GOMA, Congo (AP) — The pilot of a jetliner that rammed into a bustling market killing at least 40 people had tried to stop the plane but couldn’t because the runway was too short, survivors said Wednesday.

The DC-9 crashed Tuesday after failing to lift off, ramming through a fence dividing the short runway from a busy market district of shops. An airline official said most of those on board the plane had survived.

Barry Mosier, an American missionary who works in neighboring Tanzania and was onboard with his wife and two children, said the plane’s front tire blew out just before the DC-9 went into the air.

The pilot tried to stop the plane but couldn’t because the runway was too short, Mosier said.

“Outside the plane we saw that flames were coming around the plane and we knew that it could blow up, explode at any time. So, we tried to fight our way to the front of the plane, as everyone was trying to do as the side doors did not open,” Mosier told AP Television News.

“As we were doing this, pulling my son along, he got stuck between people and as we pulled him it broke his leg. But, by God’s grace we all got out and we are alive.”

Marybeth Mosier, a 51-year-old native of Dodge Center, Minn., said others were not so lucky.

“As we were rushing down the aisle, smoke was coming up through the floor. A man was trapped under the seats and he was burning,” Mosier said at Goma’s Heal Africa hospital.

She said she tried to pull him up. “But there were so many people pushing … I thought this man was so badly hurt and I couldn’t block the way. I climbed over the tops of the seats” to escape. It is unclear if the unidentified man Mosier tried to help died.

Dunia Sindani, a former pilot who was among the passengers, told a local radio station that the plane suffered a problem in one wheel — possibly a flat tire — and did not have enough power to lift off.

One of the plane’s pilots reported that an engine died as the plane taxied down the runway, said Julien Mpaluku, the governor of the district. When the pilots tried to brake, a tire failed as well, he said.

The airport’s runway was partially blocked and effectively shortened by lava from a 2002 volcanic eruption. The plane appeared to have burst through a fence separating the runway from a market district of wooden houses and cement shops where sugar, avocado, flour and fuel are sold.

Hundreds of people gathered at the morgue in Goma. Annemarie Mulotwa, 19, leaned against a wall and wept for her young nephew, Kikuni.

“I saw his body inside, he is dead, he was burned,” Mulotwa said, covering her face with her hands. “He was 12 years old, he was only in primary school. He wasn’t even on the plane.”

Mary Rose Kiza, 33, said she watched as her 15-year-old son ran out of a shop, his clothes and body on fire. She does not know if her three other sons were alive.

“What have I done to God to deserve this?” she wailed outside the morgue, after leaving a hospital bed where she was treated for back injuries.

It was unclear if weather played a part in the crash. It had stopped raining about one hour before the DC-9 took off at about 3 p.m., residents said.

Crew members and U.N. troops managed to evacuate most of the 79 passengers before the plane caught fire, said Dirk Cramers, a spokesman for the private Congolese company Hewa Bora Airways.

Mpaluku said 40 people had died and more than 110 were injured.

Transport Minister Charles Mwando Nsimba warned that the death toll could rise.

“We have to take into account the fact that there are bodies still trapped under the rubble,” he said, noting that only two of the bodies so far were of passengers.

The jetliner had been headed to the central city of Kisangani and then to the capital, Kinshasa, 700 miles to the west.

Congo, which is struggling to emerge from a 1998-2002 civil war, has experienced more fatal crashes since 1945 than any other African country, according to the nonprofit Aviation Safety Network.

Last week, the European Union added Hewa Bora to its list of airlines banned from flying in the EU. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Alison Duquette said no Congolese airlines now fly into the U.S. although they are not banned from doing so.

GAZA CITY (CNN) — Israeli airstrikes and ground battles with Palestinian militants on Wednesday left 21 dead, most of them Palestinians, according to Palestinian security sources.

A Reuters cameraman and two bystanders were killed in an apparent airstrike near El Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to Hamas security sources and Palestinian medical sources.

Ten other Palestinians — five militants and five civilians — were also killed near El Bureij in an Israeli airstrike, Hamas security sources said. It is unclear if it was the same incident that killed the journalist.

The sources identified the five slain militants as members of a new radical Islamic group called El Oma Army.

The Israeli military confirmed an airstrike that targeted militants in El Bureij but had no information on casualties.

Reuters identified the cameraman as Fadel Shana, 23, and said he was getting out of the vehicle when an explosion killed him and two bystanders. Witnesses said it was caused by an Israeli airstrike.

The cameraman’s colleagues identified his body at a hospital, according to Reuters’ Web site.

Earlier in the day, three Israeli soldiers were killed when troops exchanged gunfire with Palestinian gunmen who were making their way toward the border between Gaza and Israel, just south of the Nahal Oz crossing, an army spokesman said. The gun battle wounded a few other soldiers.

