KUWAIT CITY -- A fire broke out Wednesday morning in the Mangaf area in southern Kuwait, resulting in at least 41 fatalities and dozens of injuries, according to the First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Minister of Interior Sheikh Fahad Yusuf Al-Sabah.
"41 people have died so far," he said in a statement broadcasted by Kuwait TV, attributing the tragedy to the "greed and avarice of company and building owners." (Kuwait-Fire-Casualties)
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JERUSALEM -- The Israeli military confirmed on Wednesday that it killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Sami Taleb Abdullah, in southern Lebanon in an airstrike on Tuesday.
"As part of the strike, Sami Taleb Abdullah, the commander of the Nasr Unit in Hezbollah, was eliminated," the military said in a statement, adding that he was "one of Hezbollah's most senior commanders in southern Lebanon." (Israel-Lebanon-Ties)
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TOKYO -- Two women were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of killing a 17-year-old high school girl whose body was found in May in Hokkaido, northern Japan.
Riko Uchida, 21, and a 19-year-old woman, both from the city of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, are suspected of pushing Runa Murayama, a high school student from the city of Rumoi, off a suspension bridge into a river in a mountainous area of Asahikawa on April 19, resulting in her death, police said. (Japan-Suspects-Murder)
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JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa is on high alert following the outbreak of monkeypox in May, with five laboratory-confirmed cases including one death, Minister of Health Joe Phaahla said on Wednesday.
Phaahla told the media that all five patients diagnosed with monkeypox, also known as Mpox, three from KwaZulu-Natal Province and two from Gauteng Province, were men between the ages of 30 and 39 with no history of travel. Two remain hospitalized, two have been discharged, and one died on Monday in a hospital in Johannesburg. (South Africa-Monkeypox) ■
