Update: We just received a statement from Hunter Todd about the event in which he confirms that he did search the backpack of a woman because she was wearing a hijab and says he had to do it to protect his audience. Find his entire statement at the end of this post.

Last weekend marked the end of the 46th annual WorldFest. The film festival, third oldest in North America, bills itself as a “competitive International Film Festival” and lists as part of its mission/vision statement a desire to “add to the rich cultural fabric of the city of Houston.” The actions last Saturday of festival founder/CEO Hunter Todd would appear to show that every vision has its limits.

According to a widely distributed blog entry by writer Amanda Rudd, which quoted a Facebook post by the author’s brother, Todd insisted on searching the bag of a Muslim student (and only her bag) when a fire alarm went off at one of the “master classes” he was introducing at the Westchase Marriott. When asked why he was searching the student’s bag, Todd responded, “[B]ecause she is a Muslim and a suspicious character, now sit down.”

Mike Rudd, the student who confronted Todd writes in his Facebook post:

Before the morning seminar at WorldFest this morning, everyone was gathered in the seminar room for the lectures start when the hotel’s fire alarm went off. The founder and director of WorldFest, Hunter Todd, told everyone to stay in the room before he went to a Muslim UH student and classmate of mine, and demanded to search her bag. She tried to show him her pass to prove she was supposed to be there, but he demanded to search every single pocket of her bag anyway. I’d like to add he did so with a great deal of rudeness and attitude. She complied and showed him the her bag, after this he walked off and didn’t ask to search any of the dozens of other bags in the room.

Another student at the seminar, who prefers to remain anonymous, pointed out the student in question was wearing a hijab and niqab, and added:

He demanded to search her bag, even after she had shown him her VIP Gold Pass to the festival. This young woman was also a University of Houston student, and she complied with Todd’s request. She started with the back pocket, then he rudely and condescendingly said “There’s another zipper.” She showed him the contents of her entire backpack while I watched, stunned. Afterwards, he walked back to the front of the room without questioning or addressing anyone else in the crowded seminar.

Rudd, apparently alone among those in attendance, objected to Todd’s behavior. Todd’s response (according to the other student):

“You’re the kind of person I hate the most – an obnoxious little bastard. Now sit down or I’ll have you thrown out.” Rudd answered, “All right, that’s fine,” and pulled out his phone to call our professor for advice. Todd freaked out, lunged at Rudd, grabbed him with both hands and tried to take his phone.

Rudd states at this point he left the room to avoid further escalation. His next step was to call WorldFest and lodge an official complaint about Todd’s behavior. The phone was answered by a woman named Kathleen, but the conversation quickly went south. Again, according to Rudd:

I told her I was calling to file a complaint about a racial incident involving their founder and director and asked her what her position was at WorldFest. Ignoring this, she asked my name. I told her I would not give my name until she told me what position she held. More rudely she said “you called us now tell me your name”. I told her that in this situation I would not give her my name or any info when I did not know who I was talking with. This is when she yells loudly in the the phone “TELL ME YOUR NAME RIGHT NOW!”

Rudd says he hung up and started contacting members of the press about the incident. “Kathleen” may be Kathleen Haney-Todd, WorldFest’s program director and wife of Hunter Todd.

As of this writing, Todd has not responded to emails asking for a comment. WorldFest’s Twitter account (@worldfest) has been silent since 10:21 AM Saturday. Curious, considering Sunday was the last day of the festival, marked by the annual Consular Regatta at the Houston Yacht Club.

As a member of the Houston film community, I’m not sure which depresses me more: that the man in charge of an allegedly “international” film festival is capable of an act of such obvious xenophobia and religious profiling, or that out of a class of over 50 people, only one person stood up to challenge him.

Update: When we first heard back from Hunter Todd, he complained that we hadn’t given WorldFest sufficient coverage this year and questioned why we would highlight something like this. He also said he would get back to us with a statement later in the day. This is his latest statement to us:

Sir:

We are running a film festival, not constantly checking Email and FaceBook… we have a very small staff and are totally involved in producing a fine film festival… what are you attempting to do, destroy me and/or the film festival?

