Karzai urges Taliban to 'fight enemies'

PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai has urged Taliban insurgents to fight Afghanistan's enemies, an apparent reference to Pakistan after an Afghan soldier died in border clashes with the Pakistani army.

"Instead of killing their own people and destroying their own country, they must point their guns against places where plots are being made against Afghan prosperity and progress," Karzai told journalists in Kabul on Saturday.

An Afghan soldier died this week in clashes with the Pakistani army in the east of Afghanistan, sparking anti-Pakistan protests.

"They must stand along with this youth Mohammad Qasim who martyred to defend this soil," Karzai said, referring to the dead soldier.

Karzai's remarks are likely to worsen relations with Pakistan, whose military Afghanistan blames for supporting Taliban-led insurgents.

The United States and its allies want Pakistan to help broker peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban as the NATO-led military alliance prepares to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

The deadly clash took place along the Durand Line, a 19th-century British-drawn boundary through the tribal Pashtun region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan recognises the line as an international border between the two countries. Afghanistan disputes this.

Afghan officials say that the Pakistani government has built new military installations on Afghan soil near the line, which it wants removed.

Meanwhile, five US soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan.

The Kandahar governor's office said the soldiers were killed in the Maiwand district of the province.

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Italian quake-hit town of Onna rebuilds

RECONSTRUCTION work funded by the German government has started on a 13th century church in Onna, a village in the central Italian region of Abruzzo that was destroyed by an earthquake four years ago.

The 6.3-magnitude quake that hit the medieval town of L'Aquila and its surroundings on April 6, 2009, killed 309 people and left nearly 70,000 homeless. In Onna, 41 of 280 inhabitants were killed.

Italy's new culture minister, Massimo Bray, and Germany's public works minister, Peter Ramsauer, travelled to the village for the inauguration of the rebuilding works.

The German embassy in Rome said on Saturday that Berlin pledged 3.5 million euros ($A4.4 million) for Onna's church, where occupying German troops shot dead 17 civilians as a reprisal for partisan activities during World War II.

"On June 11, 1944, Germans inflicted on Onna unspeakable sufferings. With the sustainable reconstruction of the Church of Saint Peter Apostle we want to offer a proof of reconciliation and friendship between our two countries," Ramsauer said.

Il Centro, a local newspaper, wrote: "Everything that has been done in Onna in the last four years is due to the solidarity from the German Federal Republic," noting that reconstruction work should have started in 2010 but was blocked by "Italian bureaucracy".

Locals have repeatedly complained about slow progress on rebuilding. Work on the historic centre of L'Aquila started in recent weeks, and Italy's former regional aid minister, Fabrizio Barca, has told the DPA news agency that it would take "10-12 years" to be completed.

Barca quit office last week, as a new government was appointed. In his last report to parliament, he said that there were still more than 22,000 displaced people in the L'Aquila region and that 10 billion euros ($A12.8 billion) would be needed to fund the reconstruction.

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$100m Vic budget boost for Frankston line

TRAIN services are set to be more reliable on one of Melbourne's busiest rail services under a $100 million boost that will be part of this week's state budget, the government says.

Premier Denis Napthine will on Sunday announce a cash injection for the south-eastern Frankston line, which carries about 60,000 people every weekday.

The money will pay for track, signalling and power upgrades, which will in turn improve service reliability, he says.

"This $100 million will mean the Frankston line will also be able to accommodate the X'Trapolis trains, giving passengers the fastest, most reliable and most comfortable commute to and from the city," Dr Napthine said.

Poor service on the Frankston line was a key issue in the 2010 election, with a swathe of seats along the line, including Bentleigh, Mordialloc and Carrum, switching from Labor to the coalition.

Transport Minister Terry Mulder said one in three trains on the Frankston line ran late under Labor as at June 2010.

Over the past year, punctuality had jumped to 91 per cent, he said.

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Pakistan officials visit hurt prisoner

PAKISTANI embassy officials have visited a hospital in north India where a Pakistani prisoner is in critical condition in the intensive care unit after being attacked by an Indian inmate.

Convicted murderer Sanaullah Ranjay suffered multiple head injuries in a prison in Jammu in an apparent tit-for-tat attack after an Indian prisoner, Sarabjit Singh, was fatally assaulted in Pakistan.

On Friday, Ranjay was airlifted to a government hospital in the city of Chandigarh, 250km north of New Delhi.

A spokeswoman for the government hospital said Ranjay was in the intensive care unit and on a ventilator as his condition "continues to remain critical".

The Pakistani High Commission (embassy) officials "came to the hospital and we have given them Ranjay's medical update", added Manju Wadwalkar, the spokeswoman of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Hospital.

Ranjay, who hails from the city of Sialkot in Pakistan, was attacked by a prisoner who was identified as a former Indian army soldier nearly 24 hours after Singh's death in Lahore.

Singh died on Thursday in Pakistan and was cremated with state honours on Friday in his native village in northwestern India where hundreds of protesters shouted "Down with Pakistan!" as they gathered to pay their tributes.

Singh had been on death row after being convicted by a Pakistani court 16 years earlier for espionage and for his alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan that killed 14 people in 1990.

His family insisted he was a farmer who became a victim of mistaken identity after inadvertently straying across the border while drunk. India's government also denied he was a spy.

The prison violence could aggravate tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, whose relations were hit by a border flare-up earlier this year that undermined efforts to build trust.

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Orthodox Christians mark 'Holy Fire' rite

THRONGS of Orthodox Christians have filled Jerusalem's ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre and surrounding streets for the "Holy Fire" ceremony on the eve of Orthodox Easter.

Believers hold that a divine fire from heaven ignites candles held by the Greek Orthodox patriarch, in an annual rite dating back to the 4th century AD symbolising the resurrection of Christ.

Israeli police deployed in large numbers to secure an estimated 10,000 faithful packed into the church, with a similar number in the streets around the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.

The event, the highlight of the Eastern Christian calendar, was attended by pilgrims from around the world - predominantly Eastern Europe - as well as Arab Israelis, all carrying unlit candles.

Greek Patriarch Theophilos III made his traditional grand entry on Saturday at the head of a procession of monks, chanters and dignitaries with red and gold banners bearing icons.

After circling the shrine in the heart of the church three times, he entered along with the Armenian Patriarch what Orthodox, Roman Catholics and many other Christians believe is Jesus's burial site, emerging minutes later with a lit candle.

The holy flame was swiftly passed from candle to candle between ecstatic believers, most of whom had waited for several hours for the ceremony which filled the air with light and smoke.

While the Church of the Sepulchre is one of Christianity's holiest sites, it is shared uneasily by six denominations - the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Egyptian Copts, Syrian Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox.

Roman Catholics in Jerusalem and Bethlehem celebrated Easter on March 31, according to the Gregorian calendar.

But this year other Catholics in the Holy Land, including those from Nazareth, decided for the first time to mark Easter this Sunday under the Orthodox calendar, in an act of ecumenical unity.

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At least 62 bodies found: Syria watchdog

THE bodies of at least 62 murdered residents have been found in a Sunni neighbourhood of the Syrian city of Banias, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

"The bodies of dozens of citizens killed on Friday during an assault by the army and Alawite members of the National Defence Forces in the Sunni neighbourhood of Banias were discovered on Saturday," the Observatory said.

"We have identified 62 citizens by their names, photos, or videos, including 14 children, and the number could rise because there are dozens of citizens who are still missing."

The mass killing is the second "massacre" to be reported in the Banias area this week.

On Thursday, the Observatory said at least 50 people had been killed in the Sunni village of Bayda, south of the coastal city of Banias.

"Witnesses from the village say no less than 50 civilians were killed, including women and children," the group said.

"Some were summarily executed, shot to death, stabbed or set on fire."

After the deaths, which were reported on Friday, regime forces began shelling several Sunni neighbourhoods of Banias, prompting residents to flee the area early on Saturday.

"Hundreds of families are fleeing Sunni neighbourhoods in Banias in fear of a new massacre," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"They started fleeing at dawn this morning (Saturday) from Sunni neighbourhoods in the south of the city towards Tartus and Jableh," he added.

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Two dead in Belgian train accident

TWO people died and 14 were injured when a train carrying chemicals derailed in Belgium, causing a major fire near the city of Ghent.

Jan Briers, governor of eastern Flanders, gave the death toll to the Belga news agency after the accident and blaze prompted authorities to evacuate nearly 300 people from their homes.

The accident happened around 2am (1000 AEST) on Saturday between the towns of Schellebelle and Wetteren, said Infrabel, the group responsible for the Belgian railway network.

Six of the train's 13 cars derailed and two were on their side.

The blaze led to a series of explosions in the railway cars, then a spectacular strip of fire spread over hundreds of metres prompting authorities to evacuate residents living near the site of the accident.

Firemen decided to let the cars burn out as water could have released toxic chemicals.

The blaze was under control by late morning but residents were told to keep their doors and windows closed.

The causes of the accident remains unclear. The cars derailed as the train changed tracks and observers say it might have been travelling too fast.

The train came from the Netherlands and was bound for Gent-Zeehaven, the city's seaport.

Train services between Schellebelle and Wetteren were disrupted and problems were expected for two days, with buses laid on to transport passengers.

Two similar accidents involving goods trains carrying tanks of toxic products occurred in Belgium in May 2012.

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