Five dead in explosion

MANILA: Suspected Muslim guerrillas detonated a bomb near a Roman Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines on Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 46. Pope Benedict XVI condemned the attack. The bomb exploded outside the Immaculate Conception cathedral in Cotabato city as churchgoers were attending Mass. Two people were killed instantly in the attack and three others, including a militiaman, later died in hospitals, military officials said. Among the wounded were six soldiers and militiamen who were in an army van that passed by the cathedral when the device, fashioned from a mortar round, exploded, Cotabato city Mayor Muslimin Sema said. — AP

Iran frees detainees

TEHRAN: Iran’s chief of police said on Sunday that authorities had released most of the people detained in the post-election violence which rocked Tehran. Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said of the 1,032 people arrested, “two-thirds have been freed”, the official IRNA news agency reported. “Most of the detainees have been or are being either released on bail or simply freed,” he said. Tehran was the scene of deadly unrest after official results from the June 12 presidential election gave hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second four-year term. — AP

Flood causes havoc

ASSAM: One person died and 400,000 have been displaced in a northeastern Indian state where a rain-swollen river burst its banks four days ago swamping hundreds of villages, an official said on Sunday. “One tribal villager drowned and thousands have been rendered homeless in the flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain,” Assam’s state minister for rehabilitation, Bhumidar Barman, told AFP. The official said that around 50,000 more people were still marooned in some of the worst-hit districts, adding paramilitary forces would soon bring them to safety. — AFP

Clue to Yemenia crash

PARIS: The French agency investigating last week’s crash of a Yemenia Airways flight to the Comoros says a submarine taking part in the search has picked up signals from the aircraft’s two black boxes. The accident investigating agency BEA said the

signals were picked up Sunday morning during a submarine search for

the black boxes, which are critical to understanding the cause of Tuesday’s crash off the Comoros coast.

BEA’s one-line statement gave no indication of when the flight data record and the cockpit voice recorder in the black boxes might be recovered. — AP