The world in brief

Saturday, March 15, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY “I was bleeding, and the driver started reciting verses from the Koran.” Bakht Mohammad, 27, who was going to a market in a rickshaw when a bomb went off in Quetta, Pakistan Article, 2AIn smog-socked Paris, public transit free

PARIS - Air pollution that has turned the skies over Paris a murky yellow and shrouded much of Belgium for days forced drivers to slow down Friday and gave millions a free ride on public transportation.

The belt of smog stretched for hundreds of miles, from France’s Atlantic coast to Belgium and well into Germany. It was the worst air pollution France has seen since 2007, the European Environment Agency said.

Nearly all of France was under some sort of pollution alert Friday, with levels in the Paris region surpassing some of those in the world’s most notoriously polluted cities, including Beijing and Delhi.

To combat the smog, public transit around Paris and in two other cities was free Friday through Sunday. Elsewhere in France and in Belgium’s southern Wallonia area, the free ride was only for Friday.

The smog is particularly severe because France has an unusually high number of diesel vehicles, whose nitrogen-oxide fumes mix with ammonia from springtime fertilizers and form particulate ammonium nitrate. Pollutants from the burning of dead leaves and wood contribute as well.

Slasher of 5 shot dead, China police say

BEIJING - A fight Friday between two food-stall owners at a market in southern China left five people hacked to death and one person fatally shot by police, authorities said.

A man named Hebir Turdi slashed and killed another man, Memet Abla, at the market in Changsha, the official Xinhua news agency said. As he ran away, Turdi stabbed four more people before he was shot dead by police, it said.

Two of the four people died at the scene and the two others died in a hospital, police said in a statement.

The killings happened two weeks after 29 people were killed and 140 others wounded in a knife attack blamed on ethnic Muslim Uighur separatists at the Kunming train station, initially raising concerns that the latest violence was politically motivated. Unlike the Kunming attack, Friday’s violence appeared to stem from a personal dispute.

The identities of the food-stall owners were not immediately clear. A witness who gave only his surname, Chen, said the stand operators were Uighurs selling flatbread. Online news reports posted early Friday that said they were Uighurs were later removed.

French kill threat-spewing jihadist in Mali

BAMAKO, Mali - The red-bearded jihadist who once warned that “every French national is a target” after France began a military operation in northern Mali to oust the Islamic extremists from power has been killed by French forces, U.N. and Malian officials said Friday.

Omar Ould Hamaha became the public face of Islamic militancy in northern Mali after al-Qaida and other extremists seized control of the region in 2012. He frequently spoke with international journalists by telephone to convey the group’s threats and detail the harsh punishments meted out during the militants’ rule.

According to an internal United Nations report obtained by The Associated Press, Hamaha was killed last Saturday when French forces had a shootout with men in a pickup about 124 miles northeast of Timbuktu. Two other militants also died in the fight, according to the report from the U.N.

peacekeeping mission in Mali.

Two Malian security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists, confirmed Hamaha’s death.

Called al-Qaida recruiters, 7 in custody

MADRID - Spanish and Moroccan authorities on Friday arrested seven suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked extremist cell purportedly recruiting members to fight in Syria and other hot spots.

Spain’s Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said the group leader, a Belgian-born Spaniard, and two French recruits were arrested in its North African coastal enclave of Melilla and another person, a Tunisian, in the southern resort city of Malaga.

A ministry statement said several of those arrested had spent time with groups related to al-Qaida and that the two French recruits were preparing to travel to Syria.

The Moroccan Interior Ministry said police arrested three others in the town of Laroui, not far from Melilla. It said the group leader had also previously lived in Laroui.

Spain said the group recruited members via the Internet for three al-Qaida groups for operations in Mali and Syria.

The leader had ties with a cell recruiting fighters for al-Qaida’s North African branch fighting in northern Mali that was broken up in November 2012, and he also sent fighters to Libya and Syria and raised funds for extremist groups, the Moroccan statement added.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/15/2014