Turkish warplanes bomb Kurdish rebel bases

Ankara, Turkey

Warplanes bomb Kurdish rebel bases

Turkish warplanes have bombed Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq, the military said Sunday, two days after rebels killed 15 soldiers in an attack staged partly from Iraqi soil.

The planes on Saturday bombed rebel hide-outs in Iraq's Avasin Basyan region and returned safely to their bases, the military said.

Turkey is urging Iraqi Kurdish leaders to arrest the rebels and cut their supply lines, after rebels on Friday fired mortars and artillery from Iraqi soil onto a military outpost in a Turkish valley in Aktutun.

The attack touched off the deadliest battle between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in eight months. Fifteen soldiers and at least 23 insurgents were killed, while 20 more soldiers were wounded and two were still missing, the military said.

Gauhati, India

Death toll at 30 in ethnic clashes

Police shot at violent mobs in northeastern India, killing 14 people and raising the death toll from three days of ethnic clashes to at least 30, officials said Sunday. About 25,000 villagers have fled their homes, they said.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew Friday in the northern districts of Assam state when clashes erupted between members of the ethnic Bodo group and Muslim settlers. State officials authorized police to shoot anyone fighting in the streets.

On Sunday, police shot into a mob that was setting huts on fire in Dhola village in Darrang district, 50 miles north of the state capital of Gauhati, state official Rajib Bora said. He said four people were killed.

The fighting began Friday when a group of young Bodo men were attacked after they finished patrolling their villages. Bodo leaders blamed the incident on relatively recent settlers, most of whom are Muslims, sparking several days of clashes, Bora said.

Beijing

More melamine in Cadbury candy

Hong Kong said Sunday it found two Cadbury chocolate products containing considerably more of the industrial chemical melamine than the city's legal limit in a growing scandal over tainted food made in China.

Hong Kong's food-safety agency said samples of two chocolate products made by British candy maker Cadbury at its Beijing factory contained considerably more melamine than the city's legal limit of 2.5 parts per million.

The two items were among 11 Chinese-made products that have already been recalled by Cadbury in parts of Asia and the Pacific.

Hong Kong's Center for Food Safety said Cadbury's Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate Bulk Pack contained 56 parts per million of melamine, while Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate contained 6.9 parts per million.

London

Prime minister makes changes

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced more changes to his government Sunday, completing a shake-up intended to strengthen the government as it faces the global economic crisis.

The government is hoping the changes will help tighten its grip on the economy as the global financial crisis deepens.

On Friday, Brown moved several senior Cabinet members and brought back to government his longtime adversary Peter Mandelson — a key architect of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's rise to power in the 1990s.

ALSO:

Five state police officers in Mexico were arrested Sunday in connection with the deaths of four villagers during a raid on protesters who seized the entrance of a Mayan archaeological site. The officers led an operation on Friday to remove villagers who had occupied the entrance of the Chinkultic ruins in southern Mexico for nearly a month, the Chiapas Justice Department said.

Seattle Times news services