38 die as US chopper crashes

US senior administration official said yesterday a Chinook helicopter that crashed, killing 31 US special operations forces and seven Afghan soldiers, was apparently shot down by insurgents.

It was the highest number of American casualties recorded in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Twenty-five of the dead were US Navy SEALs, US television network ABC News reported.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai sent his condolences to US President Barack Obama, according to a statement issued by his office.

Taliban claims to have brought the helicopter down in a rocket attack but it has been known to make exaggerated claims.

NATO said there ‘‘was enemy activity in the area’’.

The helicopter was brought down during an anti-Taliban operation in an insurgent-infested district of the eastern province of Wardak, just south-west of Kabul.

It was shot down by a Taliban rocket that destroyed it, the Wardak governor’s spokesman said after the Taliban had claimed responsibility.

The death toll was given in a statement issued by Mr Karzai’s office and was not immediately confirmed by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

During a joint special operation last night a helicopter crashed and as a result 38 people lost their lives. Among the dead, seven of them are from the Afghan Special Commando Army and the other 31 victims are international forces,” said Zaher Azimy, spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said the helicopter crashed in central Maidan Wardak province to the west of the capital Kabul.

The Taliban issued a statement claiming to have shot down the Chinook during a firefight which also killed eight insurgents.

Azimy would not be drawn on the possible cause of the Chinook crash saying: "The incident is already under investigation. As this helicopter belongs to international forces, obviously they will provide details of the crash and the reason.

WA link in Indonesian chopper crash

INVESTIGATORS have blamed bad weather for the crash of a helicopter in Indonesia that killed two Australian mine workers and eight others.

The Australian men, identified by Indonesian officials as Barry Tomlinson and Adrian Aird, were travelling to the Gosowong gold mine in North Sulawesi operated by Melbourne-based company Newcrest Mining.

All 10 people on board the helicopter died, including two Indonesian crew, four Indonesian passengers and two South Africans. All of the passengers worked at the mine.

He was the life of the party, he had an excellent sense of humour, it was very dry, and everyone loved him. He was good. Too good to be gone," Margaret said yesterday.

Mr Aird followed in his father Sydney's footsteps and chose a career in the mines. He completed an apprenticeship as a fitter in Kalgoorlie before moving to Indonesia for the good pay about three years ago.

Mr Aird has three daughters from a previous marriage in Australia and his mother said he told her, when he visited Australia two weeks ago, that he was excited about becoming a father again.

Meanwhile in Perth, Mr Tomlinson's former colleagues at Remote Control Technologies remembered a talented technician and a proud grandfather.

He had visited his workmates only last Friday.

Former colleague Phil Goode said Mr Tomlinson was based in Perth but travelled regularly to Indonesia to work as an adviser.

He left Remote Control Technologies in April and planned to work at the mine for three years in order to save enough money for a comfortable retirement with his wife Lynne.

Mr Tomlinson was a Perth man while Mr Aird - originally from South Australia - had spent time working on the mines in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

News Ltd is reporting that the other eight victims were employees or contractors of PT Nusa Halmahera Mineral, a joint venture between Newcrest Mining and PT Aneka Tambang.

The group was travelling to Gosowong Mine on Halmahera island. The cause of the crash is not known.

Mr Aird's mother Margaret told the Daily Telegraph her son was about to become a father for the fourth time.

"He was the life of the party, he had an excellent sense of humour, it was very dry, and everyone loved him. He was good. Too good to be gone," she said.

With three children from a previous marriage, Mr Aird was about to welcome his first child with Indonesian wife Joice.

Mr Tomlinson was working as a contractor in Indonesia after previously working for Remote COntrol Technologies in Perth.

Three hurt in suspected drug house blast

THREE people are in hospital with serious burns after a suspected clandestine drug lab explosion at a house in Perth's north.

Police, firefighters and ambulance officers went to the Balga property at around 2.25am (WST) today after a neighbour reported a loud blast, flames and screaming.

Two men, aged 34 and 37, have been taken to Royal Perth Hospital (RPH), the younger man with extensive burns to his body.

A 43-year-old woman with serious burns later presented at Joondalup Hospital and was transferred to RPH.

Police said a number of people were seen running from the house and driving off in a car.

Items associated with the manufacture of methylamphetamine were found in the house.

Police said a number of people were seen running from the property trying to escape the flames in the house. They got into a vehicle and drive away.

