International briefs

Karachi blast kills 8

KARACHI: A blast flattened a house being used by militants in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi on Friday, with eight people killed when explosives apparently detonated accidentally. Guns, grenades and suicide vests were recovered from the house in a poor Karachi neighbourhood, which officials said was a den for Islamist insurgents waging an escalating campaign of violence across the nuclear-armed nation. Fayyaz Khan, a senior police official in southern Karachi, said, “We have pulled out all the eight bodies from the rubble and shifted them to hospital for the autopsies.” Abdul Majeed Dasti, said grenades, a Kalashnikov rifle and suicide vests were found at the scene, while city police chief Waseem Ahmad said the explosives appeared to have been detonated unintentionally. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters the people living in the house were from Swat, a northwestern district where the military launched an operation last year to quash a two-year uprising by Taliban fighters.

Death for Myanmans

YANGON: A court in Myanmar has sentenced two officials to death for leaking confidential information, sources said on Friday, in a case reportedly involving secret trips by junta leaders to North Korea and Russia. The men were arrested last year after details and photos were passed to exiled media about the visits by senior regime officials and about military tunnels built in Myanmar by nuclear-armed North Korea, reports said. A third man was jailed for 15 years, official sources said. The two condemned men were retired army major Win Naing Kyaw and foreign ministry official Thura Kyaw, while the jailed man was Pyan Sein, also a foreign ministry employee, the sources said. Details about possible links between North Korea and military-ruled Myanmar prompted the United States to express concerns about regional security, even as Washington pursued a new policy of engagement with the junta.