Gunmen attack hospital in Pakistan

May 31, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

LAHORE, Pakistan

At least two gunmen disguised in police uniforms attacked a hospital in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore late Monday, killing eight people in a failed attempt to free a captured militant being treated there, officials said.

The gunmen managed to escape but left without securing the release of the militant, who was part of a group of gunmen who attacked a minority sect in Lahore on Friday and killed 93 people, said Rana Sanaullah, the law minister of Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital.

The gunmen stormed Jinnah Hospital in a hail of gunfire shortly before midnight Monday and briefly took several patients hostage, Sanaullah said.

Lahore has experienced a string of deadly attacks in the past year by militants who have declared war on both the government and minority groups in the country.

Al-Qaida leader in Algeria surrenders

ALGIERS, Algeria

Algeria’s Interior Ministry says a leader of al-Qaida’s North Africa offshoot has turned himself in to authorities. The ministry says Atmane Touati — alias Abu El Abbas — gave up after his wife “convinced her husband to abandon the criminal horde and come home.”

The 37-year-old allegedly took part in a long-running Islamic insurgency against the government in the 1990s and was seen as an ideological leader of the Algeria-based affiliate of al-Qaida.

The ministry said Monday that Touati on May 25 became one of four members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQMI, to turn himself in.

Man arrested after flight is diverted

MONTREAL

Canadian authorities identified Monday a man arrested on an Aeromexico flight from Paris to Mexico that was forced to divert to Montreal after U.S. authorities refused to let the plane use U.S. airspace.

Abdirahman Ali Gaall was arrested Sunday at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, said Robert Gervais, an Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada spokesman. He was taken off and arrested under an outstanding warrant.

The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed Monday the passenger was on a U.S. no-fly list.

Flower drop honors CIA casualties

NEW YORK

Historic aircraft have escorted a B-17 bomber as it dropped flowers over the Statue of Liberty in a public Memorial Day tribute to seven CIA employees killed in Afghanistan.

A World War II fighter trainer from the American Airpower Museum on Long Island escorted the bomber as it dropped flowers in New York Harbor on Monday afternoon.The tribute honors employees killed Dec. 30 by a suicide bomber at a CIA base in Afghanistan’s Khost province.

Report reduces chance of fuel swap

VIENNA

Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country’s developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is pursuing only civilian nuclear energy.

The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft of a fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Associated Press