Assault on Gaddafi bastion ends in chaotic retreat (Reuters)

By Maria Golovnina and Alexander Dziadosz Maria Golovnina And Alexander Dziadosz – Sun?Sep?18, 12:13?pm?ET

BANI WALID/SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan interim government forces fled on Sunday in a chaotic retreat from the town of Bani Walid, after failing in yet another attempt to storm the final bastions of loyalists of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Since taking the capital Tripoli last month, motley forces of the ruling National Transitional Council have met stiff resistance in Bani Walid and Gaddafi's birthplace Sirte, which they must capture before they can declare Libya "liberated."

Anti-Gaddafi fighters have tried several times to storm Bani Walid, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Tripoli, in recent days only to retreat in disorder under fire from defenders. Sunday's failed attempt appeared to be among the worst yet, setting off angry recriminations among the attackers.

NTC fighters said they had planned for tanks and pickup trucks with anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to lead Sunday's attack, but foot soldiers had piled in first.

"There is a lack of organization so far. Infantry men are running in all directions," said Zakaria Tuham, a senior fighter with a Tripoli-based unit. "Our commanders had been told that heavy artillery units had already gone ahead, but when we advanced into Bani Walid they were nowhere to be seen.

"Gaddafi forces were hitting us heavily with rockets and mortars, so we have pulled out."

A Reuters reporter saw fighters withdraw around two km (more than a mile) after they had stormed into the town.

Anti-Gaddafi fighters from Bani Walid blamed comrades from elsewhere in Libya for being unwilling to coordinate. Those from elsewhere accused some local fighters of being traitors and passing information to Gaddafi loyalists.

"Commanders who are from the Warfalla tribe, they tell us one thing and then commanders from the other cities say something else. We do not understand anything," said pro-NTC fighter Mohamed Saleh.

"So we are just going in and pulling back without a single purpose. It's impossible to take this city this way. It will continue like this until they send more experienced troops who know how to use their weapons."

Some fighters openly disobeyed orders. In one incident, an officer from Bani Walid was heckled by troops from Tripoli after he tried to order them to stop randomly shooting in the air as they celebrated seizing a mortar from Gaddafi forces.

"You are not my boss. Don't tell me what to do," one of the Tripoli fighters snapped back at him.

Shells whistled above anti-Gaddafi positions and exploded across the desert valley as invisible snipers sprayed bullets from Bani Walid's rooftops and smoke rose above the town.

NTC fighters helped some families evacuate from the town, driving them out in military pickup trucks.

"The past two weeks been awful but last night was particularly bad," said Zamzam al-Taher, a 38-year-old mother of four. "We have been trapped here without a car and with no food. Snipers are everywhere."

"The biggest mistake by the rebels is that they come in and leave without setting up checkpoints. When they leave, Gaddafi militiamen come in with their own checkpoints and flags and terrorise local people," she added.

BATTLE FOR SIRTE

NTC forces and NATO warplanes also attacked Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace. Fighters launched rockets from the city's southern entrance and traded fire with Gaddafi loyalists holed up in a conference center.

"The situation is very dangerous. There are so many snipers and all the types of weapons you can imagine," said fighter Mohamed Abdullah as rockets whooshed through the air and black smoke rose above the city.

Medics mopped the floor of a small field hospital on Sirte's western outskirts as they prepared for more casualties, following bloody but inconclusive clashes a day earlier. A doctor said 16 NTC fighters and an ambulance driver had died in Saturday's fighting. He had also received 62 wounded.

As in many episodes during Libya's conflict, the frontlines at Sirte and Bani Walid have ebbed back and forth, with shows of bravado colliding with the reality of battle.

An incoming shell landed within 200 metres of NTC-held lines only to be met with return fire from NTC fighters shouting "God is greatest!"

Speaking against the roar of NATO jets overhead, one anti-Gaddafi fighter at Sirte, Mahmoud Othman, said his men were helping families who had fled ahead of the next assault.

"We don't want any more bloodshed between us. But if the Gaddafa want more blood, we are ready," he said, referring to the deposed leader's tribe. "In the end we want Gaddafi."

Scores of civilian cars and pickup trucks poured out of the city, with residents describing water and electricity shortages amid street fighting. Gaddafi forces were patrolling the streets in the center, they said, making their lives a misery.

