News in brief

Philippines troops kill 6 Abu Sayyaf gunmen

ZAMBOANGA: The Philippine military said yesterday it had killed six members of an Al-Qaedalinked group that is holding three foreign hostages in the volatile south of the country. The military launched an assault on Saturday against dozens of Abu Sayyaf militants hiding in and around a remote village on Jolo island, where the militants are holding two European tourists and a Japanese. Marines, backed by police forces and a pro-government militia unit, launched the ground assault after acting on tipoffs from locals, local commander Colonel Jose Johriel Cenabre said. “Our firepower was controlled because we did not want any collateral damage. It was a surgical strike,” Cenabre said. He said six militants were killed and six others were wounded during a 15-minute assault, but about 50 escaped after they put up strong resistance with heavy return fire. Cenabre said it was not immediately clear whether the hostages were with the militants when fighting erupted. “But I can assure you that based on intelligence reports they are alive and still being kept on the island,” he said.

Suicide bomber kills 4 women in Pakistan

PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber killed four women in northwest Pakistan yesterday in an attempted attack on mourners at a funeral, police said. The blast hit a house in Peshawar, a frontline city in Pakistan’s battle against Islamist insurgents, close to where a group of people were holding funeral prayers, senior police official Najeeb Ur Rehman said. According to Rehman, the mourners spotted three would-be suicide bombers coming towards them but managed to scare them off. Two fled the scene while the third entered a nearby home, unconnected to the mourners, and blew himself up at the entrance, said Rehman. “Four women died and six people were wounded in the suicide blast,” he said. Shafqat Malik, chief of Peshawar’s Bomb Disposal Unit, confirmed the suicide attack and said that the bomber used around six kilograms of explosives along with ball bearings in his suicide vest. Jamil Shah, a spokesman for Peshawar’s main Lady Reading hospital where all the dead bodies and injured were taken said that five of the injured were women.

6 die in multi-car crash on S California freeway

DIAMOND BAR: A suspected drunk driver sped the wrong way on a Southern California freeway, causing a pre-dawn crash that killed six people, authorities said. Olivia Culbreath, 21, of Fontana, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of driving under the influence and manslaughter after being pulled from a badly mangled Chevy Camaro on State Route 60, California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez said. Jimenez said the crash scene in this suburb east of Los Angeles was horrific. Three people were ejected from their cars and the Camaro was barely recognizable. Authorities said Culbreath was traveling north in the southbound lanes of State Route 57 before transitioning east in the westbound lanes of State Route 60, where the Camaro collided head-on with a red Ford Explorer. A Ford Freestyle then collided with the Explorer. Four people were pronounced dead at the scene, and two people died after being taken to the hospital, Jimenez said. Witnesses told dispatchers the Camaro was speeding up to 100 mph, Jimenez said. Culbreath was in serious condition at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center with a broken femur and a ruptured bladder, he said.

Four militants killed in North Caucasus

MOSCOW: Russian police killed four suspected militants, law enforcement officials said yesterday, in a shootout at a house in the North Caucasus, highlighting regional security concerns near the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. The gun fight broke out on Saturday after police surrounded a private house used by militants in the province of Dagestan, which lies some 600 kilometers from Sochi on the other end of the Caucasus Mountain chain. There was no indication the shooting was connected with the Games. President Vladimir Putin, who has invested personal and political prestige to ensure the Games’ success, ordered security forces on high alert after a suicide bomber killed at least 37 in the southern Russian city of Volgograd in December. Militants wage violence to establish an Islamist state in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus. Militant leader Doku Umarov, Russia’s most wanted man, threatened to disrupt the Olympic Games in a video posted online last year. Russian newspaper Kommersant said among those killed was an ethnic Russian convert to the insurgency.