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Saudis say capture thwarted bomb plot

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Two wanted al-Qaida militants were among 10 extremists killed in clashes with police during a double suicide car bombing in the Saudi capital, officials said Thursday, portraying the attack as a plot that was wrecked by the earlier capture of a militant.

The car bombs exploded Wednesday night in the Saudi capital, targeting the Interior Ministry and a recruiting center for the kingdom's antiterrorism forces.

But the vehicles were unable to get close to their targets and the blasts killed only the three suicide bombers, said a ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki. Seventeen security officers and several bystanders were wounded. Saudi TV had reported the blast outside the ministry killed a passing limousine driver, but Turki said he was only wounded.

Turki said the plotters had to carry out the bombings earlier than they had intended because a militant was captured after a shootout in Riyadh a day earlier.

MADRID - The Basque Parliament by 39-35 approved a measure on Thursday that says the Basque country has the right to secede from Spain, a move analysts described as the most serious threat to national unity since the establishment of democracy here nearly 30 years ago.

The plan now moves to the national Parliament, where it will surely be rejected, analysts said. But supporters of the plan said a defeat would not stop them from submitting it to a popular referendum in the Basque country next year. The central government has said such a referendum is illegal.

SUDAN: Representatives of Sudan's government and southern rebels will sign a permanent cease-fire and endorse a detailed plan for implementing an agreement to end a 21-year-old civil war, the Kenyan foreign ministry said Thursday. The warring sides are to sign the deals today, resolving procedural issues that have prevented them from concluding a comprehensive peace accord, said Peter Ole Nkuraiya, permanent secretary in the Kenyan ministry for East African and regional cooperation.

SENEGAL: To the cheers of thousands, Senegal's government signed a peace deal Thursday with separatist rebels aimed at ending two decades of low-level skirmishing in the southern Casamance region.

BELARUS TRIAL: A prominent opposition figure was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday after being convicted of stealing computers supposedly owned by the U.S. Embassy in Minsk, Belarus, a charge Washington labeled spurious and human rights groups called politically motivated.

Mikhail Marinich, who was international economic affairs minister under authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko but joined the opposition in 2001, had pleaded innocent.