Dozens of others were injured when troops raided the convoy of six ships, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, early on Monday.

Israel said activists on board attacked its commandos as they boarded the ships, while the flotilla’s organisers said the Israeli forces opened fire first, as soon as they stormed the convoy.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, gave his “full backing” to the military forces after the raid.

“The prime minister… reiterated his full backing for the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] and inquired about the well-being of the wounded,” his office told the AFP news agency.

Israeli media reported that many of the dead were Turkish nationals.

Organisers of the Freedom Flotilla say it was carrying 700 activists and 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid with the aim of breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza.

Protests worldwide

Hamas, the Palestinian group which governs the Gaza Strip, said the assault was a “massacre” and called on the international community to intervene.

Hamas, whose leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, called the Israeli action “barbaric”, urged Arabs and Muslims to show their anger by staging protests outside Israeli embassies across the globe.

The call came even as demonstrations denouncing the Israeli raid were being held in many cities around the world, including the capitals of Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank clashed with Israeli security forces who responded with tear gas, injuring many.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, officially declared a three-day state of mourning.

Thousands of Turkish protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul soon after the news of the operation broke. The protesters shouted “Damn Israel” as police blocked them.

“[The interception on the convoy] is unacceptable … Israel will have to endure the consequences of this behaviour,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

The United Nations Security Council was to meet on Monday afternoon for an emergency session to discuss the matter.

Turkey, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Sweden have all summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective countries to protest against the assault.

Live ammunition

Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, on board the flotilla’s lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, said in his last report before communications were cut off, that Israeli troops used live ammunition during the assault.

The Israeli military, 10 of whose soldiers were reportedly wounded in the operation, said troops opened fire after “demonstrators on board attacked the IDF naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs”.

Our correspondent said that a white surrender flag was raised from the ship and there was no live fire coming from the passengers.

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from the Israeli port of Ashdod, were the aid ships were taken after the assault, said the Israeli army was not giving any details of who had been killed, injured or detained.

She said at least 16 flotilla activists had been taken to an Israeli prison after the first two ships docked.

“As soon as [the ships] land here, the goods are taken, put into a terminal, and the passengers undergo extensive security checks.

“[They are] given the choice either to go home straight away, in which case they’re being bussed to Tel Aviv airport, or if they resist deportation, they are taken to a nearby detention centre where we understand they will be for at least 72 hours.”

Defending Monday’s military raid, Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesperson, said the Israeli commandos came under fire from people on board the flotilla whom he branded as “violent extremists”.

“Israel was totally within its rights under international law to intercept the ship and to take it to the port of Ashdod,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Unfortunately they were met by the activists on the boats with deadly violence, knives, metal clubs, even live fire on our service people. They initiated the violence.”

He said the people on board the flotilla were not peaceful activists.

“They are part of the IHH, which is a radical Turkish Islamist organisation which has been investigated by Western governments and by the Turkish government itself in the past for their links with terrorist organisations.”

Turkish denial

The Turkish parliament has dismissed this claim, saying it had investigated the ship and the people on board, finding no links to such organisations.

Murat Mercan, the head of Turkey’s foreign relations committee, said claiming that activists on board had links to terrorist organisations was Israel’s way of covering up its mistake.

“Any allegation that the members of this ship is attached to al-Qaeda is a big lie because there are Israeli civilians, Israeli authorities, Israeli parliamentarians on board the ship,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Does he [Regev] think that those are also attached to al-Qaeda?”

The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Palestinian coastal enclave.

Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, confirmed that the attack took place in international waters, saying: “This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory, but we have the right to defend ourselves.”

Footage from the Mavi Marmara showed armed Israeli soldiers boarding the ship and helicopters flying overhead.

Israeli accounts of the incident said its navy had contacted the Mavi Marmara’s captain asking him to identify himself and say where the ship was headed.

Shortly afterwards, two Israeli naval vessels flanked the flotilla on either side, but at a distance.

Organisers of the flotilla then diverted their ships and slowed down to avoid a confrontation during the night.

They also issued all passengers life jackets and asked them to remain below deck.

Troops on alert

Following the news of the flotilla deaths, Israeli police were put on a heightened state of alert across the country to prevent any civil disturbances.

Sheikh Raed Salah,a leading member of the Islamic Movement who was on board the Mavi Marmara, was reported to have been seriously injured in Monday’s raid. He was being treated in Israel’s Tal Hasharon hospital.

In Um Al Faham, the stronghold of the Islamic Movement in Israel and the birthplace of Salah, preparations for mass demonstrations were under way.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, including a Nobel laureate and several European legislators, were on board the flotilla.

They came from the UK, Ireland, Algeria, Kuwait, Greece and Turkey among other countries.

But Israel had said it would stop the flotilla before it could reach Gaza.

The flotilla had set sail from a port in Cyprus on Sunday and aimed to reach Gaza by Monday morning.

Israel said the boats were embarking on “an act of provocation” against the Israeli military rather than providing aid, and issued warrants to prohibit their entrance to Gaza.

It asserted that the flotilla would be breaking international law by landing in Gaza, a claim the organisers rejected.

The 10,000 tonnes of aid carried by the convoy included medicine, water purification devices and construction material.

Adnan Abu-Hasana, a spokesman for UNRWA, said the Gazans are in dire need of aid after Israel’s war on the territory in December 2008-January 2009 destroyed buildings and infrastructure.

“We need hundreds of thousands of tonnes [of aid] to rebuild Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We need more of building materials… We need spare parts for machines in the agricultural and industrial sectors, for the fishermen, all these sectors are nearly collapsed.

“Eighty per cent of the Gazans are dependent on humanitarian aid coming from UN organisations such as UNRWA.”

Panicked residents, who tried to flee as fierce fighting erupted between the security forces and gang members loyal to Christopher “Dudus” Coke, said they had seen bodies lying in the street.

At least three people are known to have been killed, including one police officer. Several men were arrested, but Coke remains at large.

Several airlines on Tuesday cancelled flights to and from Kingston after foreign governments issued emergency warnings against travel to the city.

“You must realise, we are fighting a war,” said Glenmore Hinds, the deputy commissioner of police, as local media reported that Jamaican bloodbanks were seeking emergency donations.

Coke, who is wanted in the US on drug and gun charges, has been holed up in Tivoli Gardens, a western Kingston neighbourhood, since the Jamaican government signed his extradition order to the US last week.

Emergency

Gangs allied with Coke took up arms to fight the extradition late on Sunday after Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s prime minister, imposed a state of emergency.

The measure covers the western part of Kingston and St Andrew districts.

“The criminal element who have placed the society under siege will not be allowed to triumph,” Golding said on Monday in a televised address.

He promised “strong and decisive action” to restore order.

Owen Ellington, Jamaica’s police commissioner, said “scores of criminals” from drug gangs across the Caribbean island had joined the fighting.

Elon Parkinson, a presenter on Jamaica’s 90 FM radio station, told Al Jazeera that Kingston had seen hours of intense street fighting with some buildings being hit by mortar shells.

“A drone is flying over the area ostensibly identifying targets and as soon as they are identified, soldiers start pelting their houses,” he said.

“Where it concerns negotiations regarding Mr Coke’s surrender, hopes are fading. His [supporters] indicated to us about an hour ago that any deal between the US and Jamaican authorities would be almost impossible, especially with the way the onslaught is taking place.”

Parkinson said that Coke has concerns about going into Jamaican custody because his father, who was supposed to be extradited in 1992, burnt to death in his prison cell in what Jamaican police said was an accidental fire.

Barricades

Tensions in Jamaica rose over the last week after Golding reversed his long-standing refusal to extradite Coke to the US.

The Jamaican prime minister had previously stalled the case for nine months claiming the US indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence, but he changed his stance amid a growing public outcry over his stand.

US prosecutors describe Coke as the leader of the “Shower Posse” that murdered hundreds of people during the cocaine wars of the 1980s.

