World Briefs

PARIS – Protesters linked arms across an entrance at Paris' main airport on yesterday to keep passengers off a Yemeni flight to Comoros on a route that saw a deadly crash this week after years of complaints about dangerous conditions to the Indian Ocean island nation. The Comoran community in France is angry that it took Tuesday's accident, which killed 152 people on Yemenia airlines' Paris-Moroni flight, to focus attention on the problems. They say they have been complaining about dangerous planes, unhelpful crews and stopovers in the Yemeni capital of San'a that lasted hours or days in stifling heat with little information and few basic services from the Yemeni airline. French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau warned that Yemenia risked inclusion on list of banned airlines.

ABUJA – Three African countries signed yesterday an accord to build a 10-billion-dollar trans-Saharan gas pipeline linking vast reserves in Nigeria to Europe.

The project will convey gas destined for the European market more than 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles) from the Niger Delta in Nigeria, via Niger and Algeria.

No date was announced for the start of construction.

LIMA, Peru – Two buses crashed head-on Thursday on a mountain road near Lake Titicaca in Peru, killing at least 23 people and injuring 50 more, police said. The morning crash occurred in the Santa Lucia district, about an hour's drive from Lake Titicaca.

Emergency crews said there could be as many as four more people still trapped in the wreckage, the officer said. Fourteen of the dead were identified, all of them Peruvians.

MOSCOW – Russia said Friday it will allow the United States to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, a long-sought move that bolsters US military operations but potentially gives the Kremlin leverage over critical American supplies. Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said the expected deal would enable the US to ship lethal cargo and would include shipments by air and land.

WANA, Pakistan – A US drone aircraft fired missiles yesterday into Pakistan's South Waziristan region, killing 10 militants, officials said, ahead of an expected Pakistani military offensive in the area.

Three missiles were fired at militant hideouts in an area near the Afghan border controlled by Pakistani Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Baitullah Mehsud.

The attack came as Pakistani troops stepped up pressure on Mehsud's strongholds.