TIRANA, Albania: Police say that one woman has died and 11 others were injured when a fire broke out in a bus in northern Albania.
Police said Friday that the fire broke out at 11:25 a.m. (0925 GMT) when the Mercedes bus was near the old bazaar in Kruja, 35 km north of the capital, Tirana.
It was taking 30 Christian Orthodox believers coming from the southwestern port city of Vlora to visit the castle of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg, a 15th-century warrior.
Local media quoted one of the passengers saying the fire spread rapidly and that passengers could not reach the bus door, but got out after some passers-by smashed some windows.
Doctors said eight of the injured, all elderly women, were gravely ill with burns over more than half of their bodies. First reports had said 12 people were injured.
Church officials said that the group was on a pilgrimage around Albania and neighboring Montenegro.
Police say the cause of the fire is being investigated.
1 dead, 12 injured in Albania bus fire
1 dead, 12 injured in Albania bus fire
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The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and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.
