Including: Tsunami; Iraq election; Palestinian president election; Bush inauguration; Auschwitz 60th Anniversary; Sudan peace signing; and more. ASIAN TSUNAMI KILLS OVER 230,000 PEOPLE ACROSS INDIAN OCEAN REGION The year 'started' the day after Christmas 2004 with the Asian tsunami. One of the most powerful earthquakes recorded, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale and centered off Sumatra, triggered a series of waves that devastated the coastal regions of countries across south east Asia. The raging waters dragged villagers out to sea, flung others inland and tore children from their parents arms. Fishing boats were smashed and beach hotels drowned in mud after waves up to 30 feet engulfed the shorelines. Many tourists lost their lives at popular resorts in the region. An estimated 250,000 people died with tens of thousands still unaccounted for. The scale and reach of the devastation was enormous, from Indonesia in the east, across to the coast of Africa, 4,000 miles away. All points between were hit, including the Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in aid was donated by individuals and pledged by governments across the globe. An international relief effort swung into action but in some areas help was slow to come, hampered by the complete devastation of roads and infrastructure. Locals, charities and individual volunteers helped each other as governments debated how best to proceed. In one Indonesian hamlet, villagers decided to rebuild their coastal homes on top of a nearby hill, but for many the reconstruction of their lives, homes and businesses would much longer. IRAQ ELECTION In Iraq another type of rebuilding was taking place. As an anti-U.S. insurgency formented following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the first free multi-party elections for half a century were held, the first building blocks of a new democracy. Across the country on January 30 voters braved the threats of violence and cast their ballots in millions. Kurds danced and women ulalated as they left the polling stations. But 44 people died in bloody attacks aimed at wrecking the poll. The results showed a turn out of 58 percent - ranging from 89 percent in the Kurdish region of Dahuk to two percent in the Sunni region of Anbar, and returned a 275-member Transitional National Assembly that will draft a permanent constitution and pave the way for new national elections at the end of 2005. The new government, headed by Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari (appointed in April 2005) has been beset by the problems of security and a nationwide insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and splits amongst its Shia and Sunni Muslim and Kurdish factions. Iraq Body Count, a British anti-war group that has compiled a death toll based on media reports says between 26,690 and 30,051 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the 30 months since the war began. By late October, 2000 U.S. soldiers has been killed in the conflict. **election results: National Assembly - percent of vote by party - United Iraqi Alliance 48.2%, Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan 25.7%, Iraqi List 13.8%, others 12.3%; number of seats by party - United Iraqi Alliance 140, Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan 75, Iraqi List 40, others 20** PALESTINE Elsewhere in the Middle East, there was hope that the election of a successor to former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would help invigorate the peace process with Israel. The streets of Ramallah rang to the sound of celebratory gunfire and car horns on the evening of January 9, as Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, won 62 percent of the vote despite a boycott by Hamas and other militant groups. The mandate gave strength to his calls to end violence against Israel and resulted in an invitation to the White House and a pledge of help from U.S. president George W Bush. BUSH INAUGURATION January also saw the inauguration of the U.S. president. George W Bush was sworn in for his final term on a cold and wintry day, January 20. Winner of a closely fought election, Bush began his second period of office with the lowest approval rating of a returning president for 30 years. Anti-Iraq war campaigners staged protests during the ceremony and the address, during which Bush vowed to advance democracy abroad. Bush led the United States into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. An insurgency in Iraq has killed thousands following the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and some observers fear a Vietnam-style military quagmire with no end in sight. Many anti-war activists want foreign troops out of the country. AUSCHWITZ 60TH ANNIVARSARY Closure of another kind was sought by survivors of the Nazi death camps at events marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. A snow-bound ceremony at the concentration camp in Poland brought together world leaders and the remaining elderly survivors of the 7,000 prisoners who were released by shocked Soviet soldiers as the Germans withdrew on January 27, 1945 Surrounded by barbed wire and remnants of the killing machine used by the Nazis to gas and incinerate camp inmates, a Jewish cantor blew a symbolic shofar (Ram's horn) and survivors wrapped in blankets and wearing their prisoner caps watched as candles were lit by dignitaries, who vowed the World War Two genocide must never be forgotten or repeated. Up to 1.5 million people, including more than one million jews, died at Auschwitz-Birkenau set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in 1940 as the main centre of their "Final Solution." SUDAN PEACE SIGNING In Africa, Sudan celebrated a peace deal to end 20 years of civil war in the south of the country, despite threats of a new genocide. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir edged his state back towards the international fold at a ceremony in Nairobi. But the deal to end strife in the south does not cover a new humanitarian crisis in the western Darfur region, where the United Nations says genocide has taken place. Bashir has overseen his country's transformation into a radical Islamic state but a cornerstone of the peace agreement says sharia law will not apply in the south. The application of sharia law across the ethnically and religiously diverse country was the catalyst for the war erupting in 1983. After years of fighting the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), Bashir's government forged the interim peace deal in 2002,even offering southerners the right to secede after an interim period.
Including: Tsunami; Iraq election; Palestinian president election; Bush inauguration; Auschwitz 60th...
