Blast near mayor's vehicle kills 2 in Somalia

Mogadishu, Somalia

A bomb detonated in Mogadishu near the mayor's vehicle convoy Sunday, leaving at least two civilians dead, the mayor said. His bodyguards shot and killed a suspected insurgent who had been in a tree near the explosion.

Mayor Mohamed Dheere was unharmed in the blast, but he said several wounded civilians were taken to a hospital for treatment.

The government continues to battle clan rivals and Islamic insurgents, who have vowed to run an Iraq-style guerrilla war unless the country becomes an Islamic state.

The conflict in Mogadishu between March 12 and April 26 alone killed at least 1,670 people. Since February, 400,000 Mogadishu residents have fled violence in the capital.

Meanwhile, the United Nations food agency appealed for international action to eliminate piracy off the Somali coast after a failed attempt to hijack a U.N.-contracted ship near Merka on Saturday killed a Somali guard.

The attack was the eighth this year off the Somali coast, which is near shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean.

Tbilisi, Georgia

Opposition leader fatally shot

The leader of a Georgian opposition movement was gunned down Sunday evening on a street in a central part of the capital, Tbilisi, the Interior Ministry said.

The ministry's press service did not give further details, but local television reports said 67-year-old Guram Sharadze was shot five times and died at the scene.

Sharadze, a professor of philology at Tbilisi University, was leader of the nationalist Faith, Fatherland and Language movement. Last year he led protests against Western influences in Georgia. He also was a close associate of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first president of post-Soviet Georgia, who was overthrown in a coup and who died in unclear circumstances in 1993 as he tried to lead an uprising against the government of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

The television station Rustavi-2 reported that a suspect had been arrested, but there was no immediate information on a possible motive.

London

Cutty Sark clipper damaged in fire

British fire crews were battling a blaze on the Cutty Sark, the famous 19th-century tea clipper moored as a tourist attraction in southeast London, a fire service spokesman said today.

"There is substantial damage," a London Fire Brigade spokesman said. "We've got eight fire engines and 40 firefighters there." There were no reports of any injuries.

Television pictures showed the ship well ablaze.

The Cutty Sark, launched in 1869 on Scotland's River Clyde to make the run to China for the tea trade, was undergoing a $49 million refurbishment.

The Cutty Sark was one of the world's only surviving fast tea clippers.

Kabul, Afghanistan

25 fighters killed in coalition attack

Insurgents ambushed a U.S.-led coalition and Afghan patrol in the volatile south, sparking a battle and airstrikes that killed 25 suspected insurgents, officials said today.

The coalition said the joint forces were attacked while on a patrol in the Sangin district of Helmand province Sunday. An estimated 50 Taliban reinforcement fighters came by foot and boat along the Helmand River from surrounding areas, the coalition said in a statement.

Coalition airstrikes bombed seven compounds, resulting in three secondary explosions from suspected weapons caches, it said. It said there were "several" confirmed rebel deaths during the 14-hour battle and no reports of civilian injuries.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber walked into a crowded market in the eastern city of Gardez and blew himself up, killing 14 people and wounding 31, officials and witnesses said.

Witnesses said a convoy of foreign troops appeared to be the target of the Gardez bomber, but that it already had passed when the bomber struck.

Seattle Times news services