Car bomb at Iraq market kills 17
BAGHDAD – A car bombing at a market in Iraq killed 17 people on Saturday, wounding dozens of others in the latest outbreak of violence to hit the country.
Police officials said a pickup truck exploded at night at the entrance of a wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital.
They said at least 35 people were wounded and that several shops were damaged in the attack.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in Iraq since attacks began accelerating in April after a deadly security crackdown against a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija.
The latest surge in violence has raised fears that Iraq could be returning to widespread sectarian killings similar to those that brought country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.
Inspectors’ hotel in Syria nearly hit
BEIRUT – Two mortar shells hit Syria’s capital Saturday near a hotel where international chemical inspectors and United Nations staff are staying, state media and a hotel guest said.
An 8-year-old girl was killed and 11 people were hurt in the blasts in the upscale Abu Roumaneh area of Damascus, the SANA news agency said. One shell fell near a school and the other on the roof of a building.
The girl was in her family car near the school when she was killed, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based activist group monitoring the fighting.
The blasts damaged several cars and shattered nearby windows. One resident was seen sweeping debris on a sidewalk, near where twisted metal pieces from the wreckage had been heaped in a small pile.
The blasts struck about 1,000 feet away from the Four Seasons Hotel where the chemical inspectors and U.N. staff are staying. A U.N. employee staying there said it did not appear that the hotel was affected by the twin explosions.
Wind, rain pound India as massive cyclone hits
BEHRAMPUR, India – A massive, powerful cyclone packing heavy rains and destructive winds slammed into India’s eastern coastline Saturday evening, as hundreds of thousands of residents moved inland to shelters in hopes of riding out the dangerous storm.
Roads were all but empty as high waves lashed the coastline of Orissa state, which will bear the brunt of Cyclone Phailin. By midafternoon, wind gusts were so strong that they could blow over grown men. Seawater pushed inland, swamping villages where many people survive as subsistence farmers in mud and thatch huts.
As the cyclone swept across the Bay of Bengal toward the Indian coast, satellite images showed its spinning tails covering an area larger than France. Images appeared to show the storm making landfall early Saturday night near Gopalpur.
With some of the world’s warmest waters, the Indian Ocean is considered a cyclone hot spot, and some of the deadliest storms in recent history have come through the Bay of Bengal, including a 1999 cyclone that also hit Orissa and killed 10,000 people.
St. Petersburg gay-rights rally ends in violence
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – A gay-rights rally in St. Petersburg has ended in scuffles after several dozen protesters were confronted by about 200 conservative and religious activists.
The police standing nearby waited until clashes broke out between the two groups before intervening. According to Russian news agencies, the police detained 67 people from both sides.
The scuffles started after anti-gay protesters tore a rainbow flag out of a woman’s hands.
The St. Petersburg city government had sanctioned the rally despite the Russian government’s June passage of a contentious law outlawing gay “propaganda.” Gays in Russia have faced increasing pressure and threats of violence from homophobic vigilantes.
Venezuela pressed on seizure of ship
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Guyana’s government stepped up pressure on Venezuela to explain why it intercepted an American-chartered ship surveying for oil in disputed waters, a move that threatens to revive a decades-old territorial dispute between South America’s biggest oil producer and one of the region’s poorest nations.
The 285-foot survey research vessel, carrying five American oil workers, was conducting a seismic study under contract for Anadarko Petroleum Corp. on Thursday when it was stopped by a Venezuelan navy vessel and ordered to sail under escort to Margarita Island. Guyana said the crew was well within its territorial waters but that the Venezuelan navy informed them they were operating in that country’s exclusive economic zone and ordered an immediate halt to the survey.
“It was then clear that the vessel and its crew were not only being escorted out of Guyana’s waters, but were under arrest,” the Guyanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday in which it demanded the immediate release of the vessel and its crew.
Texas-based Anadarko said it was working with the governments of Guyana and the U.S. to secure the release of the crew and the vessel, which was expected to arrive today to Margarita Island off of Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. The U.S. State Department is aware of the situation but has so far declined to comment.
Associated Press
