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BEIJING: As many as 12 workers are
feared dead after being buried by a massive
landslide at a quarry in northern China, state
media reported Monday. Rescuers have so far pulled
one body out of the quarry near the city of
Tianjin, the landslide site. Rescue work proceeded
slowly and cautiously as 10 kilograms (22 pounds)
of explosives have been buried along with the
workers. Local officials said the accident was the
result of a natural landslide, Xinhua said, adding
that five other quarries in the area had been
closed for safety reasons.
--AFP
JAKARTA:
Doctors said Monday that former Indonesian
president Suharto’s strong will to live had
taken them by surprise as he clung tenaciously to
life in hospital, hooked up to breathing
apparatus. On Sunday, doctors gave him a 50-50
chance of survival and gathered his family to warn
them to prepare for his imminent death. But Mardjo
Soebiandono, the doctor heading the team treating
Suharto, said Monday that his “general condition
is improving.” --AFP
CHANAE,
Thailand: Separatist rebels killed eight Thai
soldiers and tried to decapitate them after
ambushing a military convoy in the restive
Muslim-majority south Monday, officials said. It
was the single deadliest attack against the
military in the region since June last year, when
seven troops were killed in an ambush of a
security team protecting teachers. In the latest
incident, a powerful bomb overturned the
soldiers’ humvee in Narathiwat province and tore
a one-meter (three-foot) crater into the road as
they returned from escorting teachers to school.
--AFP
ABU DHABI: US
President George W. Bush was headed for regional
powerhouse and close ally Saudi Arabia on Monday
to rally support for his campaign to isolate arch
foe Iran and for his Middle East peace drive. Bush
warned on Sunday warned of what he called the
threat to the world posed by the Islamic republic,
saying it should be confronted “before it’s
too late.” “The United States is strengthening
our longstanding security commitments with our
friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around
the world to confront this danger before it is too
late,” he said on Sunday in the keynote speech
of his Middle East tour. He described Iran as
“today the world’s leading state sponsor of
terror” and, with al-Qaeda, the main threat to
the region’s stability.
--AFP
BAGHDAD: Gunmen
assassinated an appeals court judge as he was
heading to work in western Baghdad on Monday, an
Interior Ministry source said. “Unknown armed
men in two cars gunned down Amir Jawdat al-Naieb,
an appeals court judge and a member of the Iraqi
Supreme Judicial Council, about 8:30 a.m. [0530
GMT], “ according to Xinhua’s source.
Naieb’s driver was seriously injured by the
attack, and died later while he was transported to
a nearby hospital, the source added. Insurgents
frequently attack senior government officials,
judges, doctors and high-profile academics in the
past years in Iraq.
--Xinhua
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