World

GENEVA/FREETOWN — The spread of Ebola seems to have stabilised in Guinea, one of three West African states worst-hit by the disease, but a lack of beds and resistance in affected communities means its advance continues elsewhere, the World Health Organisation said.

Underscoring drastic measures being taken to halt the worst outbreak on record of the deadly virus, Sierra Leone put three more districts — home to over a million people and major mining operations — under indefinite quarantine.

An outbreak that began in a remote corner of Guinea has taken hold of much of neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing nearly 3,000 people in just over six months. Senegal and Nigeria have recorded cases but, for now, contained them.

World leaders and international organisations have warned of a crisis threatening the stability and economies of a string of fragile West African states. But they have also been criticised for doing too little too late.

"The upward epidemic trend continues in Sierra Leone and most probably also in Liberia," the WHO said in its latest update on the disease, which has killed about half of those confirmed and suspected to have been infected.

"However, the situation in Guinea, although still of grave concern, appears to have stabilised: between 75 and 100 new confirmed cases have been reported in each of the past five weeks," it added.

Experts are trying to straighten out data from the ground, where already weak local health systems over been overrun by one of the world's deadliest diseases, muddying information on the current situation.

But most warn that the number of cases recorded so far represents a fraction of the real total, with many victims unable find places to get treated or unwilling to come forward due to fears over the disease.

WHO said earlier this week that the total number of infections could reach 20,000 by November, months earlier than previously forecast. US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January if nothing was done.

Difficulties of isolation

Overnight, Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the districts of Port Loko and Bombali in the north and Moyamba in the south would be quarantined.

The step means five of the country's 14 districts are now isolated. The districts of Kailahum and Kenema, in the northeast close to Guinea and Liberia, were already quarantined.

"The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulties for our people in those districts," Koroma said. "[But] the life of everyone and the survival of our country take precedence over these difficulties."

The extension of the quarantine follows a nationwide lockdown at the weekend that Koroma said had been a success but exposed "areas of greater challenges", including the need to rapidly build more treatment centres.

Under the new measures, people will be able to travel through quarantined districts during daylight hours so long as they do not stop. The World Food Programme is meant to provide food to residents living there.

The Ebola outbreak comes a decade into Sierra Leone and Liberia's recovery from intertwined civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1990s.

In this time, both nations have secured billions of dollars in investment, especially from mining firms looking to tap into their vast iron ore reserves.

However, firms operating in the region have appealed to world leaders to do more to fight the outbreak, which they said threatened the region's stability. Border closures and travel bans have hamstrung trade as well as the aid response.

Sierra Leone's new restrictions are likely to hit mining firms. Port Loko is home to London Mining's concession and African Minerals has its rail and port services there.

Axel Addy, Liberia's minister for commerce and industry, said his nation had secured imports of basic food staples until December, but the blow to its mining sector may trigger a recession next year.

Screening outsiders

Having spread slowly at first, a spike in Ebola cases and warnings of exponential spread in recent weeks spooked international leaders into greater pledges of action. The response is slowly picking up momentum.

Governments and organisations from across the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Cuba, have pledged military and civilian personnel alongside cash and medical supplies. But aid workers say it is still not enough.

The WHO said Liberia had 315 bed spaces for Ebola patients and aid agencies have promised to set up 440 more, but the country needs a further 1,550 beds that nobody has yet offered to provide. In Sierra Leone, 297 planned new beds would almost double existing capacity, but a further 532 were needed.

The lack of beds means those infected with Ebola are still being turned away from hospitals and must be cared for at home, where they risk infecting yet more people.

As a result, part of the aid response is now focusing on setting up care centres in communities and training locals, including 11,000 teachers in Liberia, to educate people about how to combat the disease.

The first 9,000 of a planned 50,000 kits — containing protective gowns, gloves and masks for family members to look after Ebola sufferers — arrived in Liberia, according to UNICEF.

However, WHO said these efforts were still being resisted in neglected, remote communities with a distrust of outsiders, like the one where eight members of an Ebola team were killed in a attack in southeast Guinea last week.

