Authorities relax curfew in Kashmir city
AP, Srinagar
Authorities on Tuesday lifted a curfew in most parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir’s main city after a 17-day security lockdown, but shops and businesses remained shut due to a strike called to protest Indian rule in the Himalayan region.
Police and paramilitary soldiers removed steel barricades and layers of barbed wire from the roads in downtown Srinagar, the old quarters of the city, but hundreds of residents burned tires and chanted pro-freedom and anti-India slogans on the streets.
Priest killed in attack on French church
BBC Online
A priest has been killed in an attack by two armed men at his church near Rouen in northern France, police and French media have said.
The armed men entered the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during mass, taking the priest, two nuns and several churchgoers hostage, reports said.
French TV said shots had been heard after police arrived at the scene. Both hostage-takers are now dead.
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya top AL
summit agenda
Al Jazeera
Leaders at Mauritania meeting vow to “defeat terrorism” and back French bid to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Arab leaders, speaking at the opening of the Arab League summit in the Mauritanian capital, have pledged to “defeat terrorism” , with the ongoing threat of violence in the region dominating the agenda. Chaired by Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the two-day conference opened on Monday inside a large tent in Nouakchott, with the crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya the main focus of talks.
Bombs kill 13 in Mogadishu
AFP, Mogadishu
At least 13 people were killed on Tuesday in twin bombings near UN and African Union buildings adjoining Mogadishu’s airport, police said, in what the jihadist Shabaab group claimed as a suicide attack.
The Al-Qaeda aligned Shabaab group is blamed for a string of bloody assaults in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya, and is fighting to overthrow Mogadishu’s internationally-backed government.