Relations between Jamaica and the US grew strained when Jamaica ignored an earlier extradition request for Coke, who is a supporter of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and wields influence in the inner city constituency that Golding represents.

The US State Department said on Monday it was “the responsibility of the Jamaican government to locate and arrest Mr Coke.”

Coke faces life imprisonment if convicted.

The drug trade is deeply entrenched in Jamaica, which is the largest producer of marijuana in the region and where gangs tied to the trade have become powerful organised crime networks involved in international gun smuggling.

The drug trade has also fuelled one of the world’s highest murder rates with Jamaica experiencing about 1,660 homicides last year among a population of just 2.8 million people.

Thaksin is accused of bankrolling recent “red shirt” protests in the Thai capital that left 88 people dead and thousands wounded following a mililtary crackdown.

The court on Tuesday heard evidence from Thailand’s department of special investigations, the agency charged with investigating the protests.

Thaksin was ousted in 2006, and currently lives in self-imposed exile to avoid jail time for corruption.

Many of the red shirt protesters support the Pheu Thai Party, which is allied with Thaksin, and want early elections. They say the current government is illegitimate.

“They are saying to us, this is not the end for the former prime minister,” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Bangkok, said.

“This wrangling between the former prime minister and his supporters here, and the current regime, continues.”

Noppadon Pattama, Thaksin’s legal adviser, said he’s seeking to have the warrant revoked because Thaksin’s attorney wasn’t able to present evidence in his client’s defence.

Impeachment move

Meanwhile, opposition politicians in Thailand have begun moves to impeach the country’s prime minister over his handling of the protests.

The measure, backed by 159 opposition MPs, targets prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. It also calls for the censure of three ministers in his cabinet: the deputy prime minister, the transport minister, and the interior minister. MPs also tabled a no-confidence motion in Abhisit.

Neither measure is expected to pass the Thai parliament.

But the fact that they were introduced at all reflects deep rifts in Thailand’s political landscape following the protests.

Wittaya Buranasiri, the opposition whip, said the impeachment motion was introduced by the Pheu Thai Party.

Party members accuse Abhisit and his deputy of abusing their power by ordering the crackdown.

The red shirts have called for Abhisit to resign and allow early elections; they accuse his government of taking power illegitimately, with the help of back-room deals and military pressure.

The demonstrations came to a head when red shirt protesters moved into Bangkok’s central business district, building bamboo-and-tire barricades and manning checkpoints that crippled one of the city’s most important shopping and tourism areas.

Shops and businesses have begun to reopen since last week’s crackdown, but authorities have said they might extend a late-night curfew for another week.

“The purpose of the curfew is to separate the terrorists from the public,” said army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd.

He said the late hours of the curfew would not cause significant disturbances to the public. The Thai cabinet was expected to approve the extension on Tuesday.

They said the collision between the two vessels – identified as tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3 and the bulk carrier MV Waily – occurred at 06:05am (2200 GMT) on Tuesday.

There were no reports of injuries.

“The Malaysian-registered tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3 suffered damage to one of its cargo tanks, resulting in an oil spill,” the port authority statement said.

The Master of MT Bunga Kelana 3 estimated that 2,000 tonnes of oil could have spilled into the sea.

The tanker was carrying Bintulu light crude and condensate, Paul Lovell, head of corporate communications at AET Tanker Holdings Sdn Bhd. AET, which owns and manages the vessel, said.

“She was carrying two types of cargo, some condensate and some very light crude, it was about 40 per cent condensate and about 60 per cent light crude on the vessel at the time of the incident,” he said.

“It looks as though the spill would have been from the very light crude, the exact amount I can’t tell you.”

Response

Following the collision, the authorities have dispatched four patrol and emergency response craft to the affected area.

They have also activated oil spill response companies which have deployed three craft equipped with oil spill equipment.

“Work is ongoing to contain and clean up the oil spill,” the statement added.