This entire episode is insane… After a false evacuation alarm… and the appearance of a single individual Hijab (eye slit only) clad individual without any friends, sitting up front in the room… I was only concerned for the safety of our many guests.. she was carrying a large dark backpack that was heavy and fully loaded… upon a brief inspection, it turned out to be 3-4 water bottles… I was extremely polite and thanked her after the 60-second interchange… there was nothing else to it. This entire issue has been created by the Rudd individual.

Mr. Rudd either has some perverse agenda or is highly misguided. He refused to talk with me later outside the seminar room… he seemed to want to have it out – right there and right then. He refused two request to step aside, rudely confronting me with angry accusations and outburst. I was only trying to start the delayed seminar.

I was referring to your lack of interest in the film festival, until something unpleasant comes along. I will long remember how you have treated me and the festival. Mr. Rudd is being quite disingenuous. He has never mentioned the complete circumstances.

Sincerely,

JHT

Related:
-What The Profiling Of A Houston Muslim Tells Us About The National State Of Mind

What if they were Muslim? (H/T: rookie)

Greek police arrest man behind Facebook page satirizing ‘mystical’ priest

Cross posted from ekathimerini.com

A 27-year-old man was arrested in the village of Psahna, Evia, on Monday on suspicion of being behind a Facebook page satirizing a dead Orthodox priest who some faithful believe had uncanny powers of perception.

The suspect, who was not named, is alleged to have maintained the page mocking Father or Elder (Geron) Paisios. The page was named Father Pastitsios after a traditional pasta-based dish.

The 27-year-old is being charged with blasphemy and insulting the late priest, who has become a cult figure among some Orthodox Christians over the past few months after allegedly foreseeing Greece’s economic crisis.

Police said that they made the arrest after “thousands” of complaints about the page from various parts of the world reached the electronic crimes squad.

Critics, however, point out that the police took action a few days after far-right Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) raised the issue in Parliament.

The arrest was heavily criticized on Facebook and other social media as being an unacceptable case of censorship unbefitting a modern European country.

Opponents of the man’s arrest began a campaign on Twitter under the keyword #FreeGeronPastitsios.

The increasingly unstable Eric Allen Bell (aka Eric Edborg) isn’t backing down from his calls to destroy Mecca. His genocidal predilections are endless. Last week I covered his cutesy attempt at fanning the flames of his Islamophobic followers fanatical anti-Muslim hate.

Now Bell is at it again, the chicken hawk wants the US military to hover over the Ka’ba and remove it.

Bell, having taken notice of the fact that his deluded hate-mongering is well known, gives his followers an empty warning, telling them to be careful of what hate they say because evil Obama-Mooslim-Brotherhood-Hamas-AlQaeda-linked-CAIR is watching:

Clearly Bell doesn’t know the meaning of “contradiction.”

As hollow a disclaimer as you will ever read, Bell who is extra-vigilante to ban those who oppose his hate goes ahead and leaves comments such as these up from Kim Bruce:

or James Garner:

You can check the thread out yourself and see all the other calls for nuking and killing, it would take a long time for us to load all of the screenshots.

(Via IslamophobiaToday.com)

National Front planning to protest ‘once a month’ at proposed Sunderland mosque

Members of the National Front are planning to protest once a month at the site of a proposed new city centre mosque, Sky Tyne and Wear has learned.

The right wing group demonstrated against the building of a mosque in St Mark’s Road in Sunderland on Saturday, August 11. Police were forced to separate the protesters and anti-fascist groups as tensions heightened in front of worried residents.

Following the protest, the North East National Front (NENF) Facebook page announced the group will protest every month. The posting, which has been forwarded to Northumbria Police and Sunderland City Council, claimed that the NF “won the day”.

