Briefly

THE PHILIPPINES

Landslide death toll climbs to 98

The death toll from a landslide in a mining town in Davao de Oro Province in the southern Philippines on Feb 6 has risen to 98, a regional disaster prevention office said on Saturday. The Maco Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office said rescuers continue to search for nine others who remained missing. Rocks, soil and debris triggered by days of rain slid from a mountainside on the evening of Feb 6, burying houses and vehicles in its path, including two buses that were used to ferry workers to and from a nearby mining firm in Maco town. The miners on the buses were among the dead.

IRAN

12 relatives killed in shooting accident

A man shot dead 12 of his family members and injured three others on Saturday morning in the southeastern Iranian province of Kerman, Iran's semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. The incident occurred at 04:30 am in Faryab County when the 25-year-old armed man opened fire on his two stepbrothers and their family members in two houses, Tasnim quoted Kerman's Police Commander Nasser Farshid as saying in an address to reporters. He cited family differences as the shooter's motive, adding that a manhunt had been launched to arrest the "murderer". Ebrahim Hamidi, head of Kerman's Justice Department, said the man used a Kalashnikov rifle to kill his family members, according to the official news agency IRNA.

GERMANY

Ex-spy chief founds new right-wing party

A former German spy chief who was sacked after being accused of averting his eyes to the threat posed by the far-right founded a new right-wing party on Saturday, holding an inaugural party congress on a boat near Bonn. The party is the third to be founded this year in Germany, further fragmenting the political landscape and making electoral predictions tricky ahead of European parliamentary polls and votes in half the country's municipalities and three states. The Werteunion, or Values Union, is headed by Hans-Georg Maassen, who was dismissed as head of Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2018.

Xinhua - Agencies