital, in his first press conference as head of the national ebola response centre. "What is happening now should have been done three months ago."

"Today we have a new and vicious enemy, an enemy that does not wear uniform, that... attacks anyone that comes into contact with [it] and if unchecked will ravage our beautiful land and its fine people," he said.

The stark warning and call to action was echoed by others, even in neighbouring Liberia, where the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said the rate of infection appears to be slowing, perhaps by as much by 25 per cent week over week.

"We need to re-galvanise our efforts, accelerate the interventions, remain vigilant," said Tolbert Nyenswah, the assistant minister of health who leads the Liberian government's Ebola response.

The WHO announcement has given Liberia a reason "to put our shoulders to the wheel so that Ebola can be something of the past", Deputy Information Minister Isaac Jackson told a news conference Thursday. "We are not going to relax."

WHO officials also urged caution in giving the news, saying the gains could be reversed.

But others went further. Alfred Brownell, an activist in Liberia, remembered the moment in the spring when Liberians thought the crisis was over, but then it got worse. Now he is bracing for another potential wave of cases, he said.

"The present epidemic is unpredictable: We have seen a lull in cases in one area only to see the numbers spike again later. More aid is needed on the ground. It's time now to step up contact tracing, safe body management practices and community surveillance," said Fasil Tezera, head of Doctors Without Border's mission in Liberia, even while noting that their 250-bed centre in the capital has only about 80 beds occupied.

Liberia is the hardest hit country in the Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa that has also ravaged Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Still, there are some signs of hope. In Liberia, there has been a decrease in the number of patients seeking Ebola treatment, the number of bodies collected and the number of lab-confirmed cases, according to Nyenswah. In Sierra Leone, even though the outbreak is now hitting areas in and around the capital, the country's east has seen the disease wane.

"If people in other areas of the country copy the example of eastern Kailahun and Kenema Districts, then the spread of the disease will subside like in Kailahun and Kenema. As I speak, people [near the capital] are still touching people suspected with the Ebola disease, people are still burying corpses at night of those who have died of the disease," Conteh said.

With international assistance growing, Conteh said up to 700 beds would be set up in treatment centres and that the United Nations has four helicopters in the country. A British hospital ship docked in Freetown on Thursday.

The outbreak has taken a particularly high toll on health workers, sickening more than 520, and greatly reducing the health system's capacity to respond in the three most-affected countries.

The World Bank announced Thursday that it will give an additional $100 million to help bring in more foreign health workers. The new funds will be used to train, pay and house health workers while they're in the Ebola hot zone and provide medical care or evacuation for anyone infected.

"It is our hope that this $100 million can help be a catalyst for a rapid surge of health workers to the communities in dire need," Jim Yong Kim, the bank's president, said in a statement Thursday. He is visiting Ghana, where the UN mission on Ebola is based.

If the virus continues to surge in the worst-affected countries and spreads to neighbouring countries, the financial impact could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015, the bank has warned.

WALLOPS, Virginia — Authorities on Wednesday started investigating what made an unmanned US supply rocket explode in a fireball moments after lifting off from a launch pad in Virginia, destroying supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station.

The 14-storey Antares rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp., blasted off from the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22pm (2222 GMT) on Tuesday but burst into flames moments later, the first disaster since NASA turned to private operators to run cargo to the space station.

Orbital Sciences stock fell 15.9 per cent to $25.54 on Wednesday.

The rocket was carrying a Cygnus cargo ship with a 2,273kg payload for the station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations that orbits about 418km above Earth.

The loss of the supply vessel posed no immediate problem for the orbiting station's six crew: two from NASA, one from the European Space Agency and three Russians, officials said.

"There was no cargo that was absolutely critical to us that was lost on that flight. The crew is in no danger," National Aeronautics and Space Administration Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier said.

Russia's Roskosmos space agency said it was ready to help ferry extra US cargo to the space station if NASA requested. The station is overseen by Russia and the United States, whose relations are at a low ebb over the Ukraine crisis.

The unmanned Russian Progress supply vehicle launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan hours after the explosion and the capsule, carrying more than 2273kg of food, fuel and supplies, reached the station at 9:08am
(1308 GMT).

