World in brief: Missile strike kills at least 6 suspects

A U.S. missile strike early Monday against terrorism suspects in a remote village of southern Somalia killed at least six people and wounded 10 others, witnesses and local leaders said.

The Tomahawk cruise missile was launched from a U.S. submarine off the coast of the African nation, U.S. officials said, but they declined to identify the target or provide other details.

It is the fourth U.S. military strike in Somalia since Ethiopian troops entered the Horn of Africa nation in December 2006 to help defeat Islamist militants who had seized Mogadishu and to restore power to a U.N.-recognized transitional government.

U.S. officials defended Monday’s attack.

“The United States is going to go after al-Qaida and al-Qaida- affiliated operatives wherever we find them,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon D. Johndroe said.

MEXICO CITY

Backyard yields two more bodies

Mexican investigators found two more bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, increasing the tally of corpses found there to 14, officials said on Monday.

Federal agents began digging in the yard of the house in the La Cuesta neighborhood in February, finding nine dismembered bodies. Five more, including two announced Monday, were discovered in the past week, the federal Attorney General’s office said in a news release.

Five of the 14 bodies had been buried about five years ago, the statement said.

The Attorney General’s Office did not say how the victims died or who is believed to have buried their remains, but it did note that 3,740 pounds of marijuana were found in the house during the initial raid.

Ciudad Juarez, a northern border city that is home to the Juarez cartel, has been plagued by violence as Mexico’s crackdown on powerful drug cartels stokes turf wars among traffickers who have been linked to hundreds of killings in the past two years.

KATMANDU, Nepal

U.N. helicopter crashes, killing 12

A United Nations helicopter crashed Monday while flying in bad weather in Nepal’s mountainous east, killing 12 people including at least seven U.N. staff, officials said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed “great sorrow” after learning of the crash.

The helicopter went down about 125 miles east of Katmandu as it was returning to the capital from a Maoist cantonment site in eastern Nepal’s mountainous region, U.N. officials said.

Modraj Dotel, an official with Nepal’s Home Ministry, said police rescuers have recovered 12 charred and unrecognizable bodies from the crash site. The U.N., however, has said there were only 10 people on board.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas in New York said there were four U.N. arms monitors on board – from South Korea, Indonesia, Gambia and Sweden – three U.N. staff members from Nepal, and a three-member Russian crew.