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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Steve Miller.
Xinhua news agency reports that 15 people are confirmed dead in a landslide in southwestern China. About 1,000 workers with life detection instruments are searching for survivors. The news agency says that no news signs of life have been found at 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning. More than120 people were buried in the landslide that caused huge rocks and massive earth to come crushing into their homes in the mountain village of Xinmo. The Israeli Air Force launched a strike in Syria after several projectiles were fired out of the war-torn country into the Golan Heights region Saturday. The air raid targeted two "Syrian regime" tanks in the northern part of the Golan Heights. The military said no one was injured in the incident, but asked civilians to avoid the area surrounding the border with Syria. The two countries are still technically at war. A Pakistani official says the death toll from twin bombings at a crowded market at northwestern town of Parachinar has risen to 67, bringing the overall death toll [to] from three separate attacks to 85. Shahid Khan, a government official in Parachinar, said that many of the victims of the Friday attacks are in critical condition and feared the death toll may further increases. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian Sunni extremist group, claimed the bombings in Parachinar for responsibility in majority-Shiite town. A suicide car bombing near the office of the provincial police chief in the southwestern city of Quetta has killed 14 people. The Quetta attack was claimed by a breakaway Taliban and the Islamic State group. This is VOA news. Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour Ben Turki told Arab media that his forces disrupted a terrorist plot to attack worshippers Friday in the vicinity of Mecca's Grand Mosque. Attempts by security forces to storm a terrorist lair on a narrow side street near the mosque, however, prompted the man holed up inside an upper-story flat to blow himself up, causing part of the building to collapse, wounding a number of people. A boy nearby recounts his experience: "We heard a very loud explosion. My brother said, 'It may be fireworks.' But my mother said 'No, it is something strange.' Then I went outside and saw police cars and then heard someone saying that there was a terrorist attack. And then many explosions took place." Ben Turki says the suspects have ties to the Islamic State terrorist group, but no group has claimed responsibility. The Trump administration has stepped up its fight against MS-13, a notorious street gang with roots in El Salvador. VOA's Miller Sega reports. Another mass arrest of MS-13 members, part of the Trump administration's stepped up fight against the gang notorious for hacking its victims to death. President Donald Trump blames his predecessor's immigration policies for allowing the gang with roots in central America to flourish in the U.S. and he vows to demolish it. "MS-13 is going to be gone." But despite some recent successes by law enforcement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the gang continues to find new recruits from its home turf, the so-called "northern triangle" countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. While 90 percent of foreign-born members of MS-13 are illegal immigrants, ??? says equating criminals with immigrants is not based on facts. I'm Miller Sega for ???, VOA news, Washington. The Syrian government released Saturday hundreds of detainees including some who backed the insurgency against President Bashar Assad on the eve of a major Muslim holiday. Hours after the release, though, a car bomb exploded in a rebel-held northern town near the border with Turkey, killing and wounding dozens of people. Leftist rebels in Colombia say they have released two Dutch journalists who have been kidnapped earlier in the week. Reporter Derk Johannes Bolt and cameraman Eugenio Ernest Marie Follender were released early Saturday to a [detention], oh sorry, delegation of Colombian human rights officials in a rural area of Norte de Santander state. Bolt said after his release the two men had been treated well. From Washington, I'm Steve Miller. That's the latest world news from VOA. |