"People are living in terror," resident Taher al-Menseli, 33, said as NTC fighters searched his car at a checkpoint. "Gaddafi supporters are trying to convince people the revolutionaries are criminals and that you have to kill them. Even if you don't believe this, you have to appear convinced."

Nearby, three young men knelt in the sand beside the road, their hands tied behind their backs. NTC fighters said they had found two assault rifles and ammunition in their car.

Gaddafi's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said NATO air raids had killed 354 people in Sirte on Friday night, an accusation Reuters could not verify without access to the city. A NATO spokesman in Naples said previous such reports had been false.

"We will be able to continue this fight and we have enough arms for months and months to come," Ibrahim said in a call to Reuters via satellite telephone on Saturday.

British warplanes, operating under NATO's U.N. mandate to protect Libyan civilians, bombed a Gaddafi ammunition dump west of Sirte on Sunday, after destroying an armoured troop carrier and two armoured pickup trucks in the Sirte area the day before, a British military spokesman said.

More NTC fighters were advancing from the east to reinforce those assaulting Sirte. The slow and cautious advance met resistance from pro-Gaddafi fighters who fired Grad rockets and machine guns rounds, sending plumes of smoke into the air.

"We will not retreat. God willing we will reach Sirte either tonight or tomorrow," fighter Ali Hassan al-Jaber said.

Outside Bani Walid, NTC fighters captured a man hailing from neighbouring Chad, accusing him of being a Gaddafi gunman.

Shaking with fear, the man, who gave his name as Mohamed Ezzein, whispered that he had nothing to do with the war.

"I'm just a shepherd. What fighting? What fighting?" he repeated from the back of a pickup truck as anti-Gaddafi fighters pushed him around saying: "Don't lie, don't lie."

(Additional reporting by William MacLean and Joseph Logan in Tripoli, Sherine El Madany in Herawa, Emma Farge in Benghazi, Barry Malone and Sylvia Westall in Tunis and Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck in Brussels; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Peter Graff and Myra MacDonald)

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Debt crisis resists assault by ECB and global leaders (AFP)

FRANKFURT (AFP) – World leaders scrambled Monday to ensure financial and economic stability as the European Central Bank bought eurozone bonds to stem a spiralling debt crisis, but chronic doubts endured and battered markets tumbled again.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialised and emerging economies pledged to "take all necessary initiatives in a coordinated way to support financial stability and to foster stronger economic growth in a spirit of cooperation and confidence."

Their statement came after Asian stock markets suffered heavy losses and European trade saw promising gains melt by noon, with Friday's unprecedented US ratings downgrade adding to the toxic cocktail.

A sharply-worded editorial in the Chinese People's Daily -- the mouthpiece of China's Communist Party -- said Western nations threatened global well-being by "ignoring their responsibility" to the rest of the world.

The G20 stressed that its members would maintain constant contact "to ensure financial stability and liquidity in financial markets."

Earlier, the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- made a similar commitment.

Sentiment on major European financial markets took a stab at resisting the downward trend before throwing in the towel and heading firmly south as well.

Economists warned that even the long-awaited ECB intervention on bond markets was no "silver bullet" and that big obstacles remained to stabilising strained public finances and putting credible eurozone defence mechanisms in place.

The G7 and G20 statements came after a whirlwind of weekend conference calls between political leaders and officials who saw storm clouds hovering over the markets.

The moves were part of a global response dictated by Standard & Poor's taking the historic step of cutting its US credit rating to AA+ from the top notch triple-A late on Friday.

As Europe struggles with its problems, global markets also want to know how Washington will reduce its more than $14 trillion debt without choking off an economic recovery since a modest US debt deal.

Late Sunday, the ECB said it would "actively implement" a programme that buys eurozone bonds, a measure which seemed to be working Monday, at least initially, as pressure eased on Italian and Spanish government debt.

That was also helped by Italy and Spain announcing measures to curb deficits and debt, and France and Germany pushing for full and rapid implementation of measures agreed at an emergency eurozone summit last month to protect the euro.

"However, we think it would be optimistic to assume that this response will be sustained or that the bond purchases will do much to address the eurozone?s fiscal crisis," Capital Economics chief economist Jonathan Loynes said.

Asian stock markets were the first to give a group reaction to the US downgrade and prospect of a serious global economic slump.

Tokyo shed 2.18 percent, Hong Kong lost 2.11 percent, Sydney fell 2.91 percent, Seoul sank 3.82 percent and Shanghai lost 3.55 percent.

