OIL TANKER EXPLODES IN PAKISTAN; AT LEAST 153 DEAD
An overturned oil tanker exploded Sunday on a Pakistani highway as local villagers gathered to collect the leaking fuel, engulfing them in an inferno that killed at least 153 people and critically burned scores more.
Authorities warned the death toll could rise from the accident near Bahawalpur, a city of about 1 million people near the Indian border. More than 150 people were injured, 50 of them critically, when the flames from the blast swept through the crowd.
Regional police chief Raja Riffat told Pakistan’s Dawn news agency it was not immediately clear what ignited the fuel. Firefighters battled the blaze for two hours.
“When (the tanker) turned over, the residents of the nearby village of Ramzanpur Joya rushed to the site with buckets and other containers, and a large number of people on motorcycles also came and started collecting the spilling fuel,” Riffat said. He said the crowd rejected efforts by the highway patrol to clear the area.
ISRAEL FREEZES MIXED PRAYERS FOR WESTERN WALL
The Israeli government froze a long-overdue plan Sunday to open a mixed-gender prayer area at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a major policy reversal that is likely to upset liberal streams of Judaism that represent most Jews in the United States.
Israel had approved the plan in January 2016 to officially recognize a special mixed-gender prayer area at the Western Wall — the holiest site where Jews can pray — a compromise reached after years of negotiations between Israeli and American Jewish leaders and Israeli authorities. It was seen as a significant breakthrough in promoting religious pluralism in Israel, where the ultraOrthodox authorities govern almost every facet of Jewish life.
10 BODIES FOUND, SCORES MISSING IN CHINA LANDSLIDE
Rescuers recovered 10 bodies and were searching for 93 people on Sunday, a day after a massive landslide buried a picturesque mountain village in southwestern China.
More than 2,500 rescuers with detection devices and dogs were looking for signs of life amid the rubble of huge boulders that rained down on Xinmo village in Sichuan province early Saturday.
As of Sunday afternoon, only three people — a couple and their month-old baby — had been rescued from the disaster site.
Xinmo has in recent years become a tourism destination for its homes in lush meadows tucked between steep and rugged mountains. But after the landslide, the village was reduced to a vast area of rubble.