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Woman killed her 5 children, officials say

By TIMES WIRES
Published March 1, 2007

BELGIUM

A mother killed her five children, then tried to commit suicide at the family's home on the outskirts of Nivelles, officials said Wednesday. The four girls and a boy, aged between 4 and 14, were stabbed with a knife. The woman called emergency services, then tried to kill herself. She was in critical condition at a hospital. "We know that the mother wrote to a friend - she wrote a letter in which she says she will kill her children," Nivelles Mayor Pierre Huart said. The friend was helping police analyze the letter, hoping to discover clues to the motive. Children do not have to attend school on Wednesday afternoon and the killings took place some two hours after they returned home. "We don't know whether the woman used other means than a knife and we don't know whether the children defended themselves," Bernard Goethals of the prosecutor's office told RTL network. Local media said the mother was 51 years old. Her husband was not at home when the killings took place.

ITALY

Prodi wins Senate vote of confidence

Premier Romano Prodi kept his fractious center-left coalition together to win a confidence vote in the Senate on Wednesday, ensuring the immediate survival of his nine-month-old government. After the 162-157 vote in the upper house of Parliament, one of his Cabinet ministers, Clemente Mastella, said that "the government is like the Tower of Pisa: It leans but it doesn't fall." Prodi resigned last week after the Senate failed to endorse the government's foreign policy guidelines, including its commitment to keep 1,800 Italian troops in Afghanistan. But the president asked Prodi to stay on. On Friday, Prodi will submit his nine-month government to the judgment of the lower house.

Elsewhere

SENEGAL: President Abdoulaye Wade appeared to have won the country's election outright Wednesday, according to nearly complete results released by regional vote-counting centers and reported by the state-run news agency.

NIGERIA: Gunmen kidnapped a Lebanese worker Wednesday in Nigeria's restive southern oil region, the latest in a string of attacks across the increasingly lawless area, police said. More than 60 foreigners have been kidnapped this year in the oil-rich delta region.

CHINA: A farmer in southeast China has contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, state media reported today. Xinhua News Agency said it was China's first human case of bird flu since Jan. 10.

CHINA: A sandstorm packing hurricane-force gusts derailed a train early Wednesday in western China, killing at least three people and injuring 34, state media said.

HAITI: U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police seized the last remaining gang stronghold in Cite Soleil, Haiti's largest slum, on Wednesday, the latest in a series of military crackdowns aimed at stabilizing the impoverished and divided Caribbean nation.

PERU: An air force helicopter crashed in Peru's highlands Wednesday, killing three active-duty or retired military personnel and injuring an army general who commanded a military base in the area.

LIBERIA: Former President Gyude Bryant has been charged with stealing more than $1-million from Liberia's coffers while in office, government officials said Wednesday.

[Last modified March 1, 2007, 01:25:57]