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Attacks resume after Abbas vote

 
Published Jan. 13, 2005|Updated Aug. 24, 2005

After a brief calm surrounding this week's Palestinian election, an Israeli man was killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli soldiers tracked down and killed four armed Palestinians, including those who had planted the explosive.

Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected president on Sunday, opposes attacks against Israel, but armed Palestinian factions have rejected his call to lay down their weapons.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a larger Islamic faction, Hamas, boycotted Sunday's election, but they did not disrupt it. But the Palestinians have resumed the rocket and mortar attacks in Gaza. For its part, Israel suspended military raids into Palestinian areas for the election, but on Wednesday, its troops killed two Hamas men in the West Bank.

British flight turns around after U.S. refuses entry

LONDON _ A British Airways jet carrying 239 passengers to New York was forced to return to London Wednesday after U.S. authorities determined that one of the passengers represented a terror threat, the airline said.

Flight BA175 was three hours into its journey when it was forced to turn back to London's Heathrow Airport. The administration said the man was a match with an antiterrorism watchlist.

Passengers were rescreened, and the plane took off again for New York, British Airways spokesman Honor Verrier said.

London's Metropolitan Police, who questioned the man, said later he had been released without charge.

Pakistan shuts gas plant after tribesmen attack

QUETTA, Pakistan _ More than 2,000 troops took control of one of Pakistan's major natural gas plants and shut it down after renegade tribesmen fired hundreds of rockets, blowing up a pipeline and triggering clashes that have killed eight people in the last five days, officials said Wednesday.

Tribesmen frequently target security forces and gas facilities to demand higher royalties from gas extracted from their territory, according to the government.

Eight people, three of them security personnel, were killed and another 33 people, mostly civilians, were wounded in shootouts between assailants and the government, officials said.

Fresh U.S. delegation visits North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea _ A group of U.S. congressmen met with North Korea's foreign minister in Pyongyang on Wednesday, the communist state's official news agency said, in an effort to persuade the North to rejoin talks on its nuclear weapons ambitions.

A bipartisan delegation led by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a four-day visit.

From Pyongyang, the six U.S. lawmakers will travel to Russia, South Korea, China and Japan _ the four other countries involved in six-nation negotiations.

The latest visit followed an effort by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who led a delegation into North Korea last week.

Germans arrest 22 in raids to target terrorism

BERLIN _ More than 700 German police stormed mosques, shops and homes across the country Wednesday, arresting 22 people suspected of financing and providing illegal documents to terrorists, perhaps in Iraq.

German officials, citing privacy laws, refused to identify those arrested or to say what group or groups they belong to. Those arrested included German citizens as well as people from Bulgaria, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, officials said. Five were women.

Also . . .

CHINA RAIDS S. KOREANS' NEWS CONFERENCE: Chinese security agents raided a news conference organized by visiting South Korean legislators Wednesday, cutting the lights, forcibly ejecting foreign journalists and prompting statements of protest in Seoul. Four members of South Korea's opposition Grand National Party called the conference to urge the Chinese government to show leniency toward refugees from North Korea. The lawmakers refused orders to leave, resulting in a nearly 13-hour standoff.