World Highlights

¤ Four people were taken to hospital with burns after an explosion and fire at an industrial site in the Dutch town of Pijnacker near The Hague, police said yesterday. A police spokesman said the fire had broken out at a company that makes food supplements.

¤ An Austrian woman was jailed for life for killing four of her babies after the tiny bodies were found entombed in buckets of concrete or wrapped in plastic bags in a freezer at her home, a court spokesman said yesterday. The woman, 33, from the southeastern city of Graz, was sentenced by Graz's provincial criminal court, the spokesman said, adding he could not give details.

¤ A blast in a rubbish bin killed one man and injured 11 others near a bus station in a historic area of Istanbul yesterday, the city's governor Muammer Guler said. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion. A bomb disposal unit picked through the debris following the blast in a bin in the Kocamustafapasa district of Istanbul, a city of 12 million and a popular tourist destination.

¤ Taliban insurgents raided several police posts in Afghanistan yesterday and six of the attackers were killed, a provincial official said. The Taliban say they have launched a spring offensive in their campaign to oust foreign troops and defeat the Western-backed government and violence has surged in recent days.

¤ Chad accused Sudan yesterday of organising an attack by Chadian rebels and pro-Khartoum militia which killed the commander of the Chadian army, who was a nephew of President Idriss Deby. Brigadier General Abakar Youssouf Mahamat Itno died on Thursday after being wounded near the Sudan border in an attack by Janjaweed militia and fighters of the Chadian Rally for Democracy and Liberty (RDL) rebel group, Chad's government said.