A 37-year-old man who lived at the house and a 34-year-old man from Baldivis were taken to Royal Perth Hospital by ambulance.

A 43-year-old woman presented herself at Joondalup Hospital but was transferred to Royal Perth Hospital. She and the 34-year-old man have serious burns.

The organised crime squad is examining the property after a number of items associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine were found inside the house, according to police.

Maddie Pulver fights back after bomb hoax

BOMB hoax victim Madeleine Pulver had a return to normalcy, of sorts, this weekend, four days after being subjected to a terrifying 10-hour ordeal at her Mosman home.

The teenager set off before 7.30am yesterday for a swim before returning home with a friend.

After a quick change, she left the house again, this time accompanied by her parents, Bill and Belinda Pulver, to join teammates from Wenona School for Girls for a hockey match, where she was warmly greeted by teammates.

It is believed to be the first school activity she has undertaken since being held in her home on Wednesday as the victim of an elaborate extortion attempt during which a hoax bomb device was chained around her neck.

As she left,, Madeleine said she just wanted to get on with her life.

''I'm doing well,'' she said. ''Every day is getting better. It's good to be getting back to normal.''

The way individuals cope with trauma is influenced by how their lives have been up until that point, according to Sydney neuro-psychotherapist Trisha Stratford, who said not all victims needed counselling.

''If something like this happens to you and you have had a fairly happy, enjoyable life up until that moment, then you cope with it better.''

Mr and Mrs Pulver stood on the sidelines cheering their daughter on.

Mr Pulver, who said his daughter would return to school on Tuesday, said the family would not feel safe until their daughter's tormentor was caught.

The note attached to Maddie - which featured references to Tai-Pan - did not include instructions for a handover of money, but Det Supt Luke Moore confirmed a "demand" had been made.

Yesterday, the 18-year-old donned her shinpads and headed to Sydney's inner west for an inter-school hockey competition.

Leaving home in the company of her father, Bill, and mother, Belinda, soon before 9am, Maddie clearly relished the opportunity to catch up with teammates.

After laughing and chatting with friends in a warm-up session, watched by a slew of television crews, she took to the field for a spirited game.

Her team eventually went down 2-0, but she was commended for her determination in attending.

There were supportive cheers from the crowd, and her teammates patted her on the back as she returned to the change rooms.

Maddie said she had looked forward to rejoining her teammates, saying her friends had been a "very good pillar of support" following her ordeal.

"It will be good to be back to normal," the 18-year-old said.

Earlier, Maddie took advantage of the warmer weather, heading out for an early morning swim with a male friend about 8am.

It was the same friend who had comforted her on Friday night, cuddling and hugging her during a visit from school mates.

But it won't be all fun and games for Maddie in the weeks ahead.

As she tries to come to terms with her horror bomb hoax ordeal, she will also have to resume her studies for her HSC exams.

Along with her fellow year 12 classmates, Maddie had been scheduled to begin the tests last Thursday - the day after she was attacked while studying alone at her Mosman home.

Staff at Wenona postponed the exams in the wake of the attack, citing the distress the incident had caused all students.

4WD driver tested

Epping woman, 34, who was driving a 4WD carrying 10 children when it crashed on Friday night has been released from the Royal Melbourne hospital after taking a blood alcohol test.

Police were last night waiting for the results before interviewing the unlicensed driver.

The 10 children are in a stable condition at the Royal Children's and Western hospitals. The Pajero ran off the Western Highway and rolled.

Militants retreat from Mogadishu

MOGADISHU — Somalia's Islamist Shebab rebels pulled out of key positions in the war-torn and famine-struck capital on Saturday, with the country's president proclaiming the city "fully liberated."

"Mogadishu has been fully liberated from the enemy, and the rest of the country will soon be liberated too," Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.

The Al-Qaeda affiliated Shebab insurgents abandoned several strategic positions overnight that were then taken over by government troops.

"We are very happy -- the fruits of bloodshed and the wars that we fought against the rebels are finally attained," Ahmed said.

African Union-backed government troops have been battling Shebab rebels in Mogadishu in an offensive to secure aid delivery routes for victims of the drought threatening some 12 million people in Somalia and other Horn of Africa countries.

"We have two enemies to fight - one of them is the Shebab, while the other is those who try to rob the people," the president said.

"We will not tolerate looting, and anyone found committing such a crime will be brought to justice."

