World Scene

IRAQ

Suicide bomb kills 40 on pilgrimage

HILLA — A suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with metal ball bearings in a tent full of pilgrims heading to a Shi’ite festival yesterday, killing at least 40 persons and wounding 60, police said.

Women and children were among the victims of the attack in the town of Iskandariyah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, police said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq this year.

Most of the victims were hit by the ball bearings, said a doctor at a hospital in Hilla, where many were taken.

IRAN

New centrifuges said to speed work

TEHRAN — The government said yesterday that it has started using new centrifuges that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the machines that Iran has been using.

It was the first official confirmation by Tehran after diplomats with the United Nations‘ nuclear watchdog reported this month that Iran was using 10 new IR-2 centrifuges.

“We are [now] running a new generation of centrifuges,” the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the deputy of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council as saying.

SERBIA

U.S. ambassador expresses outrage

BELGRADE — The U.S. ambassador to Serbia expressed outrage yesterday at rioters who set fire to the American Embassy in Belgrade and demanded that Serbian leaders prevent any more violence against diplomatic missions.

Ambassador Cameron Munter also criticized Serbian political leaders who have defended the riots as a “legitimate” form of protest over Kosovo’s independence declaration.

“That kind of incendiary language … is leading further to the diplomatic isolation of Serbia, which is in nobody’s interest,” Mr. Munter told the Associated Press.

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