No one was hurt in the US accident but witnesses said the explosion shook buildings for kilometres around and described a massive ball of fire lighting up the evening sky.

In the control room, reaction was a mix of "shock and professionalism”, said Frank Culbertson, Orbital Executive Vice President and mission director.

"Everyone did their job and secured the data and assessed what we had going and made sure that everything was safe and secure and then we went through our contingency plan."

Within a few days, he said, investigators would have a "pretty good idea" of where the failure began. "What exactly caused it may take a little bit longer and corrective action probably will take some time, from weeks to months," he added.

The area around the Wallops Flight Facility was cordoned off on Wednesday and a helicopter circled overhead, surveying.

Ronda Miller, manager of the Ocean Deli in Wallops Island, Virginia, told Reuters she felt the force of the blast, about 8km from the launch pad.

"We were standing outside waiting for it to launch and we saw bright red, and then we saw a big black cloud, and it shook the whole building where we work," Miller said.

The Cygnus mission was non-military but the company's Antares programme manager, Mike Pinkston, said the craft included "some classified cryptographic equipment, so we do need to maintain the area around the debris in a secure manner".

Russian rocket engines

The Antares is powered by the AJ-26 engine built by GenCorp Inc. division Aerojet Rocketdyne. In May, an AJ-26 exploded during a ground test at NASA's Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi. GenCorp shares lost 6.9 per cent to $15.99.

The accident also renewed questions about the use of Russian engines in US rockets. Congress has been concerned about Russian-made RD-180 engines that power United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rockets, used primarily to fly US military satellites.

The RD-180 has had no technical problems but Russia has threatened to suspend exports in response to US trade sanctions prompted by Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

It was unclear how much Tuesday's explosion would cost Orbital Sciences, whose flight was partly insured. The rocket and the cargo ship it carried were valued at $200 million, Culbertson said.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies NASA has hired to fly cargo to the station after NASA's space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

The second US supply line to the station is run by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is preparing its fourth flight under a separate $1.6 billion NASA contract, slated for December 9.

The Cygnus carried a prototype satellite owned by Redmond, Washington-based startup Planetary Resources Inc., which is developing technology to mine asteroids.

Orbital Sciences is merging with Alliant Techsystems Inc.'s Aerospace and Defence division, a deal analysts expect to close sometime early next year.

KOSLANDA, Sri Lanka — Around 100 people were buried alive in a tea-growing region of Sri Lanka Wednesday as mudslides triggered by monsoon rains washed away their homes on a plantation, disaster officials said.

One witness spoke of hearing a noise like thunder as part of a mountainside collapsed onto the estate, burying some of the workers' homes in nine metres of mud and debris.

"What I gathered is that about 100 people have been buried alive," Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told AFP after visiting the site in the eastern Koslanda region.

"There is no chance they could have survived," said the minister, as other officials said 16 people were confirmed dead.

Hundreds of soldiers, who initially used their hands to dig for survivors, had switched to operating excavators by evening but hopes had faded of finding anyone else still alive.

"Anyone buried under the mud has a very slim chance of surviving," disaster management centre spokesman Sarath Kumara told AFP.

The annual monsoon brings vital rains for irrigation and electricity generation but also causes frequent loss of life and damage to property.

The minister said the search and rescue mission led by troops had now turned into a recovery operation, which they hope to resume at first light on Thursday.

He said using heavy machinery also had to be done carefully because the surrounding hills were unstable.

"Initially we estimated the missing number at 300, but most of them were at school or work," the minister said.

"We have already started relief operations to provide them with shelter and food.”

"Even the office where records were kept had been damaged," the minister said.

The region's top military official, Major General Mano Perera, said 302 people, including 75 schoolchildren, whose homes were destroyed in the mudslide were being looked after at two schools in the same area.

The mudslide hit at a time when most people were at work and children were already in school, leaving the elderly and the very young at home.

The military officer said about 500 troops had been deployed in the area to carry out the search for victims.

Kumara said 16 bodies have so far been recovered from the disaster around 200 kilometres east of the capital Colombo.

"We have reports of 140 houses getting washed away in the mudslides," Kumara added.