In Europe, stock markets initially showed signs of resilience but later began a slide that accelerated once Wall Street opened.

London's FTSE-100 index closed down 3.39 percent to 5,068.95 points, while in Frankfurt the DAX dropped 5.02 percent to 5,923.27 points. In Paris, the CAC-40 slid 4.68 percent to 3,125.19 points.

Markets in Madrid and Milan initially bounced higher as news of the ECB's intervention, but they also got caught up in the sell off, losing 2.44 percent and 2.43 percent respectively.

Safe-haven gold surged to a record $1,715.75 per ounce, before finishing the day at $1,693. The euro slid to $1.4234 from $1.4282 on Friday.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.9 percent in afternoon trading at 11,109.93 points.

The broader S&P 500 dropped 3.8 percent to 1,153.74 points, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 4.0 percent to 2,432.30 points.

Analysts said dissension among ECB governors on the bond purchases could curb the intervention and Commerzbank analyst Bernd Weidensteiner added: "In principle, the crisis can probably only be tackled by reducing deficit and stabilising debt levels. But this needs time."

IHS Global Insight chief economist Howard Archer said the ECB was building an essential firewall for Madrid and Rome but could not be content with "half-hearted measures in exercising its function as ?true lender of last resort? - the markets need to be absolutely convinced."

Deutsche Bank economist Gilles Moec said the focus would now shift to the lending capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the eurozone's rescue fund that is too small to bail out Italy or Spain if they go the way of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

But a German government spokesman said there were no plans to boost the 440-billion-euro ($625-billion) EFSF, which is supposed to take over bond buying from the ECB as soon as possible.

The ECB is the only European institution capable of acting fast and keeping at bay so-called bond vigilantes who strike fear into finance officials.

But Barclays Capital economists warned that it might be hard to buy enough government debt to keep the pressure off for long.

Goldman Sachs economists estimated the ECB would have to purchase at least 100-130 billion euros worth of Italian and Spanish bonds, compared with the total amount it had held until now of 74 billion euros.

Italy, the eurozone's third largest economy, saw its borrowing costs hit record highs last week.

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Polygamist leader gets life in prison for assault (AP)

By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press Paul J. Weber, Associated Press – 37?mins?ago

SAN ANGELO, Texas – Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for sexually assaulting an underage follower he took as a bride in what his church deemed a "spiritual marriage."

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also received a 20-year sentence for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl.

He stood quietly Tuesday as the decision of the Texas jury was read, giving him the maximum sentence on both counts. They are to be served consecutively. Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said the 55-year-old will be eligible for parole in 35 years.

Prosecutors had asked the jury for the life sentence after presenting their painstaking and sometimes graphic case, and rejected Jeffs' contention that he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

"The evidence in this case shows that this isn't a prosecution of a people," prosecutor Eric Nichols said in his closing argument. "This is a prosecution to protect people."

During the trial, prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with the 15-year-old and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting the 12-year-old.

Jeffs, who had insisted on acting as his own attorney during the earlier part of the trial, was convicted Thursday.

He asked to be excused under protest during the sentencing phase, which ended Tuesday with him refusing to answer when the judge asked if he wanted to make a closing statement. A defense attorney told the judge Jeffs had instructed his attorneys not to speak for him.

Jurors deliberated less than half an hour.

During the trial, prosecutors played other tapes in which Jeffs was heard instructing as many as a dozen of his young wives on how to please him sexually — and thus, he told them, please God.

"If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree," Jeffs wrote in 2005, according to one of thousands of pages of notes seized along with the audio recordings from his Texas ranch.

Nichols referred to that in his closing.

"No, Mr. Jeffs, unlike what you wrote in your priesthood records ... we don't hang convicts anymore from the highest tree. Not even child molesters," Nichols said.

Jeffs claimed his religious rights were being violated. Representing himself after burning through seven high-powered attorneys, he routinely interrupted the proceedings and chose to stand silently in front of jurors for nearly half an hour during his closing arguments. He called just one defense witness, a church elder who read from Mormon scripture.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, has more than 10,000 followers who consider Jeffs to be God's spokesman on Earth.

He spent years evading arrest — crisscrossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006, said Nichols.

Several former members of the church testified that Jeffs ruled the group with a heavy and abusive hand. Jeffs also allegedly excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership, breaking up 300 families while stripping them of property and "reassigning" wives and children.

