Casualties

A series of powerful earthquakes in remote eastern Indonesia killed at least three people today as it cut power lines, flattened a hotel and damaged other buildings, officials and witnesses said. Five people were injured when several floors of the hotel collapsed in Manokwari, the provincial capital of West Papua, and a search was underway for people who might have been trapped in the rubble. An emergency room assistant said the bodies of a man and boy were brought to a hospital.

A suicide bomber struck U.S. troops patrolling on foot Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two soldiers and three civilians and wounding at least nine civilians, officials said. The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province's Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number. Army Col. Jerry O'Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S.

Two senior Al Qaeda operatives were killed in a CIA missile strike on New Year's Day in Pakistan, including a suspect in the bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel in September, a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said Thursday. The two operatives were also suspects in the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa for which they had been indicted in the United States, the official said.

A bomb exploded in an exclusive neighborhood here Tuesday, killing two people, authorities said. Police and emergency workers cordoned off the area near a Blockbuster video store and an upscale restaurant after the strong explosion rattled the northern part of the capital. "Unfortunately, two people were killed," Interior Minister Fabio Valencia told reporters at the scene. Several more people were reportedly injured. Bombings have been rare in Bogota since President Alvaro Uribe began a U.S.

Lorraine Melgosa hasn't developed the thick skin of someone who works with the bereaved. She almost always cries at funerals. On a crisp morning in this northwestern Nebraska town, her tears began when pallbearers slid the flag-draped coffin of Marine Cpl. Adrian Robles into Melgosa's 19th century horse-drawn hearse. She helped Robles' parents into the seat at the front of the carriage and stepped to the head of the mare harnessed to it.

Gunmen kidnapped an American who heads the U.N. refugee office here and killed his driver today, police said. The abduction occurred as John Solecki was heading to his job, senior police official Khalid Masood said. "Solecki has been serving in Quetta for more than two years," Masood said. "We cannot speculate on the motive behind the crime." U.N.

A man blew himself up Thursday among worshipers streaming toward a Shiite mosque in central Pakistan, killing 24 people and wounding 40. The attack in the city of Dera Ghazi Khan, in Punjab province, could spark sectarian fury in a country already battling rising militancy along the border with Afghanistan and at odds with India over a November terrorist attack in Mumbai. Television channels showed bystanders and emergency workers trying frantically to help victims lying in the darkened street.

Wildfires roared through southeastern Australia on Saturday, killing at least 49 people and destroying homes, farmland and forests, officials said. The army was called in to help firefighters and volunteers battle the blazes. Officials said the death toll could rise as fires continued burning out of control early today in the southern state of Victoria, in the country's worst wildfire disaster in years. At least 640 houses have been destroyed, officials said.