Mississippi school homecoming celebrations turn deadly

LELAND, Miss. • High school homecoming celebrations in Mississippi ended in gunfire, with two separate shootings on opposite sides of the state Friday night that left at least six people dead and many more injured, authorities said.

Four of the dead were killed in downtown Leland, after a high school football homecoming game in the Mississippi Delta region on the state’s western edge, a state senator said Saturday. On the east side of the state, a pregnant woman was among the dead, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said.

In Leland, about 20 people were injured in the gunfire after people gathered in the downtown area following the game, state Sen. Derrick Simmons said. Of the 20 who were hurt, four were in critical condition and flown from a hospital in nearby Greenville to a larger medical center in the state capital city of Jackson, Simmons told The Associated Press. He was being updated on developments from law enforcement authorities in the Delta.

On Saturday, pieces of tattered, yellow crime scene tape were wrapped around a pole in the city’s tiny downtown area. The police tape could also be seen in front of a boarded-up storefront, tangled up at the base of a sign commemorating the late soul singer Tyrone Davis, who was born nearby.

Paramilitary attack kills at least 53 people in Darfur

CAIRO • A shelling and drone attack by the Sudanese paramilitary forces hit a shelter in a besieged city in the Darfur region, killing at least 53 people, a doctors’ group said Saturday. The onslaught was the latest in Sudan’s more than two-year war.

The Sudan Doctors’ Network, a group of medical professionals tracking the war, says at least 14 children and 15 women were among the dead in the attack late Friday by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, on the city of el-Fasher.

The attack also left 21 people wounded, including five children and seven women, the group said. Most of the wounded suffered serious injuries, it said.

The attack targeted al-Arqam Home, a shelter for displaced families in el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur, the group said. The shelter is located at the Omdurman Islamic University.

Quakes kill at least 7 people near Philippines

MANILA, Philippines • Two powerful offshore earthquakes struck the same region in the southern Philippines hours apart on Friday with the first 7.4 magnitude temblor killing at least seven people, setting off landslides and prompting evacuations of coastal areas nearby because of a brief tsunami scare.

The second one had a preliminary 6.8 magnitude and also sparked a local tsunami warning by authorities. It was caused by movement in the same fault line, the Philippine Trench, at a depth of 23 miles off Manay town in Davao Oriental province, Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology chief Teresito Bacolcol said.

“The second one is a separate earthquake, which we call a doublet quake,” Bacolcol said. “Both happened in the same area but have different strengths and epicenters.”

Bacolcol and other authorities expressed fears that the second nighttime earthquake could further weaken or collapse structures already undermined by the first one.

NEWS SERVICES