PODGORICA: An unknown person blew themself up after throwing a suspected grenade into the US embassy compound in Podgorica, the Montenegrin government said Thursday.
“In front of the @USEmbassyMNE building in #Podgorica, #Montenegro an unknown person committed suicide with an explosive device. Immediately before, that person threw an explosive device,” the official government account tweeted, adding that the device was “most probably” a hand grenade.
An AFP correspondent could not see any damage on the spot as police sealed off the area.
According to the government, the attacker first threw an explosive device into the US embassy compound from an intersection close to a sports center.
A State Department spokesman confirmed “an attack on the US Embassy compound,” adding that “at this time Embassy officials are working closely with police to identify the assailant(s).”
A guard at the sports center who asked not to be named said he “heard two explosions, one after another.”
“Police came very quickly and the body of a man was taken away,” the witness told AFP.
Montenegro, a small Adriatic state of some 660,000 people, joined NATO last year.
Suspected grenade attack on US embassy compound in Montenegro
Suspected grenade attack on US embassy compound in Montenegro
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
