BAGHDAD — Bombers struck Shiite pilgrims Saturday for a third consecutive day, killing at least three people in the latest in a series of attacks apparently aimed at stoking sectarian tension. The attacks have targeted pilgrims headed for the Shiite city of Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of people have gathered for festivities that culminate this morning. No group has claimed responsibility, but assaults on Shiite civilians have been carried out for years by Sunni extremists such as al-Qaida in Iraq.
Afghanistan: 30 militants slain
U.S.-led coalition soldiers killed more than 30 militants during three days of fighting in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said Saturday. The U.S.-led coalition said militants attacked a coalition and Afghan patrol “numerous times” as the troops traveled through the Zamto Valley of Kandahar province Wednesday through Friday. The U.S. and Afghan forces returned fire and called in airstrikes from fighter aircraft, the coalition said. No coalition or Afghan forces were reported wounded or killed in the fights.
Poland: Heavy storms kill six
Heavy storms hit parts of Europe, killing at least six people, injuring scores and damaging houses, according to media reports Saturday. Southern Poland was hardest hit, with three deaths and 34 injuries when a tornado and heavy rainstorms late Friday tore the roofs off homes, knocked down trees and overturned vehicles. Two of those killed were in the southern province of Silesia, where a man near Czestochowa died after a tree crashed into his vacation home and a woman was crushed by the ceiling of her house in Rusinowice. Separately, a woman in the central city of Lodz was electrocuted by wires pulled down by heavy winds.
Germany: Humpback in the Baltic
Germans have been treated to the rare sight of a lone and wayward humpback whale swimming in the Baltic Sea, but marine biologists said it may be doomed because the waterway lacks the conditions such mammals need to survive. The humpback has been spotted several times near Rostock in recent days, according to the biologists, who say such whales don’t typically range too far into the Baltic.
India: Islamic militants arrested
Police have arrested the alleged mastermind of serial bombings in western India last month that killed 58 people and have linked him to a banned Islamic group, an official said Saturday. Police also arrested eight other men who were described as members of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, a group that was banned in 2001 and has been blamed for a wave of bomb attacks across India in the last three years. “We believe that the network of SIMI was behind the blasts,” a senior police official said in Ahmadabad, the capital of Gujarat state and the site of last month’s bombings.
Ohio: Bob Ney out of custody
Former Republican congressman Bob Ney of Ohio has been released from a halfway house in Cincinnati after serving a sentence in connection with a public corruption scandal. Ney has served nearly a year-and-a-half of his original 2 1/2-year prison sentence. The sentence was reduced after he completed treatment for alcohol problems. Ney admitted trading political favors for golf trips, other gifts and campaign donations arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates.
Florida: Hurricane fears in Keys
Residents and tourists in the Florida Keys prepared Saturday for Tropical Storm Fay, which forecasters said could strengthen to a hurricane and begin battering the island chain as soon as Monday. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency because Fay “threatens the state of Florida with a major disaster.” Officials in the Keys’ Monroe County said they would likely order an evacuation of all visitors this morning.
California: Schwarzenegger’s knee
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled out of an environmental summit Saturday to have one knee examined for a possibly torn meniscus. He had been scheduled to be co-host of the session on climate change at South Lake Tahoe, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the crowd that the governor told her he was on his way to a Los Angeles hospital. A Schwarzenegger spokesman said the governor injured the knee recently while exercising and it had been bothering him all week.
Tennessee: House fire kills seven
Five children, a teenager and a mother died Saturday in a fire that engulfed a Memphis home, fire officials said. A fire official said two teenagers and an 11-year-old boy escaped and were hospitalized in stable condition. The cause was under investigation, and authorities were unsure how the survivors escaped, he said. A next-door neighbor, who said he was awakened by the victims’ cries for help, said two of the survivors escaped by jumping from a second-story window of the burning home.
From Herald news services
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