Both vessels are currently anchored in the Singapore Strait. MV Waily is currently about 11km southeast of Changi East and MT Bunga Kelana 3 is about 7km south of Changi East.

Malaysia’s largest shipping company, MISC, a unit of state-run oil company Petronas, lists the Bunga Kelana 3 as an Aframax class tanker built in 1998.

“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula,” Lee Myung-bak said on Monday.

“But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts,” he said. “I will continue to take stern measures to hold the North accountable.”

South Korea released findings of a report last week which concluded that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedothat sank the Cheonan corvette on March 26.

Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the choppy Yellow Sea waters off the Koreas’ maritime border, but 46 died – the nation’s worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean war.

Trade frozen

Lee urged North Korea to apologise and punish those involved in the alleged attack but Pyongyang has consistently denied involvement in the sinking and has warned that any move to take punitive measures would mean war.

In a solemn televised address to the nation from South Korea’s War Memorial, Lee recounted the “incessant” pattern of attacks by North Korea, including the downing of an airliner in 1987 that killed 115 people.

North Korea, he said, must be punished for its repeated provocations, and Seoul would invoke its right to defend itself if Pyongyang showed aggression again, but he added that “our ultimate goal is not military confrontation”.

Lee said the North’s commercial ships would no longer be permitted to sail in South Korean waters and that all trade and exchange with the North would be frozen.

Seoul will also take Pyongyang to the UN Security Council over the sinking, he said.

US support

Washington backed Lee’s tough rhetoric with strong words of its own on Monday, saying Seoul’s sanctions against North Korea were “called for and entirely appropriate”.

Barack Obama, the US president, said he “fully supports” Lee’s demand that Pyongyang apologise and punish those responsible for the sinking and ordered the US military to work closely with South Korea “to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression”, according to the White House.

“The Republic of Korea can continue to count on the full support of the United States, as President Obama has made clear,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said in a written statement.

The US has called for an “international response” to the sinking- without specifying what form this might take – and on Monday the US secretary of state urged China to join that response.

Opening high-level US-China talks in Beijing, Hillary Clinton said North Korea must be held to account for the incident.

China is North Korea’s only major political and economic backer, and Beijing has avoided firm public comment on the sinking, instead expressing sympathy for the South Koreans killed and urging all sides to show restraint.

Al Jazeera’ China correspondent, Melissa Chan, said China had to perform a juggling act, weighing its relationship with North Korea, against its ties with the US.

The fact that China has been so cautious shows that it is very worried that the situation could lead to all out war, our correspondent said.

‘Co-operation has crumbled’

Leonid Petrov, a North Korean specialist and a lecturer in Korean studies at the University of Sydney, told Al Jazeera that relations between the North and South have been deteriorating for some time.

“The inter-Korean relationship is destroyed now, co-operation has crumbled … the result was the sinking of the Cheonan, and I can see it’s a very logical result of this collapse in communication and inter-Korea relations.

“Such accidents could have been easily prevented by diplomatic means – this is something President Lee jeopardised by scrapping the ’sunshine policy’ [of rapprochement towards the North],” he said.

The two Koreas are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

According to documents obtained by the newspaper, a secret meeting between the then-Israeli defence minister, Shimon Peres, and his South African counterpart, PW Botha, ended with an offer by Jerusalem for the sale of warheads “in three sizes”.

The Guardian claimedon Sunday that those “sizes” referred to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.

The documents provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The classified documents surrounding the agreement between the countries and cited by the Guardian were uncovered by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, an American academic, during research for a book, the newspaper said.

The defence ministers also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.

Sunday’s report said that the documents were proof that Pretoria wanted the weapons to keep neighbouring states and other enemies from attacking them.

The report also said Israeli authorities attempted to keep the South African government from declassifying the documents.

Israeli denial

A statement issued on Monday by the office of Peres, now Israel’s president, rejected the newspaper’s report.

“There exists no basis in reality for the claims published this morning by The Guardian that in 1975 Israel negotiated with South Africa the exchange of nuclear weapons,” it said.

