Kabila Battles To Retake Towns Seized By Congolese Rebels

KINSHASA, Congo - Trucks rumbled out of this capital city today, loaded with government troops on their way to reinforce fighters battling rebels in western Congo, a radio report said.

President Laurent Kabila had ordered the reinforcements to try to retake several small towns in the west, including the oil town of Muanda, state-controlled radio reported.

In their weeklong uprising against Kabila, rebel Tutsis have captured strategic towns in both the west, about 150 miles southwest of Kinshasa, and in Congo's eastern Kivu region.

Kabila's government yesterday accused Uganda of sending soldiers and tanks into Congo in support of the Tutsi rebellion.

The government also accused neighboring Rwanda, which it alleges instigated the uprising, of executing Congolese army officers and rounding up civilians in the region.

The charges could not be independently confirmed, but if true, they represent a sharp escalation in hostilities that threaten to spawn a broader regional conflict.

Tutsi gunmen with close ties to Rwanda launched an offensive a week ago in Kivu, vowing to topple Kabila's 14-month-old regime.

Within the first few days of their uprising, the rebels captured several key cities near the Rwandan border, including Goma and Bukavu.

U.N. evacuates Iranians from Afghanistan fighting

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The United Nations today evacuated to Islamabad nine Iranians, including a diplomat, from the

opposition-held province of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, Pakistani state television said.

There was no information about the fate of 11 Iranian diplomats and a journalist the Iranian government said were taken prisoner by militia of the Taliban Islamic movement when it captured the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Saturday.

A Taliban government spokesman in Kabul today denied the movement was holding diplomats, but said it had arrested 35 Iranian truck drivers who had been delivering ammunition to combatants.

Iran and Pakistan, Afghanistan's neighbors to the west and east, are both accused of stoking the Afghan civil war, Iran by backing the northern alliance and Pakistan by backing the Taliban.

If they can hold it, a Taliban victory in Mazar-i-Sharif will boost the militia's four-year campaign to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic rule on the entire country.

12 dead in Vietnam after man goes on stabbing spree

HANOI - A man who may have feared bad luck in a dispute over his mother's burial went on a stabbing spree that killed 12 people, including nine children, police said today.

Two other people were injured in the rampage, which began Saturday in the Central Highlands province of Daklak, Officer Ho Son said by telephone.

Duong Van Mon, 30, who once suffered from an unspecified mental illness, surrendered more than 4 1/2 hours later.

Million-dollar painting stolen from New Zealand art gallery

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - The weekend heist of a $1 million painting from an Auckland gallery may have been the work of international art thieves, New Zealand police and gallery staff said today.

The painting, "Still on Top" (1874), by James Tissot, was stolen by a gunman who burst into the gallery in central Auckland yesterday morning.

The gunman, carrying a shotgun and wearing a motorcycle helmet, smashed the picture frame and used a crowbar-like tool to tear out the canvas before escaping on a motorcycle, the New Zealand Herald reported.

A witness quoted by the newspaper said the man had threatened patrons and staff before making his getaway. He also fired a warning shot into the air after leaving the gallery, police said.

Tissot was a 19th-century French painter and etcher, well known for a series of watercolors illustrating the Bible.