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Four suspected militants killed in drone attack in Pakistan

 
Published May 27, 2012

PESHAWAR, Pakistan

Four suspected militants killed in drone attack

An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week. The Associated Press said it was told by two Pakistani intelligence officials that the latest attack took place in Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region.

TEHRAN, Iran

Iran says uranium issue is technical

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, says traces of enriched uranium discovered at an underground bunker came from a "routine technical issue," the country's official news agency reported Saturday. Soltanieh was responding to a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that said it had found uranium enriched to a level that is slightly closer to the threshold needed for nuclear weapons than Iran's previous highest-known enrichment grade. The IAEA's confidential report was careful to avoid any suggestion that Iran was intentionally increasing the level of its uranium enrichment, and analysts and diplomats said Iran's version sounded plausible, the Associated Press reported.

MADRID

Bank says it won't need more bailout

The president of Bankia tried Saturday to calm fears about the bank's future, saying Spain's second largest mortgage lender will emerge stronger after it receives $29.5 billion in state aid in the country's biggest-ever bank bailout. Bankia and its parent group BFA are prepared to sell a large portfolio of real estate and a "significant package" of companies to turn itself around, president Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri told reporters. The Spanish government has promised to honor Bankia's request for $23.8 billion in state aid, an amount not anticipated when the government effectively nationalized the bank this month after it was stuck with some $40 billion in toxic assets, mainly from the burst real estate bubble.

TUNIS, Tunisia

Islamists rampage in Tunisian town

Up to 500 hardline Islamists terrorized a Tunisian town on Saturday, attacking a police station and stores selling alcohol. The official TAP news agency said police fired tear gas in Jendouba to disperse ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis, some armed with clubs or sabers. Four people were arrested and police were searching for others, Interior Minister Ali Laarayedh said on Radio Mosaique. There has been a resurgence of hardline Islamists since the fall in February 2011 of Tunisia's autocratic leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had jailed many Islamists and forced others underground.

Elsewhere

Visegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Several thousand people held a mass funeral Saturday for 66 Muslim Bosnians killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the country's 1992-1995 war. The victims' remains were discovered in 2010 when a man-made lake that divides Bosnia and Serbia was partially drained for work on a dam.

Helsinki, Finland: An 18-year-old gunman on Saturday killed two people and wounded seven in Hyvinkaa, southern Finland, local media reported. The suspect was arrested a few hours after the attack.

Bamako, Mali: Two rebel groups in north Mali agreed to merge and work together to create an independent Islamic state on territory they occupy.

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Times wires