Eight Palestinians killed in fighting in Gaza

April 12, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel struck hard into the Gaza Strip by land and air Friday, trading fire with gunmen in fighting that killed eight Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said.

The deaths drove the Palestinian death toll in Israeli raids to 16 since a militant attack killed two Israeli civilians at a border fuel depot Wednesday. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged to keep hitting Hamas so that it cannot “continue to operate against Israeli civilians as it does.”

Gaza residents said the ground fighting appeared to be easing by Friday evening, although there was still some Palestinian rockets, and Israeli helicopter fire that killed a Hamas fighter.

Severe weather damages houses in the South

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Another round of severe weather raked the storm-weary South with rain, hail and high winds Friday, damaging homes and injuring at least five people in Tennessee and Kentucky.

A mother and two children were hurt when strong thunderstorms moved through southern Kentucky in the early morning, knocking over their trailer near Bowling Green. Tara Duvall, a spokeswoman for Warren County Emergency Management, said all three were hospitalized.

“Apparently, the trailer rolled twice and fell apart,” Duvall said.

Charles Foster, who lives nearby, said he helped pull one of the children from the wreckage.

Rats bought as snake food overrun woman’s home

ROCHESTER, Wash. — A woman bought rats as food for her pet snakes but eventually came to think of them as “friends” and allowed them to breed and overrun her house, which will need to be razed, officials said Friday.

The rats have gnawed through wiring, walls, cupboards and drawers, “so there’s no lights or heat or sewage” disposal, County animal services director, said Friday.

Michelle Diller, 64, who had rebuffed agencies’ efforts to help her, agreed to move into an assisted living center to get her cat back, Beauregard said. The cat had been confiscated along with 11 caged animals — four severely malnourished snakes, five mice and two rats.

“I told her I would let her have her cat back if she agreed to move,” Beauregard told The Associated Press.

Road workers stop swerving school bus

ERIE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Two road workers jumped onto a moving school bus carrying 31 young pupils and steered it safely to a stop after the driver apparently suffered a medical problem.

Aaron Pierce and Ken Lambert were returning from their shift patching potholes Wednesday when they saw the Monroe Public Schools bus swerving at about 5 to 10 mph. Lambert, a volunteer firefighter, had heard over his emergency radio that the bus driver had gone into diabetic shock.

Pierce hoisted himself through a window to steer the bus to a stop.

“There was lots of screaming, lots of crying,” he told The Monroe Evening News. “One little girl asked me, ’Are we going to die?’ I had to hug her. She was crying her eyes out.”

Cuba legalizes private titles to government homes

HAVANA — Thousands of Cubans will be able to get titles to state-owned homes under regulations published Friday — a step that might lay the groundwork for broader housing reform.

The measure was the first legal decree formally published since Raul Castro succeeded his brother Fidel as president in February. It comes a day after state television said the government also will do away with wage limits, allowing state employees to earn as much as they can as an incentive to productivity.

Together, housing and wage restrictions have been among the things that bother Cubans the most about their socialist system.

Hostages freed

PARIS — Helicopter-borne French troops swooped in on Somali pirates Friday after they freed 30 hostages from a yacht, seizing six of the hijackers and recovering sacks of money — apparently ransom paid by the ship’s owners.

The pirates boarded the 288-foot French luxury yacht Le Ponant a week ago, capturing its crew — 22 of whom were French — off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates seized more than two dozen vessels off the Somali coast last year, mostly in hopes of securing ransoms.

Associated Press