Mon, Dec 09, 2019 page5

• World News Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  SYRIA

  Airstrikes kill at least 18

  Airstrikes on areas in the last major rebel stronghold in the northwest on Saturday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and wounded others as a three-month truce crumbles, opposition activists said. The airstrikes on Idlib Province have intensified over the past few weeks, as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo.

  MEXICO

  Four shot in capital

  Four people were shot and killed in the capital on Saturday, just steps from an entrance to the official residence of the president, authorities said. Officials said a man entered an apartment building near the National Palace seeking to urinate in the courtyard and was confronted by residents. He pulled out a gun and began shooting, hitting five people, officials said. A police officer killed the shooter, while three of the building residents died, authorities said. Residents who declined to give their names said that their street in the capital’s historic center is far from safe, despite being a stone’s throw from the palace.

  BRAZIL

  Tribe members killed

  Two indigenous men, members of the Guajajara tribe in the northeast, were shot dead on Saturday, and two others were wounded, not far from where a prominent tribesman who defended the Amazon rainforest was also killed last month, authorities said. Tribes have faced violence especially from illegal loggers and miners. Magno Guajajara, a spokesman for the tribe, said that they did not know why the two men had been shot. He identified them as Firmino Guajajara and Raimundo Guajajara. The men were on a highway, coming back from a meeting, when the shots were fired from a passing vehicle, he said. “They were shooting at everyone,” he said by telephone. Authorities said they were investigating, but did not say if anyone had been detained.

  UNITED STATES

  ‘Miracle’ missionary dies

  German evangelical preacher Reinhard Bonnke, who claimed to perform miracles on stage and had a huge following in Africa, died on Saturday aged 79, his church said. Bonnke, the founder of the Christ for All Nations church, first visited Africa in the 1960s and preached across the continent for decades, often at open-air events. The obituary on his Web site said Bonnke had drawn 1.6 million people to one gathering in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2000, and that he had converted 79 million people during his career. Bonnke, who lived in the US, claimed to raise the dead, and to cure the deaf, blind and disabled — often attracting criticism and anger from skeptics, other faiths and more traditional Christian churches.

  FRANCE

  Defendant poisons himself

  A man has been hospitalized in critical condition after apparently trying to poison himself in a courtroom when a judge pronounced him guilty of rape and kidnapping that led to death. The dramatic gesture came at the end of a high-profile trial into one of the country’s bigger cold cases: the 2002 killing of Elodie Kulik, a young woman. DNA evidence later led police to Willy Bardon, who was convicted on Friday. One of his lawyers on Saturday told Europe-1 radio that his client was desperate and convinced of his innocence.
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