Four Hamas members were killed when soldiers entered northern Gaza in a routine operation against militants, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. Palestinian security sources confirmed the deaths.

Hamas security sources said an earlier airstrike killed a Palestinian farmer in northern Gaza near Beit Lahiya. The Israeli military said its aircraft fired at armed men entering a car, hitting one of them.

Meanwhile, Israel resumed some fuel shipments to Gaza on Wednesday, a week after Palestinian militants shot and killed two Israeli civilian workers at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal — the only transit route for delivering fuel supplies to Gaza.

Israel began shipping diesel fuel to Gaza’s power station at 2:30 p.m. (7:30 a.m. ET), according to a spokesman for Israel’s coordinator of activities in Gaza.

Israel halted fuel supplies from Nahal Oz to Gaza after last Wednesday’s attack.

Despite various claims of responsibility by other Palestinian militant groups, Israel has put the blame for the April 9 attack squarely on Gaza’s Hamas leadership.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, upheld Kentucky’s use of lethal injection as a means of executing prisoners, ruling that the method — used in some 35 states — is properly and humanely applied.

At issue was whether the most common method of capital punishment can cause excruciating pain for death row inmates, violating the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” and thereby giving inmates a proper challenge in court.

The justices had never before directly addressed the fundamental question over the constitutionality of the chemical “cocktail” of drugs used to execute convicted killers. All but one of the states that perform executions use the three-drug mixture.

“Kentucky has adopted a method of execution believed to be the most humane available,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority. “If administered as intended, that procedure will result in a painless death.”

The immediate impact of the ruling is that it will allow states to resume executions, which had been on hold since September while the high court considered this appeal. No executions are scheduled in the next few weeks.

The ruling gives guidance to other states, some of which may have to modify their procedures to fall in line with Kentucky’s method and thereby survive judicial scrutiny.

Kentucky inmates Ralph Baze and Clyde Bowling Jr. brought suit in federal court three years ago, questioning that state’s three-chemical mixture and the procedures used to administer it.

They claim the first drug — sodium thiopental — which renders the prisoner unconscious, wears off too quickly, and that some prisoners are actually awake and able to feel pain as the procedure continues.

The second drug — pancuronium bromide — which paralyzes all muscle movement, then prevents the condemned person from speaking out and expressing awareness of the pain, according to the suit, and the third drug, potassium chloride, which induces cardiac arrest, is “excruciatingly painful in a conscious person.”

“We … agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” said Roberts. His opinion had the support of only two other justices. Three others agreed with the outcome but wrote separate concurring opinions.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented. Ginsburg said Kentucky failed to consider “readily available safeguards” to ensure inmates were not subject to pain. She urged the state to revise its procedures, which she suggested might create “an untoward, readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe and unnecessary pain.”

Baze, 52, admits killing Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe in 1992 while the lawmen were trying to serve him with arrest warrants.

Bowling was convicted of killing Edward and Tina Earley in Louisville in 1990. Their 2-year-old son was wounded in the attack in the couple’s dry cleaning business parking lot. Bowling’s lawyers have claimed prosecutorial misconduct in the case, and say their client has a low IQ.

State officials have said their lethal-injection procedures are in line with other states, and a doctor is on site and available to provide any pre-execution medical care to the inmate.

A Texas inmate was put to death the day the high court accepted the Kentucky cases in late September, but since then, the justices have stepped in and imposed a de facto moratorium nationwide.

Only 26 people were executed last year, the lowest total in more than a decade. No executions have taken place this year.

The justices spent nearly six months debating behind closed doors the threshold when execution procedures become unconstitutional. Both sides of this politically charged national debate were hoping for clear guidelines from the Supreme Court to help guide capital inmates and the courts.

Different states and different judges have applied different standards over whether an inmate can make a challenge to the method of execution.

Recent executions in Florida and Ohio were rife with problems, taking much longer than expected when technicians had trouble inserting IVs into the prisoners’ veins.

The Supreme Court in 2006 ruled prisoners could make last-ditch legal challenges to the method of execution, using claims that they would suffer a painful death.

“The question before the court was how much risk of unnecessary pain is too much risk of unnecessary pain under the Constitution,” said Edward Lazarus, an appellate attorney and Supreme Court legal analyst. “There is evidence to show that this is somewhat of an inhumane way to approach this, but there’s going to be a group of justices who really think we shouldn’t be in the business of micro-managing the death penalty, [who say] if state legislatures think that this is OK, that’s going to be fine with us.”

US prosecutors would like to make an example out of Wesley Snipes for tax evasion. The prosecutors said that the action movies super star should serve three years in prison and pay a $5 million fine for failing to file tax results.

