BBC news 2008-06-09 加文本

BBC News with Ian Perdon.

The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called on the Colombian rebel group, the FARC, to end its decades-long rebellion and free the hundreds of hostages it's holding. He said a guerrilla war of the kind of the FARC has been waging since 1964 was out of place in modern Latin America. James Ingham reports from Caracas.

President Chavez has often spoken of his admiration for the FARC. He's described them as a legitimate army with a valid political goal. Such comments have always angered the Colombian government which has staked its reputation on defeating the left-wing guerrilla army by force. But now, the socialist president appears to be asking the FARC to change tactics. There're old folk, women, sick people and soldiers, who've been prisoners in the mountains for ten years, said Mr. Chavez. He appealed directly to the FARC's new leader, Alfonso Cano, to release them.(Www.hxen.net)

Two bombs at a railway station east of the Algerian capital Algiers are reported to have killed at least twelve people. The blasts followed a week of violence in Algiers and in Boumerdes to the east. James Copnall sent this report from the region.

Reports from the scene say the first bomb killed a French engineer and his Algerian driver. Then the second bomb was detonated as security forces and rescue workers came to help the first victims. The engineer was working for a French firm. Three employees of the same company were wounded by a bomb attack last September. It's not yet clear who is responsible for this latest attack, although the North African wing of al-Qaeda said it carried out the September bombing and is known to operate in the area.

A reporter working for the BBC in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, Abdul Samad Rohani, has been killed. His body was found in the town of Lashkar Gah. He'd been shot in the head. Mr. Rohani worked for the BBC Pashto service. Colleagues praised his courage and dedication in helping to report events in Afghanistan. is head of the Pashto and Persian service at the BBC.

"We first received news yesterday, that is to say Saturday, when he disappeared and was not heard from, and he was out about doing work, and suddenly everyone lost contact with him, his family and his colleagues in the BBC, and we began to be increasingly worried, obviously it's a very dangerous area, and today, it basically, there was a report that a body had been found, and we went out to investigate it, cuz(or ‘cause) there was suspicion that it might be him and in fact one of our colleagues went inside and find the body is his, and he'd clearly been murdered."

Yesterday in Somalia, a journalist who contributed to the BBC Somali Service, Nasteh Dahir, was shot dead by gunmen.

The US military in Iraq has reported the deaths of another two of its soldiers, one was killed in a suicide bomb attack on the patrol base near the northern city of Kirkuk, the second by a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad on Saturday.

World News from the BBC.

Rescue teams in Ukraine are battling to save nearly forty miners believed trapped underground after a gas explosion. They are trying to reach the men through a shaft, but it's been damaged by the blast. Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Kiev.

The 37 miners were underground working to improve safety, so when the explosion occurred early in the morning on Sunday, they became victims of precisely the kind of accident that they were trying to prevent. Rescue workers reached the depth of more than 600 meters and heard voices, but they've so far failed to release the trapped miners. The mine is now in danger of flooding and rescue workers are in a race against time. The Karl Marx mine in the coal-rich Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine had, along with around twenty other mines in the area, recently been declared too dangerous for operation.

An earthquake in southwestern Greece has killed at least two people and injured several others. The tremor which had a magnitude of 6.5 struck near the town of Patras in the Peloponnese region, causing some buildings to collapse.

Police in Britain searching thousands of safety deposit boxes, thought to have been used by major criminals, say they've uncovered more than $60 million in cash, and six suitcases of what they believe to be gold dust. Police are only under a third of the way through their search of the boxes they seized in London a week ago. But they say they've also found drugs as well as counterfeit currency.

Sport in Men's Tennis, the Spaniard Rafael Nadal has won the French Open Championship for the fourth time in a row. Nadal easily beat the world No.1 Roger Federer of Switzerland in three sets. Federer now has to wait another year to try to win the only Grand Slam that has eluded him.

Footballer of Germany has beaten Poland 2-0 in the latest match in the European Football Championships. The game was played amid tight security in the small Austrian city of Klagenfurt, to prevent tensions between the rival fans turning into violence.