In brief: Ecuador declares emergency as volcano activity increases
QUITO, Ecuador – President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency Saturday over increasing activity in the Cotopaxi volcano near the capital of Quito, and officials evacuated a few hundred people as a precaution.
The decree gives authorities more flexibility in using government funds to deal with any problems.
Eruptions beginning Friday have shot ash more than 2 miles into the sky, spreading fine, gray powder over roads, homes and cars in the region as far as the capital 30 miles to the north.
Presidential legal secretary Alexis Mera said further ash explosions and some pyroclastic flows on the volcano’s western slopes Saturday led officials to evacuate some nearby villages.
Cotopaxi is considered one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes because of a glacial cover that makes it prone to fast-moving volcanic rock and mud flows, known as lahares. It last had a major eruption in 1877.
Police say bombings kill 22 in Baghdad
BAGHDAD – A car bomb at a popular auto dealership Saturday killed 13 people and injured 52 in eastern Baghdad’s volatile Sadr City neighborhood, where a market bombing two days earlier killed dozens, police said.
The Habibiya car dealership, known for buying and selling used vehicles, has been targeted multiple times in the past. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombing in a communique distributed via affiliated Twitter accounts, saying the vehicle targeted a large gathering of the Iraqi army, federal police and government-backed Popular Mobilization Forces.
Elsewhere in and around the capital, a series of bombings killed at least nine people and wounded 33.
The largest took place in the town of Madain, just south of Baghdad, when a bomb tore through a popular market killing three people and wounding 10, police said.
A massive explosion in a Sadr City market Thursday killed at least 67 people and wounded more than 100. The bombing, claimed by IS, was one of the worst single-day attacks in Baghdad in a decade.
18 passengers dead after truck crashes
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A truck crowded with vendors heading to a market lost control and tipped over in Haiti’s northern region Saturday, killing 18 people and injuring 28, authorities said.
The accident occurred when the truck swerved to avoid a motorcycle and turned over near the coastal city of Cap-Haitien, said Jean-Henri Petit, a coordinator for the Civil Protection Agency.
He said the truck also was carrying loads of charcoal and wood the passengers had planned to sell at a nearby market.
Petit said the 28 injured were all hospitalized, but no details were available on their conditions.
5 die when copter plunges into sea
MOSCOW – Russian investigators say a helicopter crashed into the Sea of Okhotsk in the far east, and five of the 16 people on board were missing and presumed dead.
The pilot reported by satellite phone that he and 10 others made it to a tourist base on the Tugur Peninsula, the Interfax news agency said, citing the emergency services.
Investigators said the Mi-8 helicopter took off Saturday from the Polina Osipenko village in the Khabarovsk region and was scheduled to land near a lake on the Tugur Peninsula, but crashed into the sea. The cause of the crash was not yet known.
The state news agency Tass said the helicopter was transporting a group of top managers from a Russian company on a trip to the rugged Shantar Islands.