NEWS OF THE DAY
_1 Nigeria attack: Suicide bombers attacked a camp for internally displaced people and a nearby market in a northeastern Nigeria village Tuesday, killing at least 20 people, a local official said Tuesday. Village chief Lawan Kalli said Tuesday that at least three suicide bombers entered Mandarari’s market around 5 p.m. posing as buyers. Then an undetermined number went to the nearby camp for people displaced by Nigeria’s conflict while at least one stayed at the market. They all detonated explosives almost simultaneously, he said. “Our village is right at the entrance into Konduga town, and that is where both the camp and the makeshift market are situated, which made us an instant target point of the insurgents,” Kalli said. At least 80 people were injured and were taken to the hospital in Maiduguri, a town about 18 miles away, Kalli said. Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency has displaced millions in Nigeria and neighboring countries and has killed more than 20,000 people.
_2 Rebels disarm: U.N. observers on Tuesday removed the last of more than 8,000 guns once carried by the guerrillas of Colombia’s largest rebel army and collected at 26 demobilization sites around the South American nation under a historic peace deal. Rebels agreed to disarm as part of the pact reached with the government last year, and some of the weapons will be smelted and transformed into statues commemorating the end to Latin America’s longestrunning armed conflict. “This puts the country on the path to a new future,” Jean Arnault, head of the United Nations’ mission in Colombia, said at a ceremony where President Juan Manuel Santos put a lock on the final container as leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, looked on. Former FARC rebels finished turning over their individual weapons in late June, and since then the guns have been locked up and guarded by U.N. observers.
_3 Car attack: A security guard who deliberately rammed his car into a crowded pizzeria in France told investigators he was a suicidal habitual drug user and had consumed “a large quantity” of painkillers the day before the act that killed an adolescent girl, a prosecutor said Tuesday. Eric de Valroger, a prosecutor in the town of Meaux east of Paris, described the 32-year-old suspect as “incoherent” and said his interrogation was proving “very complicated” and confusing.
4_ Anti-Semitic insult: Outrage erupted Tuesday after a small Swiss hotel posted a sign asking “Jewish guests” to shower before using the swimming pool. After a hotel guest posted a picture of the sign online, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, quickly demanded the closure of the Paradies Arosa, an Alpine establishment in the eastern Swiss city of Arosa, outside Davos. Israeli government officials also condemned the hotel, describing the sign as “an anti-Semitic act of the worst and ugliest kind.”
_5 Siege tightens: The Lebanese army said Tuesday that troops have advanced along the border with Syria, tightening the siege on areas controlled by the Islamic State group. The Lebanese army said in a statement that the troops discovered bombs and explosive belts left behind by militants in areas captured on the edge of the Lebanese border town of Arsal. It said that they also found the body of an unknown man. Tuesday’s advance came a day after hundreds of insurgents and civilians returned to Syria from the Lebanon border area as part of a deal negotiated with the Lebanese.
Chronicle News Services