Lawless Somalia is awash with rival militia factions. On Friday, food aid being handed out to famine victims in Mogadishu was looted by gunmen, who killed five people.

However, a spokesman for hardline rebels, Ali Mohamed Rage, said Saturday's withdrawal involved merely "a change of military tactics."

"The Mujahideen fighters applied military tactic changes to undermine the allied enemy of Allah, and you will soon be hearing a good news."

Shebab fighters are waging a bloody campaign to overthrow the country's Western-backed transitional government, and control large areas of the south and centre of the country.

Until Saturday morning, government and AU troops controlled just over half of Mogadishu, including the airport and port, while the Shebab controlled the city's north-east.

"The enemy is defeated, they pulled out of Mogadishu -- and we will fight them to eliminate them from the rest of the country," Somalia's prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said.

Since February, the African Union mission (AMISOM) with its 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers has clawed back key positions from the insurgents.

Major Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU's AMISOM force in Somalia, said they were reacting cautiously to the Shebab's move.

Rebel units began trundling out of the city in pickups before dawn after intense firefights with government forces late Friday night. The Al Qaeda-linked militants headed toward their strongholds across Somalia, a desolate terrain awash with hundreds of thousands of starving families enduring the Horn of Africa's worst drought in decades.

The country "welcomes the success by the Somali government forces backed by (African Union peacekeepers) who defeated the enemy of Shabab," President Sheikh Shairf Sheikh Ahmed told reporters at his residence.

He added: "It is time to harvest the fruits of peace. I call on the Somali people to help and to support their soldiers and point out any Shabab member hiding in homes."

Ali Mohamoud Rage, a Shabab spokesman, told a Somali radio station: "We have abandoned Mogadishu but we remain in other towns. We aren't leaving you. We have changed our tactics. Every one of you will feel the change in every corner and every street in Mogadishu. We will defend you and continue the fighting."

Shabab and its fierce interpretation of Islamic law, which espouses stoning adulterers and public beheadings, were despised in Mogadishu, where residents lived trapped by gunfire and artillery barrages between the rebels and government-backed troops. The capital devolved into a fearful, bloodstained, whittled version of itself as bullet-pocked buildings slumped along the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. has been concerned that the Shabab, which has connections to the Al Qaeda extremists in Yemen, would further disrupt the volatile intersection of Africa and the Middle East. In 2010, Shabab carried out twin bombings in Uganda that killed 76 people; the attacks were retribution for Uganda soldiers taking part in the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

The rebels have been particularly brutal to their own countrymen. In recent weeks, they have deterred humanitarian organizations from reaching drought regions under their control, leaving swaths of the country scattered with starving families. Shabab has also been criticized for preventing hundreds of thousands Somalis facing famine from fleeing their territory to international aid camps.

The Islamic militants began seeping across Mogadishu in 2007, a year after Ethiopian troops invaded the country and a transitional government attempted to form a semblance of order among warring clans and religious extremists. The transitional government has received millions of dollars in Western assistance but is rife with corruption, tribal politics and an often noncommitted, underpaid army.

Surges by Africa Union forces, however, had weakened Shabab's grip on the capital. The rebels had been divided on tactics in recent months, and shortly before midnight Friday they launched attacks on government bases and troop positions. Gunshots and explosions rang across the city for hours as government-backed forces advanced on rebel strongholds.

"The government repelled the attacks and we have cleared Mogadishu this morning," government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman told The Times. "The security committee is in emergency meeting to restore law and order in the vacuum left by" retreating Shabab forces.

Somalis watched as militants streamed out of the city.

"I saw a convoy of about dozen pickup trucks full of fighters coming from Mogadishu," Osman Farole, a resident of Afgoye, about 22 miles outside the capital, told The Times. "Among the convoy were two black-tinted 4x4 vehicles that are supposed to carry their leaders.

Norway polar bear attack: grieving family pays tribute to Horatio Chapple

JUST before Patrick Flinders headed out on the expedition to the Arctic Circle he and his father posted a short film on the internet to express his excitement over the ''fantastic'' trip.

The 16-year-old, like his friends, Horatio Chapple and Scott Smith, both 17, dreamed of experiencing raw nature and were particularly excited about seeing polar bears in their natural habitat.

However, it was the brutality of the wilderness they had to face after their group was attacked by the world's biggest land carnivore.

A 2.1-metre, 254-kilogram bear rampaged through their camp on Friday, ignoring traps designed to keep it at bay. By the time it was shot, Horatio, an Eton schoolboy, was dead and Patrick, from Jersey, and Scott along with their two guides were seriously injured.