Local NF activists were joined by others from across the country as they claim the mosque posed a threat to the community and the safety of local children.

Gary Duncan, 42, of Sunderland, speaking on behalf of the anti-fascists, said: “It doesn’t matter what they say is the reason they are against the mosque, it is all about racism and that is it. They are not complaining about the church down the road. We have come to stand in opposition to these people who have been bussed in from all over the country to poison Sunderland with their racism.”

Simon Biggs, the group’s North East regional organiser of the NF, said: “There are no British-born Muslims in my eyes. They don’t belong here and Islam is alien to us.”

The Global Secular Humanist Movement (GSHM) Facebook page recently posted this drivel from Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

To back this claim, GSHM linked to a 2007 MSNBC article with the propagandistic title of Some young U.S. Muslims approve suicide hits, which in turn cited a Pew study that found that “[o]ne in four younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances.”

This Facebook post is now making its rounds around the internet.  Seeing as how LoonWatch monitors anti-Muslim loons–and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among the best of them–I thought a response would be worthwhile.

First of all, it should be noted that suicide bombing by itself is not illegal under international law.  In a section entitled “Suicide Attacks and International Law”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes that “[s]uicide attacks are a method of warfare that in themselves do not violate the laws of war.”  This is the case if the tactic is used by legitimate combatants against purely military targets in a time and place of war.

In fact, HRW finds that “as weapons [suicide attacks] are very discriminate: a suicide bomber is able to detonate with an accuracy that exceeds that of the most sophisticated guided weapon.”  An Iraqi resistance fighter would inflict far fewer civilian casualties from a suicide attack against a U.S. military installation than a U.S. bomber would inflict from carpet bombing Iraqi cities.  But because U.S. soldiers are the victims of suicide bombing and not carpet bombing, Americans hold the former as the epitome of evil and the latter as perfectly acceptable: hey, it’s war!

The American mentality is very easy to understand: they suicide attack our soldiers, so it’s terrorism and morally atrocious.  We carpet bomb them, so it’s perfectly acceptable: what do you expect in a time of a war?

Forget just carpet bombing: “A Gallup poll in August [of 1945] revealed that 85 percent [of Americans] approved of the use of the atomic bomb against Japanese cities.”  In fact, a poll for Fortune magazine found that another “22.7 percent of respondents agreed with the sentiment: ‘We should have quickly used many more of the [atomic] bombs before Japan had a chance to surrender.’”  Worse yet, a “December 1944 Gallup poll found that 13 percent of respondents favored the killing of all Japanese” after the war: men, women, and children; or, in the words of the chairman of the U.S. government agency the War Manpower Commission, “[t]he extermination of the Japanese in toto.”  (All quotes in this paragraph taken from pp.13-14 of Prof. Sahr Conway-Lanz’s Collateral Damage.)

This is not just some sentiment of a bygone era.  To this day, a “majority of Americans surveyed think dropping atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was the right thing to do.”  I guarantee you that a sizable portion of Americans, if polled today, would agree with nuking Mecca, Medina, and/or Tehran.  Even more would be comfortable with carpet bombing Muslim cities, which is what our military already does.

That such sizable percentages of Americans support carpet and atomic bombings should really cause us to understand Pew’s poll results–and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s rantings–with some much-needed perspective.

What MSNBC’s article, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s quote, and the Global Secular Humanist Movement’s posting, fail to mention is that an even greater percentage of Americans–of many different religions or no religion at all–justify the targeting and killing of civilians.  This is something I pointed out in an earlier article of mine: Gallup Poll: Jews and Christians Way More Likely than Muslims to Justify Killing Civilians.  This showed that an overwhelming majority of U.S. Muslims (78%) stated that it is never morally justifiable to target and kill civilians, compared to only 38% of Protestants, 39% of Catholics, 43% of Jews, 33% of Mormons, and 56% of people with no religion/atheists/agnostics:

The wily Islamophobes feebly argued back, saying:

The survey is of American Muslims, who are unlikely to be representative of Muslims in Muslim countries or of Muslims in Europe.