In an audiotape played during the sentencing phase, Jeffs was heard softly telling five young girls to "set aside all your inhibitions" as he gave them instructions on how to please him sexually. Jeffs is heard telling the girls that what "the five of you are about to do is important."

Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him — in what Jeffs called "heavenly" or "celestial" sessions — in order to atone for sins in his community. Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides "who can be worked with and easily taught."

FBI agent John Broadway testified that fathers who gave their young daughters to Jeffs were rewarded with young brides of their own. Girls who proved reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away, according to excerpts from Jeffs' journals that prosecutors showed to the jury.

Police raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.

Jeffs is the eighth FLDS man convicted since the raid on Yearning For Zion, in the town of Eldorado, 45 miles south of San Angelo. Previous sentences ranged from six to 75 years in prison.

The church's traditional headquarters is along the Utah-Arizona border, but it established the Texas compound in 2004. Jeffs once faced criminal charges in Arizona and was convicted of accessory to rape in Utah in 2007. But that was overturned by the state Supreme Court and he was extradited to Texas in December.

Willie Jessop, a former FLDS spokesman, who railed against the raid but has since disavowed Jeffs, said the first priority of the church would be tearing down the guard tower and the gate at the ranch.

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Dozens die, thousands flee Syrian tank assault in Hama (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian troops killed at least 45 civilians in a tank assault to occupy the center of the besieged city of Hama, an activist said on Thursday, in a sharp escalation of a campaign to crush an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Thousands of civilians were fleeing the city, a bastion of protest surrounded by a ring of steel of troops with tanks and heavy weapons.

Electricity and communications have been cut off and as many as 130 people have been killed in a four-day military assault since Assad sent troops into the city on Sunday, activists say.

Reacting to the intensifying assaults on Hama and other Syrian districts, the U.N. Security Council condemned the use of force against civilians -- its first substantive response to nearly five months of unrest in Syria.

In Hama, residents said tanks had advanced into the main Orontes Square, the site of some of the biggest protests against Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000. Snipers spread onto rooftops and into a nearby citadel.

An activist who managed to leave the city told Reuters that 40 people were killed by heavy machinegun fire and shelling by tanks in al-Hader district on Wednesday and early on Thursday.

The activist, who gave his name as Thaer, said five more people from the Fakhri and Assa'ad families, including two children, were killed as they were trying to leave Hama by car on the al-Dhahirya highway.

Hama has been one of the main centers of protest against Assad, reviving memories of 1982, when Assad's father sent troops to crush Islamist protests in the city, killing thousands of people and razing much of al-Hader district to the ground.

Last week tanks also moved into the eastern provincial capital of Deir al-Zor and the town of Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq's Sunni heartland. Both towns have also witnessed large pro-democracy protests.

"The security apparatus thinks it can wrap this uprising up by relying on the security option and killing as many Syrians as it thinks it will take," a diplomat in the Syrian capital said.

"Tanks are firing their guns at residential buildings in Hama and Deir al-Zor after the two cities were left for weeks to protest peacefully. This is the first time the regime is using tanks with such targeted ferocity," the diplomat said.

Syrian authorities say the army has gone into Hama to confront armed groups trying to take control of the city. They say at least eight soldiers have been killed by gunmen.

The contrasting accounts from activists and state media are difficult to verify because Syria has barred most independent media since the beginning of the protests.

Rights groups said the lack of communication with the besieged city was alarming. There were also some reports that water supplies were blocked.

"Hama has been cut off. We're in the dark and of course we're very worried," said Human Rights Watch's Beirut-based senior Syria and Lebanon researcher, Nadim Houry.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 1,500 families managed to flee Hama in the last 48 hours, heading mainly to the east or the west of the besieged city. Other activists said authorities had blocked the road north toward Aleppo and Turkey.

"We are talking about hundreds of families leaving Hama since yesterday by cars and pick-up trucks," said one activist in touch with the families which escaped.

"The Aleppo road is the most dangerous, with most 'shabbiha' (pro-Assad militia) stationed there to prevent movement up to Turkey," he said. A resident of Aleppo said police were turning families from Hama back at roadblocks.

Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory said seven other people were killed across Syria during protests on Wednesday night, three of them in the southern Deraa province and two in the Damascus district of Midan.

ELECTION LAWS

Alongside the military crackdown, Assad has also lifted a state of emergency in place for nearly 50 years and promised constitutional changes to open Syria up to multi-party politics.

