Afghan suicide attack 'kills 11'

31 July 2011 Last updated at 08:40 GMT The attack targeted the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah

Ten Afghan policemen and a child have been killed in a suicide attack in the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, officials say.

The attacker targeted the gate of the police headquarters in the city, the capital of Helmand province.

The Taliban said it had carried out the attack, which also wounded 12 people.

Responsibility for Lashkar Gah was recently handed to Afghan forces as part of a plan to return all security to local forces by the end of 2014.

High-profile raids

The attack reportedly targeted a joint Afghan police and army patrol at the compound.

Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor, said that in addition to those killed nine policemen and three civilians were injured.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told Agence France-Presse news agency the group had carried out the attack.

Helmand remains a flashpoint of the Taliban insurgency and has cost the lives of more foreign troops than any other province.

Lashkar Gah is one of seven initial areas for which security has been handed to Afghan forces as part of the gradual transition of control from the Nato-led Isaf.

Sunday's attack follows a series of high-profile Taliban raids.

Last week an attack by insurgents in the southern Afghan town of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province left at least 22 people dead, including BBC reporter Ahmed Omed Khpulwak.

On 27 July, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hameedi, was killed in a suicide attack.

Two weeks earlier, President Hamid Karzai's influential half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed in the same city.

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Vietnam shoe plant fire kills 17

30 July 2011 Last updated at 06:25 GMT Burning debris blocked escape routes in the factory At least 17 people have been killed in a fire at a shoe factory in northern Vietnam, police and local media say.

Some 21 other people were injured in the blaze at the plant in the port city of Hai Phong, reports say.

Local media quoted a survivor, Bui Thi Them, as saying sparks from a welding machine had ignited the roof of the building.

Burning material fell from the roof, blocking the exit, Mr Them said, trapping the victims inside.

"The fireball blocked the factory's main entrance and there is no exit on the back," Mr Them told the Thanh Nien newspaper, AFP news agency reported.

"Many people in the middle of the factory which was engulfed with fire and smoke could not escape and were burned to death."

Ten of those killed were women, the Associated Press new agency said.

Thanh Nien was quoted as saying six people, including the factory owner, her husband and a welder, have been detained over the incident.

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Roadside bomb kills Afghan family

2 July 2011 Last updated at 09:00 GMT US troops overseeing reconstruction work in Zabul province, and on the look-out for Taliban, close to the Pakistan border At least 11 members of a family have been killed by a roadside bomb in the southern Afghan province of Zabul.

The family, including women and children, were thought to be refugees returning home from Pakistan.

They were driving their van through Shamulzayi district when the blast occurred. They are thought to have been heading for Ghazni province.

Roadside bombs are a weapon commonly used by the Taliban in their war against western forces.

Earlier this week, 20 Afghan civilians were killed when the bus they were in hit a roadside bomb in Nimroz province in southwest Afghanistan.

Elsewhere about 500 demonstrators chanting "Death to the Pakistan military!" and "Long live Afghanistan!" protested in Kabul against rocket attacks along the border with Pakistan.

At least 36 civilians are estimated to have died in the attacks in recent weeks.

Pakistan has denied that it fired the rockets into Afghanistan.

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Nato 'kills top Afghan militant'

30 June 2011 Last updated at 13:56 GMT Smoke billows from the Intercontinental Hotel after the Tuesday night attack Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed a senior militant they suspect of involvement in the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.

Ismail Jan died in an air strike in the eastern province of Paktia on Wednesday, the alliance said.

BBC correspondents say he is a leading commander in the Haqqani network, which is linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Nato and Afghan intelligence believe Haqqani members helped mount the hotel attack, which left 22 people dead.

The Interior Ministry says nine attackers were killed as well as 11 civilians and two police.

There has so far been no independent confirmation of Ismail Jan's death.

'Precision air strike'

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel attack, but Nato said it was carried out jointly with the Haqqani network.

The group has bases in the tribal region of Waziristan in Pakistan, but focuses its attacks over the border in Afghanistan.

It has been accused of carrying out a number of high-profile gun and bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

Afghan officials also say the network has close ties to Pakistani intelligence services.

A statement from the Nato-led Isaf force said Jan was suspected of providing "material support" to the hotel attackers in Kabul.

It said he had been killed in what it called a "precision air strike" in Gardez district.

"Ismail Jan was the deputy to the senior Haqqani commander inside Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan. Jan and several Haqqani fighters were killed in the strike," the statement said.

It added that he had been tracked down after information from Afghan officials, citizens and "disenfranchised insurgents".

Ismail Jan operated in and around the Khost-Gardez pass, a rugged and heavily forested area near the Pakistan border, and was blamed for leading attacks on Nato and Afghan targets.

