NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Prison clash: At least 37 people were killed during clashes between armed inmates and security forces at a small prison in southern Venezuela, the state’s governor said Wednesday. Gov. Liborio Guarulla said the bloodshed came after fighting erupted between inmates and their jailers Tuesday night in the prison in Puerto Ayacucho, capital of sparsely populated Amazonas state. He said security forces raided the facility seeking to restore order in the prison, where the inmates had seized control several weeks ago. “At midnight special forces showed up and through the night we heard gunfire and explosions,” Guarulla said. The office of Venezuela’s chief prosecutor said on social media that it was investigating the incident. It said 14 prison guards were also injured. Guarulla said the city’s morgue had been overwhelmed trying to handle so many bodies. The death toll was the worst in Venezuela since a prison riot in 2013 that left 61 people dead.
_2 Hospital attack: Attackers stormed one of Guatemala’s largest hospitals with guns blazing Wednesday to free an imprisoned gang member, officials said. At least seven people were killed and five were arrested. Carlos Soto, director of Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City, said an unknown number of gunmen entered the facility in the morning and began shooting. The jailed suspect, who had been taken to the hospital for lab tests, disappeared during the chaos. Deputy hospital director Marco Antonio Barrientos told reporters that 12 people were wounded, including a child who underwent surgery and was in critical condition. “The law doesn’t consider it, but they are acts of terrorism,” President Jimmy Morales said at a news conference. He said he would send police and soldiers to bolster security at hospitals. National Civil Police said the five men in custody were members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Via Twitter, the agency showed photographs of assault rifles seized from the attackers.
_3 Marine killed: An American service member was killed Wednesday, and an unspecified number were wounded, while battling Islamic State loyalists in eastern Afghanistan. Members of the Afghan army also sustained casualties in what the U.S. military characterized as a partnered operation. Officials in Kabul have said little else about the engagement, releasing only a brief statement indicating the wounded were evacuated for medical treatment, the families of those involved were being notified, and the mission was aimed at “further reducing” the Islamic State’s regional presence.
_4 Rape law repealed: Lawmakers in Beirut on Wednesday repealed Lebanon’s law that allowed rapists to evade punishment by marrying their accusers, the latest in a string of countries in the region to reverse such provisions under pressure from Arab women’s groups. A handful of countries — including several in the Arab world as well as the Philippines, a majority Catholic country — have allowed men accused or convicted of rape to be exonerated if they marry their victims.
Long-lost ring found: A Canadian woman in Alberta who lost her engagement ring 13 years ago while weeding her garden on the family farm is wearing it proudly again after her daughter-in-law pulled it from the ground on a misshapen carrot. Mary Grams, 84, of Camrose said she can’t believe the lucky carrot actually grew through and around the diamond ring she had long given up hope of finding. Grams said she never told her husband, Norman, that she lost the ring, but told her son. Her husband died five years ago.
Chronicle News Services