World briefs 02/03/03

Venezuela's opposition begins petition drive

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared victory Sunday after his opponents eased a 2-month-old national strike, but hundreds of thousands of voters still signed petitions seeking his ouster.

"Today is a victorious day," the president said in his weekly television and radio program. "We have beaten once and for all a new destabilizing attempt, a new malevolent and criminal attempt to sink Venezuela."

Venezuela's opposition called the strike Dec. 2 to demand a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's presidency -- then upped the ante to demand Chavez's ouster.

Organizers delivered 2 million voter signatures in November to demand the referendum. But the Supreme Court indefinitely postponed it, citing a technicality.

Forty killed in Chinese new year celebrations

BEIJING -- Chain-reaction explosions at a fireworks street market killed seven people and injured 21 in the south, as Chinese across the country began celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Also Sunday, a fire at a hotel in northeastern China killed 33 people and injured 10, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The fireworks accident happened in the southern province of Guangdong around noon on Saturday, the start of the 15-day New Year, or Spring Festival, China's biggest holiday.

An explosion at one stall in the town of Taiping triggered blasts at two or three other stalls, a local official was quoted as telling the official Xinhua News Agency. He gave only his surname, Chen.

Fireworks are a main part of New Year festivities and cause an unknown number of deaths and injuries every year, despite repeated safety crackdowns.

The hotel fire occured Sunday in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province near China's border with the Russian Far East. The one-sentence Xinhua dispatch did not name the hotel or give any other details.

Death toll reaches 46 in Zimbabwe train crash

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The death toll in the head-on collision between a packed passenger train and a freight train in northwestern Zimbabwe rose to 46, police said Sunday.

A railway worker who might have given a wrong signal was arrested and tested for alcohol, media reports said.

Rudo Muchemenyi of the western Matabeleand province police department told state television four more bodies were retrieved from the wreckage Sunday.

Police had reported 42 people killed in the crash Saturday and 64 injured, many seriously. All the dead were found in the charred wreckage that was gutted by fire.

Only 11 of the dead have been positively identified, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. said in its nightly news report.

The transport ministry blamed the crash on human error.

Top police official killed by mine blast in Chechnya

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- A top police official was killed by a mine blast in the Chechen capital Grozny, as Russian forces clashed with rebels throughout the republic, an official said Sunday.

Vissit Erzhnukayev, the police chief of Grozny's Oktyabrsky district, was killed Saturday when his car exploded after hitting a mine, an official with the Moscow-backed administration said.

Chechen rebels have repeatedly targeted officials of the Kremlin-backed administration in Chechnya for killings and kidnappings, calling them traitors to the separatist cause.

The attacks on Chechen officials and Russian soldiers claim daily casualties and have raised questions about Russia's claims that order is being restored to the war-ravaged republic.

-- From wire reports