ROME: Fire broke out Friday on an Italian ferry carrying more than 500 people to Sicily and all the passengers were taken by lifeboat to another ferry and a coast guard vessel, officials said.Five passengers, including a pregnant woman, were taken to a hospital as a precaution.The fire continued to rage in the car hold as the vessel was towed toward Palermo, the Sicilian capital, Sicily's fire department said.The vessel Vincenzo Florio, traveling from the mainland port city of Naples to Palermo, was 25 miles (40 kilometers) from its destination when the fire broke out in the car hold."They knocked on the door of the cabin and told us to get on deck," passenger Stefano Friscia told Sky TG 24 television. "It was hard to breathe, the whole ship filled with smoke and they ordered the lifeboats lowered."The 526 passengers were taken onto the coast guard ship that came to the rescue and the other ferry, said Palermo port official Cosimo Seminara.Most of the 35 crew members initially stayed on board to help put out the flames, Seminara said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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