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The authorities in Mexico have arrested three people suspected of throwing grenades that killed eight people and wounded more than 100 last week.



The grenades exploded during independence day celebrations in the city of Morelia, in western Mexico.

Investigators say the three men are members of a unit of the Gulf drug cartel, known as the Zetas.

The attacks shocked Mexico, because they appeared to target civilians, not security forces or other criminals.

The explosions went off in the main square of Morelia as the crowds celebrated the independence day on 16 September.

Police say the three arrests came as a result of an anonymous tip-off.

The city is the capital of Michoacan, a state hit by a wave of drug gang violence in recent years.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed the lives of more than 2,700 people so far this year.

BBC News

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Thanks for the news!

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Austria's Social Democrats won the most votes in the country's early election but far right parties made significant gains, the interior ministry has said.



Preliminary official results from Sunday's poll show Social Democrats with 29.7% of the vote.

But the country's two far right parties made large gains, winning a total vote share of 29% between them.

The conservative People's Party, which was in a faltering coalition with the Social Democrats, won 25.6%.

The interior minister, Maria Fekter, said the far right Freedom Party had won 18.01% percent of the vote and the Alliance for the Future of Austria had 10.98%.

The elections were called after Austria's 18-month-old coalition collapsed.

The BBC's Bethany Bell, in Vienna, described the far right gains as a "slap in the face" to the centrist parties.

Full official results will not be known until absentee and postal ballots, making up about 10% of the votes, are counted.

Outrage across Europe

For the first time in an EU country, 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote. This bloc represented about 200,000 of the 6.3 million-strong electorate.

Elections were last held in October 2006. It took a further six months for the government to form a cabinet.

The far right showing was its strongest showing in Austria since 2000, when the Freedom Party won 28% and gained a place in the coalition government with the conservatives.

That development sparked outrage across Europe and for several months Austria was placed under EU sanctions.

In this election, the shape of any future governing coalition is hard to predict, our correspondent said, before the vote.

Analysts say the far right could re-enter government but only after all other options are exhausted.

These include another grand coalition or pacts with the Greens or the two other smaller parties.

BBC News

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Sudanese officials say their forces have shot and killed six of the kidnappers who abducted a group of European tourists in Egypt last week.



Two other suspected kidnappers have been taken into custody, but the tourists themselves remain in captivity in Chad, officials in Sudan said.

The hostages - 11 tourists and eight Egyptian guides - were taken on 19 September and are said to be unharmed.

They include five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian.

A spokesman for Sudan's military said that the kidnappers were killed following a high-speed desert chase.

Sawarmy Khaled said the missing Europeans, who were abducted in Egypt but thought to have been taken first to Sudan and are now being held in neighbouring Chad.

Leader 'dead'

Mr Khaled said the Sudanese military forces were near the Libyan border when they encountered a white vehicle carrying eight armed men.

"The armed forces called for it to stop, but they did not respond and there was pursuit in which six of the armed men were killed," he said, adding that the group's leader, who he identified as a Chadian named Bakhit, was among the dead.

The remaining two gunmen were captured and they confessed to being involved in kidnapping the tourists and their guides, who were on desert safari in southwest Egypt.

The tourists, who were seized while near Gilf al-Kebir in Egypt, are being held by 35 other gunmen in the Tabbat Shajara region of Chad, Mr Khaled added.

He said the vehicle was "full of weapons including RPGs" and documents from the Sudan Liberation Movement "about how to distribute the ransom when received".

The shootings come as negotiations continue for the release of the hostages.

An Egyptian official told the AFP news agency that the kidnappers and German negotiators had agreed to a deal but that "negotiations were still ongoing to work out details."

The kidnappers have demanded that Germany take charge of payment of an $8.8m ransom.

German officials have declined comment.

BBC News

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At least 23 people have been killed and dozens more wounded in a string of bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police have said.



Police said a car bomb followed by a roadside bomb killed 10 people and wounded 22 in the busy Karrada shopping district of the centre of the capital.

Earlier they reported two bombs killed 13 people in other districts.

The blasts occurred before the breaking of the fast for the evening meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

BBC News

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Gunmen in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar have killed the country's most prominent policewoman, officials say.



Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, head of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, was shot in her car as she was about to leave for work.

Her son was also wounded in the attack, and is said to be seriously injured.

Taleban rebels, who banned women from joining the police when they were in power, said they had carried out the shooting.

"We killed Malalai Kakar," a Taleban spokesman told AFP news agency.

"She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target."

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says Ms Kakar was one of only a few hundred female police officers in Afghanistan and that she had previously received death threats.

Prominent

Ms Kakar, who was reported to be in her early 40s and had six children, was one of the most high-profile women in the country.

She has figured prominently in the national and international media, partly due to a famous episode in which she killed three would-be assassins in a shoot-out - although she said her everyday life involved tackling theft, fights and murders.

Ms Kakar joined Kandahar's police force in 1982, after her father and brothers were also police officers.

But when the hard-line Taleban regime took over Afghanistan she was prevented from working.

Working in the police force in Afghanistan has become an increasingly dangerous occupation, says our correspondent.

According to the Ministry of Interior, more than 700 police officers were killed in the first six months of 2008.

The majority of the casualties were killed in suicide attacks and roadside bombings.

In June, another woman police officer was gunned down in Herat province in a killing believed to have been the first of its kind.

Kandahar is a key battleground of the Taleban insurgency, where Afghan and foreign troops are fighting the rebels.

