Sudan president may face charges

United Nations

Sudan president

may face charges

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant Monday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and crimes against humanity in the orchestration of a campaign of violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the nation's Darfur region during the past five years, according to U.N. officials and diplomats.

The action by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, will mark the first time the tribunal in The Hague charges a sitting head of state with such crimes.

Some U.N. officials raised concerns Thursday that the decision would complicate the peace process in Darfur, possibly triggering a military response by Sudanese forces or proxies against the nearly 10,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers there.

Istanbul, Turkey

Arrests in attack

at U.S. consulate

Turkish authorities on Thursday captured a gunman wanted in the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate after rounding up suspects who had communicated with three other assailants killed by police, local media reports said.

Officials were investigating whether the attackers were linked to al-Qaida. Police suspect the four gunmen had ties to the terrorist network but said that, so far, they had no proof of that link.

Mexico City

10 people found

dead in Culiacán

Gunmen killed nine people at an auto-repair shop in the gang-plagued Mexican city of Culiacán and a police investigator was found shot to death near the city's police headquarters, prosecutors said Thursday.

On Wednesday, 10 police officers in the town of Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas, Ariz., resigned after another officer was gunned down.

Mexico has been rocked this year by narcotics-related violence stemming, in part, from a turf war that has erupted between the Sinaloa cartel and rivals vying to control lucrative drug-smuggling routes to the United States.

Also

Pakistan quake: A Pakistani official said a magnitude-5.2 earthquake jolted the country's capital, Islamabad, and some northwestern cities, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Mass killer executed: Indonesia has executed a man for killing 42 women and girls in a series of ritual slayings. An Attorney General's Office spokesman said 57-year-old Ahmad Suradji, who apparently believed the 11-year killing spree increased his magical powers, was killed by firing squad late Thursday. Police said Suradji lured his victims to a sugarcane field near his home and then strangled them before reburying their bodies with the heads pointing toward his house.

Seattle Times news services