Insurgents attack British base
An insurgent attack on a British base killed two soldiers and an Afghan interpreter, military officials said Sunday, while at least 20 militants died during clashes and coalition airstrikes.
The two British soldiers died after their base was hit by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades Saturday night in southern Helmand province, said military spokesman Capt. Drew Gibson.
A U.S. helicopter crashed in an accident in southern Afghanistan, killing one crew member, the U.S. military said.
The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from Kandahar Air Field while responding to a reported rocket attack against the airbase, the coalition said in a statement.
LA PAZ, Bolivia
Leftists fail to gain assembly control
President Evo Morales’ ambitious plans to empower Bolivia’s indigenous majority and boost state control over the economy suffered a setback Sunday when his party failed to win power of an assembly that will rewrite the constitution, unofficial preliminary results showed.
The vote results, based on a partial count of actual votes at 100 percent of polling stations done for the PAT television network, gave Morales supporters 132 seats in the 255-person body, far short of the two-thirds majority they needed to push through their leftist agenda.
In a separate ballot question with potentially explosive results, voters in four of Bolivia’s nine states overwhelmingly chose greater political and economic autonomy for their states, according to the unofficial results.
BANJUL, Gambia
Annan pressures Sudan on Darfur
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pressed Sudan’s president Sunday to accept U.N. peacekeepers in the country’s war-wracked Darfur region and said he expected the troops to be deployed there despite staunch government opposition.
About 7,000 African Union troops are deployed in Darfur, and their mandate expires in September. Annan wants a U.N. force to replace them, but Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is opposed, arguing it would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.
Al-Bashir said Sudan is prepared to bear the cost of African Union peacekeepers in Darfur for the next six months as an alternative to a U.N. force, Sudan’s official news agency SUNA reported Sunday.