BBC News

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Police in the US state of Maryland say they have found the frozen bodies of two children in the freezer of a house in Calvert County.



A 43-year-old woman told police the children were her adopted daughters and had been frozen since February.

The remains were found by authorities investigating reports of child abuse at the address.

The county sheriff's office told the BBC the woman was arrested and was being held without bail.

The authorities visited the house, in Lusby, on Saturday to investigate reports of abuse against a third child, a seven-year-old girl, who showed "signs of extreme abuse and neglect", the sheriff's department said.

When police arrived at her house to look for evidence of the alleged abuse, they found the children's remains in a chest-style freezer.

The woman said that the remains were those of her adopted children and had been in the freezer since she had moved to the area in February, said police.

She also admitted to hitting the seven-year-old with a "hard-heeled shoe".

"It's a tragedy, and it gets to you a little bit," County Sheriff Mike Evans told a news conference on Monday.

"You think you've seen it all, but you haven't."

Police confirmed that the woman had adopted three children but that they had not yet been able to examine and identify the bodies.

The woman has been charged with first degree child abuse and is being held in a county jail without bail.

BBC News

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At least five people have been killed in a suspected car bomb attack on a military bus carrying soldiers in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.



Witnesses said the blast happened on the outskirts of the city during morning rush hour. Some 30 people are believed to be wounded.

Several soldiers as well as civilians were killed in a similar blast on a bus in the city last month.

Lebanon's leaders said the attacks were an attempt to destabilise the country.

Efforts have been under way recently to try and reconcile Lebanon's rival factions after a wave of violence in May pushed the country close to civil war.

Pro-government Sunni fighters and pro-Syrian gunmen, whose fighting has centred on Tripoli, agreed to a peace deal earlier this month.

Threatened deal

Lebanese officials said the blast came after a car parked by a busy roadside near the southern entrance to the city was detonated by remote control.

The explosives were believed to have been mixed with nuts and bolts, and shattered nearby windows and damaged other cars.

The blast appeared to target a military bus that was passing through morning traffic in the Bahsas neighborhood at the time.

Security sources said four of the dead and at least 21 of the wounded were soldiers, the rest were civilians.

TV pictures showed soldiers sealing off the area and preventing people from approaching the scene of the blast.

Government officials said an investigation into the attack was under way, but no one had yet claimed responsibility.

At least 14 people were killed in a similar attack on a bus in the city in August. Several of the victims were off-duty soldiers.

'Terrorist act'

"Once again the hand of treachery has reached the military institution in a clear targeting of security and stability," the Lebanese military said in a statement after Monday's attack.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the bombing was aimed at undermining efforts to reconcile Lebanon's various rival factions.

Syria too denounced the bombing, calling it a "terrorist and criminal act".

A similar bombing in the Syrian capital Damascus killed at least 17 people just two days ago.

The Syrian authorities have blamed the attack on Islamist extremists, and say the car came from a "neighbouring Arab country".

The BBC's Natalia Antelava says some analysts believe this new trend for car bombings in the region is directly linked to the changing situation in Iraq.

As the security situation improves there, analysts say, so insurgents are driving their members across the border into neighbouring countries.

BBC News

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There's way too much news like this on a regular basis. It's horrible. There's too many sick people out there...

[JohnCenaFan28]

A group of Western tourists and their Egyptian guides, who were kidnapped 10 days ago by gunmen, have been freed.



The 11 hostages - five Italians, five Germans and a Romanian - and some eight guides are said to be in good health.

The group, abducted in a remote border region of Egypt, have now arrived at a military base in the capital, Cairo.

Egyptian officials said they were freed in a mission near Sudan's border with Chad, and that half of the kidnappers were killed. No ransom was paid.

The freed hostages were greeted by Egyptian military and government officials on arrival in Cairo as well as foreign diplomats, and were then taken for medical checks.

Sudanese authorities had been tracking the group since early last week through a remote mountainous plateau that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

They were seized in an ambush at around dawn on Monday, Egyptian security sources said. Some 150 Egyptian special forces were then sent to Sudan, officials said.

German officials had been negotiating via satellite phone with the kidnappers, who were demanding a ransom of $8.8m (£4.9m). Egyptian officials said no money exchanged hands.

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Sudanese and Egyptian forces had carried out "a highly professional operation".

He added that "Italian intelligence and experts from the special forces" in Italy and Germany had been involved.

Egypt's defence minister said that half of hostage-takers had been "eliminated", without giving precise figures.

The BBC's Christian Fraser, in Cairo, says Egypt's tourism minister will be relieved.

The abductees had been touring in an area well off the beaten track but a messy end to this crisis would not have been good for the health of the Egyptian economy, our correspondent says.

Suspects

The breakthrough comes a day after Sudanese troops clashed with alleged kidnappers in northern Sudan, killing six gunmen. Another two were taken into custody.

The two suspects claimed the tourists were in Chad but their exact whereabouts at the time of rescue remains unclear. Chad denied the group was within its borders.

In a statement, the military said the vehicle of the hostage-takers was full of weapons and documents detailing how the ransom should have been paid.

Other documents found inside led the army to believe a faction of the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army was involved in the kidnapping.

None of Darfur's numerous rebel groups have said they were linked to the kidnappings.

Other reports said the abduction, near the Gilf al-Kebir plateau, was carried out by tribesmen or bandits operating in the area.

BBC News