Massacre

A Moreno Valley martial arts instructor suspected of belonging to the Guatemalan military unit that killed more than 150 civilians, including children, in the country's infamous Dos Erres massacre in 1982 has been arrested on immigration fraud charges after fleeing from federal authorities last year. Jorge Sosa, 52, was arrested by Canadian authorities last week while visiting his parents near Calgary, and Justice Department officials are seeking his extradition back to California.

Nearly 30 years after the massacre of dozens of men, women and children during Guatemala's civil war, a Santa Ana maintenance worker who was allegedly a member of the elite military unit that carried out the killings was deported and turned over to authorities in that country to face charges. Pedro Pimentel Rios is accused of being among some 20 members of an elite Guatemalan army unit known as the Kaibiles that murdered at least 160 villagers — including nearly 70 children under age 12 — in the village of Dos Erres in December 1982, according to immigration officials.

Reporting from Seoul and Zamboanga City, Philippines -- Twenty-four people were found dead in the southern Philippines after scores of gunmen on Monday kidnapped a caravan of supporters accompanying a woman en route to file her husband's nomination papers to run for provincial governor, authorities said. Officials called the attack a politically motivated massacre. Many of the victims were beheaded and buried in shallow graves. The victims -- at least 13 of them women -- reportedly included a dozen local journalists covering the filing that marked the start of the Philippine election season.

The slaughter last month of at least 15 young people with no apparent criminal ties has galvanized the Mexican public in ways not seen here in more than three years of bloody drug warfare and has forced the government to enact long-resisted policy changes to combat violence. Some in Mexico are wondering whether this is their nation's tipping point, a moment when public outrage that has bubbled along finally overcomes the fear and fatalism that largely silenced or intimidated Mexican society.

Australia announced plans to ban automatic and semiautomatic rifles and pump-action shotguns as a wave of anti-gun sentiment continued to sweep the country in the wake of a massacre on the island of Tasmania that left 35 people dead. Prime Minister John Howard said the necessary legislation and regulations will be passed as soon as possible. Opinion polls show overwhelming support for tougher gun laws in the wake of the April 28 massacre.

MEXICO CITY -- It was like Chicago '68, only much bloodier, or Tiananmen Square '89, only more shrouded in secrecy. Even today there is no definitive count of how many pro-democracy demonstrators were slaughtered by Mexican army troops in the Tlatelolco zone of this capital on Oct. 2, 1968. Was the death toll a few dozen, as the government claimed? Or closer to 300, as some intrepid journalists reported? Did President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz approve the attack? No one knows for sure.

Gen. Manuel Antonio Vassalo e Silva, the colonial governor who defied his government and surrendered Portugal's territories in India in 1961, died Sunday after a long illness, his family said. He was 86. A family member said the general and diplomat died at Lisbon's military hospital where he had been undergoing treatment for the past month. He gave no details of the illness.

The elderly were gunned down by the score, hospital patients were shot dead in their beds and babies were killed as they nursed at their mothers' breasts. More than 380 people, mostly women and children, died in the massacre at Homoine, one of the worst in Mozambique's decade-long civil war, and the death toll continues to rise as more bodies are found, as more of the critically wounded die.

Saying that their emotional wounds have not yet healed, residents of this San Diego community expressed outrage and disgust Thursday over word that a television network next year will likely air a miniseries on the July, 1984, mass murder of 21 people at a local McDonald's restaurant. Community leaders said they are considering initiating a petition drive that would implore independent producer Larry H.

Ari FOLMAN'S "Waltz With Bashir," which screens tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival, straddles many boundaries: between memory and dream, history and memoir, fact and fiction. Using animation to shift fluidly between frames, the movie investigates the Sept. 16, 1982, massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut. Lebanese militiamen belonging to the Falangist Party, their passions inflamed by the assassination of the country's president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, slaughtered hundreds and possibly thousands of men, women and children, stacking their bodies in the narrow alleys between houses.