On Thursday he formally approved laws passed by the cabinet last week allowing the formation of political parties other than his ruling Baath Party and regulating elections to parliament, which has so far been a rubber-stamp assembly.

But most figures in Syria's fractured opposition reject any dialogue with Assad while the repression continues.

The United States, which says Assad has lost legitimacy to rule, described him on Wednesday as the cause of instability in the country. "Syria would be a better place without President Assad," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

In New York, Indian Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, president this month of the Security Council, read out a statement condemning "widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities".

The U.N. document agreed after three days of hard bargaining urged Damascus to fully respect human rights and comply with its obligations under international law.

But it also urged all sides to act with restraint, reflecting divisions between the West on one hand, and China and Russia, which has a naval base in Syria. Russia said it was important that the U.N. document discouraged international involvement in Syria's affairs.

"Moscow is convinced that a solution to the situation in that country must be brought about by the Syrians themselves without any outside interference in the all-Syrian dialogue," the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

A Syrian pharmacist who managed to talk with her family in Hama told Reuters that they had tried to flee but that the "shabbiha" were randomly shooting residents.

The official Syrian news agency said "armed terrorist groups" had abducted three oil-well guards in Deir al-Zor on Wednesday, and killed one policeman.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans)

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Writer files assault charge against Strauss-Kahn (AP)

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD, Associated Press Michael Weissenstein And Pierre-antoine Souchard, Associated Press – 15?mins?ago

PARIS – A young French author formally accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape and broke her long public silence Tuesday with a dramatic account of fending off an attacker who ripped at her clothes as they fought on his apartment floor.

Tristane Banon's criminal complaint was already spawning an ugly public battle that appeared to be dividing France and follows trans-Atlantic mudslinging over the Guinean chambermaid who accused Strauss-Kahn of forcing her to perform oral sex in his New York hotel room.

The sudden weakening of the maid's case because of New York prosecutors' doubts about her credibility revived hopes in Strauss-Kahn's Socialist Party that he could return to France and retake his position as the strongest potential challenger to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.

Those hopes could be undermined by the 31-year-old writer's legal action, which is expected to set off a lengthy preliminary investigation by prosecutors into whether there is enough evidence to pursue a case in France.

While many here saw Strauss-Kahn, 62, as a victim of rough U.S. justice, the French public may recoil at a drawn-out case in French courts brought by a woman whose mother is a Socialist Party official. Polls already have found French voters evenly divided over whether they want Strauss-Kahn to return, with women more likely to object to his reviving a political career.

A poll of 860 people conducted over the weekend by the magazine Nouvel Observateur found that 54 percent didn't want Strauss-Kahn to run in the Socialist Party primary, and 63 percent didn't believe that he would end up running.

"He grabbed my hand, then my arm, I told him to let me go and that's when the fight started. He pulled me towards him, we fell down and fought on the ground for a few minutes," Banon told news magazine L'Express.

She said she started kicking him with her boots, then finally broke free, ran down the stairs and called her mother from her car.

"I couldn't even drive I was trembling so much," she said. The Associated Press does not name alleged victims of sexual crimes unless, like Banon, they choose to publicly identify themselves.

Strauss-Kahn allies took to the airwaves Tuesday to try to undermine Banon and question the timing of her complaint about an incident that she says took place in 2003, when she was trying to interview Strauss-Kahn for a book project. Banon first recounted the incident on a 2007 TV show in which Strauss-Kahn's name was edited out.

Her lawyer began discussing the possibility of bringing charges after Strauss-Kahn's May 14 arrest, but Banon still said very little.

"Tristane Banon has been telling her story for months and years. She's filing her complaint today," Socialist lawmaker Jean-Marie Le Guen told reporters. "In that, I see a certain opportunism that I associate with this mudslinging, these disinformation campaigns against Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the moment when American justice is about to acknowledge his innocence."

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers on Monday labeled Banon's account "imaginary" and said they would file a criminal complaint of slander against her.

Banon told French news magazine L'Express that she was tired of hearing "lies and rumors" told about the incident.

"I can't take it anymore hearing that I must be lying because I haven't filed suit," Banon said.

Strauss-Kahn is free on bail in New York, charged with attempted rape and other crimes. In a further twist to the saga, his New York accuser filed a libel suit Tuesday against the New York Post after it called her a prostitute.

