Turkish authorities were on Thursday investigating a large fire that destroyed the cargo terminal at the country’s biggest airport, responsibility for which was claimed by radical Kurdish militants. The police sealed off the badly damaged building at the Atatürk International airport and were examining tapes from security cameras, the Anatolia news agency reported.
A bomb blast killed three people and wounded 11 in one of Baghdad’s main squares on Thursday as the interim defence minister said restoring security to the capital was top priority for the new government. The force of the explosion levelled a building on Tahrir Square in the capital’s commercial heart, one of a series of attacks around the country.
Eight people have been arrested in connection with the death of several people on trains in Gauteng recently, the police and Metrorail said on Thursday. The group was arrested on the West Rand and in Pretoria and would face charges of attempted murder, Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said in a statement.
Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been comatose in a Jerusalem hospital since suffering a stroke in January, will be moved next week to a rehabilitation clinic, an official said. ”Sharon is going to move to the Sheba Medical Centre at the beginning of next week,” Yael Bosem Levy, a spokesperson for the Hadassah hospital said.
At least 35 people were burned alive and dozens injured overnight in northern Benin when a fuel truck burst into flames while they were stealing petrol, official sources said on Thursday. ”We took 80 people into hospital, of whom 12 died. At the scene, 23 charred bodies have been counted,” Boniface Sambieni, director of the hospital in the nearby town of Tanguieta, told Agence France-Presse.
Newcastle midfielder Kieron Dyer was arrested after a woman complained that he had indecently exposed himself, Press Association, citing police sources, said on Thursday. Dyer (27) had been released on police bail without charge pending further investigation, sources said.
Eskom’s ”power alert” messages will be broadcast on South African Broadcasting Corporation television from Thursday night, the electricity utility said in a statement. Meanwhile, the situation at Koeberg nuclear power station will ”return to normal” by August, Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks said on Thursday.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions wants the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the African National Congress to clarify whether a senior officer of the public broadcaster made political statements at an off-the-record press briefing by the ruling party.
The March local government elections once again proved that there was no viable alternative to the African National Congress and its allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Thursday. In an evaluation of the March election, the trade-union federation said the opposition had demonstrated that it cannot reach beyond its ethnic strongholds.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is to investigate the link, if any, between security-sector employers and African National Congress leaders. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said such a link, if found, ”may help explain the apparent indifference of political leaders to the plight of security workers”.