Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era

WORLD

Islamic extremists attack Malian troops 3 North Korean doctors killed France tracks horsemeat scandal 10 die in India stampede

GAO, Mali -- Black-robed Islamic extremists armed with AK-47 automatic rifles invaded Gao in a surprise attack on the most populous city in northern Mali, two weeks after French and Malian troops ousted the jihadists.

The combat started at 2 p.m. in downtown Gao and the fighting was continuing as night fell. The Islamic fighters used pirogues, large wooden dugouts with motors, and other boats to cross the Niger River and penetrate Gao, according to French Gen. Bernard Barrera, who cited Malian officials.

Ever since French forces took Gao on Jan. 26, Islamic rebels have clashed with security forces on the city's outskirts. France launched its military intervention in its former colony on Jan. 11 when the Islamic radicals began encroaching on the south, threatening the capital Bamako which lies deep in southern Mali, 750 miles from Gao.

POTISKUM, Nigeria -- Assailants in northeastern Nigeria killed three North Korean doctors, beheading one of the physicians, in the latest attack on health workers in a nation under assault by a radical Islamic sect, officials said Sunday.

The deaths Saturday night of the doctors in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state long under attack by the sect known as Boko Haram, comes after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

The attackers struck at the North Korean doctors inside their home, said Dr. Mohammed Mamman, chairman of the Hospital Managing Board of Yobe State.

PARIS -- Europe's horsemeat scandal is spreading and threatening cross-border tensions, as France says Romanian butchers and Dutch and Cypriot traders were part of a supply chain that resulted in horsemeat disguised as beef being sold in frozen lasagna around the continent.

The motivation for passing off horsemeat as beef appeared to be financial, and authorities are concentrating on pursuing anyone guilty of fraud in the affair, said France's junior minister for consumer goods, Benoit French Benoit Hamon.

An initial investigation by French safety authorities determined that French company Poujol, a subsidiary of French group Comigel, bought frozen meat from a Cypriot trader, Hamon's office said in a statement Sunday. That trader had received it from a Dutch food trader, and that Dutch company had received the meat from two Romanian slaughterhouses. Poujol then supplied a Luxembourg factory, Hamon's statement said.

ALLAHABAD, India -- At least 10 people were killed and dozens more injured Sunday after a stampede broke out at a train station in the northern Indian town where millions of devout Hindus gathered for a religious festival, a senior government minister and television news channels reported.

Pawan Bansal, India's Railway Minister, told reporters that the stampede took place after a section of a crowded footbridge at the Allahabad train station collapsed Sunday evening.

An estimated 30 million devotees were expected to take a dip at the Sangam, the confluence of three rivers -- the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati -- on Sunday, one of the holiest bathing days of the Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival. The festival lasts 55 days and is one of the world's largest religious gatherings.