World Briefs

CIUDAD JUAREZ – Mexico has deployed 1,500 more troops to the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where homicides related to the drug trade have surged in recent weeks.

The resurgent bloodshed raises doubts about the government's goal of returning law enforcement and security duties to a reconstituted Ciudad Juarez police force later this year.

The extra soldiers will begin patrolling the city Monday, said Enrique Torres Valadez, the spokesman for the joint security operation of soldiers and state police in Ciudad Juarez.

A total of 2,500 troops arrived Saturday night in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, Torres said, though about 1,000 of them are relieving soldiers already on duty there.

Haiti – Election officials flew street banners and sent text messages to encourage a big turnout for Haiti's hotly anticipated Senate run-offs, but very few in the capital city were voting Sunday.

Unrest is fueled by political tension, including some early jockeying for next year's planned presidential elections, as well as wrangling between the president and parliament over the proposed minimum wage increase.

HAMILTON, Bermuda – Bermuda's premier survived a no-confidence vote Saturday aimed at punishing him for allowing four former Guantanamo prisoners to settle in the British island territory.

Parliament rejected the resolution in a 22-11 vote after 14 hours of debate that went through the night. Opposition lawmakers accused Premier Ewart Brown of "autocratic" behavior.

LONDON – The dead bodies of two Britons taken hostage in Iraq in 2007 and handed to UK officials in Baghdad late on Friday have been provisionally identified, the British government said on Sunday.

The men were among five Britons seized by an armed Shi'ite militant group from inside a finance ministry building in a raid in the Iraqi capital.

The Foreign Office said in a statement the dead men were "highly likely" to be Jason Creswell, originally from Glasgow in Scotland, and Jason Swindlehurst, from northwest England.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Saturday the three other hostages were in "grave danger" after the Iraqi authorities passed the two men's remains to the British.

No details about where, when or how they died have been made public, but the police is carrying out the investigations.