“Unfortunately, The Guardian elected to write its piece based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts.

“Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa. There exists no Israeli document or Israeli signature on a document that such negotiations took place.”

However, Ian Black, Middle East editor of the Guardian, says the significance of the revelation is that it provides documentary proof that Israel was prepared to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa.

“This shows that Israel was prepared to be a proliferator of nuclear weapons and encourage the spread of them around the world,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We have had definitive evidence since the 1980s that Israel certainly has nuclear weapons, but it’s one thing to have weapons, this shows that Israel was going to sell weapons to another country.

“Something that was previously known perhaps as a rumour or suspicion, has now been confirmed as fact – that the Israeli government had strong relations with the apartheid government and that Israel was planning to sell nuclear weapons.”

Documentary proof

According to the Guardian, the minutes of the meeting on March 31, 1975, record that: “Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available.”

The document then records: “Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice.”

Polakow-Suransky, is also quoted as saying that Israel’s offer to equip South Africa with atomic weapons was the result of the regime’s need for a military deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.

“South Africa’s leaders yearned for a nuclear deterrent – which they believed would force the west to intervene on their behalf if Pretoria were ever seriously threatened – and the Israeli proposition put that goal within reach,” the Guardian quoted Polakow-Suransky as writing in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa.

But the alleged deal did not go through, according to Polakow-Suransky, although Israel did reportedly provide South Africa with 30 grams of tritium, the substance which provides thermonuclear weapons with a boost to their explosive power.

The delivery, according to the Guardian, was enough to build several atomic bombs.

Waldo Stumpf, a former chief executive officer of South Africa’s Atomic Energy Commission, told Al Jazeera that Botha “was quite adamant that the South African nuclear weapons programme was there for political reasons and was never there for technical reasons”.

No surprise

Allister Sparks, a political commentator and former editor of South Africa’s Rand Daily Mail newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the confirmation of a relationship between Israel and the apartheid regime came as no surprise.

“Israel will obviously come out and deny this evidence and label anyone who takes it seriously as being anti-Semites,” he said, “but this makes it more difficult for Israel to hold the respect of the world.”

The documents confirm accounts by Dieter Gerhardt, a former South African naval commander, jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union.

After his release following the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called “Chalet” which involved an offer by Israel to arm eight Jericho missiles with “special warheads”.

According to the paper, Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer.

The existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme was revealed by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunuto the Sunday Times in 1986.

He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site but provided no written documentation.

Israeli ‘pressure’

According to the Guardian, Israel “pressured” the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky.

“The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date,” he told the Guardian.

“The South Africans didn’t seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime’s old allies.”

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but it has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that.

It has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow international surveillance of Dimona in the southern Negev desert.

Panicked residents, who tried to flee as gun battles erupted between the security forces and gang members loyal to Christopher “Dudus” Coke, said they had seen bodies lying in the street.

Coke has been holed up in Tivoli Gardens, a western Kingston neighbourhood, since the Jamaican government signed his extradition order to the US last week.

He is wanted on charges of illegal drug and arms trafficking but has become popular after helping impoverished local residents of the area.

The two police officers who died were responding to a call from a female motorist late on Sunday when they were shot.

Gangs took up arms to fight Coke’s extradition after Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s prime minister, imposed a state of emergency on Sunday.

The measure, which went into effect at 23:00 GMT on Sunday, covers the western part of Kingston and St Andrew districts.

“The criminal element who have placed the society under siege will not be allowed to triumph,” Golding said on Monday in a televised address.

Intense gunfire

Elon Parkinson, a presenter on Jamaica’s 90 FM radio station, told Al Jazeera: “There is intense gunfire and buildings are being hit by mortar shells.

“A drone is flying over the area ostensibly identifying targets and as soon as they are identified, soldiers start pelting their houses.

“So far, five people are said to have been killed and a number of houses have been hit.

“Where it concerns negotiations regarding Mr Coke’s surrender, hopes are fading.

