Afghanistan

Three U.S., two Afghan soldiers injured in clash

Three U.S. and two Afghan soldiers were wounded Thursday when a regional militia attacked their convoy in a remote province wracked by factional tension, the American military said.

U.S. and Afghan National Army soldiers in the convoy called in warplanes to help ward of attackers who rained fire on them on Thursday afternoon in central Ghor province, spokesman Maj. Rick Peat said. It was unclear if the planes inflicted any casualties.

“Attacks like this will not be tolerated,” Peat said.

The wounded Americans were trainers embedded in a unit of the new U.S.-trained national army which is supposed to eventually replace the unruly warlord militias who still control much of the country.

Netherlands

U.N. war crimes tribunal clears Bosnian Croat

A U.N. war crimes tribunal Thursday ordered a Bosnian Croat commander’s early release from prison after clearing him of responsibility in a 1993 massacre, a decision that could make it harder to convict high-ranking officials accused of masterminding ethnic violence in the Balkans.

Overturning a ruling by a lower chamber, the five-member panel of judges dismissed 16 of 19 war crimes charges against Gen. Thiomir Blaskic, exonerating the 43-year-old of ordering ethnic bloodshed in Bosnia. His sentence was reduced from 45 to nine years.

A summary of the 300-page ruling read out in court found that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Blaskic planned or even knew about war crimes being committed by his forces.

Ethiopia

Report: Militias burned villagers alive in Sudan

Arab militias chained civilians together and set them on fire in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed in a 17-month conflict, according to a report by an African Union monitoring team.

The immolation came during a July 3 attack on the village of Suleia by the pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed, the monitoring team said in its report.

“The attackers looted the market and killed civilians, in some cases, by chaining them and burning them alive,” according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

It did not say how many people were killed.

The United Nations estimates up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur.

Spain

Socialist says officials lied about train bombing

A top Socialist official claimed on Thursday that Spain’s former conservative government withheld early information of an Islamic link to the Madrid train bombings and blamed Basque separatists in a bid to win national elections three days later.

At issue in the testimony to a parliamentary commission is whether the government of then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar told Spaniards the March 11 terror attack was probably carried out by Islamic militants, not Basque separatists, as soon as evidence pointed that way.

The conservative Popular Party insists it was honest with the country. The Socialists, who went on to win the vote, say it wasn’t.

“It was a disinformation operation seeking an electoral advantage,” Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the Socialist spokesman in congress, told the commission Thursday about the attack that killed 191 people.