MADRID – Spanish lawmakers have voted to ban the spearing to death of bulls at one of the country’s goriest spectacles.
Wednesday’s decision by lawmakers in the Castile and Leon region confirms an earlier government decree to prohibit bull killing at September’s annual Toro de la Vega festival in the town of Tordesillas 120 miles northwest of Madrid. The vote does not affect traditional bullfighting in the region.
During the centuries-old festival, men on horseback traditionally have chased a bull and speared it in front of onlookers. The event has attracted increasing protests in recent years by animal rights activists.
NAYMIYAH, Iraq – A column of black Humvees carrying Iraqi special forces rolled into southern Fallujah on Wednesday, the first time in more than two years that government troops have entered the western city held by the Islamic State group.
The counterterrorism troops fought house-to-house battles with the militants in the Shuhada neighborhood, and the operation to retake the city is expected to be one of the most difficult yet.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised a swift victory when he announced the start of the operation on May 22 to liberate Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad. But the complexity of the task quickly became apparent.
Although other security forces from the federal and provincial police, government-sanctioned Shiite militias and the Iraqi military have surrounded the city, only the elite counterterrorism troops are fighting inside Fallujah at this stage of the operation. And they are doing so under the close cover of U.S.-led coalition airpower.
ANKARA, Turkey – A Kurdish rebel suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle outside a police headquarters near Turkey’s border with Syria Wednesday, killing five other people and wounding dozens.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said the attack killed two female police officers, one of them pregnant, as well as three civilians. A total of 51 people, among them 23 civilians, were wounded in the attack in the town of Midyat, it reported.
The bombing came amid a surge in violence in the country and a day after a car bomb hit a police vehicle in Istanbul, killing 11 people during the morning rush hour. It took place during funerals for the Istanbul victims.
Associated Press
