200 feared killed in attack in Chad

In the latest sign that violence plaguing Darfur is spilling into neighboring Chad, more than 200 Chadians were feared dead in an attack against two remote farming villages near the Sudanese border, the U.N.’s refugee agency said Tuesday.

A team of humanitarian workers that reached the villages of Tiero and Marena on Sunday found mass graves, decomposing bodies, scores of dead livestock and hundreds of torched huts, some still smoldering more than a week after the March 31 attack.

The attacks were among the deadliest to hit southeastern Chad in the past 18 months, when violence from the Darfur region of western Sudan began spilling over the border.

PANMUNJEOM, Korea

U.S. envoys reclaim soldiers’ remains

U.S. envoys made a rare crossing of the border dividing the two Koreas today with the remains of six American soldiers from the Korean War.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Anthony Principi, former U.S. veterans affairs secretary, were greeted at the frontier between North and South by U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow and U.S. military officials.

The Americans drove two hours from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, with the remains of the soldiers.

They then walked across the North-South frontier at the truce village of Panmunjeom, where the two Koreas stand face-to-face across the border that has divided the peninsula since a 1953 cease-fire ended the Korean War.

BELGRADE, Serbia

Four convicted of Bosnian war crimes

Four members of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit who were videotaped gunning down Bosnians near Srebrenica were convicted of war crimes on Tuesday, two years after the footage forced Serbia to admit its role in the 1995 slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

It was the first ruling by a Serbian court related to the systematic killings in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

Trials of Serbs in Serbia have only become possible since the 2000 ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic, and the Srebrenica case has been a key test of the ability of Serbia’s judiciary to deal with wartime atrocities.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

Ethiopia defends detention practices

Ethiopia conceded for the first time Tuesday that it detained 41 suspected terrorists from 17 countries but defended the action as part of the international war on terror groups and denied reports the prisoners were held incommunicado.

The statement came a week after the Associated Press reported that terrorism suspects had been transferred from Kenya to Somalia and then to Ethiopia. Ethiopian officials at the time denied any suspects were in custody, but U.S. officials said they had questioned some detainees.

Human rights groups have called the detentions and transfers a violation of international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has not been granted access to the detainees despite having sought meetings for the last month.