World briefs

IRAQAttacks on Kurds kill 19

A double bombing at a Kurdish party office killed 19 people yesterday, police officials said. A suicide bomber set off his explosive vest in the morning at the gate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan office in Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad in ethnically mixed Diyala province. Minutes later, a car bomb exploded near the building as security forces arrived to inspect the first blast. Police put the death toll at 19 killed and 65 wounded. A senior police officer and four bodyguards were killed.

IRELANDProbe urged of baby burials

Ireland should investigate the Catholic Church's mistreatment and burial of babies who died decades ago in nun-operated homes for unmarried mothers, the archbishop of Dublin declared yesterday as the country confronted another shameful chapter of its history of child abuse. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin made his appeal following revelations that hundreds of children who died in a former church-run residence for infants were buried in unmarked graves at a site in western Ireland. Martin said the probe should have no church involvement, be led by a judge and examine the treatment of children in "mother and baby homes" for unwed mothers and their newborns. These mostly operated in Ireland from the 1920s to 1960s. Typically, the women's families and wider society had shamed and rejected them because of their pregnancies. Babies born in the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.

SPAINBasques form human chain

Tens of thousands of people joined hands yesterday to form a human chain 76 miles long in support of greater independence for the Basque region. The chain was a continuous line along a road linking the northern cities of Durango and Pamplona. Last September, more than 1 million people supported Catalan independence by forming a 250-mile human chain across that northeastern region, which also harbors a secessionist movement.