Briefly

CANADA

1 dead, 5 wounded in Vancouver attack

A man stabbed and killed a woman and wounded five others at a library in Vancouver on Saturday, police said. Police arrested a suspect but the motive was unknown, said Sergeant Frank Chang of the Vancouver police. Police said the suspect was thought to have acted on his own and they had not yet interrogated nor given his name by Saturday evening. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted his condolences to those affected, saying:"My heart is in North Vancouver tonight."

EUROPE

Migrant arrivals fall but deaths stay high

The number of migrants and asylum-seekers who reached Europe in 2020 is the lowest it has been in the past decade, said a report issued by the United Nations migration agency on Friday. Of the 93,000 people who entered Europe irregularly last year, about 92 percent did so via the Western, Central and Eastern Mediterranean Sea, as well as through the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands, often on unseaworthy boats. The International Organization for Migration's Missing Migrants Project confirmed the death or disappearance of nearly 2,300 people last year. In 2019, there were 2,095 victims.

AFGHANISTAN

10 police officers killed in three-hour gun battle

Ten police officers were killed in an attack by militants in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on Saturday, a local official said. The attack took place in the Yakling area of Nahr-e-Saraj district in the early hours of Saturday when the insurgents attacked a security checkpoint, triggering a gun battle that lasted for three hours. As a result, 10 officers and some Taliban militants were killed. A spokesman for the Helmand provincial government, Omar Zawak, confirmed the attack, saying an investigation had been initiated.

Agencies via Xinhua