World Scene

PAKISTAN

U.S. aid group attacked, 6 killed

ISLAMABAD | Suspected militants armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb attacked the offices of a U.S.-based Christian aid group helping earthquake survivors in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani employees, police and the organization said.

The attack prompted World Vision, a major international humanitarian group, to suspend its operations in Pakistan. The assault took place in Ogi, a small town in Mansehra district that was badly hit by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, which killed about 80,000 people and left 3 million people homeless.

Meanwhile, two suspected U.S. drone attacks killed at least 15 people in the Mazer Meda Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region, local officials said.

SWEDEN

Cartoonist sees plot as ‘low-tech’

STOCKHOLM | A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog said Wednesday he has no regrets and believes the suspects in a purported plot to kill him were not professionals.

Lars Vilks, who has faced numerous death threats over the controversial cartoon, told the Associated Press in an interview he has built his own defense system, including a “homemade” safe room and a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders.

The 63-year-old artist said the suspects in a plot to kill him — seven people arrested in Ireland and a woman held in the U.S. — were “not the real hard professionals. I think they are rather low-tech.”

Colleen R. LaRose of Philadelphia, who had called herself JihadJane in a YouTube video, was arrested Tuesday. Irish authorities said Wednesday those arrested there were two Algerians, two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian and an American woman married to one of the Algerian suspects. They were not identified by name.

LIBYA

U.S. official’s apology accepted

TRIPOLI | Libya has accepted an apology from a senior State Department official for a light-hearted remark he made about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s call for holy war against Switzerland.

Last week, Libya summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires and threatened negative repercussions if the U.S. failed to apologize. A Libyan Foreign Ministry statement said Wednesday it accepted the apology and welcomed resumption of visits.

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