Texan police officer Kim Munley who shot Fort Hood gunman hailed as a heroine

A police officer who intervened to stop a shooting spree at America’s biggest military base was hailed today as a heroine as she received treatment for the wounds received in a shoot-out with the gunman.

Major Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist due to be posted to Afghanistan, shot dead 13 people and wounded 30 others after opening fire with two handguns at Fort Hood yesterday afternoon.

But the death toll from the rampage could have been far worse had it not been for the actions of Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer stationed at the base who was the first on the scene as Major Hasan picked off his victims.

Sergeant Munley managed to hit Major Hasan four times but was herself hit by a bullet that passed through both her legs, according to witnesses.

Colonel John Rossi, briefing reporters at Fort Hood this morning, said that Major Hasan’s victims, who were killed in a part of the base used to process soldiers for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, had all been unarmed. Sergeant Munley had been the first armed person on the scene and had immediately taken him on.

“Her efforts were superb,” he said.

Colonel Steven Braverman, commander of the base hospital and Major Hasan’s supervisor, said that Sergeant Munley was in a stable condition in a nearby community hospital.

She is likely to return home to a hero’s welcome, although her Twitter page – which features a picture of her with the country music star Dierks Bentley at the Fort Hood “Freedom Fest” on July 4 – suggests she is not the type to have her head turned.

Her Twitter biography reads: “I live a good life … a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone’s life.”

It emerged today that Major Hasan, a Muslim who had argued with his comrades against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and had been trying to get out of the Army, shouted “Allah akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – as he launched the attack.

Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, said that soldiers who witnessed the rampage heard him shout out the invocation as he opened fire.

General Cone told NBC’s Today programme that Major Hasan was not known to be a threat or risk at the base. Colonel Braverman said the same.

COLOMBO: More than 6,200 soldiers died and nearly 30,000 have been wounded since the last phase of Sri Lanka’’s 25-year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) began in July 2006, the defence secretary has said.

Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa gave the figures for the first time during an interview late on Thursday with the state-run Independent Television Network.

By comparison, in the six years and one month since the United States went to war in Iraq, nearly 4,600 U.S., British and other nations” troops have been killed.

Sri Lanka had only given its own casualty figures erratically if at all during the final 34-month phase of the war, dubbed Eelam War IV, and stopped giving them altogether last year.

The military had said several months ago it had killed at least 15,000 Tamil Tigers in the course of fighting but has not given a final tally.

Much of the fighting over the last year took place as troops crossed tall earthen dams and moats to break through into LTTE-held areas, across an area strewn with landmines, booby traps and Tiger fighters willing to commit suicide attacks.

Overall, the United Nations this week said what had been Asia’’s longest modern conflict had killed between 80,000-100,000 people since it erupted into full-scale civil war in 1983.

Unofficial and unverified U.N. tallies show 7,000 civilians were killed since January alone. Aid agencies say some 280,000 ethnic Tamils who fled the war zone are in refugee camps.

SYDNEY: Australian and US scientists have successfully tested hypersonic aircraft technology, which could revolutionise international flight, officials said Friday.

The trial was the first of up to 10 tests to be conducted at the Woomera desert range as part of a joint US-Australian military research operation, said Defence Science Minister Warren Snowdon.

The programme, called Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE), is investigating hypersonics technology and its potential for next generation aeronautics. “Hypersonics is the study of flight exceeding approximately five times the speed of sound, and this trial has successfully tested the flight and mission control systems that will be used in future experiments,” Snowdon said.

The test vehicle was carried into space aboard a rocket launched from Woomera and then dived back into the atmosphere to test the hypersonic flight technology. Nitrogen gas valves were used as thrusters to manoeuvre the craft in space and correctly position it for reentry into the atmosphere, offering scientists a “wealth of new data,” Snowdon said.

Hypersonic technology offered “quantum leaps” in speed and fuel efficiency and had the potential to dramatically reduce intercontinental travel times, said Snowdon.

BRUSSELS: Belgium’’s foreign minister says his government remains committed to taking in several detainees from Guantanamo Bay when the U.S. military prison closes down.

Speaking to La Premiere radio during his current trip to Washington, D.C., Karel De Gucht says it remains to be seen how many former inmates may be taken in.

De Gucht says in Friday’’s broadcast that he spoke to the White House’’s national security adviser Gen. James Jones about the issue. He says the matter is complicated by the free travel regulations within the European Union, which would allow the former prisoners to change their country of residence without informing the authorities.

Belgium first offered to accept “a certain number”” of prisoners freed from Guantanamo when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Brussels in March.

CALIFORNIA: A U.S. military jet crashed during a training mission over the Mojave Desert, killing the pilot and injuring another crewman who ejected, the Air Force said Friday.

Capt. Mark P. Graziano, 30, was pronounced dead at the scene after his T-38A jet went down at about 1:15 p.m. Thursday near California City, about nine miles (15 kilometers) north of Edwards Air Force Base.

Maj. Lee V. Jones, a senior navigator, ejected from the twin-engine plane. He was listed in stable condition at a Bakersfield hospital, a statement from the base said.

Both men were assigned to the Test Pilot School at the base. Graziano was training to be a test pilot and Jones was training to become a test navigator.