AFP, Paris
Paris police on Monday began evacuating around 1,000 migrants from two makeshift camps in the city, five days after another 1,000 were taken to temporary lodgings.
The operation began at dawn at a camp along the Canal St Martin northeast of the city centre where an estimated 550 mainly Afghan migrants were staying, an AFP reporter said.
Madagascar PM resigns
Reuters, Antananarivo
Madagascar’s Prime Minister Olivier Mahafaly said he resigned on Monday to comply with a court ruling that ordered the formation of a new consensus government to end a political crisis on the Indian Ocean island nation.
Last month, President Hery Rajaonarimampianina approved an election law under which the main opposition candidate, Marc Ravalomanana, could run for office. The law sparked deadly street demonstrations.
7 dead in Kabul suicide blast
AFP, Kabul
At least seven people were killed Monday when a suicide bomber detonated near a gathering of top clerics in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, roughly one hour after the group proclaimed such attacks a sin, police said.
The blast in the western part of the city, near universities and a police academy, is the latest demonstration of the militants’ chilling ability to carry out attacks in the heart of Kabul, which is now the deadliest place in the country for civilians.
Pashtun activists killed in Pakistan
Reuters, Peshawar
Several Pashtun ethnic rights activists were killed and at least 25 were wounded in a Pakistan tribal region on Sunday, when Taliban militants attacked their gathering and security forces opened fire on protesters during disturbances that followed.
The violence took place in Wana, the main administrative center for South Waziristan, one of the most volatile of the tribal lands on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
Six miners killed in Indonesia
Xinhua, Jakarta
A total of six gold miners were killed after a landslide struck an illegal gold mining area in North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, a government official disclosed earlier Monday.
Heavy downpours were blamed for the incident taking place in Bakan village of Bolaang Mangondow district, spokesman of national disaster management agency Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
Rains fail to quench western US wildfires
Reuters, Colorado
Rains fell on two massive wildfires in the U.S. southwest but it was not enough to quench the fires that were burning through thousands of acres in New Mexico and Colorado early Monday, officials said.
“The rains came and we’re glad of it,” said Judith Dyess, a spokeswoman for the joint agency, South West Incident Management Team in New Mexico. “But it didn’t do it. We’re still burning out of control.”
