News In Brief
AFP, New Delhi
Suspected Maoist rebels attacked a police convoy in a remote part of eastern India, killing five officers and two civilians, police said Thursday.
The attackers set off a powerful landmine blast before opening fire on the convoy, which was on an anti-Maoist operation in the forests of Jharkhand state on Wednesday.
“Seven people died in yesterday’s landmine blast,” police officer Nav Kumar Singh told AFP by phone from Palamu district, 190 kilometres from the state capital Ranchi.
Bomb kills 4 soldiers in Egypt’s Sinai
AFP, Cairo, Egypt
A bomb explosion killed an Egyptian colonel and three soldiers in North Sinai on Wednesday as their armoured vehicle passed by, security officials and emergency services said.
The device was detonated from a distance as the vehicle was engaged in a search operation on the outskirts of provincial capital El-Arish, the officials said.
12 killed in suicide blasts in Nigeria
Reuters, Maiduguri
At least 12 people were killed on Wednesday when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a market in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok where Boko Haram militants abducted more than 200 girls almost two years ago, police and residents said.
Boko Haram has been waging a six-year armed campaign in Nigeria’s remote north to build an Islamic state. Thousands have been killed and more than two million people displaced by the campaign.
4 Zika cases found in New York
Reuters, New York
Four people who had returned from travel abroad have tested positive in New York state with infections with the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus, local health officials said on Wednesday.
Two tested positive in New York City, city health officials said. Neither had severe complications, they said.
