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BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-packed Mercedes near a row of stores in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on Saturday, killing at least 15 people, police and hospital officials said. The attack in the eastern Baghdad enclave came as at least 36 other people were killed or found dead in Iraq, including four who died in a bombing of an outdoor market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa.
Violence has been unrelenting in Iraq and the suicide bombing in Baghdad was among a series of attacks tempering U.S. claims of success in taming the capital just days before a pivotal progress report is due to be delivered to Congress by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
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COLOMBO: Sri Lankan soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels clashed in northern Sri Lanka, leaving 10 combatants dead,the military said Saturday.
Troops and insurgents battled on two fronts in the rebel-held north Friday, killing seven guerrillas and three soldiers, an officer at the defense ministry's media center said on condition of anonymity because of policy.
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WASHINGTON: According to the U.S. administration, the suicide rate for children and young adults aged 10 to 24 has increased 8% in 2004, marking the largest yearly increase in over 15 years. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that the rise followed up a cumulative fall of over 28% in the suicide rate from 1990 to 2003, and was fueled by increases in suicide rates among girls between 10 to 19 and boys 15 to 19. The report derived from a data analysis from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System. The suicide accounted for 4,599 deaths among people aged 10 to 24. Read the rest of this entry »
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ARUSHA: At least 27 people were killed in a bus accident on Saturday in southwestern Tanzania, a senior police officer said. A bus tried to overtake a car and crashed into a truck about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the southwestern Tanzanian town of Mbeya, said Stephen Mwinamila, the regional traffic commander.
Mwinamila said two pedestrians were among those killed. Forty-three people were seriously injured and have been admitted to Mbeya Hospital, he said. The accident is one of the deadliest in the region in the past two years.
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DUBAI: The North African branch of Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks in Algeria which killed over 50 people, an Arabic television reported Sunday citing an Internet statement from the group.
The television said that in the statement, the Al-Qaeda Movement in the Islamic Countries claimed responsibility for Saturday's truck bomb attack on a naval barracks that killed at least 30 people, and also for Thursday's apparent assassination attempt on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in the eastern city of Batna, which left 22 people dead.
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KABUL: In clashes between allied forces and Taliban in Afghanistan, two British army men were killed while the allied forces have claimed to kill more than 30 Talibans. According to the US spokesman, in an attack on an army convoy in Hilmand, a southern province of Afghanistan, two British army men were killed and two wounded. Later, the allied forces in a full counter attack killed more than 30 Talibans.
The allied forces claimed that weapons in huge quantity were recovered in other operations also in Hilmond.
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BEIJING: Seven people were confirmed dead and 23 others were injured when a bus veered off the road and hit a mound on Saturday in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the local government said. A brake failure caused the bus carrying 30 people to veer off a country road in Heyang county, dash onto State Highway No. 108, and hit the mound on one side of the highway at 4:30 p.m., a spokesman with the county government said. He said four people were killed on the spot and three others died in hospital on Saturday night. The county's health bureau got together the best doctors and nurses from four local hospitals to ensure adequate treatment for the injured, he said. Read the rest of this entry »
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KABUL: Afghan President, Hamid Karzai public address at the Sports Stadium here was marred by gunshots breaking out stampede, however, the security men managed to escort out the Afghan President safely from there. Government TV said that the US trained guards managed to escort out the Afghan President Hamid Karzai safely from the Stadium, following the firing over there. The gunshots were heard, when Hamid Karzai was delivering his speech at a ceremony commemorating the 6th death anniversary of Ahmad Shah Masood.
Afghan Army said that the Stadium was jam-packed by a 15,000 strong crowd and a large number of people had gathered even outside the Stadium, who were trying to get in, when the police resorted to aerial firing for dispersing them.
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TOKYO - A typhoon pounded Tokyo and surrounding areas on Friday, killing at least one man and snarling transport and power supplies, before weakening and moving north. The typhoon, the biggest to hit Tokyo since October 2002, brought down record rainfall in many parts of the capital, but by afternoon it had weakened to a tropical storm.
Rescue workers searched for homeless people swept away by a swollen Tama river as they slept in shacks along its banks in western Tokyo.
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Roadside landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have killed and injured 860 civilians over the previous nine months. Addressing a news conference here, Interior Ministry spokesman Zmaray Bashari said mine and IED explosions in different parts of the country had killed 227 civilians during that period. He said risk of mines and IEDs were eminent due to non-availability of modern detection equipment with the Afghan security forces. Deputy spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Major Charles Anthony and head of the explosives and IED branch of the Defence Ministry Brig. Gen. Muhammad Shafi Bahir were also present on the occasion. Read the rest of this entry »
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BATNA: Sixteen people have been killed and 114 injured after a bomb ripped through a crowd waiting for Algeria's president to arrive. The bomb exploded about 45 minutes before President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's scheduled arrival in Batna, a town about 279 miles east of the capital, Algiers.
Local police said a man in his thirties carried the explosive device in a bag into the middle of the crowd, which was waiting in front of Batna's Al-Atik mosque. Onlookers alerted the police. Many injured are in critical state.
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HYDERABAD: A land mine blast triggered by suspected Maoist rebels killed at least three people in southern India early Friday, but its presumed main target, a key governing Congress party lawmaker, was unscathed, an official said. The mine, hidden under a small highway bridge, went off as N.Janardhan Reddy, the former top-elected official of southern Andhra Pradesh state, moved along with his supporters in a convoy of 50cars in his native Nellore district, said state Home Minister K.Jana Reddy.
Another five people were wounded in the blast, which missed Reddy's vehicle, but hit one of the accompanying cars near Vidyanagar, a village nearly 550 kilometers (340 miles) south of Hyderabad, the state capital, the home minister told foreign news agency.
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BAGHDAD: The US military said on Friday that insurgents have killed seven American troops in separate attacks in Iraq. Four marines and three soldiers were killed in two different incidents on Thursday, the military said. The marines were killed during combat operations in the restive province of Anbar, west of Baghdad, a statement said.
The three soldiers were killed in the northern province of Nineveh when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb near their vehicle, the military said. The latest deaths brought the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,749, according to a count based on Pentagon figures last updated on Thursday.
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LISBON: The mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal four months ago, will be formally declared a suspect on Friday, a spokeswoman for the family said. The sudden shift in the investigation came after authorities received forensic evidence from the holiday apartment in the Algarve where four-year-old Madeleine vanished on May 3. Since her disappearance, Madeleine's parents have campaigned relentlessly to draw attention to the case and won overwhelming sympathy around Europe. Their efforts led to a meeting with Pope Benedict in Rome who blessed a picture of their daughter. Read the rest of this entry »
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DAMASCUS, Syria - Syrian air defenses opened fire on Israeli aircraft that violated Syrian airspace, a Syrian military spokesman said Thursday. The Israelis broke the sound barrier and “dropped ammunition” over deserted areas of northern Syria overnight, the spokesman was quoted by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.
“We warn the Israeli enemy government against this flagrant aggressive act, and retain the right to respond in an appropriate way,” the Syrian spokesman said.
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