World briefs 04/01/03

Landslide kills four in Bolivian mining villageLA PAZ, Bolivia -- A landslide roared through a gold-mining town in Bolivia's tropical lowlands early Monday, killing four people, injuring three others and burying dozens of homes.

Villagers of Chima spent the afternoon digging through a mountain of mud, rock and muck to reach survivors. Others waited hours for emergency crews to arrive from La Paz. There are no landing strips in the remote mountainous area.

It was still unclear how many people were affected by the avalanche in Chima.

Local officials said dozens of homes had been buried, but they backed off on initial reports that said 400 homes had been destroyed and many people were missing.

Suicide attack suspected on British Embassy in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran -- A pickup truck loaded with extra fuel crashed into the perimeter wall of the British Embassy on Monday night, exploding in flames in what one witness said appeared to be a suicide attack.

Police initially said the crash appeared to be an accident, in which the truck driver was killed but no one else hurt. But the city's security chief said the back of the vehicle was loaded with gallons of extra fuel.

The director of security in Tehran's governor's office, Ali Ta'ala, did not say whether the incident was an attack on the embassy. He identified the driver as a 35-year-old employee in the Energy Ministry.

The truck left the main road and went through openings in metal barriers on either side of a bus lane that passes in front of the embassy wall. It hit the wall, a yard away from the main gate, and exploded.

Rebels in Afghanistan step up attacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan rebels stepped up their guerrilla campaign against foreign troops in the country, hitting U.S. bases across the east with mortar and rocket fire, officials said Monday.

U.S. forces called in air support that smashed a cluster of suspected rebel vehicles and killed at least two attackers Sunday in the eastern border town of Shkin, U.S. Army spokesman Col. Roger King told reporters at Bagram Air Base.

In Kabul, Afghan security forces were searching houses and combing hills to the east of the city for rebels who fired a 122 mm rocket Sunday night into the headquarters of the 22-nation multinational force protecting the capital.

The rocket attack -- launched either from the back of a truck or from a shoulder-fired weapon -- was the most sophisticated strike yet on the 5,000-man International Security Assistance Force, said peacekeeping spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Lobbering of Germany.

Police seek warrant to arrest Milosevic's wife

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- Police sought an international arrest warrant Monday for Slobodan Milosevic's wife, alleging her involvement in the killing of a political rival, but she denounced the warrant from Russia as a political ploy.

Mirjana Markovic, believed to be hiding in Russia, wrote a letter denying she had any part in the 2000 slaying of Ivan Stambolic, whose body was found in a lime-covered grave in northern Serbia last week. Sunday, her daughter said Markovic would not heed an earlier request that she return for questioning.

-- From wire reports