Suicide blast kills politician, 21 others

October 6, 2008

COLOMBO - A suicide blast in the north-central Sri Lankan town of Anuradhapura killed 22 people including an opposition leader who is a former army general, Sri Lankan police said today. "A suicide bomber went inside and exploded. My senior officer there said 22 people were killed and among the dead were Janaka Perera and his wife," Deputy Inspector General K.P.P. Pathirana said. Perera is a former army general who is the leader of the main opposition United National Party in North Central Province. (Reuters)

ASTANA - US efforts to build closer ties to this energy-rich former Soviet republic are not meant to undermine Russian influence in Central Asia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. "We don't see any of this as a zero-sum game," she told reporters flying with her to the Kazakh capital from India. US gains need not mean Russian losses, she said. Later, at a news conference with Rice, Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin said his country's relationship with the United States was "stable" and had "strategic character." Kazakh ties with Russia, he said, are "excellent" and "politically correct." (AP)

BEIRUT - An intriguing item about the mysterious leader of a ferocious militant group floated around the Lebanese and Syrian media over the weekend. According to a report Saturday in the Arab-language Syrian newspaper Al-Liwaa, Syrian officials captured the leader of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Fatah al Islam two months ago in their nation. The report says that Shaker Abbsi, a former Libyan air force pilot turned radical Islamist, was caught in a "major house raid" in the poor Meliha district of southern Damascus and hauled off to prison. (Los Angeles Times)

ALGIERS - A baby was found alive by rescuers after spending four days in a pool of mud following flash floods that killed at least 41 people in central Algeria this week, a local official said yesterday. "It's a miracle, really a miracle to find it alive after all this time," the town governor of Ghardaia, Yahia Fahim, told national radio. The state-run APS news agency said the 4-month-old baby appeared in good health after being discovered late Saturday and had been handed to a family while authorities looked for its parents. It wasn't known if the baby was a boy or a girl. (AP)

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, traveling to Russia this week on one of his last diplomatic missions, said yesterday he would urge Moscow not to sell sophisticated weapons to Israel's enemies. Iran is interested in buying antiaircraft missiles that could cripple any military strike against its nuclear program. Israel is also afraid Moscow would sell Syria the same missile defense system. (AP)