"There are reports from Fassankoni, Guinea, that communities have set up roadblocks to screen entering response teams."

KIEV — President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday proclaimed an end to the "most dangerous" part of Ukraine's pro-Russian uprising and the start of a post-war recovery that would lead to an EU membership bid in 2020.

But the upbeat message was clouded by new deadly clashes and a defiant decision by guerrillas to hold independent elections on November 2 that Poroshenko said he hoped Russia would not recognise.

The pro-Western leader told the first press conference since his June inauguration that he would never let a resurgent Kremlin and gunmen entrenched in Ukraine's eastern rust belt halt Kiev's ambition to break out of Russia's embrace.

"We suffered for too long in the socialist camp to let someone lower an iron curtain across our western border," Poroshenko said in reference to Ukraine's Soviet past.

"I have no doubt that the biggest, most dangerous part of the war is already behind us thanks to the heroism of Ukrainian soldiers."

The five-month conflict has killed more than 3,200 people and driven 650,000 from their homes across a bomb-scarred region that once served as the country's economic driving engine.

Poroshenko showed he was determined to continue on a Westward path as he unveiled a comprehensive package of social and economic reforms, dubbed Strategy 2020, which he said "will prepare Ukraine to apply for membership in the European Union in six years".

The plunge in relations between Moscow and Kiev came after the February ouster of a Moscow-backed leader, followed by the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea and its alleged backing of a bloody pro-Russian revolt.

An unexpected militia counteroffensive at the end of last month was only halted when Poroshenko agreed to a truce the Kremlin helped partially draft.

The plan called for rebel-held regions to hold local council elections on December 7 to help restore law and order.

But separatist leaders soon objected because it gave them only limited self-rule for three years. They now plan to form their own "Supreme Soviet" parliament and elect a formal government.

"I hope that neither Russia nor the rest of the world recognise elections called by self-proclaimed terrorist organisations in violation of Ukrainian law," Poroshenko said.

EU and NATO ambitions 

Poroshenko's revival programme includes 60 proposals to improve his country's chances of European Union membership — a bid the wealthier European nations currently view with mistrust.

The proposals include efforts to tackle rampant corruption and reform the country's bribe-infested justice system.

Poroshenko also promised to gain "energy independence" — a reference to Ukraine's heavy reliance on Russian natural gas.

A politically-charged energy price dispute — whose end EU officials will try to broker in Berlin on Friday — saw Russia cut off Ukraine's gas taps on June 16.

The row, along with the escalating costs of war and the shutdown of giant industries in the east, have only accelerated Ukraine's economic implosion.

Growth is expected to slow by 7 to 10 per cent this year and put still more pressure on Poroshenko ahead of parliamentary polls on October 26.

Poroshenko has responded to charges of weakness in the face of Russia by announcing plans to seek NATO membership — a step the Kremlin views as a direct national security threat.

The president reaffirmed his intentions on Thursday by tweeting that he had just "instructed the Cabinet minister to revoke Ukraine's non-aligned [nation] status".

Sealing Russian border

Both Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of supporting the rebels in eastern Ukraine by sending in elite forces and heavy weapons.

Russia denies the allegations and dismisses NATO satellite imagery purporting to show Russian troops in Ukraine as fabrications designed to back the military alliance's expansion towards its border.

But rebels are continuing to use sophisticated weapons to launch sporadic raids and on Thursday a soldier was killed on the outskirts of the government-held southeastern port of Mariupol.

Ending weeks of speculation, Poroshenko on Thursday ordered his government to prepare a temporary closure of the 2,000-kilometre land frontier with Russia as part of efforts to halt its "intervention" in Ukraine's state affairs.

A senior Ukrainian security source told AFP that the border security measures would affect all road traffic and come into force "soon".

A spokesman for Ukraine's state border service said no additional security measures had yet been taken and that cars were still allowed to pass along the dozens of border crossings linking the two countries.

