News
Email
Print
The World
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: November 16, 2008
Port town in Somalia is overrun by radicals
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A radical Islamic group seized another Somali port town yesterday, consolidating its control over a southwestern region that borders the Somali capital.
Amin Adan, a resident of the port town of Barawe, said that fighters of al-Shabab took control without a fight because the government's allies left as soon as they heard the fighters were on their way.
"We don't know whether it is a tactical retreat," Adan said from Barawe, 110 miles southwest of Mogadishu. Barawe is near Merka, a key port town with an airstrip that al-Shabab seized earlier last week; both are in the region of Lower Shabelle, which surrounds Mogadishu.
The steady and seemingly uncontested rise in recent months of al-Shabab meaning The Youth -- which the United States considers a terrorist organization, is a far cry from the situation in late 2006, when Somalia's U.N.-backed government rolled into Mogadishu supported by powerful Ethiopian troops and drove out radical Islamists intent on ruling by strict Shariah law.
Subway tunnel collapses In China; 1 dead, 16 missing
BEIJING -- A subway tunnel under construction in eastern China collapsed yesterday, trapping workers and creating a huge crater into which more than 10 vehicles plunged, a local official said. At least one person died, and 16 were missing, state media reported.
A 65-foot-wide section of road over the construction site collapsed in the city of Hangzhou, said a city official who gave only his surname, Zheng. He said that at least 10 vehicles had fallen into the crater. Nineteen people were hospitalized, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Water from a nearby river was seeping into the tunnel and had reached a depth of about 16 feet, Xinhua said. About 2,000 rescuers were struggling to pump out the water and search for the trapped people.
Coal mine explosions kill 12 in southwestern Romania
BUCHAREST, Romania -- Two explosions in a coal mine in southwestern Romania yesterday killed eight miners and four emergency workers, officials said.
Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said that the explosion that killed the miners in the coal-rich Jiu Valley occurred at a depth of 800 feet.
Later, a second explosion killed the four rescue workers, said Ilie Paducel, the mayor of the town of Petrila where the mine is.
Police officers are wounded in attacks in Tijuana, Mexico
TIJUANA, Mexico --Gunmen attacked a state-police convoy on a main boulevard in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, seriously wounding three policemen, state prosecutors reported yesterday.
A store owner was found shot to death nearby, though it was not clear if he was killed in Friday's attack on police or in a separate incident.
Attacks on lawmen have become increasingly brazen in many parts of Mexico as drug gangs try to intimidate honest officers pursuing them or to kill corrupt police in the pay of rival gangs in a rising wave of drug violence.
Email
Print
