Russia: Air-crash victims mourned at service

Grieving relatives and friends gathered Saturday in the Ural Mountains city of Ufa to pay their final respects to 28 people killed in last week’s air crash over Germany.

More than 1,000 people came to Ufa’s central square, where Muslim and Russian Orthodox ceremonies were conducted to mourn the victims, including 26 children, killed in the July 1 collision over Germany of a Russian Tu-154 and a DHL International cargo plane.

The crash killed 71 people; 49 of them children heading to a summer holiday in Spain.

Spain: Island occupation brings naval presence

Spain sent three war vessels to protect two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast as its southern Mediterranean neighbor occupied a tiny, uninhabited Spanish islet for a third day Saturday.

A frigate, three corvettes and a submarine were on their way to the area, news reports said.

The ships were sent after 12 Moroccan soldiers landed Thursday on Perejil island, a barren, half-mile-wide rock three miles off the Moroccan coast that Spain says it has controlled since the 17th century. The Moroccans planted their country’s flag.

Afghanistan: Assassination probe still hitting dead ends

One week after the assassination of Vice President Abdul Qadir, international peacekeepers and government investigators said Saturday they are no closer to finding his killers.

With the probe deadlocked, President Hamid Karzai will ask the FBI and “other friendly countries” for help, Karzai’s spokesman, Syed Fazl Akbar, told The Associated Press.

Qadir was gunned down July 6 outside his office.