INTERNATIONAL
More than 2,000 migrants rescued in Mediterranean, operations ongoing
More than 2,000 migrants were rescued from five wooden boats in the Mediterranean this week and as many as seven other vessels have been reported at sea, the privately funded Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) and Italys coastguard said.
MOAS coordinated the rescue of over 2,000 people together with Italian, Irish and Germany ships, the group tweeted.
The migrants were packed onto wooden fishing boats in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast.
Italys coastguard, which coordinates sea rescue efforts in from Rome, could not confirm the number of migrants who had been saved so far, but said about a dozen different migrant boats had been reported and rescue operations were ongoing.
We have several assets at work, a coastguard spokesman said.
During the first five months of the year, there were 46,500 sea arrivals in Italy, a 12 percent increase on the same period of last year, the UN refugee agency said.
Italys government projects 200,000 will come this year, up from 170,000 in 2014.
The summer months are usually the busiest period for departures because the calm seas make the crossing easier.
This year growing anarchy in Libya -- the last point on one of the main transit routes to Europe -- is giving free hand to people smugglers who make an average of 80,000 euros ($89,000) from each boatload, according to an ongoing investigation by an Italian court.
MOAS, which is operating a privately funded rescue operation with Doctors without Borders, said its Phoenix ship plucked 372 mostly Eritreans from one boat.
The Italian navy said one of its ships was still trying to remove about 560 from a wooden boat, while another navy ship has finished rescuing 316 from yet another.
Saudi-led air strikes kill 20 Yemeni soldiers: residents
Saudi-led air strikes killed at least 20 soldiers who had gathered to collect their salaries at the Yemeni army headquarters in the capital Sanaa on Sunday, government officials and residents said.
They said that four explosions shook the compound in central Sanaa, where the soldiers allied with the Houthi group that dominates Yemen had gathered since Saturday evening to get their pay checks.
Saudi-led forces have been pounding the Houthi group since March 26 in a campaign aimed at restoring President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.
Residents said Saudi-led aircraft also targeted other military camps east and west of the capital but there was no immediate word on casualties.
On Saturday, the Houthis and their army allies fired a Scud missile into Saudi Arabia which the kingdom said it shot down, in a major escalation of two months of war.
Arab air strikes and shelling after the attack killed 38 Yemenis in provinces near Saudi Arabia, according to reports in the Houthi-controlled state news agency Saba which could not be immediately confirmed.
Iraq continues to be a dangerous place
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged that security in Iraq has not improved statistically since Saddam Husseins fall in 2003 this week ten years ago.
Rumsfeld told the BBC insurgents crossed Iraqs porous borders from Iran, Syria and elsewhere. But he said Iraqs military forces were growing in numbers and he was confident the insurgency would be defeated. This week ten years ago at least 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Police saod most of the dead were civil servants lining up outside a government-owned bank to get their salaries or pensions.
