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. Russia bombs towns around Grozny by Ruslan Musayev Associated Press Grozny, Russia — Russian warplanes and artillery pummeled towns around Grozny and other parts of Chechnya on Sunday, and Chechen officials claimed that at least 39 people had been killed and dozens more injured in the attacks. The Russian military acknowledged that it fired mis siles at targets around the towns of Bamut and Achkoi-Martan, but said they were aimed at rebel mil itary positions. Chechen leaders again called for peace talks with Russia, demanding they be held on neutral territory with 0 international mediation. “The conditions for the peace talks are a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, or Russia's complete capitulation,” Chechen Vice Pres ident Vakha Arsanov told The Associated Press. The Chechen military reported that the Russians “heavily pounded” villages to the north and east of the capital, Grozny. It said that a pre-dawn Russian rocket attack on the town of Vedeno, 18 miles southeast of the capital, killed 23 people and wounded 58. Russian artillery also taigeted the village of Samash ki, near Chechnya's western border, killing 16 people and wounding 41 others, the Chechens said. The casualty figures couldn’t be confirmed, and the Russian command didn’t offer any estimates of its own. It stressed that the attacks were aimed at militants rather than civilians. The Chechens didn’t say if the casualties included rebel fighters. “The militants are strengthening their positions,” said Col. Gennady Alyokhin, a Russian military spokesman, and Russian troops are responding with “some artillery strikes against the rebels' bases.” The Chechen military command claimed that its fighters downed an 11-20 Russian reconnaissance plane overnight with a Stinger missile, after shooting down two warplanes Saturday. The Russian air force vehe mently denied losing any of its planes in recent days. Grozny was calm Sunday, though most people ven tured out of basement bomb shelters only to cook food on campfires in the streets. Electricity and gas in the city have been shut off. Some residents shopped for food at the city's cen tral open-air market, which reopened Sunday after a A Thursday night bombing killed at least 143 people. But they didn't linger, fearing Russian attacks. A group of Russian leaders from regions surrounding Chechnya pressed for negotiations to end the fighting. Ruslan Aushev, the president of neighboring In gushetia, said that the leaders had met Saturday and called for Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president, to meet with Russian President Boris Yeltsin or with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Interfax news agency re ported. Russian officials have repeatedly balked at sugges tions for negotiations, saying the war is aimed against terrorists. Russia sent troops into Chechnya at the end of September, ostensibly to wipe out militants who in vaded neighboring Dagestan this summer and were blamed for a series of apartment explosions in Russia that killed some 300 people. But the Russian offensive increasingly appears aimed at restoring Russian control over Chechnya. Aushev said that some 169,700 Chechens had tak en shelter in Ingushetia, and that the republic was “suf focating under such a tide of refugees,” Interfax re ported. Sifting through the ashes Special to The Gamecock Chechens look at the mins of a market in Grozny, Russia, on Friday. Russian officials gave contradictory accounts of whether their forces I were responsible for the attack on Grozny. -W- m -# W Wll veterans protest internment marker by Deborah Baker Associated Press ^ Santa Fe, N.M. — It doesn’t sound like a big deal: a w bronze plaque on a boulder at the edge of a dusty park where dogs run. But to a handful of World War II veterans, the pro posal to mark the site of a long-ago internment camp for Japanese Americans is a bitter affront. “Why can't they wait till I'm dead?” asked 88-year old Manuel Armijo, who survived the brutal Bataan death march and 3 1/2 years as a Japanese prisoner. “It just opens up old wounds. And it hurts." Armijo was among 1,800 young New Mexicans sent during World VVhr II to the Philippines, half of whom died. In his hometown, a city that proudly promotes its rich, varied history, the internment camp for “enemy aliens,” United States residents who were Japanese, is barely a footnote. Nothing marks the 28-acre site, now an established residential neighborhood. No exhibit or archive tells the story of the camp, run by the federal government from 194246. Thomas Chavez, director of the Palace of the Gov ernors, the state's history museum, decided a couple of years ago to rectify that omission. “It's history. It's what I should do,” Chavez said. He set up a committee that did some research and eventually recommended a plaque at a city park on a hilltop overlooking the site. Private donations would pay for it. The City Council votes on the plaque Wednes day. “This marker is placed here as a reminder that his tory is a valuable teacher only if we do not forget our past,” is part of the proposed wording. More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese ances try, most of them U.S. citizens, were removed from their homes on the West Coast and from parts of Hawaii and taken to internment camps during World War II. The federal government in 1988 formally apolo gized for the treatment and has paid at least $1.6 billion in reparations.' The Santa Fe camp, operated by the Justice De partment and surrounded by barbed wire, was largely for Japanese-born men who were professionals and com munity leaders, and therefore considered more of a threat. Some had iived in the United States for decades, but under federal law couldn’t become citizens. More than 4,500 people passed through the camp. They were neither soldiers, nor prisoners of war. But some Bataan veterans, still bitter after a half-century, contrast the internees’ treatment to their own. -1 I— Union tragedy remembered Staff Reports Associated Press Union —Susan Smith sent her two sons rolling down a boat ramp to their deaths in John D. Long Lake five years ago today. The deaths changed the lives of jnany who were shocked to discover what hap pened, particularly her husband. At first, Susan Smith, then 23, told Union County sheriff’s deputies a black man carjacked her and kidnapped her children. The story spread across the na tion and sent a crush of media to the mill town of 10,000. Nine days later, Smith confessed to Union County Sheriff Howard Wells that she’d pushed the car down the boat ramp. Smith’s former husband, David, re calls seeing the empty car seats that held his sons as they drowned. They were . found in an evidence room, and a court official asked Smith if he’d like to see them before they were destroyed. David Smith, who divorced Susan Smith before her July 1995 trial start ed, sat and pondered what had happened to his little boys in the two gray seats that were meant to keep them safe from harm. “You could tell [the seats] had been wet, and the straps had been cut so diey could get their bodies out of the car,” David Smith told the Herald-Journal p{ Spartanburg. “I sat there for almost an hour and just looked at them.” DOBSON VOLUNTEER SERVICE PROGRAM The Office of Community Service Programs * I K Use your Skills to Help Others © Help a Child Learn to Read O Learn Issues Affecting South Carolina © Gain Valuable Work Experience © Make life long friendships © Earn Academic Credit © Serve Others © Change Someone’s Life! t APPLICATION DEADLINE: I OCTOBER 27,1999 To Apply Contact: THE OFFICE OF COMMUNITY SERVICE PROGRAMS Campus Activities Center Russell House 777-5780 http://www.sa.sc.edu/stlife/ocsp/ocsp.htm Department of Student Life/Division of Student and Alumni Services I TD LOVE TO HELP YOU CRAM FOR YOUR HUMAN SEXUALITY QUIZ, BUT I’M GOING BACK TO MY ROOM TO CHECK MY EMAIL.” fun,. myTalk.com Listen and respond to your email over any phone- FREE■ Earn extra cash as an on-campus myTalk rep. 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