SNIPPETS

17 miners trapped

BEIJING: Seventeen workers were trapped in a flooded mine in China’s Hunan provin-ce as rescuers rushed to the scene to try to save them, an official said on Saturday. The Guida Coal Mine in Heye township was flooded on Friday evening after heavy rains, Xinhua reported. An official at the Hunan Provincial Coal Mine Safety Bureau surnamed Ye said there he did not know if any of the trapped workers were still alive. — AFP

Blasts kill four Afghans

KABUL: Four Afghans including two children were killed and five others were injured in two separate bomb attacks in Afghanist-an, an official said on Saturday. A roadside bomb exploded on Friday in Kandahar killing two children, said interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal. A separate explosion on Friday blew up a tractor trolley in Mazar-i-Sharif, leaving two dead and five wounded, Mashal said. — AFP

US fugitive nabbed

BANGKOK: An American fugitive wanted by the FBI for scamming Internet investors out of millions of dollars has been captured in Thailand, police said on Saturday. Eugene Carriere, 55, was arrested on Thursday at his residence in Pattaya about a year after he entered the kingdom on a fake passport, police said. According to the FBI website, Carriere and an associate were wanted for operating a telemarketing scheme in California which defrauded website investors out of over $11 million in 1999. — AFP

Five hurt in Thai mishap

BANGKOK: Five workers in the Thai capital’s mass transit Skytrain were hospitalised on Saturday when two maintenance vehicles crashed into each other after operating hours, a Bangkok Transit System (BTS) official said. The accident occurred 16 minutes after the elevated rail network’s midnight closure when a maintenance car on routine nightly service failed to stop at one station as scheduled, a BTS spokeswoman said. — AFP

Six killed by ‘Taliban’

KANDAHAR: Suspected Taliban gunmen ambushed a convoy of civilian trucks carrying vehicles to the US military in southern Afghanistan, killing three of the drivers, an official said on Saturday. Separately, dozens of Taliban fighters attacked the office of a district chief in southern Afghanistan, killing three Afghan soldiers, an official said. He said they believe the soldiers also killed about nine rebels. — AP