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Police blame rebels for 55 deaths in 2 days

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 7, 2007

A series of coordinated attacks Friday and Saturday in India's troubled northeast have killed at least 55 people, including six government officials, police said Saturday. Police said they suspected rebels fighting for the independence of Assam, the oil-producing state bordering Myanmar. The group the police identified, the United Liberation Front of Assam, has been engaged in armed rebellion against New Delhi's rule since 1979. Peace talks failed in September. Forty-eight of the civilians killed were Hindi-speaking migrant laborers, police said. The six government officials, some of them police officers, were killed in a bomb attack on their vehicle.

Orthodox church celebrates growth

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church praised the growth of the church in a Christmas Eve message Saturday, and later presided over services at a Moscow cathedral that symbolizes the faith's revival after Soviet rule. The Russian Orthodox Church, like some other Orthodox churches, including the one in Serbia, observes Christmas on Jan. 7 because it follows the Julian calendar for its liturgical schedule instead of the Gregorian calendar, adopted by Roman Catholics and Protestants and commonly used in secular life around the world. Patriarch Alexy II, dressed in golden robes and an elaborate miter, presided over Christmas Eve services at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, which was torn down in 1931 under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and reconstructed in the 1990s.

Workers find body at site of bombing

Workers on Saturday recovered the body of an Ecuadorean man killed a week earlier in an explosion at Madrid's international airport. The blast was blamed on the violent Basque separatist group ETA, police said. The body of Diego Armando Estacio, 19, had been detected Friday using fiber-optic viewing equipment, but recovery efforts were hampered by hundreds of tons of rubble, police said.

Elsewhere

Afghanistan: A roadside bomb struck a NATO vehicle in southern Afghanistan Saturday, wounding one soldier, while a suicide bomber in a car wounded four soldiers in the east on Friday, officials said. The nationalities of the wounded were not disclosed.

Philippines: Philippine troops on Saturday killed six members of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group, including one, Judnam Jamalul, wanted by the United States for involvement in the kidnapping of Americans in 2001, a military spokesman said.

Vatican City: Religious leaders of all faiths must play a role in ensuring that the spiritual and cultural aspects of life are not forgotten as mankind tackles the challenges of globalization, Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday.

[Last modified January 7, 2007, 00:45:56]