Three held over UK truck deaths freed on police bail

AFP, London

Three suspects arrested in Britain over the deaths of 39 people found in a refrigerated truck have been released on bail, police said yesterday.

They are a man and woman, both 38, from Warrington in northwest England, and a 46-year-old Northern Irish man who had been held at London’s Stansted Airport.

They were arrested two days after the bodies of eight women and 31 men were discovered Wednesday in a truck in an industrial zone in Grays in Essex, southeast England.

Helicopter fire on IS-linked fighters kills 9 in NW Syria

AFP, Beirut

Helicopter gunfire early yesterday killed nine people near a northwestern Syrian village where “groups linked to the Islamic State group” were present, said a Britain-based war monitor with sources inside Syria.

The helicopters targeted a home and a car on the outskirts of the village of Barisha in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, after US media said IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was believed to be dead after a US military raid in the same province.

Egypt extends

state of emergency

for 3 months

Xinhua, Cairo

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi issued a decree to extend the country’s already-imposed state of emergency for another three months starting from Oct. 27, Egypt’s official gazette reported on Saturday.

According to the decree, the armed forces and the police will take the necessary measures “to face the perils of terrorism and its finance, maintain security nationwide, protect public and private properties and preserve the lives of citizens.”

Notorious Aussie serial killer Ivan Milat dies

AFP, Sydney

Australia’s most notorious serial killer Ivan Milat, whose murder of seven young backpackers in the 1990s terrified the country, has died in hospital, officials said yesterday.

Milat was serving consecutive life sentences for the brutal killing spree took place near Sydney between 1989 and 1992.