Updated at: 0906 PST, Saturday, December 26, 2009 CARACAS: Nine sailors were killed and five were burned in a Christmas Day blaze aboard a Greek freighter in waters off a Venezuelan Caribbean island, the official Venezuelan news agency reported on Friday. It quoted Admiral Carlos Maximo Aniasi, commander of Venezuela's navy, as saying the blaze broke out in an engine room of the "Aegean Wind" before dawn and spread upward on the vessel, which was carrying iron ore from Brazil to Houston and had a 24-strong crew. "Nine bodies were found in different compartments of the Greek ship," the admiral said. The bodies belonged to nine sailors reported missing earlier in the day on the ship 33 nautical miles (61 km)northeast of the island of La Blanquilla, Aniasi 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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