“His loyals indicated to us about an hour ago that any deal between the US and Jamaican authorities would be almost impossible, especially with the way the onslaught is taking place.”

Parkison said that Coke has concerns about going into Jamaican custody because his father, who was supposed to be extradited in 1992, burnt to death in his prison cell because of what Jamaican police said was a fire accident.

Barricades

Tensions in Jamaica rose over the last week after Golding reversed his long-standing refusal to extradite Coke to the US on drugs- and arms-trafficking charges.

US prosecutors describe Coke as the leader of the “Shower Posse” that murdered hundreds of people by showering them with bullets during the cocaine wars of the 1980s.

Relations between Jamaica and the US grew strained when Jamaica ignored an earlier extradition request for Coke, who is a supporter of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and wields influence in the inner city constituency that Golding represents.

Coke faces life imprisonment if convicted.

Polling stations started opening as planned at 6:00am local time (0300 GMT) on Sunday.

Some 32 million Ethiopians – 90 per cent of eligible voters – are expected to vote at more than 43,000 polling stations across the country.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from the capital Addis Ababa, said most people were wondering by what margin the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) would win, rather than whether it would win.

The EPRDF’s biggest challenge comes from the eight-party coalition Medrek – or the Forum – but it is united chiefly by its desire to unseat Meles and has not set out clear policies, our correspondent said.

The opposition admits that it has little chance of victory but says that is because the EPRDF has tightened its grip on power since the 2005 polls, routinely intimidates and jails its critics and tries to divide the opposition.

Past violence

In 2005, riots broke out in the capital when the EPRDF was declared winner. Security forces killed 193 protesters and seven policemen also died in trouble that tarnished the reputation of one of the world’s biggest aid recipients.

The EPRDF says it has since won popularity during a period of sustained economic growth by building roads, hydro-power dams and electrifying villages in a country where nearly 10 per cent of the population needed emergency food aid last year.

There were concerns over whether Sunday’s vote would go peacefully, our correspondent said, and what would happen if there were again a dispute over the results, but he said that the political atmosphere was very different from five years ago, with people mindful of what happened in 2005.

While there has been some violence in the two regions of Oromia and Tigray, the capital has been calm before polling.

Outside the capital, both sides say activists have died in politically motivated killings.

Diplomats and staff of some foreign charities have been banned from leaving Addis Ababa without permission from the authorities until after the poll.

In Tigray, the ruling party is facing a challenge from former members who fought with Meles over economic policy and how to deal with rival Eritrea.

Liberation hero

Meles became leader of Ethiopia in 1991 when an armed group led by him ousted a communist government that killed hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians in a 17-year rule.

He was lionised by the West in 1991, with the then US president, Bill Clinton, calling him one of a “new generation” of leaders who would bring democracy to the continent.

But Meles, 55, has increasingly been criticised by rights groups, who say he is becoming more autocratic and stifles dissent in the country of 80 million people.

Birtukan Mideksa, leader of one of the Medrek member parties and seen by analysts as a potential replacement for Meles, is in prison accused of violating the terms of a pardon that released her from a previous jail spell in 2007.

Medrek is running 421 candidates for the 547-seat federal parliament, not as high as the EPRDF’s 521, but enough to form a clear majority should they pull off a shock win.

The next biggest opposition parties, the All Ethiopian Unity Organisation and the Ethiopian Democratic Party are running 350 and 250 candidates respectively.

Barack Obama, in his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday, also said offshore oil drilling could only go forward if there were assurances that such an accident would not happen again.

“First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton,” Obama said in his toughest remarks yet on companies linked to the spill.

“And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable not only for being forthcoming and transparent about the facts surrounding the leak, but for shutting it down, repairing the damage it does, and repaying Americans who’ve suffered a financial loss,” he said.

Growing anger

A month after the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers, anger is growing along the Gulf Coast as heavy oil washes into delicate coastal wetlands, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.

In his executive order announcing Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator, and William Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief, as co-chairmen of the commission, Obama made his first reference to the possibility of a criminal investigation.

