Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Woman is killed by bomb sent to Paris law office

By Times Wires
Published December 7, 2007

FRANCE

A package bearing homemade bombs blew up Thursday in a lawyer's office on a tony boulevard in central Paris, killing the woman who opened it. The motive for the unusual attack remained unclear. The building also housed an unrelated law firm co-founded by President Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as a Holocaust research foundation, although officials said they did not appear to be targeted. A messenger delivered the package, a wooden box that turned out to contain two homemade explosive devices, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said. The package appeared to have been addressed to the law firm, which handles civil and commercial cases. The nature of the explosive and its strength remained unclear.

PHILIPPINES 

14 sentenced to life in kidnappings

Fourteen al-Qaida-linked Muslim militants were sentenced to life in prison Thursday for kidnapping a U.S. missionary couple and 18 others, beginning a yearlong jungle ordeal that prompted U.S.-backed offensives against the guerrillas. Gracia Burnham survived, but her husband Martin was killed during a military rescue in 2002. Another American captive, Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif., had been beheaded earlier by the Abu Sayyaf rebels. Most of the top leaders of Abu Sayyaf, which orchestrated the abductions at a resort island, have been killed in clashes since the trial opened in 2003. The Burnhams, missionaries for the Florida-based New Tribes Mission, were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary when they were abducted. Defendant Toting Hannoh, who was found guilty, struck a defiant note. Asked if this was the end of the Abu Sayyaf, he said: "No, it will become stronger."

GERMANY

Autopsy: 5 brothers likely suffocated

Autopsy results point to suffocation as the likely cause of death for five brothers believed to have been killed by their mentally disturbed mother, a prosecutor said Thursday. The results indicated the boys had been given sleeping pills and then suffocated, Uwe Wick, a prosecutor in the northern port city of Kiel said. Their 31-year-old mother, who has not been identified, is suspected of killing them, he said. "We have charged her with five counts of murder, but in an instance of complete lack of full mental capacities," Wick said, meaning she could not be held responsible for her actions. The woman has been committed to psychiatric care because she was considered a danger to society. The bodies of the boys, aged 3 to 9, were found Wednesday in their home in the tiny northern village of Darry after their mother went to a psychiatric clinic and told a doctor where to find them, Wick, said.

Elsewhere

China: The death toll in a gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China rose to 105 today after 26 more bodies were recovered, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

South Korea: The government said a Hong Kong-registered oil tanker has leaked 15,000 tons of crude oil after a collision off the country's west coast.

Vatican City: A long-missing Michelangelo sketch for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, possibly his last design before his death, has been discovered in the basilica's offices, the Vatican newspaper said Thursday.

[Last modified December 7, 2007, 00:32:38]