16 killed in mishaps

QUETTA: At least 16 people were killed and 13 injured on Monday in two separate road accidents in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, police said. Twelve people died and 13 were injured when a mini bus collided head-on with a tractor-trolley near Khuzdar district. In another accident, four youths riding a motorbike were killed when it rammed into a jeep in Hub district, some 550 km south of provincial capital Quetta. — DPA

Civic official killed

PATNA: Four unidentified attackers on Monday set off a bomb in the office of an elected official in eastern India, killing him and wounding three local councilors, police said. The assailants fled on two motorcycles after the attack on Ashok Yadav, chairman of the Patna Water Board in the capital of Bihar state, said NH Khan, a superintendent of police. — AP

Buildings set on fire

JAKARTA: Thousands of demonstrators set fire to government buildings on Sumatra Island on Monday while protesting a local election they claim was marred by irregularities and fraud, police and witnesses said. More than 4,000 people took to the streets in Bintuhan, a town in Bengkulu province on the island’s eastern coast, some carrying long knives, wooden clubs, and stones. — AP

Mystery illness kills 17

BEIJING: A mystery disease that killed 17 farmers who handled sick pigs or sheep in China’s southwest is unrelated to bird flu or SARS and is probably caused by bacteria carried by pigs, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. — AP

Official may face jail

JAKARTA: A top Indonesian election official went on trial on Monday for a multi-million-dollar corruption scandal surrounding landmark polls that installed anti-graft President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Election commission treasurer Hamdani Amin was charged with two counts of criminal corruption before a new graft tribunal set up specifically to tackle Indonesia’s endemic culture of kickbacks, collusion and bribery. — AFP

Three Maoists killed

HYDERABAD: Police in Andhra Pradesh on Monday killed three Maoist guerrillas, including two women, in a shootout in Samasthan Narayanpur in Nalgonda district.— HNS

Nine killed in accident

JAKARTA: At least nine people were killed and 23 others were injured wh-en a train rammed into a passenger bus in Indonesia’s North Sumatra pr-ovince, reports said on Monday. — DPA