To this, I published a follow-up article: Surveys Show Muslims in Every Country Less Likely to Justify Killing Civilians than Americans and Israelis.  In it, we saw the following results:

Percentage of people who said it is sometimes justifiable to target and kill civilians:

Mormon-Americans 64%
Christian-Americans 58%
Jewish-Americans 52%
Israeli Jews 52%
Palestinians* 51%
No religion/Atheists/Agnostics (U.S.A.) 43%
Nigerians* 43%
Lebanese* 38%
Spanish Muslims 31%
Muslim-Americans 21%
German Muslims 17%
French Muslims 16%
British Muslims 16%
Egyptians* 15%
Indonesians* 13%
Jordanians* 12%
Pakistanis* 5%
Turks* 4%

*refers to Muslims only

Of course, the Global Secular Humanist Movement will quickly put up its hands and say: “But, we’re atheists!”  To this, I point out that U.S. Muslims were much more likely to say attacks against civilians are never justifiable (78% vs. 56%).  Aren’t these “secular humanists” beholden to scientific means?  Why then don’t they mention in their posting the results from the control group(s)?  Doing so would of course nullify their thesis.  The fact that U.S. Muslims are more likely to condemn attacks aimed against civilians completely negates their argument that wow, look at how many Moozlums support suicide attacks!

Anti-Muslim ideologues always link present day Muslim violence to Islamic scripture: the implication is that such a sizable percentage of young Muslims believe in suicide bombing because of their religion.  In fact, the opposite holds true: these young Muslims believe in suicide bombing in spite of their religion.

Indeed, such a large percentage of Muslims abhor the targeting and killing of civilians because of their religious canon, which–unlike the Jewish and Christian counterparts–condemns such a thing.  Whereas Moses in the Bible orders his soldiers to “kill all the boys[] and kill every woman” (Numbers 31:17), Muhammad explicitly forbade targeting civilians on numerous occasions, saying:  “Do not kill an infirm old man, an infant, a child, or a woman.” (Sunan Abu Dawood, book 14, #2608)

The Quran also forbids suicide, which is why the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose suicide bombing, even against purely military targets.  Admittedly, it is true that there exists a debate in some Muslim circles about the morality of suicide attacks against both soldiers and civilians.  However, it is very simplistic to draw the following conclusion:

X percent of Muslims say suicide bombing is sometimes justifiable.  If there exist Y number of Muslims, then that’s a lot of suicide bombers!

This is an erroneous and hasty conclusion.  Rather, X percent of Muslims stating that suicide bombing is sometimes morally justifiable is often simply a manifestation of their sympathies and solidarity with Muslims fighting occupation, specifically Palestinians.  The MSNBC article reads:

…Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy…said most supporters of the attacks likely assumed the context was a fight against occupation — a term Muslims often use to describe the conflict with Israel.

Many of these Muslims may fear that condemning such tactics entirely would rob the resistance fighters of their moral high-ground.  It does not mean that they themselves will go out and suicide bomb, no more than it would mean based on the poll results above that an average American would go out and start shooting Muslim civilians.

That a small but sizable portion of Muslims would justify Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians in the Occupied Territories may sound horrifying, but it ought to be understood in perspective: American and Israeli Jews are more likely to justify targeting and killing civilians (see results above).  Disturbingly, a survey conducted by Haifa University’s Center for the Study of National Security found that a majority of Israeli Jews support a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

To this day, Americans debate the morality of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with an unsettling majority of them thinking these attacks to be justified.  It would not surprise me if some American readers of our site would go on to justify atomic bombing of Japan in the comments section below.

To be perfectly clear, I find both suicide bombing and atomic bombing to be morally repugnant.  But, atomic bombing is more atrocious by an order of magnitude: it is the ultimate indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.  A minority of Muslims thinking that suicide bombing is sometimes morally justifiable is hardly as worrisome as a majority of Americans thinking that atomic bombing is perfectly morally justifiable.

