Iran president visits earthquake-hit city

The quake also damaged an army garrison base, killing a number of soldiers.

President Hassan Rouhani arrived in Kermanshah province yesterday to offer support to those affected. “Representing the nation of Iran, I offer my condolences to the people of Kermanshah, and tell them that all of us are behind Kermanshah,” he said in an online statement.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, expressed his thanks to foreign countries offering assistance but wrote on Twitter: “For now, we are able to manage with our own resources.”

The quake centred about 19 miles outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja, according to a US Geological Survey. It could be felt 660 miles away on the Mediterranean coast.

Seven deaths occurred in Iraq and 535 people were injured, all in the country’s northern Kurdish region, according to its Interior Ministry. BURMA’S military issued its most forceful denial yet yesterday that security forces had committed atrocities during “clearance operations” in the west of the country that have sparked the largest refugee crisis in Asia in decades.

The military said it had interviewed thousands of people during its monthlong investigation into the conduct of troops in western Rakhine state after Rohingya insurgents launched a series of attacks there in August.

While the report acknowledged battles against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, it claimed security forces had “never shot at the innocent Bengalis” and “there was no death of innocent people”.

Burma’s government and most of the Buddhist majority say the members of the Muslim minority are “Bengalis” who migrated

The operations have sparked a refugee crisis.

illegally from Bangladesh, and do not acknowledge the Rohingya as a local ethnic group.

The latest denial of wrongdoing contradicts statements from refugees in Bangladesh who have described atrocities by security forces and Buddhist mobs.

Some of the refugees suffered gunshot wounds and severe burns, and those who have spoken to

journalists and human rights groups accuse Burma’s security forces of massacres, rape, looting and the burning of hundreds of villages.

The military said the investigation showed security forces did not use excessive force.

The report comes ahead of an expected visit today by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to hold talks on the crisis. A SERBIAN court has issued suspended prison sentences for four suspects and acquitted three more who were tried in the 2008 torching of the US embassy in Belgrade after a rally against Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The ruling at Belgrade’s Higher Court comes after years of waiting. A retrial was ordered after an appeals court last year overturned initial verdicts against the suspects.

One person died in the 2008 rioting when the US and other western embassies were attacked by nationalists and football hooligans angry over what they perceived as support for Kosovo’s statehood.

Several hundred people stormed the US embassy and set part of it on fire before the police arrived and pushed the crowds away from the scene.

The incident soured has relations between Washington and Belgrade for years.