Part of a mountain appeared to have collapsed onto the cluster of homes belonging to the tea plantation workers and their families below, leaving no trace of them, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Homes washed away 

Shopkeeper Kandasamy Prabhakaran, 34, said he heard a noise like thunder and then saw houses being washed away by tonnes of mud.

"Right before my eyes I could see houses crumbling and getting washed downhill," Prabhakaran said.

"It all happened very quickly."

President Mahinda Rajapakse ordered troops to deploy heavy equipment to speed up the rescue efforts, his office said.

Military sources said they expected more heavy machinery to reach the site, but damage to roads as well as heavy rain and mist were slowing them down.

Sections of several national highways have also been washed away by the rains and a train was stuck after a mountain slope crashed onto a railway line.

The landslide began at about 7:45am (0215 GMT) and lasted about 10 minutes, Perera said, adding "some houses have been buried in 9 metres of mud".

Authorities have begun checking on the number of people who were in their homes when tragedy struck.

Kumara said the mudslide struck after schools opened and tea plantation workers were supposed to be at work, but bad weather may have prompted some to stay home.

The area is prone to mudslides and residents had been repeatedly warned to move to safer areas as monsoon rains lashed the region, the disaster management centre said.

Thirteen people were killed in mudslides in and around Colombo in June.

Cyclonic winds that accompanied the monsoon in June last year killed 54 people, mostly fishermen.

WASHINGTON/SYDNEY — The US military has isolated soldiers returning from an Ebola response mission in West Africa and Australia imposed a visa ban on the affected countries, policies that critics said would have little benefit but could feed a global panic.

Ebola has killed nearly 5,000 people since March, mostly in West Africa, but nine cases in the United States prompted states such as New York and New Jersey to ignore federal advice and quarantine all health workers returning from the region.

The United Nations criticised the US states' mandatory quarantine imposed on those returning from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

"Returning health workers are exceptional people who are giving of themselves for humanity," Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said. "They should not be subjected to restrictions that are not based on science."

The World Health Organisation said it feared the quarantine measures could put people off volunteering to go to Africa.

"We desperately need international health workers ... They are really the key to this response," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

Australia is the first rich country to impose a visa ban on the three countries hit by Ebola, prompting anger across Africa.

"Western countries are creating mass panic which is unhelpful in containing a contagious disease like Ebola," said Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo.

"If they create mass panic... this fear will eventually spread beyond ordinary people to health workers or people who transport the sick and then what will happen? Entire populations will be wiped out."

Eighty-two people who had contact with a toddler who died of Ebola in Mali last week are being monitored, the WHO said, but no new cases have been reported there.

Mali became the sixth West African country to report a case of the disease. Senegal and Nigeria both stopped the virus by tracking down people who had had contact with the person who brought it into their country and monitoring them for symptoms.

Major general in isolation

NATO said it was talking with the United Nations about what help the Western military alliance might be able to provide.

"The question is not whether NATO allies are contributing in fighting Ebola. The question is whether this is best organised through a NATO structure, and that's too early to say," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

American soldiers returning from West Africa are being isolated, even if they show no symptoms and are not believed to have been exposed to the virus.

Army said Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno ordered the 21-day monitoring period "to ensure soldiers, family members and their surrounding communities are confident that we are taking all steps necessary to protect their health".

The army isolated about a dozen soldiers on their return during the weekend to their home base in Vicenza, Italy. That included Major General Darryl Williams, the commander of US Army Africa, who oversaw the military's initial response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

"We are billeted in a separate area. There's no contact with the general population or with family. No one will be walking around Vicenza," Williams told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The US military has repeatedly stressed that its personnel are not interacting with Ebola patients and are instead building treatment units to help health authorities battle the epidemic. Up to 4,000 US troops may be deployed on the mission.

Dr Jeff Duchin, chairman of the public health committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said the isolation was not a necessary step. "From a public health perspective, we would not feel that isolation is appropriate," he said.

The decision goes well beyond established military protocols and came as President Barack Obama's administration sought to discourage quarantines being imposed by some US states.

Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), called for isolation of people at the highest risk for Ebola infection but said most returning medical workers would require monitoring without isolation.

"At CDC, we base our decisions on science and experience... And as the science and experience changes, we adopt and adapt our guidelines and recommendations," Frieden said.

Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground.

Its decision to refuse entry for anyone from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, while touted by the government as a necessary safety precaution, was criticised by experts and advocates as politically motivated and shortsighted.

Adam Kamradt-Scott, of the University of Sydney's Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, said the ban would do nothing to protect the country from Ebola while potentially having a negative public health impact by creating a general climate of panic.

Medical professionals say Ebola is difficult to catch and is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person and not transmitted by asymptomatic people. Ebola is not airborne.

"Anything that will dissuade foreign trained personnel from coming here to West Africa and joining us on the frontline to fight the fight would be very, very unfortunate," Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Ebola Emergency Response Mission, told Reuters in the Ghanian capital Accra.

He said that health workers returning to their own countries should be treated as heroes.

KIEV — Ukraine on Tuesday condemned as "destructive and provocative" Russia's stance towards elections organised by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine next Sunday, saying Moscow's recognition of the vote could wreck chances of bringing peace.

The November 2 vote would be being held in defiance of Ukrainian national elections last Sunday in which pro-Western parties, dedicated to holding the former Soviet republic together and negotiating a settlement to the conflict, triumphed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview with Russian media, said the pending vote being organised by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics would be important from the point of view of legitimising power".

"We expect the elections to be held as arranged and of course we will recognise their results," Lavrov told Izvestia paper and LifeNews TV.

In Kiev, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman said: "Today's absolutely destructive and provocative statements by Russian representatives, including the foreign minister, will be interpreted by the terrorists as encouragement by Russia to hold the illegal elections of November 2.

"The Kremlin is consciously making the situation worse... In such an extraordinarily fragile situation, this is an irresponsible step by Russia which can threaten the peace process," the spokesman, Yevhen Perebynis, said in a statement.

The dispute over the rebel vote has deepened the discord in the geo-political tussle between Russia and the West over the future of Ukraine, going back to the overthrow by protesters of the country's Moscow-backed president in February.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose own political group was a big winner in Sunday's parliamentary election, also weighed in against the "pseudo-elections" planned by the rebels.

They "grossly contradicted the spirit and letter" of international agreements reached in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, in September, he was quoted as saying on his website.

Western governments, at odds with Russia over the future of Ukraine whose pro-Western leadership wants to move the country westwards, have also condemned the November 2 separatist ballot.

On Monday US President Barack Obama expressed support for Kiev, saying Washington would not recognise any election held in separatist-held areas that did not conform with Ukrainian law.

The separatists, who are entrenched in strongholds in Donetsk and Luhansk, see the vote as a way to underscore their independence from Kiev.

Moscow supports the rebels, but it denies Ukrainian and Western accusations that its troops have taken part in fighting against government forces in a conflict that has killed more than 3,700 people.

Tilting Westwards

At the heart of Kiev's dispute with Moscow is the pro-Europe direction pursued by the new leadership under Poroshenko directed at shifting the country of 46 million people further away from Russia's orbit.

When street protests in Kiev overthrew the Moscow-backed leader, Victor Yanukovych, last February after he spurned a deal that would have deepened relations with the European Union, Moscow denounced what it termed a "fascist coup".

Russia went on to seize and annex the Crimean peninsula and back the separatist rebellions in the Russian-speaking east which historically are closer to Russian culture and outlook.

A further irritant in relations are supplies of gas to Ukraine from Russia, its biggest energy provider. Moscow has halted gas shipments to Ukraine in a row over the price and unpaid bills, alarming the EU which gets a third of its gas needs from Russia, half of this via pipelines through Ukraine.

With the vote count almost complete in Ukraine's election, the People's Front of Prime Minister Arsenic Yatseniuk held more than 22 per cent — slightly ahead of the Poroshenko bloc which was on 21.8 per cent.

With at least three other pro-Europe parties among those which are now certain to be represented in the 450-seat parliament, the outcome confirmed Ukraine's sharp tilt towards Europe away from Russia after months of turmoil and war.