Protesters' blockade of Bolivia capital concludes

El Alto, Bolivia

Protesters' blockade

of capital concludes

Bulldozers cleared the last barricades on the main road into La Paz and trucks rolled in yesterday loaded with gasoline and produce, signaling the end of a monthlong blockade that paralyzed Bolivia and brought down its president.

El Alto, a slum city and Aymara Indian stronghold on a mountain plain overlooking La Paz, was the epicenter of a nationwide opposition movement that shut off the key supply route to the capital for gasoline, cooking fuel and crops from the countryside.

Flatbed trucks piled high with potatoes and red onions rolled into El Alto en route to its high-altitude sister city of La Paz for the first time in weeks. Desperate crowds formed by the thousands.

Indian women with their unfed babies on their backs clamored for the first canisters of liquefied cooking gas, scuffling with day laborers who competed for the first fuel after the blockade.

Gaza

Palestinians execute

4 convicted murderers

The Palestinian Authority executed four convicted murderers today, officials said, defying international calls to halt capital punishment.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said three men were hanged and the fourth was killed by a firing squad after they confessed in a Gaza City court to murder. Some were also reportedly convicted of collaborating with Israel.

Human-rights groups say such proceedings lack due process of law, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is under pressure to curb rampant crime in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during 4 ½ years of conflict with Israel.

The capital-punishment issue is especially acute when it comes to dozens of Palestinians jailed on charges of spying for the Jewish state. Palestinian officials said in April planned executions of 15 convicted informers were suspended after they caused uproar in the European Union, the Palestinians' top aid donor.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2 opposition leaders

arrested over protests

Ethiopian authorities placed two opposition leaders under house arrest yesterday, saying they were behind a week of violent protests that left 29 dead in clashes with police.

Hailu Shawel, leader of the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy, and another senior official, Lidetu Ayalew, were under house arrest.

The government has accused the opposition of engineering the protests by students and others over the ruling partty's victory in recent parliamentary elections allegedly flawed by fraud and violence.

Compiled from The Associated Press and

The New York Times.