Patrick survived by punching the bear repeatedly on the nose.

Police who arrived by helicopter found the group in shock, the bloody carcass of the bear still lying among the tents and the injured.

The injured have undergone surgery and are recovering in hospital.

The victims were part of a group of 80 that landed last month on the Norwegian arctic island of Spitsbergen, home to more than 3000 polar bears.

Michael Reid sustained injuries to his face and neck in the incident and remained in hospital today, along with fellow leader Andrew Ruck, 27, Patrick Flinders, 16, and Scott Bennell-Smith, 17, who also underwent treatment overnight.

Mr Ruck's and Mr Reid's injuries were described as severe, while Scott and Patrick sustained less serious injuries. All were stable after operations.

The five men and boys attacked were part of a group travelling on a British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) expedition, which was camped on the Von Postbreen glacier near Longyearbyen on Svalbard, north of the Norwegian mainland.

Peter Reid described his shock when the BSES called him on Friday to inform him of the incident in which Horatio, from near Salisbury in Wiltshire, died.

"We were very anxious," he said. "We're upset, but there's a family in Wiltshire with a 17-year-old son who's been killed and we can't imagine the grief they're going through."

On hearing that his son had shot the bear, he felt a "mixture of anxiety and pride", he said.

His son, who lives in London and works as an events co-ordinator for the Royal Geographical Society, spoke warmly of Horatio in his email, he added.

Michael Reid described the schoolboy as "one of the best members of our group" and wrote "I am so devastated".

Hospital staff said it was hoped the survivors could be transferred to a hospital in the UK as soon as possible.

Jane Owen, the British ambassador to Norway, has visited the four survivors and said they were "all bearing up well".<

She said: "It's clearly a priority to get them home as soon as possible. They're receiving extremely good treatment here at the hospital in Tromso.

"We are working with the hospital authorities to establish when will be the right time to arrange for them to be medevaced (given a medical evacuation) back to the UK so that they can be with their families as they go through the recovery process.

"Our priority is obviously to support those involved and respect families' need for privacy at this very difficult time.

More than two dozen U.S. deaths in Afghan copter crash

Nato helicopter crashed overnight in east Afghanistan following an operation against Taliban insurgents.

Afghan provincial spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said the helicopter crashed in the Sayd Abad district of Wardak province. The volatile region borders the province of Kabul where the Afghan capital is located and is known for its strong Taliban presence.

Nato said the alliance was conducting a recovery operation Saturday at the site and investigating the cause of the crash, but did not release details or a casualty figure.

"We are aware of an incident involving a helicopter in eastern Afghanistan," said US Air Force Captain Justin Brockhoff, a Nato spokesman. "We are in the process of accessing the facts."

Nato said insurgents were in the area at the time of the crash.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed the downed aircraft was a US military helicopter and that the Taliban fighters had brought it down with a rocket attack.

The Taliban claimed militants downed the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. Mohammad Hazrat Janan, head of the provincial council said Tangi village elders reported that insurgents shot at the craft when it was flying back from an operation.

The incident took place in the eastern province of Wardak, an area rife with insurgent activity. There has been a swell of recent attacks in the country's southern and eastern provinces.

The crash comes just as NATO is drawing down and handing over security control to national forces. Ten thousand U.S. soldiers are scheduled to depart by year's end, while the full drawn-down is expected to take place by the end of 2014.

However, NATO's International Security Assistance Force has not said how the incident occurred. ISAF spokesman Justin Brockhoff confirmed the crash and acknowledged the helicopter had been flying in area where there was reported insurgent activity, but declined to offer additional details.

Officials are being especially tight-lipped because recovery operations at the site are still under way and body identifications and family notifications are just beginning, the U.S. military official said.

Last month, a NATO helicopter was brought down by insurgent fire in the country's eastern province of Kunar. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that attack, though no injuries were reported.

In a separate incident, a NATO service member died Saturday after an improvised explosive device detonated in southern Afghanistan.

Elsewhere Saturday, a joint Afghan and coalition force conducted raids in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing "several insurgents," NATO reported.

The operation also targeted a "Taliban facilitator," who NATO says was responsible for supplying ammunition and bomb-making materials to the Taliban.

In July, a series of gun battles in Nangarhar between insurgents and NATO forces left at least 10 militants dead.