World in brief: Plane diverted after bomb threat

BEIJING – An Afghan plane bound for the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang was sent back to Afghanistan after a bomb threat, Chinese media said.

Kam Air deputy chief Feda Mohammad Fedawi told the Associated Press that the plane, carrying 160 passengers, left Kabul and was crossing Kyrgyzstan on its way to the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, when it was told to turn back Sunday.

The Xinhua News Agency said there had been a bomb threat, and Urumqi airport authorities were told not to let the plane land.

Kyrgyz authorities told the crew that Chinese authorities would not allow them into their airspace, Fedawi said. The plane could not return to the Afghan capital because of windy weather and was diverted to the southern city of Kandahar, Fedawi said.

He said there had been no bomb threat.

There was no immediate way to explain the differing accounts.

Urumqi was the scene of China’s worst ethnic violence in China in decades when rioting last month killed 197 people and injured more than 1,700, according to official count.

Fedawi said the plane’s passengers and crew were fine and it was expected to return to Kabul this morning.

British contractor arrested in killings

BAGHDAD – Iraqi authorities arrested a British contractor Sunday over the shooting deaths of two co-workers in Baghdad’s protected Green Zone. The suspected gunman could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi trial on murder charges since a security pact lifted the immunity that had been enjoyed by foreign contractors for most of the war.

The gunman shot his colleagues – one British and one Australian – during a quarrel, then he wounded an Iraqi while trying to flee their compound inside the vast area that is sealed off from the rest of the capital, Iraqi officials said.

He said the suspect was being held at an Iraqi police station in the Green Zone.

The Green Zone houses the U.S. and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government headquarters. The U.S. military turned over security of the area to Iraqi forces when the security pact took effect on Jan. 1, but many foreign organizations maintain separate guarded compounds within the zone.

The British Embassy said two Britons were in Iraqi custody in connection with Sunday’s shooting.

But Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf maintained that only one suspect was being held, identifying him as Daniel Fitzsimons.

Dozens killed in landslides

LUCKNOW, India – Landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in northern India, a police official said.

Twenty bodies were pulled from the debris Sunday after the landslide buried the villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state a day earlier, said S.M. Shamim, a paramilitary force commander.

He said 43 people “were buried alive under the debris.”

Police and volunteers were digging through mud and rocks Sunday to recover the bodies of 23 others, he said.