Banon said she had waited eight years before filing her complaint because "it's very difficult for any woman in this situation ... and it's even more difficult when you know in advance that it's doomed to failure."

Banon says she described some of the attack in an "autobiographical novel" she published in 2006 called "The Trapeze Artist."

"I left out some sordid details, about his fingers in my mouth, his hands in my underwear after he ripped off my jeans and my bra," Banon said.

Lawyer David Koubbi said Banon had been dissuaded from filing charges after the incident by her mother, Anne Mansouret, a regional councilor in Strauss-Kahn's Socialist Party. Mansouret now says she regrets urging her daughter not to file a complaint but she feared that taking action against such a powerful figure would affect her daughter's career.

Mansouret told the French radio station RTL that her daughter "considers the only way to end this is in fact to file a complaint, to say that at least justice can be done."

"She's a young woman who's matured," Mansouret told RTL. "She took this decision, I suppose, after maturely reflecting."

Mansouret said she thought that by filing the complaint, it would help her daughter "rebuild herself."

"She tried to move ahead without doing that, and it wasn't possible. She arrived at a level of suffering. It's suffering to be permanently harassed by people who criticize how you've acted," Mansouret said.

If Banon's complaint leads to preliminary charges, there will then be a lengthier investigation, sometimes lasting years, to determine if the case should go to trial before a judge.

The same process would apply to the slander complaint against Banon.

A slander charge can be brought against anyone who French prosecutors believe deliberately filed a false complaint with authorities. In Banon's case, an investigation would begin only if her attempted rape complaint is found to be false. A slander charge carries a maximum term of five years in a prison and a 45,000-euro ($65,000) fine.

French prosecutors could decide not to pursue the case against Strauss-Kahn if they find evidence he engaged in forcible sexual contact that fell short of attempted rape. The statute of limitations on sexual assault charges in France is three years, while attempted rape charges can be filed for up to 10 years after the alleged crime.

Strauss-Kahn has relinquished his passport to New York authorities. His next court appearance is July 18.

___

Cecile Brisson and Greg Keller contributed.

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NATO-Afghan raid ends hotel assault; 19 dead (AP)

By RAHIM FAIEZ and DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Rahim Faiez And Deb Riechmann, Associated Press – 2?hrs?26?mins?ago

KABUL, Afghanistan – The first sign that militants were attacking one of Kabul's premiere hotels was an explosion that pierced Jawid's eardrums, prompting him to jump out the window of his room on the first floor into a chaotic scene that quickly turned into a grisly morass of bodies, gunfire and shattered glass.

Nineteen people died — including all eight suicide bombers — in a more than five-hour standoff at the Inter-Continental that ended early Wednesday after NATO attack helicopters fired missiles to kill three suicide bombers on the roof.

It was one of the biggest and most complex attacks orchestrated in the Afghan capital and appeared designed to show that the insurgents are capable of striking even in the center of power at a time when U.S. officials are speaking of progress in the nearly 10-year war.

It started with one loud explosion at about 10 p.m. Tuesday, startling hotel guests, including Jawid, who uses only one name.

"There was smoke. People were running everywhere. There was shooting and crying," he said after escaping from the hotel grounds with his family. "The restaurant was full of guests."

The brazen attack occurred just a week after President Barack Obama announced the beginning of a U.S. troop withdrawal next month. The transfer of security responsibility to the Afghans is due to officially begin in seven areas of the nation, including most of Kabul province, in coming weeks.

"Where is the security in this country?" Jawid asked, shaking his head. "Where is the security in this hotel? When I got to the hotel, I had to go through three checkpoints. How did they enter?"

Militants, armed with explosive vests, anti-aircraft weapons and grenade launchers, launched the attack on the eve of a conference in the capital about transition plans.

Ashraf Ghani, chairman of the transition commission, was defiant as he opened the conference, which began Wednesday despite the bloodshed.

"The transition process will be done, and these coward enemies will not stop our plans," Ghani said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai also vowed that his army and police would be ready to take over from foreign forces as planned, warning the militants are "enjoying the killing of innocent people."

"Such incidents will not stop us for transitioning security of our country" to Afghan forces, Karzai said in a statement.

U.S. Rear Adm. Vic Beck, director of public relations for the international military coalition, said Afghan security forces responded quickly and professionally to the scene — even though NATO helicopters were later called in to attack militants on the roof of the hotel. NATO said coalition mentors also were partnered with some of the units involved in the incident.

