Over 100 Activists Killed in Syrian Protest

More than 100 have been killed in the Syrian protest city Deraa, rights activists told Al Arabiya TV on Thursday, hours after medics said the local hospital had received 25 bodies of protests.

A witness reportedly told Al Arabiya that hundreds of protesters took to the streets on Wednesday in the towns of Jasim, Enkhil, al-Hara, and al-Harrag "in support for their brothers in Deraa,", adding the they demanded the end of a security siege on the city.

Syria, which has also been hit by the popular unrest sweeping the Middle East, was taken by surprise and amid an attempted failure to quell the protests by force, in the second apparent concession to protesters since the uprising, President Bashar al-Assad sacked provincial governor of Deraa aisal Kalthoum on Wednesday.

There were also reports that a number of local security officials reviled by people had been reassigned or suspended.

In first vocal western response to the events France urged Syria to carry out political reforms without delay and respect its commitments to human rights.

Ffrench foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters: "France calls on Syria to follow its international commitments to human rights, to which it has signed up especially with regard to freedom of expression and opinion".

"Political reforms must be put in place without delay to meet the aspirations of the Syrian people," he said.

In its reaction, the US Obama administration called on the Syrian Government to “exercise restraint” against its peaceful protesters. The State Department spokesman, Mark Toner said that the United States was deeply troubled by violence and civilian deaths in Deraa at the hands of security forces.

"We are concerned by the Syrian Government's use of violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests in Deraa to hinder the ability of its people to freely exercise their universal rights," he said.

Two Fukushima Nuclear Plant Workers Hospitalised

Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers outside the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Japan's nuclear safety agency says that two workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were taken to hospital on Thursday after being exposed to high-level radiation at the Number 3 reactor, NHK reports. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the workers were standing on a flooded basement floor while working to reconnect power lines in the turbine building adjacent to the reactor. As a result, their feet were exposed to 170 to 180 millisieverts of radiation. The workers were taken to a local hospital before being moved to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences for treatment. A third worker was also exposed to the higher-level radiation but apparently did not require treatment. The maximum level of radiation exposure allowed for nuclear plant workers in Japan is normally 100 millisieverts. But the health and labor ministry has recently raised that limit to 250 millisieverts for emergency crews at the Fukushima plant. High radiation levels detected 30km off nuke plant Meanwhile, Japan's science ministry says levels of radioactive substances up to twice recommended limits were detected in waters 30 kilometres off the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. The ministry conducted a survey on Wednesday in 8 locations over a distance of 70 kilometres from north to south in the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive iodine-131 and radioactive caesium-137 were detected at all locations. Levels of radioactive iodine-131 were from 1.05 to 1.92 times higher than the limit. Readings for radioactive caesium-137 were all below the limit, but about 10,000 times higher than a similar survey last year. Another survey conducted by the Tokyo Electric Power Company on Wednesday detected radioactive iodine-131 at 146.9 times the limit, 330 metres away from a water outlet of the nuclear plant. The same substance was detected at a level 19.1 times higher than allowable limits on the coast 16 kilometres south of the plant. The science ministry says it will continue analysing the impact of the radioactivity on marine resources and the environment. A senior consultant at the Marine Ecology Research Institute, Jun Misonoo, says contamination decreases further off the coast. He says radioactive iodine-131 levels fall by half in 8 days, and the impact on fish fades away. Misonoo says that although radioactive caesium is unlikely to affect human health, monitoring should continue to assess its Tokyo lifts advice against tap water In other developments, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government says it has lifted its advice against using tap water for consumption by infants in Tokyo's 23 wards and 5 adjacent cities. The government said the level of radioactive iodine-131 in water at the Machinate purification plant on Thursday morning had dropped to 79 becquerels per litre - below the recommended limit of 100 for infants under one year old. The government added that the level has been falling for three days. The advisory had been issued after levels above the limit were detected at the plant on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday, the government plans to continue testing the level at the plant and distribute 240,000 bottles of water to households with infants, following similar distribution on Thursday. impact inside fish.

Breaking News: French Fighter Downs Libyan Warplane, reports

French fighter jets have reportedly shot down a Libyan jet that tried to violate the country's UN-sanctioned no-fly zone Thursday. ABC News reported the attack happened in the skies over the embattled rebel city of Misurata. This is the first challenge of the allies aerial supremacy and it comes after five days of bombing runs against pro-Al Qathfi positions. Earlier French military officials said at a press conference in Paris that its fighter jets attacked an air base 240 kilometesinland from the Mediterranean coast overnight. Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Thursday coalition air strikes against Libya had been a "success."

Al Qathafi's Forces Roll On Despite Coalition's Strikes; Government Accuses Allied Forces of Targeting Civilians

Dead bodies of civilians that the Libyan government says were victims of the coalition's airstrikes Despite a fifth night of airstrikes, the Libyan regime's forces kept up their shelling of rebel-held cities by the use of tanks and heavy artillery, particularly at Misurata, Ajdabijah and Zintan, and with Libyan state television accusing the coalition forces of striking at civilians in the capital, Tripoli, and Jaafar, “killing dozens of civilians”. Libyan television reported UN-sponsored forces, calling them “colonialist crusaders”, as attacking military and civilian targets. Eight explosions were reported heard in the east of the capital late night on Wednesday, but US military officials denied any civilians had been killed. Government officials accompanied some journalists to a hospital early Thursday morning showing them 18 charred bodies, which the regime said, were military personnel and civilians killed in the air strikes. State television showed pictures of casualites arriving at a hospital, reportedly injured, or victims of the airstrikes by the coalition forces. At the same time, addressing journalists, the Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim addressing journalists, refused to admit that libyan forces are conducting offensive operations of any sort. “There are no attacks from Libyan forces from the air or from the ground. There are no military operations on the ground in Misurata,” he said. He added that the situation is, only confined to pockets of violence scattered in different areas of Misurata Meanwhile, the US military said it had successfully established a no-fly zone over Libya's coastal areas and had moved on to attack Al Qathafi's rremaining tanks. It has been reported that the coalition forces flew 175 sorties in 24 hours, with the US accounting for 113 of those, according to a US commander. The French defence minister, Gerard Longuet, said that France had destroyed about 10 Libyan armoured vehicles over three days. But these losses to the Al Qathafi forces, and the airstrikes have kept them from pressingg on with their assaults and their efforts to completely take control of the towns of Misurata,Ajdabiyah and Zintan. Under the cover of darkness, the pro-government forces used their tanks to push forward deep into the towns, particularly Misurata, the third largest city in the country around 200km east of Tripoli and home to a major oil refinery. According to reports Thursday, the loyalist troops shelled a residential area close to a hospital Government snipers carried on firing indiscriminately, and tanks were closing in on Misurata hospital, residents told Reuters news agency, while an opposition spokesman was quoted saying the snipers had killed 16 people. Contrary to what a resident in Zintan, 106km southwest of Tripoli told Al Jazeera, that is, that Al Qathafi's forces were bringing up more troops and tanks to bombard the opposition-held town, the Libyan government vehemently denies its army is conducting any offensive operations and says troops are only defending themselves when they come under attack. In the east, at Ajdabiyah, around 160km south of Benghazi, opposition fighters were reportedly pinned down outside the strategic junction after more than three days of trying to recapture the city. Despite coalition air strikes targeting the regime's forces along the road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah, rebel forces have been unable to retake the town.