7 basketball team players, 1 other killed in collision

7 basketball team players,
1 other killed in collision

BATHURST, New Brunswick — A van carrying a Canadian high school boys’ basketball team collided with a truck Saturday, killing seven students and the coach’s wife on their way home from a game.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Derek Strong said the seven players — between the ages of 15 and 18 — were pronounced dead at the crash site after their van crossed the center line and hit the tractor-trailer shortly after midnight.

The accident occurred on Highway 11 as the team was making a three-hour return trip from Moncton in Canada’s far eastern New Brunswick province after a storm dumped snow, sleet and freezing rain on much of the province.

The nine senior varsity players — accompanied by their coach, his wife and their daughter — were minutes from reuniting with their families when the team’s coach lost control of the van.

Strong said most of the victims were ejected from the vehicle.

Candidates go to Michigan

YPSILANTI, Mich. — Mitt Romney and John McCain argued about their concern for the auto industry, while Mike Huckabee spotlighted his opposition to abortion, as the Republican presidential contenders campaigned Saturday before Michigan’s potentially make-or-break primary.

Romney, seeking a rebound in Tuesday’s primary after losing to Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses and McCain in the New Hampshire primary, made an impromptu stop at a General Motors plant near here after 200 layoffs were announced last week.

He pledged to make restoring the domestic auto industry — once the linchpin of Michigan’s economy — a top priority if elected president.

Romney’s criticism of Washington was a none-too-subtle shot at McCain, an Arizona senator who has said that some of Michigan’s lost jobs are gone forever. A Detroit News poll being released Sunday showed the race a statistical dead heat, with McCain at 27 percent and Romney at 26 percent. Huckabee was third with 19 percent.

American school looted

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — Gunmen smashed windows, burned buses and looted computers belonging to a private American school in Gaza Saturday, an attack officials believed was linked to President Bush’s visit to the West Bank earlier this week.

A previously unknown group claiming affiliation with al-Qaida left leaflets around the school that were signed “Army of Believers, the al-Qaida Branch on the Land of Palestine.”

The group didn’t specifically claim responsibility for the attack, but vowed to target “dens of vice and corruption,” naming a number of restaurants in Gaza City.

There is no evidence that al-Qaida has been operating in Gaza, but many Islamic extremists in the area have adopted the group’s language and style recently. Hamas — which won control of Gaza after defeating Abbas’ Fatah movement in June — denies charges by Israel and Abbas that al-Qaida operates quietly from the coastal territory.

2 Dutch soldiers killed

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Two Dutch soldiers were killed in a clash with militants in Afghanistan, the Netherlands’ Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

A 20-year old private and a 22-year old corporal died during a firefight with “opposing militant forces” on Saturday at around 9 p.m. local time, the ministry said.

Two Afghan soldiers were killed in fighting later the same evening, the ministry said.

Around 1,650 Dutch are serving in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan as part of the NATO mission there. Since their mission began last year, 14 Dutch troops have died.

The firefight took place around 3 miles northwest of Camp Hadrian, near the southern town of Deh Rawod, said Gen. Dick Berlijn, commander of Dutch forces in Afghanistan.

Man captured in Ky.

MUSES MILLS, Ky. — A man suspected of killing two people and wounding a third, then holding the mother of his children hostage overnight in the woods, was captured early Saturday, Kentucky State Police said.

The hostage, 27-year-old Bonnie Butler, was found uninjured, troopers said. One of those killed in the Friday night shooting was described as the father of her unborn child. Roy Pollard Jr., 35, was arrested about three miles from the scene of the shootings at a house in a remote area of Fleming County in eastern Kentucky, Trooper Ralph Lockard said.

Butler was found about an hour before Pollard’s arrest when she went to a farm and called police, Lockard said.

Associated Press