Nation & World Digest || Storm kills three, injures 71 at festival

Storm kills three, injures 71 at festival

HASSELT, Belgium

A storm swept through a popular open-air music festival in this town in eastern Belgium on Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 70 others, an official said.

Ambulances and police cars raced to and from the site of the Pukkelpop festival, near the town of Hasselt, 50 miles east of Brussels, late Thursday, their sirens blaring. Concertgoers described scenes of panic as the sky darkened, the winds whipped, rain poured, hailstones nearly half an inch across pelted the crowds, and concert structures buckled.

“It was frightening. It looked terrible. All the structures collapsed,” said Brinnie Gardner, 20, of Aukland, New Zealand, who is on a tour of Europe with a friend. “There was panic. It was crazy.”

Syria: US waging ‘diplomatic war’

UNITED NATIONS

Syria is accusing the U.S. of waging “a humanitarian and diplomatic war” against it by imposing sanctions and calling for President Bashar Assad to resign.

Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told reporters Thursday the only aim of the U.S. “war” is to instigate further violence in the country by sending “the wrong message to the terrorist-armed groups that they are under American and Western protection.”

Ja’afari insisted that Syria has halted military and police operations. Activists on Thursday, however, reported shooting in the flashpoint city of Latakia.

Ja’afari accused the U.S. and European countries of ignoring Syrian reforms and using the Security Council “to settle their old accounts with our country.”

Feds bust drug operation in Calif.

SAN DIEGO

Federal officials said Thursday they’ve busted a drug-trafficking ring involving Mexico’s most powerful cartel and members of an Iraqi immigrant community in the U.S. who were caught selling illegal drugs, assault rifles, grenades and homemade explosives.

About 60 people from the Iraqi community were arrested after a six-month investigation carried out by the Drug Enforcement Administration and police in the city of El Cajon, a working-class city east of San Diego.

Many of the suspects are Iraqi Chaldeans — Christians who fled their homeland amid threats from al-Qaida and other extremists. Police say at least some of those arrested are suspected of being affiliated with the Chaldean Organized Crime Syndicate, an Iraqi gang based in Detroit.

Libyans fearful as rebels eye Tripoli

ZINTAN, Libya

Families fleeing their homes to avoid a possible rebel assault on the Libyan capital described deteriorating living conditions in Tripoli: power outages lasting days, gun battles at night and a climate of fear in which no one dares to criticize the regime — even among friends.

With opposition fighters steadily gaining ground in the six-month-old civil war, there are signs that Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year-old rule may be unraveling. The rebels seized Libya’s last functioning oil refinery Thursday and claimed to have captured most of the nearby city of Zawiya, just 30 miles west of the capital along the Mediterranean coast.

A rebel victory in Zawiya could leave Gadhafi nearly cornered in his increasingly isolated stronghold of Tripoli. Rebel fighters now are closing in on the capital from the west and the south, while NATO controls the seas to the north. The opposition is in charge of most of the eastern half of the country.

Associated Press