Syrian Army, Hezbollah Attack Rebels In Border Town 32 killed!

        

Syrian troops supported by Hezbollah militants launched an offensive to retake a major town near Lebanon from rebels on Sunday (May 19), the heaviest fighting yet involving the Lebanese armed group, opposition activists said.

Natural Gas Tanker Explodes In Mexico City Suburb; 22 Dead, Dozens Wounded

MEXICO CITY -- A natural gas tanker truck lost control, hit a center divider and exploded on a highway lined by homes in the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec early Tuesday, killing at least 22 people and injuring nearly three dozen, authorities said.

Officials at the Citizen Safety Department of Mexico State, which surrounds the capital, did not rule out the possibility the death toll could rise. At least a dozen people remained hospitalized late Tuesday, several of them in critical condition.

Gov. Eruviel Avila said late Tuesday that 22 people were known dead in a letter to Pope Francis, with whom he was supposed to meet at the Vatican on Wednesday. Avila said he was returning to Mexico instead.

The state safety department's spokesman, Cesar Diaz, said emergency workers would continue searching through the night in the charred remains of vehicles and homes built near the highway on the northern edge of the metropolis.

Residents pitched in to rescue people from the wreckage of the 5:30 a.m. explosion, crushed and burned cars and shattered homes. Television footage showed plumes of flame shooting out of homes in the pre-dawn darkness.

A huge piece of the truck's gas tank was blown 50 yards by the blast, landing atop the wall of a house and cars parked outside. A number of pigs, goats and other farm animals that were kept on patios were killed.

"It was thunderous sound. I thought we were all going to die," said Rita Enriquez, 42, a housewife who lives nearby. "When we ran out, we saw a car on fire and flames everywhere. Smoke was pouring all over the freeway."

Mario Lopez, 43, a mechanic, lives in the house hit by the tank and managed to escape with his three sons after being awakened by the blast.

"All the windows broke to the inside. We got down and left crawling," said Lopez, who lost a brother, a sister, three nephews and a sister-in-law who all lived in separate units of the three-story home. He said 12 people in all died in the house. "Everything was in flames," he said.

Her 15-year-old niece, Wendy Garrido, who was pregnant, was forced to give birth after the explosion, she said. They survived but both were in intensive care, Health Secretary Cesar Gomez said.Enriquez said five of her relatives were gravely injured in their concrete slab home along the road, though she had no other details as she waited for word outside Magdalena Las Salinas Hospital in Mexico City.

The pre-dawn disaster exposed two recurrent public safety issues in Mexico: extremely heavy trucks that are frequently involved in serious accidents, and the construction of improvised homes just feet away from major highways.

Some of the cinderblock homes hit by the huge explosion were just steps from the busy, eight-lane highway. Other homes were mere shacks, built of sheet tin.

Lopez said the highway recently had been widened, bringing traffic perilously closer to their dwellings.

"They never thought a car could hit them or an explosion of this magnitude," said Maribel Juarez, the cousin of another family killed in the explosion. "Now we have to bury their coffins and our family members are never going to return."

The driver, Juan Olivares, 36, was heading south from the city of Pachuca to Mexico City in a tractor that was hauling two gas tanks on tandem trailers, said Jose Luis Cervantes, an assistant state prosecutor. He said the vehicle belonged to the Termogas company.

Cervantes said the tractor hit a center divider and broke apart, with one tank flying into a house and exploding, killing 15 people, and another part of a tank hitting a separate house, killing four.

State security officials counted 33 people with various injuries.

The driver, who was under detention while being treated at a hospital, could face manslaughter and property damage charges, the prosecutor said.

"We just pulled burned people, and put out the fire in the houses, but we don't really know what happened," said Rogelio Martinez, a resident.

Emergency personnel at the scene pulled dead from their homes, some apparently burned in their beds. An Associated Press journalist saw rescue workers carry three bodies, covered with white sheets, from one home.

One small passenger van had been totally gutted by flames and tossed against the wall of one of the many improvised houses next to the highway.

Hundreds of police, ambulance drivers, paramedics, soldiers and firefighters gathered at the scene.

Pablo Bedolla, the mayor of Ecatepec, a mainly working-class area, said 20 homes and one school had been damaged by the blast. The explosion happened before class hours, so there were no apparent injuries in the school.

"People are very shaken, above all because of the injuries and the large number of dead," Bedolla said. "I've spoken with the families of the victims, and they are just sobbing."

The explosion closed the highway between Mexico City and Pachuca for hours.

Speaking in Mexico City, President Enrique Pena Nieto suggested something would have to be done to separate major highways from poor neighborhoods.

"I have instructed the Transportation Department ... to review the safety conditions on this federal highway in places where structures have been built on the right of way, so that in the near future, work can be carried out to make it safer," Pena Nieto said.