It was not clear how Ukraine intended to implement the measures along the 260-kilometre stretch of the border controlled by insurgents in the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

But the decision look set to further hurt Ukraine's recovery chances by halting trade between the mutually dependent nations and increasing the likelihood of Russia adopting retaliatory steps.

UNITED NATIONS — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday slammed Russia's "aggression" in Ukraine but offered to lift sanctions against Moscow if it threw its weight behind an unravelling peace deal with Kiev.

The outstretched hand to Moscow came a day after pro-Russian guerrillas brushed off Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's limited self-rule offer and announced plans to set up their own parliaments in self-organised November 2 polls.

The autonomy offer was at the heart of the pro-Western leader's attempts to quell a revolt that has devastated the ex-Soviet nation's economy and revived a Cold War-era mistrust between Moscow and the West.

A tough-talking Obama told a special UN General Assembly session in New York that Russia was on the wrong side of history in Ukraine. But he also stressed that a ceasefire deal agreed earlier this month offered an opening towards diplomacy and peace.

"Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition," Obama told the General Assembly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in attendance.

"We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression." 

But if Moscow "changes course", he added, "then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia's role in addressing common challenges".

Poroshenko himself has issued no comment since seeing his high-stakes bid to resolve a crisis that has killed more than 3,200 people so openly challenged just days after it was unveiled.

Poroshenko had proposed that rebel-held parts of the Russian-speaking east hold local council elections December 7 that would help war-scarred towns and cities restore basic services but not push ahead with any independence claims.

But the Kremlin appeared ready to ratchet up tensions by focusing state media on claims of the bodies of four tortured civilians being discovered in an eastern coal mine that had allegedly served as a Ukrainian military base.

The unconfirmed reports topped the headlines on Kremlin-run TV networks that provide most Russians with their news. The foreign minister said that "most likely, we are looking at war crimes that can never be justified".

Both the press office of Ukraine's eastern campaign and the National Guard — a part-volunteer force Moscow frequently brands as "fascists" — denied ever having control of the Donetsk industrial region mine.

Fresh shelling halted AFP attempts to visit the site.

Big guns pull back

Both Kiev and its Western allies fear Putin is trying to turn the east of Ukraine into a "frozen conflict" similar to those that have already given Moscow effective control over parts of the ex-Soviet nations Georgia and Moldova.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — seen by some analysts as the leader of Kiev's hawkish "war camp" — is expected to raise these concerns when he takes his turn before the UN General Assembly later Wednesday.

Yatsenyuk will make sure "discussions continue on arms sales and more direct support to Ukraine's stand against Russia", Kiev's SP Adviser's brokerage said in a report.

The string of recent peace overtures have helped calm the deadliest fighting and allowed some of the 650,000 people driven out of their homes by the conflict start rebuilding their lives.

Both sides have also begun pulling back their biggest guns and tanks from the front line in order to establish a 30-kilometre buffer zone that could be overseen by monitors from the OSCE pan-European security group.

The Kremlin has welcomed the withdrawal as a sign of Poroshenko admitting he did not need a war fought "until there are no more Ukrainians left standing".

Eurasia Group political risk consultancy said the current terms of the peace deal "yields Moscow an acceptable level of control over Ukraine and avoids further sanctions”.

"While the near term will bring some fragile calm, the fundamental clashes that underpin this entire crisis cannot stay hidden for long," it warned.

BANGALORE, India — India won Asia's race to Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit after a 10-month journey on a tiny budget.

Scientists at mission control let out wild cheers and applause after the gold-coloured craft fired its main engine and slipped into the planet's orbit following a 660 million kilometre voyage.

"History has been created. We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible," a jubilant Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) base near Bangalore.

"The success of our space programme is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation," Modi said, grinning broadly and embracing the ISRO's chairman.

The success of the mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with its Asian rivals for success in space.

Indians from ministers to students and office workers took to Twitter to express pride, with the Hindi slogan "JaiHind" or "Hail India" trending on the microblogging site.

India has been trying to keep up with neighbouring giant China, which has poured billions of dollars into its programme and plans to build a manned space station by the end of the decade.

