AFP, Bangkok
Thailand has charged two soldiers with murder in the shooting of three Muslim men foraging on a mountain in the south, police said Wednesday, a rare push for justice that one rights group called “unprecedented.”
The announcement comes after the military expressed regret last week over the killing of the unarmed civilians and said it was a case of mistaken identity in the insurgency-scarred region.
Pope, religious leaders, send South Sudan rivals X-mas peace appeal
Reuters, Vatican City
Pope Francis and two other religious leaders sent out an extraordinary Christmas appeal on Wednesday to the leaders of South Sudan to keep their promise to form at least a transitional unity government early next year.
The brief message was signed by Francis, worldwide Anglican leader Archbishop Justin Welby, and Rev. John Chalmers, former moderator of the Church of Scotland.
UN reports deadly violence by armed groups in Nigeria
AP, United Nations
Armed groups in northern Nigeria reportedly executed many civilians and abducted many others in a state where Boko Haram is active, the United Nations said Tuesday.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters the executions and abductions happened Monday in northern Borno state on the Damaturu-Biu road linking Yobe and Borno states. He gave no other details.
Colombia’s conflict spills over to museum of memory
Bogota, Colombia
On a vacant grassy lot squeezed between several smoggy highways lies the property where Colombia’s government hopes to build a large museum paying homage to victims of the country’s long civil conflict.
But for now, the terrain occupied only by a rusted cubic metal sculpture is a reminder of how polarized this South American nation remains.
Iran warplane crashes near
dormant volcano
AFP, Tehran
An Iranian military fighter jet crashed on Wednesday near a dormant volcano in the northwest of the country, official media reported.
State news agency IRNA said the jet went down at 9:00 am (0530 GMT) near Mount Sabalan, in the Lesser Caucasus range, and was a MiG-29 on a test flight after being overhauled.
Afghan Taliban abducted 26 peace activists
AP, Kabul
The Taliban ambushed a peace convoy in western Afghanistan and abducted 26 activists, members of a peace movement, a police spokesman said Wednesday.
The insurgents staged the ambush in the district of Bala Buluk in Farah province on Tuesday. The Taliban forced the six-vehicle convoy to a halt, then got into the cars and drove them and the activists to an unknown location, said the provincial police spokesman Mohibullah Mohib.