“The commission shall ensure that it does not interfere with or disrupt any ongoing or anticipated civil or criminal investigation or law enforcement activities or any effort to recover response costs or damages arising out of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire and oil spill,” the order stated.

The administration is keeping the pressure on BP on many fronts as it strives to show it is being resolute in the face of what many believe is already the worst US oil spill, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska.

BP, in charge of the cleanup, said it would be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot mud into the blown-out well – yet another delay in the effort to stop the oil.

The oil giant made no immediate comment on Obama’s remarks, but the company’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, said he welcomed the establishment of the commission and pledged to work with its co-chairmen.

“We share the goal of the president and the public to know what happened to cause this accident and what regulatory and industry changes are needed to help prevent something like this from happening again,” Hayward said in a statement.

Hayward has said that “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest”.

Hayward also recently said that “the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean – the amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume”.

Dispersant dispute

The EPA expressed frustration on Saturday when it released BP’s response to its directive on dispersants instructing the company to evaluate pre-approved dispersants for toxicity and effectiveness.

It accused BP and some of the manufacturers involved of withholding information by invoking business confidentiality.

“EPA continues to strongly urge these companies to voluntarily make this information public so Americans can get a full picture of the potential environmental impact of these alternative dispersants,” it said. It did not name the companies.

In its response released by the EPA, BP said Corexit, a dispersant manufactured by Nalco Holding Co that it has been using, was the only one immediately available in sufficient quantities to tackle the spill and “remains the best option for subsea application”.

It also said that “within 28 days of application it does not persist in the environment” and asked to discuss the situation with the Coast Guard and the EPA before they issue “directives requiring a change in dispersant products”.

Some environmentalists have expressed concerns that the chemicals in dispersants may have a lasting harmful impact.

Changing numbers

BP on Friday revised downward an earlier estimate that one of its containment solutions, a 1.6-km-long siphon tube inserted into the larger of two seabed ruptures, was catching 5,000 barrels (795,000 litres) per day of oil.

BP captured 2,200 barrels in the 24 hours to midnight, according to the incident response team, the same figure it had for the previous 24-hour period.

Some scientists have dismissed an original estimate of 5,000 bpd of the total leaking oil – often defended by BP executives – as ridiculously low and say it could be 70,000 barrels or 11 million litres per day, or more.

Nato officials said the fighters fired a number of rockets and mortars at the Kandahar Air Field on Saturday, wounding an unspecified number of Nato troops.

“Kandahar Air Field came under indirect fire at approximately 8:00 tonight and shortly afterward a ground attack was under way as well,” a Nato spokesman said.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from the capital, Kabul, said the attack is a “huge blow” for Nato forces.

“Specifically because it comes after two major attacks that happened over the past six days. The latest attack was at Bagram air field, which is the biggest air field in the country,” she said.

“Before that – just a day before – there was a suicide bombing here in Afghanistan where six foreign soldiers were killed.

“So certainly, the Taliban are trying to show that they are there and they are able to fight.”

Taliban offensive

The attack on Bagram airbase, near Kabul, on Wednesday left one US contractor dead and nine Nato troops wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, saying 20 suicide bombers took part in the assault, which included rockets, small arms and grenades, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, or Isaf, said.

The recent spate of attacks follow the Taliban’s announcement that it would launch a spring offensive against Nato and Afghan forces in response to Nato’s plans for a military campaign on the group’s southern stronghold of Kandahar.

Separately on Saturday, three foreign soldiers and one civilian working with Isaf were killed in two separate incidents in southern Afghanistan.

“In a separate incident, also in southern Afghanistan, another Isaf service member died following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack,” Nato said in a statement on Saturday.

The latest casualties bring the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year to 215, according to figures on the icasualties.org website.

In 2009, the deadliest year since the US-led an invasion that overthrew the Taliban in late 2001, 520 foreign soldiers were killed.

The US and its Nato allies are increasing to 150,000 their military deployment in Afghanistan, about two-thirds of which is American.