By showing Snipes the rough side of the law, prosecutors said they hoped to send a message to all the tax avoiders who defied authorities over the past couple of years and cheated the government of $41 million, U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill of Florida wrote in a court paper.

Snipes, a fourth-degree Black Belt in Shotokan Karate and Capoeira student, had trouble fighting the long arm of the law. He was found guilty in February of tax evasion, but was cleared of more serious charges such as fraud, fraudulently claiming tax refunds and conspiracy to defraud the government.

Each count carries a maximum sentence of one year and the 45-year-old actor was cleared on two felony charges.

O’Neill called for a heavy penalty in Snipes’ case because, as he wrote in court documents, he finds the case a “singular opportunity” to “deter tax crime nationwide”.

“This case cries out for the statutory maximum term of imprisonment, as well as a substantial fine, because of the seriousness of defendant Snipes’ crimes and because of the singular opportunity this case presents to deter tax crime nationwide,” O’Neill wrote.

Two other men were also charged in the case along Snipes. The two were affiliated with American Rights Litigators/Guiding Light of God ministries, a Florida-based tax protest organization and were found guilty of conspiring to defraud and making false claims.

Snipes and the two men “brazenly waged a campaign” against the Internal Revenue Service,
the sentencing recommendation said.

Snipes’ lawyers acknowledged the fact that the actor had been “dead wrong” and he should pay the tax money he owns, but denied that he committed a crime.

“Disagreement with the IRS is not fraud of the IRS, is not deception,” said defense lawyer Robert Barnes.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan’s ruling coalition on Tuesday renewed its pledge to reinstate dozens of judges who were sacked by embattled President Pervez Musharraf, a minister said after a key high-level meeting.

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and head of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), met with former premier Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Islamabad.

The two parties trounced Musharraf’s allies in elections in February, and then pledged at a summit in the mountain resort of Bhurban to restore the chief justice and other judges within 30 days of forming a government.

But Tuesday’s meeting between Zardari and Sharif came amid local reports of divisions over the issue within the coalition, whose members were at each other’s throats during their periods in government in the 1990s.

The coalition “renewed its commitment to the Bhurban declaration,” Information Minister Sherry Rehman said in a statement issued after the meeting.

“The meeting was one of a series that the coalition intends to have regularly,” said Rehman, Bhutto’s former spokeswoman.

Musharraf sacked the country’s chief justice and dozens of other judges under a state of emergency in November, when it appeared that the Supreme Court was about to overturn his re-election as president the month before.

The judges could in theory challenge Musharraf’s position — and so restoring them with their full powers would spark a major confrontation with the US-backed president.

New Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, once a key aide to Bhutto, freed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from house arrest last month, but analysts say the PPP wants to avoid an overt standoff with Musharraf for now.

However Sharif, the man ousted by Musharraf in 1999, has openly called for the president to quit and made the restoration of the outspoken Chaudhry a key plank of his policy platform.

Reports say there is even a split about when the government was officially formed, with the PPP saying it was after provincial assemblies were sworn in and Sharif’s party saying it was after the federal cabinet took office on March 31.

Sharif left Zardari’s residence, where the meeting was held, without speaking to the media.

His spokesman, Siddiqul Farooq, told AFP earlier that it would be an “important meeting. The agenda is restoration of judges and revival of the constitution as it was before the October 12, 1999 coup.”

Raja Pervez Ashraf, minister for water and power, told reporters that the coalition leaders “only took stock of the political situation and nothing extraordinary can be attached with this meeting.”

The meeting also featured the leader of the ethnic Pashtun Awami National Party, officials said. The ANP defeated hardline Islamic parties in northwest Pakistan in the elections.

OTTAWA (AFP) — Canadian police Tuesday searched the offices of the Conservative party at the request of the country’s election commission, which has accused the ruling party of campaign finance irregularities.

“I can confirm that the federal election commission asked for assistance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in executing a search warrant,” Elections Canada spokesman John Enright told AFP.

An RCMP official stated that police responded to a “request for assistance” from the independent commission, but would not provide details of the operation.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party confirmed that its offices were searched.

Elections Canada did not explain the reason for the search, but broadcaster CBC quoted Conservative House leader Peter Van Loan as saying the search was “in relation to the issue of the campaign financing questions and our approach on spending.”

The Conservative party won parliamentary elections on January 23, 2006 and has led a minority government.

The commission launched an investigation in 2007 into what it believes were Conservative party campaign finance irregularities. The body refused to reimburse close to 1.2 million dollars to candidates for television and radio campaign advertisements.

Canada’s opposition accused the conservatives violating the electoral law and concealing the truth during a questioning session in the House of Commons.

Harper, who heads the Conservative party, said the search took place on the eve of interviews of Elections Canada officials by Conservative party lawyers.