Iraq militants start day-long battle, kill 7
BAGHDAD -- Militants launched an attack on a Sunni-dominated city north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing seven members of the Iraqi security forces and setting off a day-long battle that eventually forced them to retreat from the city.
The assault on Samarra, 60 miles from Baghdad, started with dozens of gunmen driving into the city in the morning in sport utility vehicles, attacking security checkpoints and police stations and taking control of some areas of the city for hours, officials said.
Reinforcements were sent in, and local authorities imposed a curfew as helicopter gunships bombed militant positions. By sunset, the gunmen were forced to withdraw from Samarra and smaller clashes were taking place on the city's outskirts, the police said.
Local hospital officials said that apart from the seven policemen and soldiers killed, several attackers also died.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
In other violence Thursday, a bomb blast near a bakery in a town just south of Baghdad killed two people and wounded 10, police and hospital officials said. In eastern Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a bus stop, killing one person and wounding eight.
Germany to question Snowden in Russia
BERLIN -- German lawmakers plan to travel to Moscow to seek testimony from Edward Snowden for their probe into the extent of the surveillance conducted by the U.S. and its allies in Germany.
Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc and its center-left coalition partners agreed Thursday to hear Snowden in Russia, where the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor has sought asylum.
Leftist opposition parties had demanded that Germany allow Snowden to go to Berlin to testify, but the government argued that would hurt trans-Atlantic relations and security cooperation with the United States.
A German lawyer acting for Snowden, Wolfgang Kaleck, said it would be better if his client could testify in Germany or in a third country.
German prosecutors opened an investigation Wednesday into the National Security Agency's purported monitoring of Merkel's cellphone.
In Yemen, 12 slain in al-Qaida attack
SANA, Yemen -- Al-Qaida militants on Thursday attacked an army post southeast of Yemen's capital, Sana, killing 11 soldiers and one civilian, security officials said.
The early morning attack took place in the Beehan area in the province of Shabwa, the officials said, but they provided no other details. Five soldiers also were wounded in the attack, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Over the past few weeks, security forces have stepped up an offensive to drive militants from their strongholds.
Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Saeed al-Faqeeh said Thursday that troops have killed 500 al-Qaida militants and captured another 37 in fighting since late April in the provinces of Shabwa and Abyan, both considered al-Qaida strongholds.
At least 40 soldiers were killed and some 100 were wounded over the same period, the spokesman said. Those numbers do not include Thursday's casualties.
U.N.: War crimes on 2 sides in C. Africa
UNITED NATIONS -- A new United Nations report says "ample evidence" exists that both sides in the conflict in Central African Republic have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it says it's too early to speak of genocide or ethnic cleansing.
The commission of inquiry's preliminary report appears to conflict with an earlier U.N. human-rights assessment that ethnic cleansing has occurred in the months of fighting between Christians and Muslims. At least one prominent human-rights group, Amnesty International, quickly objected to the new report's finding.
Thousands have been killed since the fighting began. Muslim rebel forces from the north known as Seleka, which includes mercenaries from Chad and Sudan, have been blamed for numerous atrocities against civilians during their 10-month rule, which ended in January.
A wave of retaliatory violence by Christians followed. Thousands of Muslims have since fled the country.
-- COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS
A Section on 06/06/2014