Often in Mexico, squatters settle on rights of way, the strips of land on either side of a highway or railway line that are intended to be buffer zones. The gradual spread of shacks creates neighborhoods that are inherently unsafe.

This highway, however, was recently expanded, so it was unclear whether the land occupied by homes was legally settled.

The Mexican government also appears to have realized it has a big problem with over-weight trucks. Such trucks, often unsafely operated, have been involved in a number of spectacular, deadly accidents in recent years.

On Tuesday, the Transportation Department announced it had set up a panel of experts to study the issue of maximum allowable weights, "to set out opinions on eventually changing the weight standards, or drawing up a new set of rules."

One year ago, the Mexican government announced measures to tighten inspections and lower maximum allowed weights for some freight trucks after protests over a string of deadly accidents involving double-trailer trucks like the one involved in Tuesday' disaster.

Mexico has allowed trucks to travel highways with loads of up to 80 metric tons and lengths exceeding 100 feet, compared to a U.S. limit of 80,000 pounds, or 40 tons, on interstate highways.

In April 2012, a double-trailer truck on a two-lane road in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz lost its rear trailer, which slammed into a bus carrying farm workers, killing 43 people.

North Korea Missiles Moved Away From Launch Site, Say U.S. Officials

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - North Korea has taken two Musudan missiles off launch-ready status and moved them from their position on the country's east coast, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, after weeks of concern that Pyongyang had been poised for a test-launch.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea last month that it would be a "huge mistake" to launch the medium-range missiles, but the prospects of a test had put Seoul, Washington and Toyko on edge.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the missiles were still mobile and the fact that they had been moved was no guarantee they would not be set up elsewhere and fired at some point.

"It is premature to celebrate it as good news," said another U.S. official, Daniel Russel, the senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

However, a third U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States did not believe the missiles had gone to an alternate launch site and that they were now believed to be in a non-operational location.

The Musudan missiles have a range of roughly 3,000 to 3,500 kilometers (1,900 to 2,200 miles). A possible test launch, depending its trajectory, could have dramatically escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea's move coincided with preparations by President Barack Obama to meet South Korean President Park Guen-hye at the White House on Tuesday, where they will hold talks and have a working lunch followed by a joint news conference.

Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the status of the North Korean missiles.

"I wouldn't again comment on intelligence. But what we have seen recently is a 'provocation pause.' And we think that's obviously beneficial to efforts to ensure we have peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," Little told reporters.

The heightened tensions, including North Korean threats to attack U.S. bases in the Pacific, coincided with U.S.-South Korean military drills that Pyongyang had branded "a rehearsal for invasion." Those drills ended on April 30.

In a rare show of force during the drills, two nuclear-capable, bat-winged B-2 stealth bombers flew 37 1/2 hours from their U.S. base to drop dummy munitions on a South Korean range, and then returned home.

Asked what may have contributed to Pyonyang's latest move, Little noted various possibilities, including the fact that, North Korea's previous cycles of provocation had ended after a while.

He also noted that the Chinese government had made some helpful statements.

"We do think they (China) probably - again I can't speak for them - they probably heard very loudly from us and from others the need to ratchet it back and lower the temperature," Little said.

The White House's Russel told reporters it was too early to determine whether North Korea's apparent move away from a launch was an encouraging development.

"It's premature to make a judgment about whether the North Koreans' provocation cycle is going up, down or zigzagging," he said. "The decision to launch or not launch missiles, to conduct a provocation or to stand down or defer it, is a decision that rests with the North Koreans."

North Korea Won't Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Pyongyang Says

SEOUL, April 20 (Reuters) - North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it would not give up its nuclear weapons, rejecting a U.S. condition for talks although it said it was willing to discuss disarmament.

North Korea, in a sign of a possible end to weeks of heightened hostility on the Korean peninsula, offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

But the United States said it was awaiting "clear signals" that North Korea would halt its nuclear weapons activities.

"The U.S. should not think about the denuclearisation on the peninsula before the world is denuclearised," the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.

"There may be talks between the DPRK and the U.S. for disarmament but no talks on denuclearisation," it said. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

North Korea signed a denuclearisation-for-aid deal in 2005 but later backed out of that pact. It now says its nuclear arms are a "treasured sword" that it will never give up.

It conducted its third nuclear test in February.

The test triggered new U.N. sanctions which in turn led to a dramatic intensification of North Korea's threats of nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited China, South Korea and Japan this month for talks on North Korea and stressed his interest in a diplomatic solution to the tension on the peninsula.

He later told a U.S. Senate hearing that North Korea's list of conditions was "at least a beginning gambit", but added that it was "not acceptable, obviously, and we have to go further".

The Rodong Sinmun said U.S. talk of dialogue was "nothing but rhetoric".

North Korea has a long record of making threats to secure concessions from the United States and South Korea, only to repeat the process later. Both the United States and the South have said in recent days that the cycle must cease. (Reporting by Robert Birsel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)