A Russian military plane crashed into the sea during a training exercise in Russia's Far East region, leaving all 11 crew members missing and presumed dead, officials said on Saturday. The Tupolev Tu-142 plane disappeared from radar as it was coming to the end of a training mission on Friday over the Tatarski Strait that divides Russia's Far East island of Sakhalin from the mainland, the defence ministry said. "Given the conditions under which the catastrophe took place, we can presume that all the crew aboard the Tu-142 were killed," a source in the emergencies ministry told the RIA Novosti news agency. "But search ...
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NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- A rock slide in a cave Sunday killed two people and seriously injured two others in the Perm Territory in the Urals, Russian authorities said. Five speleologists, or cave experts, were more than a mile deep in the cave when the collapse occurred. One person managed to escape and notify rescuers, RIA Novosti reported. One of the speleologists was hospitalized with brain injuries. The injuries of the second person had yet to be fully assessed, RIA Novosti said. Copyright 2009 by United Press International All Rights Reserved.
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The French military Thursday dismissed as "baseless" a British newspaper report that French troops died in Afghanistan because Italy had failed to inform them of a Taliban payoff deal. The Times of London said 10 French soldiers were killed in Sarobi district in August 2008 because they were not told that Italy had been paying the Taliban not to carry out attacks and failed to properly assess risks. Admiral Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the armed forces general staff, said he had "no information enabling us to confirm the reports published in the British press." "These are rumours, and it is not the first time ...
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On the eve of a European Union report on who started the Russia-Georgia war, EU monitors have stepped up their patrols in Georgia to try to keep tensions from boiling over into violence, an official said Tuesday. The August 2008 war ended with Russian soldiers driving Georgia forces out of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia now has thousands of troops stationed in the two regions, which it has recognized as independent states. Russia, in apparent violation of the EU-brokered agreement that ended the war, has not allowed EU monitors into the two separatist regions and tensions persist along their boundaries ...
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The allied mission in Afghanistan requires a "sustained, substantial commitment," a top US commander warned, as his British colleague said Friday talking with the Taliban would help end the bloodshed. General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, said late Thursday that violence levels in Afghanistan were now 60 percent higher than last year. But the allied mission, which included Western troops tackling an increasingly deadly Taliban insurgency, is "do-able," Petraeus said. "The challenges in Afghanistan are significant. But the stakes are also high. And while the situation unquestionably is serious, the mission is still do-able," Petraeus said in a ...
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