The Red Cross says that of the 39 killed in a clash between government forces and the Yan Kala-Kato Islamic sect in the Nigerian state of Bauchi, some 60% were children.
A UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official protested Thailand’s move to forcibly repatriate some 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to Laos. Some 400 have been removed so far.
In a fourth day of protests during the Ashura holy period in Iran, police fired teargas to disperse demonstrators. The death toll in the past 48 hours stands at at least eight.
Bomb attacks targeted Shi’ite worshippers in Kirkuk and Christian churches in Mosul, leaving seven dead. Over the past six days, 32 Iraqis have been killed in Ashura violence.
A suicide bomb in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-administrated Kashmir, killed at least 15 and injured over 100 in an attack on a Shi’ite religious procession marking the Ashura holy period.
Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto, 32, was assassinated in El Salvador’s Cabañas department—the second anti-mining activist killed there this week. She was eight months pregnant.
José Alberto Velázquez López, owner of the Mexican newspaper Expresiones de Tulum, was shot by a gunman on a motorcycle, bringing to 12 the number of reporters killed this year in the country.
In a heart-warming display of holiday spirit, the New York Times runs a Christmas Eve op-ed making the case for illegal pre-emptive military strikes on Iran.
Egypt has informed organizers of the Gaza Freedom March that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks. Organizers are calling for pressure on Egyptian authorities.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades pledged that “the Israeli occupation has thrown open the doors of its own inferno” following an IDF raid on Nablus that left three youth dead.
Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based radical imam with ties to the suspect in the Fort Hood killings, has been named in the apparent thwarted Christmas Day terrorism attempt.
The military prison at Guantánamo Bay may have to remain open until 2011 to allow an Illinois prison time to prepare for the arrival of the detainees, reports indicate.
