WORLD BRIEFS

PAKISTAN: Provincial regime dismissed

Pakistani leaders dismissed the government of southwest Baluchistan province early Monday in response to the demands of protesters angry about an attack on minority Shia Muslims there that killed 86 people. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed 14 Pakistani soldiers. Thousands of Shia have blocked a main road in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta for three days with coffins of relatives killed in the twin bombing of a billiards hall Thursday. They demanded the provincial government be dismissed and that the army take over responsibility for the city.

AFGHANISTAN: Blast kills seven mourners

An explosion in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province, west of Kabul, killed seven civilians Sunday as they tried to pull bodies from the rubble of a mosque after a night raid by Afghan and NATO special forces, Afghan officials said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast. Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said Taliban militants fired on the joint force from inside the mosque in Hasan Khail after an insurgent was detained elsewhere. During the exchange, he said, explosive vests worn by the militants detonated, killing four of them. The later explosion that killed the villagers, including a woman, came 90 minutes after the operation ended, he said. The NATO command confirmed four insurgents died, but by small-arms fire.

MALI: French bomb city in north

French fighter jets bombed rebel targets in a major city in the north Sunday, pounding the airport as well as training camps, warehouses and buildings used by the al-Qaida-linked Islamists controlling the area, officials and residents said. Now in its third day, the French-led effort to take back Mali's north from the extremists began with airstrikes by combat helicopters in the small town of Konna. It has grown to a coordinated attack by state-of-the-art fighter jets which have bombarded at least five towns, of which Gao, which was attacked Sunday afternoon, is the largest.