Saturday, October 10, 2009 LAGOS: Between 70 and 80 people were killed when a fuel tanker truck exploded after hitting a pothole on a road in southern Nigeria, several newspapers said on Saturday.The truck overturned and exploded after hitting a pothole on Friday on the road between Onitsha and Enugu, witnesses and police told the papers, torching vehicles including five packed minibuses. Anambra state road safety director Ben Ekenna admitted local roads were in a bad state and was quoted as saying that "if something isn't done quickly, tragedies like this will happen again." Accidents on Nigeria's poorly-maintained inter-city roads are common.
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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