Saturday, November 28, 2009 BEIJING: Ten passengers died on Saturday when a bus caught caught fire in China's northeastern province of Heilongjiang, a local news agency reported. The agency cited emergency officials in Zhaoyuan county as saying the driver of the bus had detected something wrong and stopped the vehicle before the blaze broke out. Seven people managed to escape the bus, which had been in operation for only one month. It was the latest in a series of bus disasters in China. On November 13, 13 people were killed when a tour bus veered off a bridge and plunged into the sea in the eastern province of Shandong. In June an unemployed 62-year-old man set fire to a bus in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, killing 27 passengers and injuring 74, state media reported.
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