DENVER (AP) — Investigators took photos and measurements at the charred wreckage of a Continental Airlines jet Monday, searching for clues about why the plane veered off a runway and skidded into a shallow ravine. The twin-engine Boeing 737-500 still sat in a shallow, snow-covered ravine where it came to rest after its aborted takeoff Saturday at Denver International Airport.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators made preliminary reviews of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder on Sunday, agency spokesman Peter Knudson said.
Qantas Airways Ltd., Australia’s largest carrier, said two of its Boeing Co. 747 aircraft were damaged in a collision while being towing at a maintenance base.
“Both aircraft did sustain some damage and the extent of this is being assessed,” Qantas said in an e-mailed statement. “We have stood the individuals involved down pending a full investigation into this incident.”
ZAGREB (AFP) — Croatia’s top security body was to meet on Friday after a senior journalist was murdered in a car bomb attack as Prime Minister Ivo Sanader vowed he would not allow the country to turn into “another Beirut”.
Ivo Pukanic, founder and owner of the Nacional independent weekly, was killed outside his paper’s offices in downtown Zagreb on Thursday night in the third mafia-style killing in the capital since the beginning of the month.
The blast also claimed the life of his marketing director Niko Franjic, while two other people were also injured in the explosion.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A suicide blast at an anti-Taliban tribal meeting in a restive Pakistani region bordering Afghanistan on Friday killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens, security officials said.
The explosion happened a day after a force of pro-government tribesmen destroyed two militant hideouts in the Orakzai district, one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, they said.
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — A car exploded Friday, killing seven soldiers outside Russia’s military headquarters in South Ossetia, and Russian authorities charged it was a terrorist bombing meant to wreck the tense cease-fire that ended their war with Georgia.
Georgia’s Interior Ministry blamed Russia, accusing it of arranging the blast to provide a pretext for delaying next week’s scheduled withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory around South Ossetia and another Kremlin-backed separatist region, Abkhazia.
COLOMBO (AFP) - One civilian was injured in an explosion in the heart of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on Monday, police said.
Police said one woman had minor injuries, while six vehicles were badly damaged in the explosion that took place in Colombo’s commercial Fort area.
The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.
Eyewitnesses said the explosion came from a van parked along the busy lane crammed with pavement hawkers and shops.
BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN — A blast targeting a bus carrying Lebanese soldiers went off near an entrance to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding 30 others, a high-ranking member of the country’s internal security forces told CNN.
The explosion occurred along the side of the road at the southern entrance to Tripoli, a Lebanese port city about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Beirut.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — A young boy was killed and 17 people hurt when a bomb exploded in south New Delhi Saturday, an Indian police spokesman said.
The bomb, which was thrown by two bikers, exploded when a child picked it up, New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. The boy was about 10 years old, he said.
A man and his wife saw the men drop the explosives. The boy called to them that they had left something behind, but they ignored him, according to Delhi’s deputy police commissioner, H.G.S. Dhaliwal.
Rescuers picked their way yesterday through the smouldering ruins of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, looking for more bodies after a huge bomb devastated the building in one of Pakistan’s worst terrorist attacks.
The death toll last night stood at 53, with 266 wounded, after a bomber blew up a lorry containing 600kg of explosive on Saturday evening. The corpse of Ivo Zdarek, the Czech Ambassador, was among the bodies pulled from the rubble. Mr Zdarek, 47, only moved to Islamabad in August. Two Americans, said to be US Defence Department employees, were also killed in the blast but their identities were not revealed.
The blast came after dusk on Saturday, when hundreds of people were dining in several restaurants inside the hotel. Closed-circuit TV footage showed the driver of the lorry ramming into the hotel’s security gates but failing to breach a second barrier.
A huge explosion ripped through part of the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Saturday, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 100.
