Greece ends migrant detention camp plan
ATHENS, Greece -- Greece's government says it is suspending an emergency plan to build migrant detention camps on Greek islands near the Turkish coast to allow for negotiations with local authorities who strongly oppose the move.
Notis Mitarakis, the migration affairs minister, said Monday that the plan announced last week has been put on hold until demands by authorities on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos are discussed.
The government says it wants to replace existing overcrowded camps with closed facilities and has already issued land-appropriation orders. But islanders staged protests against the proposed construction -- setting up roadblocks on Lesbos -- amid fears that the new sites would place an additional burden on their small communities.
Under a 2016 agreement between the European Union and Turkey, Lesbos and the four other islands have been used as natural barriers for migrants and refugees trying to reach the mainland of EU member Greece. That has resulted in serious overcrowding at the existing island camps and living conditions for migrants that U.N. officials have called horrific.
Burundi: 6,000 bodies found in graves
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Authorities in Burundi say they have opened six mass graves containing more than 6,000 bodies from unrest that occurred decades ago, the largest such discovery in years of work.
The East African nation has been unearthing such graves from a past that includes massacres along ethnic lines. Some have warned that the work can be sensitive ahead of the presidential election in May.
The country's truth and reconciliation commission said the latest mass graves to be explored are in central Karusi province. There appear to be at least 18 such graves.
The province was plunged into crisis after the assassination in 1993 of Melchior Ndadaye, Burundi's first ethnic Hutu and democratically-elected president. Some Burundians say ethnic Tutsi families were massacred after his death.
But the commission's president, Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, said the bodies were from 1972, when many ethnic Hutus were killed following a failed coup against leader Micombero Michel.
The people buried in the graves had been imprisoned and then taken in military trucks to the execution grounds, Ndayicariye said.
Suicide bomber kills 8 at Pakistani rally
QUETTA, Pakistan -- A powerful suicide bombing killed eight people and wounded 16 others in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province on Monday, local police said, when it struck an Islamist rally in the regional capital.
Police said the blast went off near Quetta's press club, where dozens of supporters for a Sunni militant group had gathered outside. They added that police officers were among those killed.
Hospital officials say some of the wounded persons were listed in critical condition.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Baluch separatist groups, as well as rival Shiite and Sunni militants, operate in the province and have staged similar attacks before.
City police chief Abur Razza Cheema said dozens of followers of the radical Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat party were rallying to pay tribute to Islam's first caliph when the bomber blew himself up there.
Footage on social media appeared to show the explosion ripping through the local bazaar, sending people running for shelter.
The bombing destroyed some nearby shops and vehicles, police said.
Gunmen kill 24 civilians in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso -- Gunmen killed 24 civilians, including a church pastor, and kidnapped three others on Sunday in Burkina Faso, an official said. It was the latest attack against a religious leader in the increasingly unstable West African nation.
The mayor of Boundore commune, Sihanri Osangola Brigadie, said the attack occurred in the town of Pansi in Yagha province. The roughly 20 attackers separated men from women close to a Protestant church. At least 18 other people were injured.
"It hurt me when I saw the people," Brigadie said after visiting some of the victims in the hospital in Dori town, 110 miles from the attack. The gunmen looted oil and rice from shops and forced the three youth they kidnapped to help transport it on their motorbikes, he said.
Both Christians and Muslims were killed before the church was set on fire, said a government security official in Dori who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media.
Attacks have targeted religious leaders in the area in the past. Last week, also in Yagha province, a retired pastor was killed and another pastor was abducted by gunmen, according to an internal security report for aid workers seen by The Associated Press.
More than 1,300 civilians were killed in targeted attacks last year in Burkina Faso, more than seven times the previous year, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which collects and analyzes conflict information.
A Section on 02/18/2020