CREESLOUGH, Ireland (AFP) – At least nine people have been killed in an explosion at a petrol station in County Donegal in Ireland’s northwest, police said on Saturday. The Garda Siochana police force said eight people had been hospitalized and that it “can now confirm nine fatalities as a result of this incident. “The search and recovery for further fatalities continues” at the site in the village of Creeslough,” it said. The cause of the explosion remained unknown and police had yet to announce the launch of an inquiry as the search through rubble went on. The toll from the explosion had already risen from three to seven overnight. At a service at the local church on Saturday morning, Father John Joe Duffy said the community had been hit by “a tsunami of grief”. Many emergency services vehicles remained at the scene overnight, including fire services from both sides of the border with British-run Northern Ireland. Gardai and civil defence were also involved, and a coastguard helicopter airlifted some of the injured from Letterkenny University Hospital to the capital Dublin.

 

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PARIS (AFP) – Air France and aircraft maker Airbus go on trial in Paris on Monday on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 crash of a flight from Brazil, killing all 228 people aboard. The case focuses on alleged insufficient pilot training and a defective speed monitoring probe, which was quickly replaced on planes worldwide in the months after the accident. Flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm in the early hours of June 1, 2009, when it stalled after entering a zone of strong turbulence. The Airbus A330 was carrying 12 crew members and 216 passengers, including 61 French. It was the carrier’s deadliest crash. Debris was found in the following days but it took nearly two years to locate the bulk of the fuselage and recover the “black box” flight recorders. Air France and Airbus were charged as the inquiry progressed, with experts determining the crash resulted from mistakes made by pilots disorientated by so-called Pitot speed-monitoring tubes that had frozen over in thick cloud. Both companies have denied any criminal negligence, and investigating magistrates overseeing the case dropped the charges in 2019, attributing the crash mainly to pilot error.

  

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NEW DELHI (AP) – A bus caught fire after hitting a truck on a highway in western India early Saturday, killing at least 12 passengers, an official said.  Another 43 people with serious burns were taken to a hospital in Nashik, a city in Maharashtra state, said police officer Bhagwan Adke. Most passengers were sleeping when the bus caught fire around 5 a.m. and the vehicle was completely burned, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Some people living near the highway reached the spot but couldn’t help as the raging fire engulfed the vehicle. The rescue work started after the fire service and police doused the blaze, Adke said. Eknath Shinde, the top state elected official, said the cause of the fire is being investigated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was anguished by the bus tragedy. “May the injured recover at the earliest. The local administration is providing all possible assistance to those affected,” Modi tweeted. Nashik is nearly 200 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. Hundreds of thousands of people are killed or injured annually on India’s roads. Most accidents are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and aging vehicles.

 

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CARACAS (CGTN) – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro is not ruling out bringing forward the country’s 2024 presidential election, his office said in a message published on Twitter. The tweet came shortly after Maduro said during an event with his United Socialist Party (PSUV) that the party is always ready for an election. “The truth is that we are prepared to achieve a big victory when elections come,” Maduro said. The election is currently scheduled to take place in two years, according to the official schedule, but the electoral authority has not set a definitive date. Maduro has said in recent months there could be a big general election next year, without offering details. The PSUV, led by Maduro, has been busy renewing its ranks through local elections, while opposition parties seek to present a singular candidate to be determined in a primary election.

 

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TUNIS (Anadolu) – Tunisia’s Ennahda movement has renewed calls for rallying efforts to confront what it termed “coup” in the North African country. “The existing authority headed by [President] Kais Saied is responsible for spoiling political life and turning the economic crisis into a catastrophe that threatens the people’s livelihood,” the movement said in a statement. It called for restoring the “democratic path and preserving the Tunisian revolution’s achievements of freedom, dignity and democracy.” Last month, Saied set Dec. 17 for holding parliamentary elections in Tunisia along with amending the law governing the polls to allow voters to elect individuals instead of single party lists. The move, however, was decried by opponents as aiming to weaken the role and influence of political parties in the country. Tunisia has been in the throes of a deep political crisis that aggravated the country’s economic conditions since last year, when Saied ousted the government and dissolved parliament. While Saied insists that his measures were meant to “save” the country, critics have accused him of orchestrating a coup.