At just $74 million, the mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity". 

It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday. 

India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.

No single nation had previously succeeded at its first go, although the European Space Agency, which represents a consortium of countries, pulled off the feat at its first attempt.

NASA sends congratulations 

Scientists announced at 8:02am (0232 GMT) that Mangalyaan had entered the orbit. Now the probe is expected to study the planet's surface and scan its atmosphere for methane, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form.

Mangalyaan is carrying a camera, an imaging spectrometer, a methane sensor and two other scientific instruments.

NASA congratulated India's "Mars arrival", welcoming Mangalyaan, which means Mars vehicle in Hindi, in a tweet to "the missions studying the Red Planet".

The European Space Agency also offered congratulations, tweeting "welcome to the club!" 

Indian engineers employed an unusual "slingshot" method for Mangalyaan's voyage, which began when it blasted off from India's southern spaceport on November 5 last year.

Lacking enough rocket power to blast directly out of Earth's atmosphere and gravitational pull, it orbited the Earth for several weeks while building up enough velocity to break free.

Critics of the programme say a country that struggles to feed its people adequately and where roughly half have no toilets should not be splurging on space travel.

But supporters say it is the perfect opportunity to showcase India's technological prowess as well as a chance for some one-upmanship on its rival Asian superpower.

"It's a low-cost technology demonstration," said Pallava Bagla, who has written a book on India's space programme.

"The rivalry between regional giants China and India exists in space too and this gives India the opportunity to inch ahead of China [and capture more of the market]," Bagla told AFP.

China offered its congratulations.

"This is the pride of India, the pride of Asia, and is a landmark of the progress of humankind's exploration in outer space," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a daily briefing.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh announced the mission launch in a speech on independence day 2012, shortly after China's attempt flopped when it failed to leave Earth's atmosphere.

India has launched 40 satellites for foreign nations since kick-starting its space programme five decades ago. But China launches bigger satellites.

ISRO scientists said the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, had "proved" India's "technological capabilities" and showed it was capable of venturing further.

"MOM is a major step towards our future missions in inter-planetary space," ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters.

The probe is expected to circle Mars for six months, about 500 kilometres from its surface, and send data back to Earth.

KIEV — A ceasefire in east Ukraine is being upheld by both government troops and Russia-backed rebels, a senior Ukrainian official said Tuesday, in a first step towards enforcing a truce that has been riddled by repeated violations since it was imposed earlier this month.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, told journalists that the ceasefire had been upheld since late Monday, making it the first night in weeks that there have been no civilians killed or residential buildings shelled.

Lysenko said there also had been no casualties among Ukrainian forces.

Russia-backed rebels in east Ukraine said they were pulling back heavy artillery from frontline positions in response to similar moves by the Ukrainian army. Those manoeuvres are part of a new peace agreement signed Saturday, which requires both sides to remove heavy artillery from the front line, creating a buffer zone that would allow the
ceasefire to be more effectively enforced.

Rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko told Interfax news agency Tuesday that his forces were withdrawing heavy artillery from certain areas on the front line, but said that "in those places where Ukraine does not withdraw its artillery, we also will not withdraw”.

Despite claims from both sides that the ceasefire was being upheld, the city council of Donetsk said in statements published online that, while the city was calm late on Monday and early on Tuesday, later in the day regular explosions could be heard in the north of the city, where fighting has centred on a government-held airport for weeks.

In Zhdanivka, a village just 35 kilometres northeast of Donetsk, which until recently was under Ukrainian control, residents told The Associated Press that government troops had withdrawn two days ago.

The neighbouring village of Nyzhnya Krynka, which is slightly closer to Donetsk, was still under rebel control, but there was no sign of heavy artillery weapons in the area. The scars of war, however, are still visible in the village, which was caught in the crossfire of heavy shelling between the Ukrainian and rebel sides in recent weeks.

Five bodies could be seen in a mass grave near a local mine.

