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BAGHDAD: The US military said Monday it will
reassess measures to secure Baghdad after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
ordered it to stop building a concrete wall around a dangerous Sunni
enclave.
“We are aware of what the press
has reported that the prime minister said,” US military spokesman
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said in an e-mail to AFP.
“The government of Iraq and
multinational forces in Iraq do agree that we need to protect the
people of Iraq,” he added.
“How that is done is always
being discussed and we will continue that dialogue. We will
coordinate with the Iraqi government and Iraqi commanders in order
to establish effective, appropriate security measures.”
Maliki told a press conference in
Cairo on Sunday that he was against walling in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah
District.
--AFP
MOGADISHU: Heavy shelling
shook the Somali capital Monday as Ethiopian forces battled Islamist
insurgents for the sixth straight day.
After a night of sporadic fire,
heavy explosions hit northern Mogadishu’s districts, where rival
sides exchanged machine gun fire, mortars and anti-aircraft
artillery, residents said.
“I have seen Ethiopian tanks
taking positions and heavily shelling insurgent positions,” said
Mukhtar Mohamed, a resident of Fagah in northern Mogadishu.
“The fighting is heavier the
yesterday, the rivals are exchanging machine guns, mortar and
anti-aircraft fire,” he added.
--AFP
SEOUL: South Korean police
said Monday they have arrested five people for forcing hundreds of
desperate job-seekers, including cancer patients and the disabled,
into virtual slavery in the fishing industry.
The five, who operated an illegal
employment agency in the southern port city of Busan, were arrested
last week. Three more suspects are being sought.
They are accused of recruiting
443 people by putting false advertisements in community papers
promising jobs and a monthly wage of up to four million won
($4,255), police said.
“Those picked by the illegal
employment agency have been coerced to work like slaves at isolated
fish farms or on fishing boats on remote islands since 2005,” Lee
In Seok, a Busan maritime police spokesman, told AFP.
“The victims included cancer
patients, the homeless and even four mentally retarded men,” he
said.
--AFP
YALA, Thailand: Suspected
separatist insurgents killed and attempted to behead a Buddhist man
on Monday, while 17 soldiers were injured in attacks in Thailand’s
troubled south, police said.
The 40-year-old Buddhist was shot
dead by suspected Islamic rebels as he drove his motorcycle in Yala
province. His neck was deeply slashed in an apparent attempt to
behead him, police said.
Rebels also staged four separate
attacks in one district in Narathiwat province Sunday evening.
Within two hours of a school
being set on fire, insurgents injured 17 soldiers in three ambushes
and bomb attacks across the district.
--AFP
HANOI: Six Vietnamese men,
including three members of one family, died one by one as they
followed each other into a well to fix a broken pump and were
apparently poisoned by some kind of gas.
The men died in the six-meter (20
foot) well in the city of Pleiku on Sunday, said Huynh Van Hung, a
local commune official.
“A neighbor, then the
neighbor’s son, then four others climbed into the well to check
what happened,” he told AFP. “They died one by one, probably
because they inhaled some kind of poisonous gas.”
The six victims were aged 23 to
47. Two of the eight men who climbed down the well were rescued and
in a serious condition in hospital.
--AFP
BEIJING: Twenty-four
people were killed and seven injured when a bus plunged off an
overpass in southwest China on Monday, state press reported.
The accident occurred in morning
rush hour when the bus fell more than 20 meters (66 feet) off an
overpass in Chongqing, Xinhua news agency reported. Five of the
injured were in a critical condition.
--AFP
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