Plane crashes at show

NEW DELHI: An Indian naval plane taking part in an aerobatics display in the city of Hyderabad crashed into a residential area on Wednesday, killing both pilots and destroying a house, the navy said. The NDTV channel showed the plane flying in a formation at the air show in the southern city shortly before it crashed into densely populated land adjacent to the show ground. A three-storey house was destroyed and other buildings were damaged. The accident occurred on the opening day of the India Aviation 2010 show, a five-day civil aviation exhibition.

Dad, daughter shot

NARATHIWAT: Suspected Islamic militants shot dead a father and his young daughter in Thailand’s troubled south, while a roadside bomb wounded five soldiers, police said on Wednesday. The casualties were the latest in a six-year separatist insurgency in the Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia that has left more than 4,000 people dead and thousands more wounded. Gunmen opened fire on the Muslim man and his three daughters as they rode a motorbike home from a religious school in Pattani province on Tuesday, killing the 44-year-old

man and his seven-year-old daughter, police said.

Pak public whipping

MULTAN: Pakistani police sailed into a storm of controversy on Wednesday after publicly whipping three suspected burglars in what one human rights activist slammed the worst form of “torture”. The incident took place on Tuesday in the rural town of Bhawana, 320 km south of the capital Islamabad. The accused were laid on the ground one by one. Two policemen grabbed their hands and feet, while a uniformed police official repeatedly thrashed their bare backs with a leather strap. “This is totally unacceptable,” IA Rehman, the secretary of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, told AFP.