Sunday, December 13, 2009 BEIJING: Police in central China encircled Sunday a remote hilltop where a gunman suspected of killing 12 people, including his father, was believed to be hiding, state media said. Special police and paramilitary troops have cornered suspect Liu Aibing, 34, on the hilltop in Hunan province and are closing in on him, the Hunan government news website reported.Liu is suspected of shooting 12 people to death with a hunting rifle and seriously wounding two others on Saturday in Yinshanpai village, the report said. Six wooden homes were also torched in the rampage, it said. Earlier, the news agency said 11 people were killed and five homes were destroyed by fire. The killings occurred early Saturday evening, news agency said. Liu, a migrant worker, had recently returned from southern China's Guangdong province where he had sought employment, the website report said. He has a history of mental illness, it added. Among the dead were Liu's father and several close relatives, it said. The Hunan killings are the latest family-related murders in China in recent weeks.Earlier this month, police in southwest China captured a man suspected of murdering his parents and four other relatives after he escaped from a mental hospital in Yunnan province.In late November, police in the southern Hainan province captured a man suspected of hacking to death his parents, wife, sons and sister in Beijing.
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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