"This attack will do nothing to prevent the security transition process from moving forward," Beck said.

Security at the Inter-Continental and other key installations had been tightened for the conference and other official events taking place in the city. Officials said they were investigating how the insurgents were still able to get through and infiltrate the building, which is frequented by foreigners and dignitaries.

Guests and visitors must pass through a roadblock and guards posted at the bottom of a hill that winds up to the building, then another checkpoint along the road before reaching the hotel where more security guards are set up in a building with metal detectors.

"We believe that there was a loophole in the security," Mashal said. "So far, we don't know how they infiltrated. The intelligence service and the Ministry of Interior will jointly investigate this. We do have a few clues."

Afghan police were the first to respond to the attack, prompting firefights that resounded across the capital. A few hours later, an Afghan National Army commando unit arrived to help.

After hours of fighting, two NATO helicopters opened fire at about 3 a.m. at militants on the roof of the six-story hotel. U.S. Army Maj. Jason Waggoner, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said the helicopters killed three gunmen, and Afghan security forces clearing the hotel engaged the insurgents as they worked their way up to the roof.

A final explosion occurred when one of the bombers who had been hiding in a room blew himself up long after ambulances had carried the dead and wounded from the hotel, according to Kabul Police Chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub Salangi.

"We were locked in a room. Everybody was shooting and firing," said Abdul Zahir Faizada, head of the local council in Herat province in western Afghanistan, who was in town to attend the transition conference. "I heard a lot of shooting."

Latifullah Mashal, the spokesman of the Afghan National Directorate for Security, said five of the suicide attackers blew themselves up and three were killed on the roof by coalition helicopters.

The 11 civilians killed included a judge from Logar province, five hotel workers and three Afghan policemen, Mashal said. The Ministry of Interior said a Spanish citizen also was among those killed, but no other information was disclosed.

The ministry said 18 people were wounded in the attack — 13 civilians and five policemen.

Nazar Ali Wahedi, chief of intelligence for Helmand province in the south, said his room was hit by several bullets. Wahedi, who also was in town for the conference, called the assailants "the enemy of stability and peace" in Afghanistan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the capital — an apparent attempt to show that they remain potent despite heavy pressure from coalition and Afghan security forces. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid later issued a statement claiming that Taliban attackers killed guards at a gate and entered the hotel.

"One of our fighters called on a mobile phone and said: 'We have gotten onto all the hotel floors and the attack is going according to the plan. We have killed and wounded 50 foreign and local enemies. We are in the corridors of the hotel now taking guests out of their rooms — mostly foreigners. We broke down the doors and took them out one by one.'"

The Taliban often exaggerate casualties from their attacks.

Before the attack began on Tuesday, officials from the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan met in the capital to discuss prospects for making peace with Taliban insurgents to end the nearly decade-long war.

"The fact that we are discussing reconciliation in great detail is success and progress, but challenges remain and we are reminded of that on an almost daily basis by violence," Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan's deputy foreign minister, said at a news conference. "The important thing is that we act and that we act urgently and try to do what we can to put an end to violence."

The Inter-Continental — known widely as the "Inter-Con" — opened in the late 1960s, and was the nation's first international luxury hotel. It has at least 200 rooms and was once part of an international chain. But when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the hotel was left to fend for itself.

It was used by Western journalists during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Twenty-two rockets hit the Inter-Con between 1992 and 1996, when factional fighting convulsed Kabul under the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani. All the windows were broken, water mains were damaged and the outside structure pockmarked. Some, but not all, of the damage was repaired during Taliban rule.

Attacks in the Afghan capital have been relatively rare, although violence has increased since the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid in Pakistan and the start of the Taliban's annual spring offensive.

On June 18, insurgents wearing Afghan army uniforms stormed a police station near the presidential palace and opened fire on officers, killing nine.

Late last month, a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan police uniform infiltrated the main Afghan military hospital, killing six medical students. A month before that, a suicide attacker in an army uniform sneaked past security at the Afghan Defense Ministry, killing three people.

Violence also continued elsewhere in Afghanistan.

A NATO service member was killed Wednesday by insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said, bringing to 62 the number of foreign troops killed so far this month. More details weren't provided. Also in the south, the director of religious affairs for Kandahar province, was gunned down Wednesday morning in the provincial capital of Kandahar.

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Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed to this report.

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