Italy allows 27 kids to leave rescue ship
ROME -- Italy's hard-line interior minister agreed Saturday to let 27 unaccompanied minors leave a migrant rescue ship after two weeks at sea, temporarily easing a political standoff that has threatened the viability of the populist government.
In recent days, Premier Giuseppe Conte had written to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini demanding that minors be allowed off the boat. After initially refusing, Salvini wrote back Saturday with a three-page missive, saying he would do so but made clear it was Conte's choice and that it didn't set a precedent.
Spanish aid group Open Arms said the decision concerned 27 unaccompanied minors who were picked up off Libya earlier this month along with more than 100 other migrants. The minors were transferred Saturday to an Italian border patrol boat for disembarkation and processing on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. The fate of the other migrants still aboard the Open Arms off Lampedusa remained uncertain.
The standoff laid bare the split between Salvini's anti-migrant League and the 5-Star Movement, which together govern Italy. Open Arms had won a legal battle to enter Italy's territorial waters, and Conte had secured offers from Spain and five other European Union nations to take in the migrants. But the ship remained off the coast because of Salvini's policy prohibiting humanitarian aid groups from docking.
Syrian airstrikes said to kill mom, 6 kids
BEIRUT -- Government and Russian airstrikes pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold Saturday in Syria's northwest, killing at least seven members of one family, activists and a war monitor reported.
The intense airstrikes were coupled with fierce ground clashes as the government, backed by Russia, pushed ahead with a monthslong offensive seeking to chip away at territory on the periphery of the rebel enclave.
Idlib and surrounding areas are home to 3 million civilians and are dominated by Islamist insurgents.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a woman and her six children were killed in an airstrike that hit their home in the village of Deir al-Sharqi in southern Idlib. Their father survived because he was not home at the time of the airstrike.
The activist-operated Thiqa news agency also reported the casualties.
Syria's Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group also known as the White Helmets, said the village of Deir al-Sharqi was hit with four airstrikes that resulted in the deaths of the Hammoud family.
By early afternoon Saturday, the Civil Defense team had recorded 31 strikes, including 18 suspected Russian airstrikes.
Stabbing at German rail takes 2 lives
FRANKFURT, Germany -- German police say a man and a woman were fatally stabbed at a crowded train station in the town of Iserlohn in what was described as an "act of relationship violence." The incident was the third fatal attack at a German train station within a month.
The dpa news agency reported Saturday that police had arrested a 43-year-old man in the attack on the woman, 32, and another man, who was 23. The suspect surrendered to police at the scene without resisting.
Police said in a statement that investigators found no reason to consider the attack as anything other than a case of domestic violence.
The killings follow two other widely reported slayings at train stations in Germany. An 8-year-old boy died July 29 after being pushed in front of a train in Frankfurt; police say the suspect, a 40-year-old Eritrean residing in Switzerland, had been under psychiatric treatment. On July 20, a 34-year-old woman was pushed in front of a train in Voerde. She and the 28-year-old suspect weren't acquainted.
After the Frankfurt killing, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called for more police at train stations and more security cameras in public places.
India hospital fire forces evacuation
NEW DELHI -- Authorities evacuated dozens of patients and visitors after a fire broke out Saturday in a major government-run hospital in the Indian capital.
New Delhi fire official Vipin Kental said smoke enveloped three floors of the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences building, but there were no reports of any injuries or casualties.
It took firefighters about three hours to bring the blaze under control, with 34 fire engines used in the operation, fire officials said. But it later reignited and engulfed the fifth floor.
Kental said the cause of the blaze was not immediately known.
He also said 32 patients were evacuated to other blocks of the hospital after the smoke spread to an adjacent gastroenterology wing connected through a corridor. It created a panic among family members attending on them.
The New Delhi Television news channel said the fire occurred in a block of the hospital where there were no patients, with rooms allocated to doctors and research laboratories.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 08/18/2019