Shorts (left)
Bomb kills 2 outsideschool in China
BEIJING — A homemade bomb outside a school in the southern city of Guilin on Monday killed at least two people and injured 17, many of them children, according to state news reports.
The two who died in the explosion were a man and a woman, according to the microblog of China Central Television, the main state television network. Of the injured, 10 were children who attended the school, which housed both elementary and secondary grades.
The man who died appeared to have been the bomber, the official news reports said. The bomb was in a three-wheel bicycle, which might have been electric or gas powered.
A photograph taken at the scene and posted online showed two people sitting in the street, their clothes mostly shredded and patches of skin missing from their bodies. A motorbike nearby was on fire, and metal and glass lay scattered across the street. Accounts posted on microblogs said the blast shattered windows as high as the seventh floor on nearby buildings.
Liu Yuping, deputy director of a local hospital, told China News Service that a 10-year-old boy’s leg had been severed by the blast.
The explosion, which occurred at 7:10 a.m., was certain to raise further questions among parents about security at schools. In 2010, a series of seemingly unrelated school attacks, some fatal, by people armed with knives and other household objects shocked parents across China.
—Edward Wong, The New York Times
Rebellion paralyzes southern Philippine city; at least eight dead
MANILA — Fighting between government forces and rebels who were left out of a recent peace agreement paralyzed a city of 800,000 in the southern Philippines on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more.
By late Monday, government troops had secured major government buildings in Zamboanga City, but several parts of the city were still occupied by about 300 armed rebels holding at least 20 hostages, a military spokesman said. Flights to the area were canceled.
The reported deaths included two rebel fighters, a Philippine navy sailor, a police officer, and four civilians.
The fighting started early Monday when several hundred armed members of the Moro National Liberation Front tried to enter the city by boat and were intercepted by the Philippine navy, said Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala, a military spokesman. The rebels, dressed in military uniforms, tried to march to the city hall to raise their group’s flag and declare independence from the national government, Zagala said.
—Floyd Whaley, The New York Times