Japan A strong earthquake of magnitude 7.4 shook the northeast of Japan late on Thursday. A tsunami warning was issued for the coast already devastated by last month s massive quake and the tsunami that crippled a nuclear power plant. No damage from Thursday s quake was detected at the plant and Japan’s public television NHK said. Workers had been evacuated without reports of any injuries. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage elsewhere but people in areas covered by the tsunami warning should evacuate to higher ground, NHK said. Japan is struggling to bring the Fukushima Daiichi plant under control after the March 11 quake and tsunami, which killed, or left missing, about 28,000 people.
Brazil A heavily armed man entered his former Rio school Thursday and opened fire, killing 10 children and wounding 18 people before taking his own life, officials said in a tragedy that has shaken Brazil. Rio de Janeiro state’s health department chief Sergio Cortes presented the new toll for the attack, revising it downward from 13 dead and 22 wounded announced earlier by fire officials in the chaotic few hours after the attack. Authorities identified the shooter as 24-year-old Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, a former student at the public school. Police said he left a letter saying he wanted to commit suicide, but they also said he appeared to have prepared for a major deadly assault, bringing into the school two revolvers and loads of ammunition just as students and staff were arriving at the morning bell. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said she was “shocked and disturbed” at the shooting. “Innocent children lost their lives and their future,” she said in a brief television appearance. Her education minister, Fernando Haddad, described the attack as “an unprecedented tragedy in Brazil,” adding that “this is a day of mourning for all Brazilian education.” Colonel Evandro Bezerra, a fire department spokesman, told TV Globo News several of the dead had been shot in the head. The multi-storey Tasso da Silveira primary school in Rio’s Realengo district served children between nine and 14 years old. “Employees of the school told officers that the young man arrived well-dressed and carrying a backpack, and said he told them he had been invited to speak with students in a school conference,” Bezerra said. “That’s how he gained access to the third floor,” where he launched his attack on at least one classroom, sending terrified students running down the stairs and out the building. Military Police Colonel Djalma Beltrame said police stormed the school and wounded the attacker, “but the man killed himself with a gunshot to the head.”
Libya A NATO airstrike hit Libya's Sarir oilfield, damaging a pipeline connected to a Mediterranean port. “British warplanes have attacked, have carried out an airstrike against the Sarir oilfield which killed three oilfield guards and other employees at the field were also injured,” Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told reporters in Tripoli. There was no immediate official comment from Britain s Ministry of Defence. Kaim said that the strike damaged a pipeline connecting to Libya s Hariga port, adding that it was against international law and not covered by the UN resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. The Sarir oilfield is located in Libya s Sirte basin, which contains around 80 percent of its proven reserves. The major oilfield was discovered in 1961. A rebel spokesman earlier said production at rebel-held oilfields in eastern Libya has stopped after they came under attack from forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Israel Gaza militants on Thursday fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, critically injuring a teenager, prompting the army to pound the Strip, killing three and wounding more than 30. After the missile slammed into the bus, the Palestinians lobbed at least 45 mortar rounds into southern Israel, hitting a house, and the army responded by staging multiple raids across the enclave, one of which hit an ambulance, Palestinian medics said. As the rockets flew over the border, Israel's Iron Dome short-range missile defence system intercepted a projectile heading for the southern port city of Ashkelon, in what was the first time the system has ever been successfully used in a combat situation. The bus attack was the first time an anti-tank missile had hit a civilian target in Israel, prompting Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to order the army "to act swiftly" in response. "An anti-tank missile was fired directly at the bus," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP shortly after the attack on the school bus which was passing in front of kibbutz Nahal Oz, just across the border from Gaza City's eastern flank. A spokesman for the Israeli medical services said a 16-year-old boy was critically wounded in the attack, while the bus driver sustained only light injuries. Television footage showed the yellow bus with the back end badly damaged and the windscreen blown out, as a small teddy bear lay on the ground among shards of glass and pools of blood. The bus had just finished dropping off dozens of schoolchildren.
Mexico Fifty-nine bodies were found in eight mass graves in a rural area in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico, officials said. Police found the mass graves while checking out reports that people traveling on a bus had been abducted in late March in the area. The mass graves are in La Joya, a rural community outside the city of San Fernando, near where the bodies of 72 migrants, the majority of them Central Americans, were found on Aug. 24. Eleven suspects were arrested in La Joya and five people being held captive were freed, officials said. "In the first six graves, 11 bodies were found, while 43 were found in the seventh and five more in the eighth," the Tamaulipas state government said in a statement. President Felipe Calderon issued a statement condemning the killings and calling for an extensive investigation to determine who is responsible for the murders and who the victims are. The killings "underscore the cowardice and total lack of scruples" of Mexico's criminal organizations, Calderon said. Mexicans should condemn the violence unleashed by criminals, the president said. The government is totally committed to "continuing to deal with crime with complete firmness," Calderon said. Investigators from the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office are gathering evidence to try to identify the bodies and find the killers.
Afghanistan Armed men launched an attack on a police training centre just outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Thursday, the provincial police chief told AFP. “Some armed men have entered a police building, a training facility. They have been exchanging fire with police for the past hour. We have no report of casualties yet,” Khan Mohammad Mujahid said. The building is also used as an army and police recruitment centre, he added. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were thought to be three attackers armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. An AFP reporter at the scene reported hearing an explosion and gunshots. He said the area had been sealed off by police and helicopters were flying overhead. Kandahar is the de facto capital of southern Afghanistan and seen as a traditional Taliban heartland area. It has seen a number of insurgent attacks on police in recent months, including in February, when 19 people were killed in a string of attacks focused on the city’s police headquarters claimed by the Taliban. Nato-led forces say the area is now safer following intense fighting in recent months but police and officials are still regularly targeted. Around 130,000 US-led Nato troops, about two-thirds of them from the United States, are in Afghanistan fighting a nearly 10-year insurgency led by the Taliban and other militants. Limited withdrawals are due to start in a handful of areas from July, ahead of a planned transition to Afghan control of security across the country in 2014.
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