Securing the porous and volatile border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has presented a major challenge for security forces in both countries.

On Thursday General Aminullah Amarkhel, the border police commander for eastern Afghanistan, resigned. He said Kabul and Nato had failed to act after Pakistani rockets were fired into Afghan territory.

Last week Afghan officials accused the Pakistani army of firing hundreds of rockets over the border. Pakistan denies this but says a few stray rockets may have crossed the border as the army battled militants in the area.

The army says that in recent weeks insurgents have crossed over from Afghanistan and attacked villages in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Many of the militant groups along the frontier are closely linked.

'Lapses'

In Kabul, meanwhile, the BBC has seen photos showing at least two of the Intercontinental attackers wearing police uniforms, raising questions about whether the militants received inside help.

In other photos large amounts of rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and bullets were left behind by the dead insurgents. Investigators want to know how they got their weapons inside the hotel.

Previous attacks in Kabul and elsewhere have led intelligence officials to conclude that the Haqqani network has penetrated Afghan security at the highest level.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says several police officials are now being questioned over what many see as glaring security lapses at one of the capital's apparently most secure locations.

Afghan forces are also accused of being slow to arrive on the scene once Tuesday night's attack had started.

Nato air support had to be called in before calm was finally restored.

Correspondents say the Intercontinental, which is not part of the international hotel chain of the same name, is one of Kabul's most heavily guarded hotels.

But a security ministry official told the BBC that the militants could have exploited a loophole in security caused by renovation work.

Kabul - the scene of many attacks over recent years - has been relatively stable so far this year, although violence has increased across the country since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan on 2 May, and the start of the Taliban's "spring offensive".

In January 2008, militants stormed the capital's most popular luxury hotel, the Serena, and killed eight people, including an American, a Norwegian and a woman from the Philippines.

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Lightning kills Uganda children

29 June 2011 Last updated at 10:16 GMT Lightning has struck a junior school in Uganda's western Masindi area, killing 18 children, officials say.

Police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba told AFP news agency 15 girls and three boys had died at Runyanya Primary School in Kiryandongo on Tuesday.

Kiryandongo's district commissioner told Uganda's Daily Monitor paper 36 pupils had been admitted to hospital.

Concern about the number of recent deadly lightning strikes has prompted MPs to raise the matter in parliament.

Up to 28 people have been killed by lightning and scores injured in the past week, the private Daily Monitor reports.

According to the AP new agency, meteorologist Ken Kizza Aderi says the lack of lightning conductors on buildings could be partly responsible for the deaths.

Kiryandongo police commander Patrick Byaruhanga told Uganda's state-owned New Vision paper that the lightning struck at about 1630 local time (1330 GMT) as pupils were in their classrooms waiting for a downpour to subside before going home.

Ms Nabakooba said some of the more seriously injured pupils had been taken to Mulago Hospital in the capital, Kampala, more than 200km (125 miles) to the south-east.

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India 'mystery illness' kills 28

21 June 2011 Last updated at 10:29 GMT At least 28 children in India's Bihar state have died in the past week from an unidentified illness, officials say.

Officials said that all of the children were between two and eight years. They died in Muzaffarpur town, 80kms (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna.

Bihar Health Minister Ashwani Choubey told the BBC that a team of doctors from Delhi is visiting Muzaffarpur on Tuesday to diagnose the disease.

Local doctors say the symptoms are similar to Japanese encephalitis.

But, they say, an important symptom of Japanese encephalitis is a stiffening of the neck, which is absent from the Bihar cases.

On Sunday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told reporters that the disease had not been identified yet.

"Without identifying the disease how can we say what is killing the children there? The local doctors are giving treatment only on the basis of symptoms," he said.

Officials said blood samples of some of the ill children have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi for test and identification.

Meanwhile, local TV channels say a number of sick children are being admitted to hospitals across northern Bihar.

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Israel gas explosion kills four

17 June 2011 Last updated at 10:37 GMT Many of the injured were eating in a restaurant in the building when the blast struck An explosion caused by a gas leak has killed four people in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya.

Police said the blast, which occurred late in Thursday night, was likely to have been caused by negligence.

More than 60 others were injured by the blast, which badly damaged a four-floor building. Rescue workers have been searching the debris for survivors.

Police arrested a man on suspicion of accidentally cutting a gas pipe that caused the leak that led to the blast.

Many of the injured were sitting in a restaurant on the ground floor of the building when the blast hit.

"The explosion was apparently caused by negligence," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the AFP news agency.

He confirmed that the attack was not criminal or gang-related, or an act of terrorism.

He added that a scrap metal dealer had been arrested in connection with the incident, and an employee of the gas company which supplied gas canisters was being questioned.

