In brief: Putin, Hollande attend Armenia events

YEREVAN, Armenia – Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande joined other leaders Friday at ceremonies commemorating the massacre of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, an event that still stirs bitter feelings as both sides argue over whether to call it genocide.

The annual April 24 commemorations mark the day when some 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up in what is regarded as the first step of the massacre. An estimated 1.5 million died in the slaughters, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915 as Ottoman officials worried that the Christian Armenians would side with Russia, its enemy in World War I.

The event is widely viewed by historians as genocide but modern Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, vehemently rejects the charge. It says the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. On the eve of the centennial, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that his nation’s ancestors never committed genocide.

The observances ended Friday night with a torchlight parade by an estimated 30,000 people from the capital’s central square to the hilltop complex memorializing the deaths. Participants started the march by burning a Turkish flag.

Evacuations near volcano urged, again

ENSENADA, Chile – Authorities urged 2,000 people living near the Calbuco volcano to evacuate Friday after potentially devastating mudflows of volcanic debris were detected in a nearby river, the result of two huge eruptions this week that sent ash across large swaths of southern South America.

Chilean officials said the evacuations were precautionary but necessary because flows of volcanic mud, known as lahars, are capable of leveling anything in their path once in motion.

The area had been evacuated after the volcano first erupted Wednesday afternoon, but by Friday many people had begun to return home. Authorities said the evacuees from the towns of Chamiza, Lago Chapo and Correntoso would stay at shelters in the nearby city of Puerto Montt.

IS ambush kills Iraqi general, staff

BAGHDAD – Fighters from the Islamic State group ambushed an Iraqi army convoy on Friday with a bulldozer packed with explosives, killing the commander of the Iraqi 1st Division and three of his staff officers north of Fallujah, military officials said.

A suicide bomber attacked the convoy of Humvees and then militants opened fire, killing Brig. Gen. Hassan Abbas Toufan, a colonel and two lieutenant colonels in the Nadhem al-Taqseem region, said a member of the division and an intelligence officer. There was no initial count on the number of soldiers killed in the attack.

The attack represents a setback for the Iraqi army, which is embroiled in a fierce battle to reconquer western Anbar province, which has been under the control of the extremist Islamic State group for the past year. Fighting has been focused on the provincial capital of Ramadi, where the government had been making slow progress.

Earlier on Friday, the army had recaptured the important al-Houz bridge over the Euphrates in western Ramadi, which had served as a primary supply route for the militants, according to police Col. Mahdi Abbas.