WORLD BRIEFS

AFGHANISTAN: 2 more killed at Bagram air base

A suicide bomber killed two civilians and wounded four others in an attack near a U.S. military base outside Kabul, police said, the latest violence linked to burning of Qurans there. Kabir Ahmad, chief of Bagram district of Parwan province, said a suicide attacker on foot blew himself up close to a vehicle in a small NATO convoy near Bagram Air Field, where U.S. forces burned Qurans and Islamic texts Feb. 20. The burnings, which the United States said were an unintentional mistake, triggered six days of violence that left nearly 40 people dead -- including six U.S. soldiers killed by Afghan security forces in apparent retaliation.

IRAQ: 25 police slain in raid by militants

Assailants waving the battle flag of al-Qaida gunned down 25 policemen Monday in a brazen challenge to control over a strategic town fraught with Iraq war symbolism. The attack replicated tactics used by Sunni insurgents during the war and appeared aimed at reasserting al-Qaida's grip, now that the Iraqis can no longer rely on American help. The attackers drove through the town of Haditha, claiming to be government officials, and methodically executed guards and commanders. Mohammed Owda al-Kubaisi, a relative of one of the slain policemen, spoke of his four children, "now orphans because their father was assassinated by the cold blood of insurgency while our government keeps watching and denouncing." Haditha is 65 miles from the border with Syria, where rebels fighting the regime are allegedly gaining recruits from Iraq. During the Iraq war the town of 85,000 was overrun and held by al-Qaida insurgents for months. It was also the home of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, as well as the scene of a U.S. massacre of civilians.

POLAND: Controller blamed in rail collision

A railroad traffic controller's error was probably a key factor in the head-on collision of two trains that killed 16 people and he will face criminal charges, a prosecutor said Monday. The controller made a mistake while setting the mechanisms routing the trains, sending one the wrong way down the track at high speed, prosecutor Tomasz Ozimek said. He said the man will be charged with unintentionally causing a railroad accident. More than 50 other people were injured in Poland's most deadly rail accident in 22 years. An American and a Russian were among the dead. The suspect hasn't been charged yet because he is in a state of shock and under doctors' care, Ozimek said.

IRAN: Review for American's death penalty

A semiofficial news agency reports that the country's Supreme Court has ordered the retrial of an ex-Marine who was sentenced to death for working for the CIA. The ISNA report Monday quotes the state prosecutor as saying the Supreme Court has found shortcomings in the case and sent it for review by another court. In January, Arizona-born Amir Hekmati was sentenced to death as a CIA spy.