Sunday, August 09, 2009 ANNABA: One person died and at least 10 were missing after an Algerian coast guard boat collided with boats filled with possible migrants, officials said.The collision occurred off the Algerian port city of Annaba after three migrant boats ignored calls that they stop, a British news channel reported.More than 70 people have unsuccessfully tried to escape Algeria by boat during the past two days, Algerian radio said, adding that more than 400 people had been intercepted by the Annaba coast guard this year. The Algerian newspaper El Watan reported two migrant boats sank in the stand-off with the coast guards that began Saturday.
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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