South Korea: Subway arson attack kills 27

A man ignited a blaze in a subway car with a milk carton of fuel today in South Korea’s third-largest city, police said.

Authorities said the blaze killed 15 people, but a news report said at least 27 had died.

Police said the blaze injured 137 in Daegu city, 200 miles southeast of Seoul.

A suspect, Kim Dae-han, 46, was under interrogation, but police still did not know what motivated the attack or whether there were passengers still trapped in the subway. YTN all-news television channel and Yonhap news agency said 12 maintenance workers appeared to be trapped underground.

The subway was filled with toxic gas, impeding rescue operations, Yonhap said.

Georgia: Radioactive substance missing from military base

Three small containers containing radioactive materials are missing from a Georgian military base, officials confirmed Monday.

The containers of cesium-137 disappeared in December from the Vaziani military base in this former Soviet republic, military prosecutor Mamuk Tsaav said. Authorities don’t know exactly when the materials disappeared, so they have been unable to determine who was on guard duty at the time.

Georgian officials did not say how much of the material was stolen or whether it was high-grade. Cesium-137 has a number of industrial and medical applications.

It is often cited as one of the most likely substances that could be used in a so-called “dirty bomb,” in which a conventional explosive device spreads radioactive material.

Serbia-Montenegro: Three ethnic Albanians arrested for war crimes

NATO detained three former rebels Monday suspected of atrocities in Kosovo, the first time the U.N. war crimes tribunal has acted against ethnic Albanian suspects.

NATO-led peacekeepers arrested the three, who were indicted for crimes committed against Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians in May and July 1998, a NATO statement said.

It said the three were commanders or guards serving with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army at the Llapushnik prison camp in Glogovac in Kosovo.

NATO identified the suspects as Haradin Balaj, Isak Musliu and Agim Murtezi. It said they had been transferred to secure locations and that the operations Monday had not resulted in any casualties.