AROUND THE NATION AND WORLD
Houthi rebel missile kills at least 17 people
CAIRO — A ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saturday killed at least 17 people in a government-held city, including a 5-year-old girl, officials said, as a U.S. envoy to the country accused the rebels of failing to try to reach peace in the war-wrecked nation.
The missile hit a gas station in the Rawdha neighborhood in the central city of Marib, according to Ali al-Ghulisi, the provincial governor’s press secretary.
Information Minister Moammar al-Iryani said the attack killed at least 17 people and wounded at least five others. All casualties were civilians, he added.
He called on the U.N. and the U.S. to condemn the attack, saying it amounted to a war crime.
There was no immediate comment from the Houthis.
Flooding, mudslides leave at least 6 dead
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Flash floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rains in Sri Lanka have killed at least six people and left five missing, while more than 5,000 are displaced, officials said Saturday.
Rains have been pounding six districts of the Indian Ocean island nation since Thursday night, and many houses, paddy fields and roads have been inundated, blocking traffic.
Four people died in floods while another two lost their lives in mudslides, according to the government’s Disaster Management Center. Another five people are missing in floods and mudslides.
Figures released by the government showed that more than 5,000 people have moved to temporary shelters and more than 600 houses have been damaged.
Black victim’s grave to get grave marker
CHICAGO — A Black teenager whose death along a segregated Chicago beach sparked a weeklong race riot in 1919 that left dozens of people dead is finally getting a grave marker.
A stone marker is tentatively set to be installed in late July atop the grave of 17-year-old Eugene Williams at Lincoln Cemetery in the suburb of Blue Island. A group of citizens raised $5,000 to buy the marker, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Williams, who lived in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, had just graduated from high school when he drowned in July 1919 after being struck by a rock thrown by a white man as he entered an area of Lake Michigan that was unofficially a whitesonly area.
Williams’ death in a city with deep racial tensions helped spark a weeklong race riot that left 23 Black people and 15 white people dead.
Police never arrested the white man identified as the person who threw the rock, and most of the homicides that occurred during the race riot also went unsolved and unpunished.
Williams and several Black riot victims were buried in unmarked plots at the cemetery. The new grave marker will feature a telling of Williams’ life and death.
Alleged jihadists kill at least 100 in village
NIAMEY, Niger — Gunmen killed at least 100 people in a northern Burkina Faso village, the government said Saturday, in what was the country’s deadliest attack in years.
The attack took place Friday evening in Solhan village, in the Sahel’s Yagha province, government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura said in a statement blaming jihadists. The local market and several homes were also burned down in the area toward the border of Niger, he said.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore called the attack “barbaric.”
This is the deadliest attack recorded in Burkina Faso since the West African country was overrun by jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State about five years ago, said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
1 body found after collapse of mine
MEXICO CITY — The body of one miner was found Saturday at a small coal mine in a northern Mexico border state that flooded and collapsed, leaving six miners still missing. There had been complaints for years about unsafe conditions at mines in the area.
The federal civil defense office said one miner’s body had been found and the search was continuing for the other six in the coal belt of the northern state of Coahuila.
The Coahuila Labor Department said the mine was apparently hit by some sort of collapse and flooding. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said a dam or holding pond had collapsed, causing the flood.
Efforts have concentrated on pumping water out of the mine.
The mine, located in Muzquiz township, appears to be a type of deep, narrow, open coal pit with steep earth walls, though local media reported there may have been tunnels or chambers at the bottom. The area is about is 80 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas.