Police: Man who set himself ablaze on National Mall dies

Police: Man who set himself ablaze on National Mall dies

WASHINGTON

A man who set himself on fire on the National Mall in the U.S. capital has died of his injuries, which were so severe that authorities will have to use DNA and dental records to identify him, District of Columbia police said Saturday.

The man died Friday night at a Washington hospital where he had been airlifted, Officer Araz Alali, a police spokesman, said.

The man poured the contents of a red canister of gasoline on himself in the center portion of the mall Friday afternoon. He then set himself on fire, with passing joggers taking off their shirts to help put out the flames. Police had said he was conscious and breathing at the scene, but he was airlifted to MedStar Washington Hospital Center with life-threatening injuries.

Police are investigating the man’s possible motives.

String of attacks in Iraq kills at least 66

BAGHDAD

A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims passing through a mainly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, and another detonated his explosives inside a cafe north of the capital, the deadliest of several attacks across Iraq on Saturday that killed at least 66 people.

The killings, which also included attacks on journalists and anti-extremist Sunni fighters, are part of the deadliest surge in violence to hit Iraq in five years. The accelerating bloodshed is raising fears that the country is falling back into the spiral of violence that brought it to the edge of civil war in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the day’s violence. Al-Qaida’s Iraq arm often deploys suicide bombers and targets Shiite civilians in an effort to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government.

Louisiana coast readies for Tropical Storm Karen

NEW ORLEANS

Tropical Storm Karen stalled off the Louisiana coast Saturday night as a weakened system that still threatened to bring strong wind and heavy rain to vulnerable low-lying areas.

The National Weather Service said Saturday evening that the storm was stationary but still expected to move across or near the southeast Louisiana coast late Saturday or early today, then track eastward and lose strength. It had spent the day either stalled or moving slowly.

“We’re going to have 35 to 45 mph winds probably starting by tomorrow morning,” David Camardelle, mayor of the barrier island town of Grand Isle, said Saturday evening.

Associated Press