Another mass grave was dedicated to the rebels: their bodies weren't visible, but four gravestones, wreathed with flowers, were engraved with the epitaph: "They died for Putin's lies." It appeared to be an expression of anger at the Russian government, led by President Vladimir Putin, for not assisting the rebels further.

Ukraine and the West say Russia has provided personnel, arms and expertise to the rebel forces, a claim Moscow denies.

LONDON — New estimates by the World Health Organisation and the US health agency are warning that the number of Ebola cases could soar dramatically — the US says up to 1.4 million by mid-January in two nations alone — unless efforts to curb the outbreak are significantly ramped up.

Since the first cases were reported six months ago, the tally of cases in West Africa has reached an estimated 5,800 illnesses and over 2,800 deaths. But the UN health agency has warned that tallies of recorded cases and deaths are likely to be gross underestimates of the toll that the killer virus is wreaking on West Africa.

The UN health agency said Tuesday that the true death toll for Liberia, the hardest-hit nation in the outbreak, may never be known, since many bodies of Ebola victims in a crowded slum in the capital, Monrovia, have simply been thrown into nearby rivers.

In its new analysis, WHO said Ebola cases are rising exponentially and warned the disease could sicken people for years to come without better control measures. The WHO's calculations are based on reported cases only.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, however, released its own predictions Tuesday for the epidemic's toll, based partly on the assumption that Ebola cases are being underreported.  The report says there could be up to 21,000 reported and unreported cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone by the end of this month and that cases could balloon to as many as 1.4 million by mid-January.

Experts caution those predictions don't take into account response efforts.

The CDC's numbers seem "somewhat pessimistic" and do not account for infection control efforts already under way, said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a Virginia Commonwealth University scientist who formerly led the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

In recent weeks, health officials worldwide have stepped up efforts to provide aid, but the virus is still spreading. There aren't enough hospital beds, health workers or even soap and water in the hardest-hit West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Last week, the US announced it would build more than a dozen medical centres in Liberia and send 3,000 troops to help. Britain and France have also pledged to build treatment centres in Sierra Leone and Guinea and the World Bank and UNICEF have sent more than $1 million worth of supplies to the region.

"We're beginning to see some signs in the response that gives us hope this increase in cases won't happen," said Christopher Dye, WHO's director of strategy and co-author of the study published by the New England Journal of Medicine, who acknowledged the predictions come with a lot of uncertainties.

"This is a bit like weather forecasting. We can do it a few days in advance, but looking a few weeks or months ahead is very difficult."

WHO also calculated the death rate to be about 70 per cent among hospitalised patients but noted many Ebola cases were only identified after they died.  Dye said there was no proof Ebola was more infectious or deadly than in previous outbreaks.

Outside experts questioned WHO's projections and said Ebola's spread would ultimately be slowed not only by containment measures but by changes in people's behaviour.

"It's a big assumption that nothing will change in the current outbreak response," said Dr. Armand Sprecher, an infectious diseases specialist at Doctors Without Borders.

"Ebola outbreaks usually end when people stop touching the sick," he said. "The outbreak is not going to end tomorrow but there are things we can do to reduce the case count."

Local health officials have launched campaigns to educate people about the symptoms of Ebola and not to touch the sick or the dead.

Sprecher was also unconvinced that Ebola could continue causing cases for years. He said diseases that persist for years usually undergo significant changes to become less deadly or transmissible.

Dye and colleagues wrote they expected the numbers of cases and deaths from Ebola to continue rising from hundreds to thousands of cases per week in the coming months — and reach 21,000 by early November. He said it was worrisome that new cases were popping up in areas that hadn't previously reported Ebola, like in parts of Guinea.

Scientists said the response to Ebola in the next few months would be crucial.

"The window for controlling this outbreak is closing," said Adam Kucharski, a research fellow in infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong students on Monday began a week-long boycott of classes, gathering in their thousands for what democracy activists say will be a wider campaign of civil disobedience against China's refusal to grant the city unfettered democracy.

