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/ 26 December 2006
Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdulkerim, once seen as a major threat to the government in N’Djamena, have signed a peace deal in Libya, a government source said on Monday. But the deal was not seen as the end of the threat to the rule of Déby from an array of rebel groups, as two of them forged an alliance.
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/ 26 December 2006
Doctors and nurses at a hospital in southern China have donned combat gear after an incident in which angry relatives of a patient attacked hospital workers, state media reported on Tuesday. The Shanxia Hospital in the boomtown of Shenzhen operated on a patient who suffered from bone fracture after a car accident early this month, but he died 17 days later of heart failure.
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/ 26 December 2006
Japan’s justice minister vowed on Tuesday to carry out more executions after the country’s first hangings in over a year, saying the vast majority of the public supported the death penalty. Japan hanged four prisoners on Christmas Day, including two men in their seventies.
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/ 26 December 2006
Islamic fighters retreated from the main front line in Somalia early on Tuesday after a week of artillery and mortar duels and attacks by government and Ethiopian troops, witnesses said. Troops loyal to the Council of Islamic Courts withdrew more than 50km to the south-east from Daynuney, a town just south of Baidoa, the government headquarters.
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/ 26 December 2006
Indonesia on Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 168Â 000 people in Aceh as the province suffered a new disaster. Aceh bore the brunt of the massive tsunami triggered by a 9,3-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra island in 2004.
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/ 26 December 2006
A total of 5Â 412 motorists were trapped speeding by speed cameras on Christmas Day, said Johannesburg metro police. Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said the motorists were photographed on the M1, M2, N1 and N3 freeways in the city. All are 120kph zones. ”The average speed of these cars was 145kph,” said Minnaar.
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/ 26 December 2006
Twenty-five Christmas shoppers were killed, including a pregnant woman and two babies, when a fire swept through a packed store in the central Philippines, the Office of Civil Defence said on Tuesday. The fire struck the Unitop General Merchandising Store in Ormoc City, about 550km south-east of Manila, on Monday when predominantly Catholic Philippines were celebrating Christmas Day.
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/ 26 December 2006
Somalia’s Islamists are in full retreat after Ethiopian air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed up to 1 000 of the religious movement’s fighters, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Tuesday. ”A joint Somali government and Ethiopian force has broken the back of the international terrorist forces … These forces are in full retreat,” Meles told reporters in Addis Ababa.
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/ 25 December 2006
An armed separatist group in southern Nigeria that is holding four foreign oil workers hostage said on Sunday that it will not be swayed by their pleas for release and indicted Italian oil firm Agip for allegedly attempting to pay a ransom. The hostages have called on their respective home governments to help in securing their release.
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/ 25 December 2006
Ethiopian warplanes attacked two Islamist-held airfields in Somalia on Monday, witnesses said, wounding at least one person and further escalating a conflict that threatens to engulf the Horn of Africa in war. The attacks came the morning after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi formally declared war on the Islamists.