*  *  *  *  *

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s quote can be further criticized for focusing on Muslims in only one decade of life (aged 18 to 29).  One could easily inflate the number of Christian, Jewish, or atheist/agnostic Americans who believe that targeting and killing civilians is permissible by focusing on that demographic with the highest results.  For example, older Americans are more likely to think this way, meaning those percentages would be even higher.

As the MSNBC article itself notes, “nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam can not be justified, 13 percent say they can be, at least rarely.”  That 13% pales in front of the 58% of Protestants, 58% of Catholics, 52% of Jews, 64% of Mormons, and 43% of people with no religion/atheists/agnostics who argue that it is sometimes morally acceptable for the military to target and kill civilians.

As I wrote in my earlier article:

Of course, it would be worthwhile to consider actual results on the ground: we Americans have (at minimum, using conservative numbers) killed 30 times as many Muslim civilians as Muslims have killed of ours, whereas Israelis have killed many-fold the number of civilians as Palestinians have killed of theirs.  Clearly, what people and states do is far more relevant than what they merely believe.

Lastly, I would like to close with a message to the Global Secular Humanist Movement: shame on you for promoting an anti-Muslim demagogue and hatemonger like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  It is the equivalent of posting up a quote by David Duke on Judaism.  But of course, the GSHM would find it very easy to levy attacks against an embattled minority in the U.S. (Muslims), but would never dare upset Jewish people in the same way.  Muslims are easy targets; GSHM knows that if it did the same thing to Jews, it “would get f*@king buried.”

Religious tolerance is a key feature of secular, liberal democracy in the American tradition.  Although I am not one to engage in nationalistic tribalism, I do deeply admire my country’s legacy of religion-friendly secularism, which stands in stark contrast to the religion-hostile (and un-American) French-style secularism.  Indeed, this latter style of secularism was born out of, and led to, an orgy of violence.  Intolerant secularists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the Global Secularist Humanist Movement emulate the religious intolerance they supposedly decry.  One can hardly tell the difference between the rantings of “secularist” Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christian Islamophobes; in fact, one will find the two routinely sharing notes and being very cozy with one another.  Case in point: GSHM’s quote of Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become very popular among Christian Islamophobic circles.  New Atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens lost all their credibility by jumping on the Islamophobic bandwagon; GSHM loses its credibility by posting Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s hateful screed.

Perhaps GSHM has taken up Ayaan Hirsi Ali because, as noted in yesterday’s featured article, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali (an exmuslim) has replaced Hitchens as the one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism.”  The truth is that she can hardly be considered a horseman: she’s just an ass.  Ironically but unsurprisingly, it is asses like Ayaan Hirsi Ali who do more to undermine the cause of secularism and liberal democracy in the Muslim majority world than anybody else.  But more on that another time.

Danios was the Brass Crescent Award Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011.

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

Infidels threaten George Galloway

Via Expose, here is the response of the South Yorkshire Infidels, a breakaway faction from the EDL, to George Galloway’s by-election victory in Bradford West.

Given that West Yorkshire Police recently arrested and charged a young Muslim over an offensive Facebook comment about British soldiers in Afghanisatan, will their colleagues in South Yorkshire be taking any action over this Facebook post?

Prominent, hawkish leaders in Israel are beating the drums of war, but according to a recent poll, a solid majority of Israelis, both Arab and Jewish, oppose a unilateral strike against Iran.

Israelis are finding creative ways to tell their leaders–and the world–they want peace. Tikkun Daily reports:

Last week, when graphic designers Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir decided to counter the war drums beating in Israel with a simple message of peace to the people of Iran, little did they know it would create a viral Facebook initiative which would help to inspire a massive anti-war rally in Tel Aviv.