Student activists crowded onto a campus on the northern outskirts of the city, many sheltering from the hot summer sun under umbrellas and waving their faculty flags, as their leaders vowed to ratchet up their campaign if their demands were not met.

Democracy campaigners are locked in a showdown with authorities on the mainland after the former British colony's hopes for full universal suffrage were dashed by Beijing's plans to vet nominees who want to stand as its next leader.

A coalition of pro-democracy groups in the semiautonomous Chinese city, led by Occupy Central, have labelled the restrictions a "fake democracy". They have vowed a series of actions including a blockade of the central financial district.

The city's vocal student community on Monday became the first wing of that coalition to move from protests to direct action — starting a week of class boycotts designed to capture the public's imagination and bolster the pro-democracy fight.

"I don't think the Chinese government is trying to protect our rights so now we are coming out to fight for our basic needs," 20-year-old architecture student Wu Tsz-wing told AFP as she gathered with what organisers said were 13,000 others on the leafy campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

There was no estimate given by police, who usually quote much lower numbers during similar protests.

Arika Ho, a second-year Hong Kong University journalism student, added: "I want this place [Hong Kong] to be a better place, so I want to stand up and join with others collectively to force some changes."

Alex Chow, chairman of the influential Hong Kong Federation of Students, said student groups would intensify their protests if their call for Hong Kongers to nominate their own candidate to lead the city is ignored.

"We demand the government to respond to our call to endorse civil nominations," he told the crowd.

"If we hear nothing from them, the students, the people will definitely upgrade the movement to another level," Chow shouted.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong has become a regular gathering point for students agitating for greater democratic freedoms in the city.

The campus boasts a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue which students gathered around during the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Beijing that were brutally crushed by the state.

The Hong Kong strike could breathe new life into the democracy campaign, which recently lost some steam after its senior leaders conceded that Beijing is highly unlikely to change its mind whatever they do.

Leaders from Occupy on Monday said they were encouraged by the student turnout.

"The future belongs to them [the students]," co-founder Benny Tai told AFP.

"I think that if they can stand up and demonstrate determination in wanting democracy in Hong Kong, I think that will be a clear message to Beijing and the government."

Some considering emigration 

But in Beijing, the rhetoric in official media has remained unrelenting against any concessions to the Hong Kong democracy movement, which some in the Communist regime see as an insidious threat to their rule of the country as a whole.

"The basic policy of the Chinese government on Hong Kong hasn't changed and will not change," Chinese president Xi Jinping told Hong Kong business delegates, including Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing, on a visit to Beijing Monday.

But he added that the "one country, two systems" deal, which guarantees greater freedoms for Hong Kong than seen on the mainland, was not under threat as it meets "the interest of the country and Hong Kong, and also the interest of foreign investors".

Tensions in the southern Chinese city are at their highest in years over rising inequality and Beijing's perceived political interference.

More than one in five Hong Kongers are considering emigrating because of the political climate, according to a poll by the Chinese University of Hong Kong released Sunday.

The poll also revealed widespread pessimism over the city's political future. On a scale of zero to 10, with zero being "extremely pessimistic", the average response was 4.22.

KIEV — The Ukrainian military said Monday it was preparing to pull back its guns from the frontline in the separatist east as a fragile truce with pro-Russian insurgents appeared to be taking hold.

Rebel leaders also said they were ready to give peace a chance after five months of bloodletting that set off the most serious East-West crisis since the Cold War.

Across the rebel-held regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, the level of violence appears to have subsided although Kiev said it lost two soldiers in overnight raids by "armed gangs".

The deaths bring to 39 the number of Ukrainian troops and civilians killed since the warring sides signed a September 5 truce that NATO's top military commander warned at the weekend was holding "in name only".

But hopes of peace gathered pace after the ceasefire was reinforced Saturday by another deal signed in Minsk calling for the withdrawal of fighters to allow the creation of a 30-kilometre buffer zone.

"We are making preparations to move back our heavy weapons 15 kilometres from the frontline," said Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko.

