Afghanistan

Taliban attack kills 4

Taliban guerrillas riding in a fleet of vehicles shot up a government office in southern Afghanistan, killing four Afghan soldiers, an official said Sunday. One gunman also was killed.

The attack came just hours after an explosion killed four special forces traveling in a Humvee, one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops trying to stop resurgent militants from wrecking planned national elections.

The suspected Taliban militiamen swept into Musa Qala, a market town 150 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, late Saturday, opening fire on the government office with assault rifles and heavy machine guns, Mayor Mullah Amir Aghunzada told The Associated Press.

Four of the 30 soldiers defending the compound were killed and eight others were wounded, Aghunzada said. One Taliban fighter was also killed and four were captured, three of them wounded.

Haiti

U.S. departure delayed

U.S. troops deployed to Haiti during a bloody revolt to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will begin leaving in the midst of another crisis as the nation tries to recover from deadly floods.

The official American handover to a U.N. force is set for Tuesday, but only a fraction of the planned 8,000 troops and police for the U.N. force have arrived, and none has brought helicopters needed to help flood victims. So most U.S. troops will stay until the end of June.

Hurrying to help people in submerged villages after floods killed more than 1,400 in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the U.S. troops control the few available helicopters and have become key to getting aid to inaccessible areas. In the past few days, they have airlifted more than 100,000 pounds of food and drinking water and evacuated the injured.

Rome

Fiat chief steps down

Fiat SpA chief executive Giuseppe Morchio handed in his resignation Sunday, shortly after the auto conglomerate announced it had named Ferrari chief Luca Cordero di Montezemolo its new chairman. Morchio also had been considered a candidate for the chairman’s position.

The Italian news agency ANSA said it had received a statement from Morchio attributing his resignation to “the changed conditions coming from the decisions taken today by the company’s board of directors.”

The statement said Morchio regretted not being able to participate in the struggling automaker’s restructuring plan, which he had led and that had begun to show “its first positive results after 15 months of total dedication and intense work at the side of Umberto Agnelli,” according to ANSA.

Agnelli died of cancer Thursday night.