U.S. aid worker killed in tribal area

Islamabad, Pakistan

U.S. aid worker targeted by rebels

The slaying of American aid worker Stephen Vance in the northwest city of Peshawar on Wednesday was thought to be the first targeted killing of a Westerner in the current campaign of violence by Islamic extremists.

Vance, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was shot dead along with his Pakistani driver on his way from his home to his office. He was overseeing a high-profile U.S. development program for Pakistan's tribal area and lived in Peshawar with his wife and five children.

The assassination came as a wave of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings continued to grip Pakistan's volatile northwest.

Early today an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in the same volatile region.

Kabul, Afghanistan

U.S. convoy attacked, soldier killed

A suicide bomber rammed his car into a U.S. military convoy passing through a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan today, killing an American soldier and at least 20 civilians, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The attack outside Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern Nangarhar province, also wounded 74 civilians, said Ajmal Pardes, a provincial health official.

Separately, an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday killed two NATO soldiers, the military alliance said, without disclosing the soldiers nationalities.

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber driving a tanker truck hauling oil detonated his explosives outside an Afghan government office during a provincial-council meeting in the southern city of Kandahar, killing six people and wounded 42, officials said.

Hours earlier, two men on a motorcycle threw acid on eight Afghan girls walking to school in Kandahar, and three of the girls were hospitalized with serious burns, said Dr. Sharifa Siddiqi.

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Second school collapses in Haiti

A school partially collapsed in the Haitian capital on Wednesday, injuring at least eight students and sparking panic less than five days after a much larger school collapse killed more than 90 people.

Portions of the ceiling at Grace Divine school in Port-au-Prince came crashing down, the second-story floor buckled and a wall partially collapsed but no one was trapped and there were no deaths.

Seoul, South Korea

N. Korea bars nuclear sampling

North Korea said Wednesday it will not allow outside inspectors to take samples from its main nuclear complex to verify the regime's accounting of past nuclear activities.

After a breakthrough deal last month about how to verify a list of nuclear programs submitted by North Korea in June under a disarmament pact, U.S. officials said atomic experts would be allowed to take samples and conduct tests.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said today that the North's latest refusal could be a ploy to secure more aid.

Also

Blast in Bangkok: A blast wounded 13 people in Thailand's capital today when assailants hurled an explosive device at market vendors who were protesting a rent hike by new managers of the government-owned facility, police said.

Tainted fish feed: Hong Kong food inspectors have found fish feed imported from China contaminated with high levels of melamine, a toxic chemical that has recently been blamed for tainting Chinese-produced food products.

Seattle Times news services