'There is a chance' 

The "deputy prime minister" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Andrei Purgin, said the rebels were ready to carry out their side of the bargain even if it was "with great difficulty".

"Show me a conflict that stopped simply because some document was signed. That just doesn't happen," he told AFP, but added that there was progress.

"There is a chance. We need to work on it and then there will be an even greater chance."

President Petro Poroshenko also remarked Sunday on the apparent "de-escalation" but warned that Ukraine would defend itself with renewed vigour should the nine-point Minsk plan collapse.

The OSCE pan-European security group has 80 observers on the ground to check compliance with the truce on the frontline and Ukraine's porous border with Russia.

But the Donetsk city government said the coal mining hub — abandoned by nearly half its 1 million residents since hostilities first erupted in April — experienced "no active combat" for the second day running.

And in another sign of easing tensions, the overnight passenger train service between Kiev and Lugansk resumed after a two-month rupture, with the number of carriages almost doubled because of high demand.

The Minsk deal however puts on the back burner all issues concerning the claims by the separatist regions for full independence from Kiev.

Lawmakers last week backed Poroshenko's decision to hand the war-scarred territory three years of effective autonomy, and grant amnesty to fighters on both sides.

Poroshenko said the "special status" was the only way out of bloodshed that has killed nearly 3,000 people and threatened Ukraine's survival in the face of what Kiev views as Russia's expansionist threat.

The war "cannot be won by military means alone”, Poroshenko told the nation in a televised interview Sunday.

NATO says Russia still has troops in Ukraine, although Moscow denies ever sending forces across the border.

But the self-rule law has been pilloried by nationalist Ukrainian politicians jockeying for position ahead of October 26 parliamentary elections.

Their fear that Poroshenko essentially conceded defeat to the Kremlin has been reinforced by rebels who claim they are no longer bound to Kiev and are free to govern their regions as independent states.

"Let them call this a 'special status' if they wish. But if the laws of Ukraine do not cover a particular region, that effectively recognises its independence — only in more veiled terms," Lugansk separatist "prime minister" Igor Plotnitsky said.

Army discontent

The Kremlin has signalled it is satisfied with ambiguities surrounding the long-term status of the east and is treating Poroshenko as a leader who has lost the will to fight.

Poroshenko "has started to realise he does not need a war to the bitter end — in other words, until there are no more Ukrainians left standing", Kremlin Chief-of-Staff Sergei Ivanov told the Rossiyskaya Gazeta government daily.

Analysts warned that Poroshenko's vow to call off the truce if there was a spike in rebel activity had failed to convince many soldiers who had lost their comrades in battle and now felt betrayed by Kiev.

"Our troops view the ceasefire as a concession to the separatists," Ukrainian military analyst Sergiy Zgurec said.

"This is causing discontent in the military's rank and file."

KABUL — Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah believes the title of president of Afghanistan has been stolen from him twice — but this time he has secured a compromise role which will give him a hand on the tiller.

Abdullah, 54, has wanted revenge since the 2009 election, when he came second to Hamid Karzai in the first-round vote and then pulled out of the run-off, alleging that fraud would be used to fix the result.

This year, he again believes that massive fraud denied him victory in the June 14 run-off election after he finished comfortably ahead of his rival Ashraf Ghani in the first round.

But Sunday's final results confirmed Ghani had won the presidency, hours after Abdullah signed up to a "national unity government".

The price he exacted for accepting defeat was the right to nominate a chief executive officer (CEO) — effectively a prime minister, who will serve under the president.

A pro-Western, religiously moderate politician, Abdullah has spent recent years building ties with tribal leaders who hold the key to power, as well as staying close to the US and other major donor nations.

Abdullah, who started off as an eye doctor in Kabul, was a member of Burhanuddin Rabbani's government during Afghanistan's 1992-1996 civil war, and made a name for himself abroad for his fluent English and courtly manner.

His formative political experience was as the right-hand man to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Tajik commander who led resistance to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and to the 1996-2001 Taliban regime.

Massoud was killed two days before the 9/11 attacks on the United States, leaving Abdullah fearing that the anti-Taliban resistance would collapse.

