South Africa

Spurned boyfriend kills 11 in shooting spree

Outraged at being dumped by his girlfriend, a South African man shot and killed her and nine other people before turning the gun on himself, police said Sunday.

Six others were seriously wounded in the shooting spree by 29-year-old security guard Bulelani Vukwana on Saturday night in the Mdantsane suburb of East London, about 560 miles east of Cape Town.

Earlier Saturday, Vukwana and his girlfriend had a fight and she had ended their relationship, said police spokesman Stephen Marais.

Kuwait

Oil minister resigns after deadly explosion

Kuwait’s Cabinet on Sunday accepted the resignation of the oil minister, who had offered to step down to take responsibility for a deadly explosion at an oil field.

Adel al-Subaih publicly offered to step down on Feb. 2, two days after the explosion in the Rawdatain oil field killed three Indian workers and a Kuwaiti firefighter.

The fire damaged an electrical substation that feeds the northern oil fields, temporarily reducing the country’s production of 1.74 million barrels a day by 600,000 barrels.

Information Minister Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah was chosen to take over the crucial post until a replacement is appointed.

China

Fireworks blaze kills at least nine

A blaze that started when a customer at a fireworks stand lighted a firecracker killed at least nine people and wrecked a shopping center in central China, a government news agency said Sunday.

The fire burned two stories of the mall in Xingyang, a city in Henan province, the China News Service said. It said many other people were injured and that the total death toll wasn’t known yet.

South Korea

Bus collision kills at least 14

A bus collided with a container truck Sunday on a highway south of Seoul, killing at least 14 people, police said.

Sixteen other passengers were injured, some seriously, when the truck crossed over the center line and hit the bus near Chonan, 50 miles south of Seoul, said Lim Ho-jin, a local police officer.

Most of the passengers were traveling to their hometowns ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, which begin this week.

Honduras

Crime ring broken up

Police have broken up a drug-smuggling, kidnapping and bank robbery ring that was the Central American arm of powerful drug cartels based in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.

Thirty anti-narcotics officers and special agents raided one of the gang’s safe-houses in the city of Lempira, near the border with El Salvador, on Saturday. Authorities storming the residence sparked a shootout with dozens of Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran gang members, police said in a statement.

Police said the gang was responsible for more than 210 kidnappings in Honduras and also abducted dozens of business owners and bankers in Guatemala and El Salvador.

The crime syndicate also coordinated efforts to move tons of Colombian cocaine through Central America’s Caribbean ports and onto destinations in the United States.