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Plane crash in Argentina kills 22

19 May 2011 Last updated at 07:12 GMT Relatives of those on board gathered at Neuquen airport for news A small plane has crashed in southern Argentina, killing all 22 passengers and crew on board, officials say.

The plane went down in the Patagonian province of Rio Negro, after issuing a distress call, the operating company Sol Airlines said.

Rescuers were sent to the crash site near the town of Los Menucos.

A local hospital director said no one had been found alive and that "everything was destroyed and burned", Argentine media reported.

The plane, a Saab 340 turboprop with capacity for 34 people, was carrying 19 passengers, including a baby, and three crew.

It was on a flight between Neuquen near the Andes to Comodoro Rivadavia.

Wreckage was found some 25km (15 miles) south-west of Los Menucos.

Ball of fire

Argentine media reported that the plane, which crashed on Wednesday night local time, may have iced up.

However, a statement from Sol Airlines said there was so far no indication of what had caused the crash.

The company said it received an emergency communication from the plane at just before 2100 local time (2400 GMT ) about halfway into the flight.

Los Menucos Mayor Mabel Yahuar said a man had seen a ball of fire fall from the sky and alerted the authorities.

But it was difficult for emergency services to reach the crash site, given the terrain and that it was night, she said.

"There's no mobile phone signal in the area. It is an uninhabited place and really cold," Ms Yahuar was quoted as saying by Clarin newspaper.

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Blast 'kills 10' Afghan labourers

24 May 2011 Last updated at 13:40 GMT Many of the wounded are in a critical condition, doctors say At least 10 road workers were killed and 28 injured in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar when their truck hit a roadside bomb, hospital officials say.

No group has said it carried out the attack. Last week gunmen shot dead 35 highway workers in Paktia province.

Road workers are frequently targeted by Taliban militants.

The Taliban recently declared a "spring offensive" of attacks. This is the fourth attack in as many days.

The labourers, who worked for a local construction firm called Nisa, were on their way to work when the bomb went off in rural Panjwayi district of Kandahar province.

According to the health director of Kandahar, Abdul Qayum Khan, 18 of the 28 injured are in critical condition.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says attack comes only weeks after Nato forces conducted operations in the district, allowing for the reconstruction of roads and much-needed irrigation canals.

Only on Monday, our correspondent says, Nato commander Gen David Petraeus was in the district praising the reconstruction work and newfound security in the area.

Kandahar is considered to be the spiritual homeland of the Taliban. Earlier this month the city effectively came under siege as insurgents attempted to seize control of several government buildings.

There are also frequent attacks on security forces, both foreign and Afghan, operating across the province.

Soldier arrested

Over the last week there has been a dramatic escalation in the frequency of attacks nationwide.

On Saturday, a suicide blast at a hospital in Kabul killed six people and on Sunday gunmen stormed a government building in the city of Khost, also killing six. On Monday, a suicide blast killed four people in a crowded market place in eastern Laghman province.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's NDS intelligence agency told reporters on Monday that several insurgents had been arrested in connection with Saturday's attack.

One of those arrested is an Afghan National Army soldier working at the hospital. The spokesman said the soldier had provided the attacker with a uniform and valid ID card to help him get into the hospital.

Correspondents say that although Nato says it is making progress against the insurgents, the Taliban are still able to strike at will including at the heart of the Afghan government, often in its most heavily guarded bases.

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Drug feud kills 27 in Guatemala

16 May 2011 Last updated at 07:03 GMT The decapitated bodies of at least 25 men and two women have been found near Guatemala's border with Mexico.

The bodies were discovered on a ranch in Peten province, 500km (310 miles) north of the capital.

Police said the killings could be linked to a battle between drug gangs fighting for control of the area.

Mexican cartels are increasingly moving into northern Guatemala, an important transit point for drugs smuggled from South America to the US.

"This is the worst massacre we have seen in modern times," police spokesman Donald Gonzalez told Reuters.

Army spokesman Col Ron Urizar told the Spanish news agency, Efe, that dozens of soldiers had been sent to the Mexican border to prevent any suspects from fleeing the country.

He said ground and aerial surveillance was being carried out in co-ordination with the Mexican authorities.

Officials said the victims, who were believed to have been workers on the ranch, appeared to have been ambushed by gunmen.

Their bound bodies showed signs of torture, police said.

They are investigating whether the deaths were related to the Zetas drug gang, which has been expanding its operations into Guatemala from Mexico.

There are also suspicions the massacre could be linked to the murder of Haroldo Waldemar Leon, who was shot in the same area on Saturday.

He was the brother of alleged drugs trafficker Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon, who was shot dead in an attack blamed on the Zetas in 2008.

Guatemalan law enforcement officials say the gang has increasingly moved its operations south since Mexican President Felipe Calderon stepped up his country's fight against the drugs trade.

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