WORLD IN BRIEF
Thursday, November 2, 2006; Page A14
Rebels in Colombia Attack Police Post
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Hundreds of leftist rebels bombarded a remote police station with mortar fire in a pre-dawn attack Wednesday and ambushed a column of police reinforcements, killing at least 16 officers, authorities said.
The six-hour assault in the village of Tierradentro, 230 miles northwest of Bogota, was the bloodiest since President Álvaro Uribe was reelected in May in a landslide that endorsed his get-tough policy with the rebels.
Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. At least 10 police officers were missing and four civilians were wounded, said the top security official for Cordoba state, where the attack occurred.
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EUROPE
· BERLIN -- The Mozart opera production canceled over security concerns because of a scene depicting the severed head of the prophet Muhammad will be staged Dec. 18 and Dec. 29, the Deutsche Oper said.
· AMSTERDAM -- U.N. officials removed the leader of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, from court in The Hague after he disrupted a hearing on how to proceed with his trial by refusing to cooperate with defense lawyers.
ASIA
· KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, wounding two soldiers, and a NATO airstrike killed three suspected insurgents in the east.
THE MIDDLE EAST
· Bird flu killed a woman in Egypt, pushing the number of fatalities worldwide this year to 74, as many as reported in the previous two years combined.
· ANKARA, Turkey -- A court acquitted a 92-year-old archaeologist for saying in a book that Islamic-style head scarves were first worn more than 5,000 years ago by priestesses initiating young men into sex.
-- From News Services