But the US reaction to the strikes on New York and Washington transformed the landscape overnight, with the Taliban soon ousted and Abdullah emerging as foreign minister in the new government under Karzai.

Abdullah used the post to give early warning to Washington that Taliban leaders ran the growing Afghan insurgency from neighbouring Pakistan — an issue that was dismissed until it became central to US foreign policy years later.

Mixed ethnic background

Born to a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother, Abdullah has long taken a strong stance promoting reconciliation between Tajiks and their traditional rivals the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

However, due to his closeness to Massoud, much of his core support still comes from Tajik and other Dari-speaking ethnic groups in the north.

He often said that he would refuse to again "swallow the bitter pill" of an unfair defeat, and he insisted until the last moment that he was the rightful president.

"We were the winner of the elections, we are the winner of elections based on the real and clean votes of the people," Abdullah said in a speech two weeks ago, his voice choking with emotion.

"We do not accept fraudulent election results, and we will not accept a fraudulent government for even one day."

Abdullah, a persuasive talker and elegant dresser, is married with three children.

On the campaign trail, he delivered scores of professional — if dry — speeches at rallies and meetings, often raising the spectre of electoral fraud.

His double name reportedly emerged to placate Westerners confused by his single moniker "Abdullah".

He may take up the new CEO role himself, but is seen as more likely to nominate a close ally to the key role.

KABUL — Former finance minister Ashraf Ghani was named Afghanistan's president-elect on Sunday after he signed a deal to share power with his opponent, ending months of turmoil over a disputed election that destabilised the nation as most foreign troops prepare to leave.

The announcement withheld the final election numbers, apparently as part of the political deal between Ghani and rival Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister who claimed the process was rigged against him.

"The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declares Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as the president of Afghanistan," commission chief Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani said.

The full results would be provided at a later date, Nuristani said, but did not say when. He acknowledged deep flaws in the June 14 run-off vote and said a UN-supervised audit was not adequate to weed out all the vote-rigging.

"Although the audit was comprehensive... [it] could not detect or throw out fraud completely," Nuristani said, without taking further questions.

Under the terms of the unity government deal signed on Sunday, Ghani will share power with a chief executive proposed by Abdullah. The two will share control over who leads key institutions such as the Afghan army and other executive decisions.

The new administration faces huge challenges in fighting an emboldened Taliban-led insurgency and paying its bills amid plummeting tax revenue.

It will also face significant difficulty in improving the lives of Afghans who face hard times as aid flows fall and as contracts with the NATO-led coalition dry up as most foreign troops leave by the end of the year.

The accord signed on Sunday was the finalisation of a broader power-sharing structure brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who swiftly welcomed its signing.

"These two men have put the people of Afghanistan first, and they've ensured that the first peaceful democratic transition in the history of their country begins with national unity."

One of Ghani's first acts would be to sign a long-delayed bilateral security agreement with the United States, as he has previously declared support for the pact to allow a small force of foreign troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014.

There is a risk that any instability could be exploited by neighbours, like Pakistan, whose past involvement in Afghan affairs have played a part in the conflicts that have dogged Afghanistan for decades.

"A difficult and challenged unity structure is still preferable to conflict between these two groups," said a US official in Kabul.

"Having them both working together within the government and direct their energies towards positive reform is again preferable to some of the alternatives."

Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, and Abdullah, whose main support comes from the country's second largest ethnic group, the Tajiks, face a difficult task forging unity in a country riven by ethnic and tribal rivalries.

Abdullah's accusations that the run-off election was rigged in Ghani's favour had raised fears of ethnic violence, which could have ignited a broader conflict.

"A spark could have dealt a strong blow to the political process, if today's deal had not happened," commented Waliullah Rahmani, director of the Kabul Centre for Strategic Studies. "But, we have crossed that moment."

Ghani is expected to be sworn in as president in about a week, according to Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi.

The settlement will also come as a relief for Afghans, who have watched the tortuous process play out since they first voted in April.