Reality Bites
A TELEVISED APPEAL on the BBC's Crimewatch UK programme was made by Metropolitan police on Tuesday night in a bid to catch those responsible for a nail bombing in Brixton on Saturday, which injured 48. Among the hurt was a 23-month-old boy, who had a four-inch nail successfully extracted from his head.
Detectives offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator. One caller to the programme, among the many calls received, spoke of people,equipped with binoculars acting suspiciously on a rooftop before the bombing.
Alan Fry, head of the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist squad, said that shopkeepers might remember selling a large quantity of nails to a man, possibly a stranger. Anyone who sold a black Head sports holdall was also asked to come forward.
On Monday responsiblity for the attack was claimed by a male caller representing the far-right group, Combat 18, calling from a phonebox yards from the scene of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Scotland Yard reacted with extreme caution, not least because no codeword was used by the caller. A nail bomb attack would mark a pronounced change in strategy by the racist group, which had previously concentrated on arson and sent parcel bombs to those in mixed race marriages in the public eye.
Police spokesmen have ruled out any IRA involvement in the attack.
25 PEOPLE were reported killed on Tuesday afternoon after two masked former pupils fired indiscriminately and threw bombs at Columbine High School in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, in what appears to have been a suicide mission. At least 21 other people were injured - 14 of them seriously - in the shooting which began at 11.30 local time.
The bodies of the two trenchcoat wearing assailants were discovered in the library by police. Up to 17 students had been held hostage by the two gunmen, who were members of a violence-obsessed local gang called the 'trenchcoat mafia'. The gang wears masks and long black trenchcoats.
Because there were no shots exchanged between police and gunmen, it appears it was a suicide mission. However, one girl caught in the library when the attack began said of one attacker that, "He said he would kill everyone who had been mean to him and his friends over the last year." Another pupil said, '"There was blood everywhere. They didn't care who they shot. They were just shooting". The attack is bound to reignite the debate in America concerning teenagers' motivation to become killers, which raged last year in the wake of the Jonesboro killings. The nation's often lax gun laws are sure to come under further scrutiny.
Following the shooting, President Clinton announced, "We must do more to reach out to our children." He went on to say that the children, teachers and parents must receive immediate counselling. '"The prayers of the American people are with you," the President said to the people of Littleton.
IN TWO major developments over the last week, the war in Kosovo appears to be spiralling out of the control of NATO policy-makers.
First, neighbouring Albania and Croatia have reported aggressive Yugoslav action on their borders. Serb ethnic cleansing now extends to villages inside Montenegro, the weaker, more pro-Western member of the Yugaslav federation. On Tuesday, Yugoslav and Albanian troops exchanged fire on the common border on Tuesday.
Andrea Angeli, a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), announced that monitors witnessed an intense skirmish, with one Albanian soldier reported injured.
Earlier, Croatia had complained that at least 200 Yugoslav soldiers had crossed from Montenegro into Croatian territory, and Ivan Simunovic, the Croatian ambassador to the UN, called on the Yugoslav forces to withdraw immediately. Yugoslav army troops based in Montenegro also closed a police-controled border crossing with Croatia.
On Monday, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea had finally revealed that NATO forces were likely to have been responsible for the deaths of some tens of Kosovan refugees in an accidental attack by American planes on a refuge convoy. NATO had sought to evade answers since Serbian television first began to release pictures of mutilated bombing victims last week.