Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Two Koreas exchange fire across the border

By TIMES WIRES
Published August 1, 2006

SEOUL, South Korea - Soldiers from North Korea and South Korea exchanged fire along their border overnight, but no one was hurt, a South Korean military official said today.

The shooting happened Monday evening when North Korean soldiers fired two bullets toward a South Korean guard post in the Demilitarized Zone, said Maj. Kim Tae Hoon of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Office. South Korean soldiers fired back six rounds, Kim said.

The motive for the initial shots from the North was unclear, and the communist country made no comment about them, Kim said.

The incident came amid tensions over the North's recent missile launches and its protracted standoff with the United States and other countries over its nuclear weapons program.

Russian oil pipeline leaks; damage remains unclear

MOSCOW - Russia's Natural Resources Ministry backed off a warning Monday that an oil pipeline leak in western Russia was a potential environmental catastrophe, and the pipeline's operator said the spill was far smaller than the ministry originally said and had already been cleaned up.

The ministry initially said the spill, which occurred Saturday, affected a 4-square-mile area and contaminated water sources in the western Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine and Belarus.

Mikhail Sayapin, head of the OAO Transneft unit that operates the pipeline, said the spill affected only a 4,000-square-foot area and that it had been cleaned up.

Ministry spokesman Rinat Gizatulin accused Transneft of regularly suppressing information about oil spills.

Elsewhere ...

Congo: Polls opened for an extra day Monday in central Congo but it appeared that few took advantage of the second chance to vote for a new president and legislature in what officials said was a huge boycott.

[Last modified August 1, 2006, 02:09:06]