On Saturday night, this is precisely what happened, as Israelis flooded Habima Square in Tel Aviv to protest the elevated war rhetoric coming from their leaders and to stand squarely against the hypothetical bombing of Iran.

It’s not difficult to trace much of the momentum for Saturday night’s rally back to the married duo of Edry and Tamir, who last week created images of themselves with the superimposed message, “‘Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We ♥ You.’”

Their images inspired countless Israelis to post their own Facebook versions, which in turn inspired Iranians to do the same, creating a virtual, imagistic message of love cycling between the two peoples. That message also helped to inspire Israeli activists – many of whom were involved with this summer’s social justice protest movement (J14) – to organize the county’s first significant anti-war rally concerning Iran.

Israelis from various walks of life have also posted their message on Youtube, and in a single day, one of the videos was viewed almost 40,000 times:

IRANIANS WE LOVE U: a message to Iran from Israel

Lib Dem’s anti-Islam rants: “Put pork restaurant next to mosque”

A Liberal Democrat candidate has refused to apologise for a series of shocking Islamophobic comments. Sick Dave Stone suggested a pork restaurant and a topless bar — named after Islam’s holiest city – should be build next to a mosque.

The would-be councillor, who is the party’s candidate for a by-election in Redcar and Cleveland on 19 January, said:

“Regarding the mosque being built near ground zero. I say let them build it. But then, across the street we should put a topless bar called “You Mecca Me Hot” … and next to that a pork rib restaurant … Then we’ll see who’s tolerant.”

A number of posts on his Facebook page were seemingly calculated to deliberately offend Muslims — including spreading outright smears. Stones claimed that the Royal British Legion were “not selling poppies in certain areas of the UK”, implying that objections from Muslims were behind the decision:

When contacted by Scrapbook, however, a spokesperson for The Royal British Legion said his claims about the poppies were “categorically not true”.

This brazen intolerance brings to mind Cllr Warren Swaine, a Liberal Democrat  who was suspended from Reading Borough Council after Scrapbook exposed a race remark about Labour MP Chuka Umunna. That incident, and an attempted cover up, led to an internal party investigation at the behest of the party’s outraged black members.

Will the Lib Dem leadership be burying its head in the sand again this time?

Roy Egan

Roy Egan was fired due to violating the TSA code of conduct.

O’Hare TSA Employee Fired Over Racist, Homphobic, Anti-Muslim Facebook Posts

Sun-Times Media Wire

It looks like the myth that Geller was pushing some months ago about Muslim hordes incinerating Nigerian Christians is resurfacing once again, this time on Facebook.

A blog by the name of Waffles at Noon covers the re-emergence of the photo:

A horrifying photo has surfaced on Facebook, one that claims the dead, charred bodies in the photo are Christians burnt alive by Muslims in Nigera. A common caption reads reads:

Christians burnt alive by Sunni Muslims in NIGERIA…(Posted by Jillian Becker in Africa, Arab States, Christianity, Christians burnt alive by Sunni Muslims, Islam, Muslims, jihad)…..PLEASE SHARE IT OR JUST UPLOAD YOUR OWN…BUT SOMEHOW SPREAD IT IF YOU’RE EVEN 1% CHRISTIAN — It is still not over yet! —

Waffles goes on to cite our piece from April that points out the fact that the picture is a fake.

Below is our post exposing the absurd falsity of attempting to pass the Congo gas tanker explosion as an example of Nigerian sectarianism.

******************

Pamela Geller Watch: Ties Gas Tanker Explosion in Congo to Electoral Violence in Nigeria

Pamela is claiming in a blog titled, Nigeria: Muslim Hordes Mass Slaughter Christians that a gruesome picture is evidence of Muslim violence against Christians in Nigeria (be warned the picture is gruesome):

A terrible and horrifying picture indeed.

Pamela brags that she wrote about it “first” back on April 19, and then wonders “why” is America fighting in Libya to restore a “universal Caliphate?”

Huh??

