Mortar rounds hit Somalia market; 17 killed

Mogadishu, Somalia

Mortar rounds slammed into a market in Somalia's capital on Monday, killing at least 17 people, after a failed insurgent attack on the presidential palace.

Also Monday, a remote-controlled land mine killed a Somali driver and wounded two aid workers — an Italian and a Somali — some 60 miles southwest of Mogadishu. The aid workers' injuries were not critical, Dr. Abdi Rahman said.

Witnesses said those killed in the capital included a 13-year-old. The fighting began when insurgents fired mortars at the presidential palace but missed, according to military spokesman Dahir Hersi.

Bern, Switzerland

Swiss to vote on EU referendum

Switzerland will vote again on whether European Union citizens should be allowed to live and work in the country after nationalist groups collected enough signatures to force a referendum, the Federal Chancellery said Monday.

Members of the youth wing of the nationalist Swiss People's Party, together with the far-right Lega dei Ticinesi and Swiss Democrats, say the vote is aimed at stopping "uncontrolled mass immigration" from Romania and Bulgaria.

Switzerland is not a member of the 27-nation EU but agreed in 1999 to let EU citizens live and work freely in the Alpine republic in return for Swiss nationals being able to do the same within the EU.

That agreement is up for renewal in May. Switzerland will hold its referendum on Feb. 8.

Budapest, Hungary

4 dead, 26 injured in train wreck

A local passenger train ran into the back of a long-distance train Monday near Budapest, killing four people and injuring 26.

National Rescue Service spokesman Pal Gyorfi said two women and one man died at the scene and at least eight other passengers were seriously hurt, some with life-threatening injuries.

Hungarian state news agency MTI reported that another victim died after being taken to a Budapest hospital.

Gyorfi said it was possible more casualties would be found in the wreckage.

Two senior officials resigned because of the accident, an unusual step in Hungary.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany accepted the resignations of Transport Minister Pal Szabo and Miklos Kamaras, chairman of Hungarian State Railways.

The accident happened around 10:20 a.m. near the train station in the town of Monorierdo, when a local passenger train ran into the back of a long-distance train coming from the eastern city of Nyiregyhaza, Hungarian State Railways said in a statement.

The Hague, Netherlands

Karadzic wants evidence on deal

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic wants U.N. war-crimes prosecutors to turn over any evidence they have about an alleged deal he cut to avoid prosecution, saying he wants to use it in a motion to have his indictment dismissed.

Karadzic has asked the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal to order prosecutors to turn over any material they have about a deal he claims he made with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke in July 1996.

Karadzic said in the motion that the deal promised he would not face prosecution if he "agreed to withdraw completely from public life."

He claims the deal is relevant to his case because Holbrooke made it on behalf of the U.N. Security Council — the body that established the tribunal. Holbrooke has repeatedly denied making such a deal with Karadzic.

Karadzic faces charges including two counts of genocide for allegedly masterminding atrocities by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian war including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica and the deadly siege of Sarajevo.

Almaty, Kazakhstan

72 dead in quake in Kyrgyzstan

A powerful earthquake rocked Kyrgyzstan, leveling a remote mountain village and killing up to 72 people, officials said Monday.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake measured 6.6 and struck at about 10 p.m. Sunday in the Osh region in the south of the former Soviet Central Asian republic.

It flattened Nura, a town of some 960 residents and 400 houses near the Chinese border.

Kyrgyzstan is a destitute, landlocked mountainous nation of around 5 million people, which borders China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Central Asia is a highly active seismic region and has been shaken by numerous significant earthquakes in recent years.

Beijing

30 killed, houses collapse in 2 quakes

Two earthquakes jolted the capital of Tibet and surrounding areas Monday, killing more than 30 people and collapsing hundreds of houses, China's state news agency said. Rescuers rushed in to try to save people buried in the rubble.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the first quake measured magnitude 6.6 and struck at 4:30 p.m. 50 miles west of Lhasa, more than 1,600 miles from Beijing.

The second temblor measuring magnitude 5.1 hit about 15 minutes later, some 60 miles west of the Tibetan capital, it said.

Thirty people died and hundreds of houses collapsed in Gedar township near the epicenter in Dangxiong County, and traffic and telecommunications were cut. An unknown number of people were trapped, and soldiers and rescue workers were dispatched to the site, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Deaths also were reported in a neighboring county, Xinhua said, but no figures were available.

ALSO:

Police in Bangkok, Thailand, fired tear gas Tuesday at several thousand demonstrators attempting to block access by lawmakers to the Parliament building in the Thai capital. The protests are part of an effort by the People's Alliance for Democracy to bring down the government, which it says is merely a proxy for ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in 2006 by military leaders who accused him of corruption and who now resides in exile.

Seattle Times news service