In brief: Wave of bombings kill scores in Iraq

BAGHDAD – More than a dozen explosions, mainly from car bombs, ripped through marketplaces, parking lots, a cafe and rush-hour crowds in Iraq on Monday, killing at least 58 people, officials said.

The bombings – 18 in all – are part of a wave of bloodshed that has swept across the country since April, killing more than 3,000 people and worsening the already strained ties between Iraq’s Sunni minority and the Shiite-led government. The scale and pace of the violence have fanned fears of a return to the widespread sectarian bloodletting that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The month’s death toll now stands at 680, according to an Associated Press count.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s attacks.

Teen’s shooting sparks outrage

TORONTO – A Toronto police officer was suspended with pay after he fatally shot a young man wielding a knife in an empty streetcar, police said Monday, as hundreds of people in Canada’s largest city protested the shooting that was caught on video and posted on YouTube.

Investigators were looking into the circumstances surrounding the shooting, the city’s police chief said.

The video shows 18-year-old Sammy Yatim holding a knife inside the streetcar early Saturday, with police outside. Yatim goads police while officers yell, “Drop your knife!” Shortly after, three shots are fired. After a pause, six more shots are fired. A Taser is later used on Yatim.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which is charged with carrying out independent investigations of police shootings, was examining the shooting.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said he has seen the video and is conducting a parallel investigation.

Explosions rock Christian section

KANO, Nigeria – Multiple explosions rocked a Christian area in Nigeria’s northern Kano city Monday night, with scores of wounded sent to hospitals.

A mortuary attendant at Murtala Mohammed Specialists Hospital said at least 10 bodies had been brought in from the scene.

Nigeria is fighting an Islamic uprising by extremists based mainly in the northeast, where the government has declared a state of emergency. Kano city and state are not part of that emergency.

Nigeria’s government is fighting an Islamic uprising by a network called Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden.” The group wants Islamic law imposed in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of more than 160 million, which is divided almost equally between Christians who live mainly in the south and Muslims who dominate the north.

Eight soldiers killed in ambush

TUNIS, Tunisia – Gunmen ambushed a Tunisian army patrol Monday in a mountainous border region known as an Islamic militant stronghold, killing at least eight soldiers, the presidential spokesman said.

Jebel Chaambi, Tunisia’s highest mountain at 5,000 feet, is located near the Algerian border and the city of Kasserine, and was the site of an intensive military hunt for an al-Qaida-linked militant group during the spring.

“An entire patrol carrying out a search operation in this mountainous region was decimated,” said presidential spokesman Adnan Mancer.

Mystery coffin found at Richard III site

LONDON – A team of archaeologists said Monday it has unearthed an unusual coffin-within-a-coffin in the central England parking lot where it found the skeleton of King Richard III, and that they hope to identify the remains within.

University of Leicester scientists have been digging at the Grey Friars site in Leicester after finding the body of Richard there in September. He died nearby in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

The team said it had discovered a fully intact medieval stone coffin during a dig in September but wasn’t able to investigate it further at the time. When it was opened this week, the team said, it found a lead coffin within it, one likely to contain a “high status” individual.

The University of Leicester’s Matthew Morris said no one on the team had ever seen a lead coffin within a stone coffin before.

“It was as exciting as finding Richard III,” he said in a statement. “We still don’t know who is inside – so there is still a question mark over it.”

At least 35 injured in train collision

BERLIN – At least 35 people were injured, five of them seriously, in a head-on collision of two trains in western Switzerland late Monday, police said.

The crash happened near the station of Granges-pres-Marnand shortly before 7 p.m. on a regional line about 31 miles southwest of the capital, Bern.