It turns out however that the above picture is not evidence of some “Muslim rampage” in Nigeria! The charred bodies are a tragic result of a tanker explosion in the CONGO!! A whole other country the last time I checked! Here is the evidence from Afrik.com (I give you the Google translation since it was originally in French):

The explosion, on July 3, a tanker in the town of Sange, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has resulted in 235 deaths.

Here is the original French language report where you will also find more pictures: RDC : les images atroces du drame de Sange au Sud-Kivu

You will also see an interesting picture of Muslim UN soldiers, possibly from Pakistan helping to respond to the tragedy.

Here is a report from Reuters with some more pictures:

(Reuters) – At least 230 people were killed when a fuel tanker overturned and exploded in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, unleashing a fire ball that tore through homes and cinemas packed with people watching World Cup soccer.

Officials said on Saturday the explosion late on Friday also injured 196 people, adding that the death toll could rise.

They described scenes of devastation in the town of Sange, where houses were burned and bodies littered the streets. Some people died while trying to steal fuel leaking from the tanker, but most were killed at home or watching World Cup soccer in cinemas.

Many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition.

United Nations helicopters began airlifting injured people to hospital, while Congo’s army, which lost a number of men in the blast, has sent soldiers in to help with the rescue.

“Our latest numbers are 230 dead and 196 injured,” Madnodje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the U.N. mission, said. Congo’s government also gave the same number of dead.

Marcellin Cisambo, governor of South Kivu province, where the incident took place, said the blast occurred when the fuel truck overturned, leaked fuel and then later exploded.

It was not immediately clear what caused the initial accident or later blast, but local people said the truck, which was part of a convoy, stopped when the road seemed to crumble, toppling the vehicle and spilling fuel. Fire then erupted.

“It’s a terrible scene. There are lots of dead bodies on the streets. The population is in terrible shock — no one is crying or speaking,” Jean-Claude Kibala, South Kivu’s vice governor, said from Sange, which is between the towns of Bukavu and Uvira.

“We are trying to see how we can coordinate with (the U.N.) to manage the situation and how to take the wounded to hospital,” he added.

TANKER ACCIDENTS

Roads in the area are notoriously bad after years of war and neglect in the vast central African nation.

“Some people were killed trying to steal the fuel, but most of the deaths were of people who were indoors watching the (World Cup) match,” Cisambo said.

There have been numerous similar accidents across Africa, where crowds gather around fuel tankers involved in crashes, only for the tanker to explode.

Millions of football fans across Africa were watching Ghana, the continent’s last team in the World Cup, play Uruguay in the quarterfinals of the tournament on Friday evening.

For many, who have no electricity at home, makeshift cinema halls are the only option for watching the football.

“My children were watching the football match in the cinema and then they ran out to see the petrol,” said Kiza Ruvinira, who lost three children and his sister-in-law in the blast.

“I went out to see what happened and I found my three children’s bodies myself. I don’t know how to go on.”

Mubaya Mumasura also lost three family members: “I don’t know what to do with myself I am so sad. I want the government to assist all the victims and help us.”

Congo’s weak government has difficulty providing even the most basic services, so U.N. peacekeepers began airlifting some of the wounded to nearby hospitals and aid workers were called in to help with medical treatment.

“The national Red Cross is working on collecting the bodies and taking them to the morgue, but the priority is obviously to take the wounded to the hospital,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coordinator Inah Kaloga told Reuters.”

Kaloga said aid workers were trying to identify bodies before they were buried, but many were completely charred.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said Captain Olivier Hamuli,” spokesman for Congo’s military operation in South Kivu, adding that 13 soldiers had been injured and another 10 were missing.

The Kenyan driver of the truck is being held by the police.

Alain Ilunga, deputy CEO of Congo’s storage and distribution company, which is already investigating the incident, said the truck was carrying 49,000 liters of petrol at the time.

(Writing by David Lewis; editing by Ralph Boulton)