World briefs 4/8/03

U.S. plane crashes in Colombia; American killed

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A U.S. State Department plane used to fumigate drug crops crashed Monday and its American pilot was killed, the U.S. Embassy said.

It was not immediately clear if the crash was caused by an accident or if it had been shot down, the embassy said.

The American, whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, was the fourth to die in three crashes of U.S. government planes in Colombia this year.

Fire breaks out in Russian school, kills 22

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- A fire engulfed an old wooden school in the northern Siberian republic of Yakutia on Monday, killing 21 students and a teacher, emergency officials said.

Ten more students were hospitalized with burns and fractured bones after they tried to escape the flames by jumping out the windows of the two-story building, said Yelena Mineyeva, spokeswoman for Yakutia's Emergency Situations Ministry. The students were between the ages of 11 and 18.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the fire a "major calamity" and ordered the federal government to fully cooperate with authorities in Yakutia, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Putin instructed his Cabinet to "provide help to the republic and immediately to the families of the victims."

The fire erupted at the beginning of the school day in a rural school in the village of Sydybal, said Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow.

The village does not have a fire department, so fire trucks had to travel to the scene from a station 12 miles away. By the time they arrived, the 1927-era building was engulfed in flames, Mineyeva said.

France aims to fight pollution with new law

PARIS -- France, stung by oil tanker disasters that soiled its seas and beaches, is moving to protect one its most precious maritime resources -- the Mediterranean -- with stiff new punishments for polluters.

The measures, adopted last week by the French parliament in a rare show of unanimity, will create an environmental protection zone off southern France's Mediterranean coast, whose sun-drenched waters and beaches draw hordes of tourists every year.

World Wildlife Fund oceanographer Denis Ody welcomed the effort but said France must strengthen policing in the Mediterranean to make it effective.

The measures, which President Jacques Chirac is expected to sign soon, are directed at shippers deliberately dumping oil, garbage and other pollutants in the Mediterranean. It seeks to punish them even when they are outside French territorial waters.

Uganda army: At least 30 rebels killed in north

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Army troops killed at least 30 rebels in northern Uganda, days after a three-week cease-fire expired, an army spokesman said Monday.

Soldiers used helicopter gunships to attack rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, in the Pader and Gulu districts on Saturday, Lt. Paddy Ankunda told The Associated Press from Gulu, the main town in northern Uganda.

"Our forces are still cross-checking to ascertain the exact number of rebels killed, but it's true we punished them. There were intense aerial attacks," Ankunda said.

The rebels, who rarely talk to journalists, could not be reached for comment.

The LRA forces are leftovers from a northern rebellion that began after President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, seized power of this East African nation in 1986.

-- From wire reports