QUOTE OF THE DAY “Fascists and imperialists are trying to conquer us by killing and injuring civilians.” Vyacheslav Ponomarev, self-proclaimed mayor of Slovyansk in eastern Ukraine, asking Russia to send in peacekeeping troops Article, 1AAttacks in Iraq leave at least 18 dead
BAGHDAD - A series of attacks, including a coordinated assault on a private Shiite college in Baghdad, killed at least 18 people and wounded nearly 50 in Iraq on Sunday, officials said.
Sunday’s deadliest attack took place outside the southern city of Samawah, where two car bombs exploded simultaneously in a commercial area, killing seven civilians and wounding 17, police said.
The assault on the college happened in Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Ur. A suicide bomber with an explosives belt attacked the main gate of the college as three militants attacked the back gate, police said. The militants killed four policemen and one teacher and wounded another 18 people. Security forces killed all of the attackers.
In a third attack, a car bomb in a commercial area in the town of Iskandariyah south of Baghdad killed three civilians and wounded 12 others, police said. Later that night, police said a bomb exploded in the village of al-Rashed, killing three people and wounding six.
Everest climbing halted; search ongoing
KATMANDU, Nepal - Nepal’s authorities temporarily halted climbing on Mount Everest while search teams dug through snow and ice Sunday for three Sherpa guides missing in the deadliest avalanche on the world’s highest peak that killed 13 others.
A section of the route over the dreaded Khumbu Icefall, a climbing pass where the avalanche swept over a group of guides early Friday, has collapsed. A new trail has to be dug, ropes fixed and aluminum ladders laid over the crevasses before climbing can resume, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Other Sherpas, who had already passed before the avalanche struck, were stranded on the other side and will be able to get back once the route is fixed, Tshering said.
Despite losing so many guides, there were no plans by expedition teams to abandon their attempts to climb the peak next month, he said.
Insurgents kill several soldiers in Algeria
ALGIERS, Algeria - Islamist insurgents ambushed an Algerian military convoy in a mountainous region, killing 11 soldiers and wounding five others, the Defense Ministry said Sunday.
But five other deaths from injuries reported by a hospital official could raise the toll to 16 in the attack that came two days after Algeria’s presidential election.
The attack near the village of Iboudraren began Saturday night as an army detachment returned to its base in Tizi Ouzou, capital of the mountainous Kabylie region east of Algiers, according to a ministry statement carried by the official APS news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suspicion falls on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, whose fighters are holed up in the Kabylie region, some 60 miles from the capital.
A local official said a large group of insurgents hid on both sides of the road and opened fire with automatic weapons as the military bus drove by. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Security forces surrounded the zone, killing three extremists, the ministry said.
Two poised to run for Egyptian president
CAIRO - Egypt’s election commission said Sunday that only two presidential hopefuls, one of them the powerful former military chief who nine months ago ousted the country’s first democratically elected leader, have submitted their papers to run in next month’s polls.
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the military’s ouster of Mohammed Morsi, is riding a wave of popular support and is the clear front-runner in this year’s vote. Since Morsi’s ouster, el-Sissi’s picture is plastered in posters around the country, and he has been hailed in state and private media as a national savior.
El-Sissi’s only rival is Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist politician who came in third in the 2012 elections after receiving about 5 million votes and largely appealing to Egypt’s secular youth and working class.
On Sunday, gunmen killed a police captain and a conscript in a firefight on a desert road outside Cairo, the Interior Ministry said, in the second such attack in three days to target Egypt’s security services.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/21/2014