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.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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