In brief: U.N. observer calls for halt to violence

BEIRUT –The head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria on Sunday called on President Bashar Assad and the country’s opposition to stop fighting and allow a cease-fire to take hold.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood spoke after arriving in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to take charge of an advance team of 16 U.N. monitors trying to salvage an international peace plan to end the country’s 13-month-old crisis that has killed more than 9,000 people.

On Sunday, Syrian troops killed at least 28 civilians, said an activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Opposition fighters shot dead three Syrian soldiers in a clash and four soldiers were killed while handling explosives, the group said.

Gunmen open fire on Christians

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – A terrorist attack at a university in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Sunday left as many as 20 Christian worshippers dead and dozens of other people wounded.

Gunmen in a car and on motorcycles threw homemade bombs at Christians gathered on the campus of Bayero University and shot them as they tried to flee, according to agency reports.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killings, but the assault was similar to previous attacks by Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group.

VERACRUZ, Mexico – The Mexican government’s human rights commission said Sunday that it will investigate the apparent slaying of a correspondent for Proceso newsmagazine who often wrote about drug trafficking.

Police found the body of Regina Martinez on Saturday in the bathroom of her home. There were signs of heavy “blows to her face and body,” and initial evidence suggested she died of asphyxiation, the state attorney general’s office said.

Martinez was the Xalapa correspondent for Proceso, one of Mexico’s oldest and most respected investigative newsmagazines.