Submit your Article

Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team, Associated Press reported.

“Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house, across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde. Carranza said the officers did not go in.

Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.

Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”

“They were unprepared,” he added.

Minutes earlier, Carranza had watched as Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch outside the school, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shot at two people outside a nearby funeral home who ran away uninjured, according to Associated Press.

Officials say he “encountered” a school district security officer outside the school, though there were conflicting reports from authorities on whether the men exchanged gunfire. After running inside, he fired on two arriving Uvalde police officers who were outside the building, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. The police officers were injured.

After entering the school, Ramos charged into one classroom and began to kill.

He “barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting children and teachers that were inside that classroom,” Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Department of Public Safety told CNN. “It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter.”

All those killed were in the same classroom, he said.

Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Ramos opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed, Associated Press reported.

“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.”

Meanwhile, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said the Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.

Carranza said the officers should have entered the school sooner.

“There were more of them. There was just one of him,” he said.

Uvalde is a largely Latino town of some 16,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary, which has nearly 600 students in second, third and fourth grades, is a single-story brick structure in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes.

Before attacking the school, Ramos shot and wounded his grandmother at the home they shared, authorities said.

Neighbor Gilbert Gallegos, 82, who lives across the street and has known the family for decades, said he was puttering in his yard when he heard the shots, according to Associated Press.

Ramos ran out the front door and across the small yard to the truck parked in front of the house. He seemed panicked, Gallegos said, and had trouble getting the truck out of park.

Nepal violated the human rights of a 16-year-old girl who was tortured, raped and shot dead by army officers during the Nepalese Civil War, the UN Human Rights Committee has found.

The Committee issued its findings today after considering a complaint filed by the victim’s parents, who found their daughter’s body in a cornfield in their village in 2004. Despite their efforts over the years, they have not been able to bring those responsible to justice through the legal system in Nepal.

“The gravity of this case has not faded with time even though 18 years have passed,” said Committee member Hélène Tigroudja. “This is a particularly severe case in which a child was summarily executed. It also underscores the pattern of abuse and rape of girls during the civil war, the lack of investigation and de facto impunity,” she added.

During the Nepalese Civil War in February 2004, R.R., the victim, was a secondary school student who lived with her family in the village of Pokhari Chauri in Kavre District, an area where many Maoists gathered to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the start of the “People’s War”. On the night of 13 February, around 20 uniformed, armed soldiers of the Royal Nepalese Army stormed into the family’s home, accusing R.R. of being a Maoist.

Although R.R. had attended the compulsory Maoist Student Union at school, she was not involved in any other Maoist activity. She denied the soldiers’ accusation, but was taken outside of the house, interrogated, hit with a rifle butt, thrown against a wall and taken to a cornfield. A soldier was heard telling another soldier to kill R.R. Three gunshots were then fired.

R.R.’s body was discovered the next morning, with her salwar (trousers) pulled down to the mid-thigh. Her blouse had been lifted up to her neck, and there were scratches on her breasts. She was shot in the eye, the head and the chest. The army killed two more people in the village that night.

Following the complaints by her family, the National Human Rights Commission in 2005 found that R.R. was killed by security forces. The Supreme Court in 2009 endorsed the Commission’s findings and ordered a prompt investigation. Nevertheless, no one has been held criminally accountable for the violations inflicted on R.R. The main suspect was acquitted in 2013 due to lack of evidence.

After exhausting all national remedies, R.R.’s parents brought the case to the Human Rights Committee.

The Committee found that Nepal was responsible for the direct and arbitrary deprivation of R.R.’s right to life and for subjecting her to physical and mental torture, including rape. The Commission also found that R.R.’s rights not to be subjected to gender discrimination and to be protected as a child had been violated. The Committee criticised the lack of an effective remedy for R.R.’s parents.

“Nepal has failed to demonstrate how a 16-year-old unarmed girl posed any threat to a squad of twenty fully armed soldiers, much less justify how her rape and summary execution could serve any legitimate security aim” said Tigroudja.

“Such egregious crimes shall in all instances be timely and thoroughly investigated and their perpetrators, whoever they are, brought to justice and punished”, she added.

The Committee urged Nepal to conduct a thorough and effective investigation into R.R.’s arbitrary detention, torture, including rape, and extrajudicial execution, and to hold those responsible accountable. It also reiterated its call to Nepal to align its statute of limitations for the crime of rape with international standards, as well as to impose sanctions and remedies for torture that are proportionate to the gravity of such crimes.

India has imposed restrictions on sugar exports for the first time in six years by capping this season’s exports at 10 million tonnes, a government order said, to prevent a surge in domestic prices after mills sold a record volume on the world market, Reuters reported.

The government has also asked exporters to seek its permission for any overseas shipments between June 1 and October 31, the order said.

India is the world’s biggest sugar producer and the second biggest exporter behind Brazil.

Reuters in March reported that India was planning to curb sugar exports to keep a lid on local prices and ensure steady supplies in the domestic market.

Benchmark white sugar prices in London jumped more than 1% after India’s decision.

“The government is worried about food inflation, and that’s why it is trying to ensure that enough sugar remains in the country to cater to the festival season,” said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm.

Exporters also said the decision to allow mills to export 10 million tonnes would help India sell a reasonably big quantity of sugar on the world market, according to Reuters.

Initially, India planned to cap sugar exports at 8 million tonnes, but the government later decided to allow mills to sell some more sugar on the world market as production estimates were revised upwards.

The Indian Sugar Mills Association, a producers’ body, revised its output forecast to 35.5 million tonnes, up from its previous estimate of 31 million tonnes.

Indian mills have so far signed contracts to export 9.1 million tonnes of sugar in the current 2021/22 marketing year without government subsidies. Out of the contracted 9 million tonnes, mills have already dispatched around 8.2 million tonnes of the sweetener, Reuters reported.

Nepal reported five new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 1, 889 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which four returned positive. Likewise, 838 people underwent antigen tests, of which one was tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that nine infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 128 active cases in the country.