Briefly

LEBANON

U.N. truck accident kills family of four

MARKABA — A Lebanese family of four, including two young children, were killed when their car collided with a United Nations tanker truck near the Israeli border yesterday, sparking anger among local residents, police said.

The four died after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) vehicle crushed the family’s car on a road in Markaba, in the central sector of south Lebanon’s border with Israel, a police spokesman said.

Witnesses said the truck, belonging to a Polish contingent of UNIFIL, had been speeding along the roads of the olive-tree dotted landscape of south Lebanon.

EGYPT

President defends Nasser’s kin

CAIRO — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak defended the patriotism of former President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s son-in-law, who Israeli intelligence officials say warned Israel of an imminent Egyptian attack in 1973.

Mr. Mubarak told reporters Monday that former official Ashraf Marwan, who died in London last week after falling from his balcony, had not spied for any organization.

Mr. Mubarak, quoted by the Egyptian state news agency MENA, said Mr. Marwan, who left Egyptian government service late in the 1970s, was “a patriot loyal to his nation.”

From wire dispatches and staff reports