Quake hits Indonesia isle

JAKARTA: An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale jolted the eastern Indonesian island of Alor, causing panic but no reported damage or casualties, meteorologists said on Monday. — AFP

10 charged with murder

DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh have charged 10 people, including a senior member of the country’s ruling party, over the killing of a former finance minister and four other opposition politicians in a grenade attack in Habiganj district on January 27, police said on Monday. — AFP

Woman executed

JAKARTA: An Indonesian woman has been executed after spending eight years in jail for a series of gruesome murders in which three women were killed and mutilated, state prosecutors said on Monday. A firing squad executed 49-year-old Astini on Sunday morning in the East Java capital of Surabaya, district prosecutor chief Antonius Darmawan said. — AFP

Blast accomplice charged

JAKARTA: Prosecutors on Monday charged an Indonesian man with allegedly helping transport explosives used in last year’s attack at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed 10 people. Chief prosecutor Jaya Sakti told the South Jakarta District Court that Agus Ahmad bin Engkos Kosasih had helped other militants to obtain and transport explosives and other material. — AP

17 bodies extricated

ISLAMABAD: Volunteers pulled out 17 bodies from the debris of a Hindu temple in Pakistan’s Balochistan province destroyed in fierce fighting between security forces and tribal fighters, reports said on Monday. More bodies were still under the temple debris in Dera Bugti town and efforts were on to take them out, Dawn quoted Mukhi Rano Mal, president of the Hindu panchayat of Kashmore in Sindh province, as saying. — HNS

China mine blast toll 63

BEIJING: Emergency crews in northern China on Monday pulled three more bodies from the site of a weekend coal mine explosion, bringing the death toll to 63 with six people still missing, the government said. The blast occurred on Saturday at the Xishui Colliery in Shuozhou, a city in Shanxi. — AP

4 suspected militants held

QUETTA: Police on Monday arrested four suspected Islamic militants after a bomb they were making exploded in the same region of southwestern Pakistan where a blast killed 46 people at a Shiite shrine over the weekend, an officer said. One of the four men was slightly injured in the accident at a residential compound which also shattered windows at a nearby mosque. — AP