Monday, August 31, 2009 MEXICO CITY: A gang of armed commandos gunned down five adults and three children in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa, authorities said. Gunmen packing assault rifles opened fire on the group in an outdoor meeting place popular with young people in the city of Navolato, Sinaloa state, a state prosecutor's spokesman told foreign news agency. There was no immediate motive for the grisly attack late Saturday, the spokesman said.The dead include an underage girl, two boys, a young woman and four young men, who were just before midnight when gunmen arrived in pickups, jumped out and executed them in a hail of gunfire, the spokesman 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.
Comments