Thousands of Syrians flee into Turkey amid fighting between Kurds and Muslim militants
AKCAKALE, Turkey — Thousands of Syrians cut through a border fence and crossed over into Turkey on Sunday, fleeing intense fighting in northern Syria between Kurdish fighters and jihadis.
The flow of refugees came as Syrian Kurdish fighters closed in on the outskirts of a strategic Islamic State-held town on the Turkish border, Kurdish officials and an activist group said, potentially cutting off a key supply line for the extremists’ nearby de facto capital.
Taking Tal Abyad, some 50 miles north of the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, would deprive the militant group of a direct route to bring in new foreign militants or supplies. The Kurdish advance, coming under the cover of intense U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the area, would also link their two fronts and put even more pressure on Raqqa.
In this Turkish border village, the refugees took by surprise the Turkish troops stationed there, who were overwhelmed by the large number of people crowding the crossing. Thousands of people had been gathering for more than a day on the Syrian side of the Akcakale border crossing before they broke through Sunday afternoon.
People threw their belongings over the fence while others passed infants into Turkey over barbed wires before following through a several-meter wide opening in the border fence.
Floods leave 12 people dead, allow wild animals to escape from zoo in former Soviet republic
TBILISI, Georgia — Severe flooding in the Georgian capital left at least 12 people dead Sunday and triggered a big-game hunt across the city for lions, tigers, a hippopotamus and other dangerous animals that escaped from Tbilisi’s ravaged zoo.
Residents were warned to stay indoors as police conducted the hunt, but fear deepened as night fell on the city of 1.1 million with some of the animals still on the loose.
“The daytime wasn’t bad,” said resident Khariton Gabashvili, “but tonight everyone has to be very careful because all the beasts haven’t been captured. They haven’t been fed, and in their hungry state they might attack people.”
Heavy rain turned a normally pleasant city stream into a fierce torrent that destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes in the former Soviet republic. Officials said 12 people were known to have died and about two dozen others were missing.
There were no immediate reports that any of the dead were killed by the animals, which ran off after the floodwaters destroyed their enclosures. Among the beasts that escaped were bears, wolves and monkeys.
Prosecutor says escaped killers used contractors’ tools, carefully returning them every night
DANNEMORA, N.Y. — The two killers who cut their way out of a maximum-security prison apparently used tools routinely stored there by contractors, taking care to return them to their toolboxes after each night’s work so that no one would notice, a prosecutor said Sunday.
District Attorney Andrew Wylie also said that Joyce Mitchell, the prison tailoring shop instructor charged with helping the men escape, had agreed to pick them up in her car and drive off with them but backed out at the last minute because she still loved her husband and felt guilty for participating.
“Basically, when it was go-time and it was the actual day of the event, I do think she got cold feet and realized, ‘What am I doing?’” Wylie said. “Reality struck. She realized that, really, the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.”
Wylie said there was no evidence the men had a “Plan B” once the getaway driver backed out, and no vehicles have been reported stolen in the area.
That has led searchers to believe the men are still near the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, where the manhunt was in its ninth day Sunday, with hundreds of law enforcement officers slogging through mosquito-infested woods, fields and swamps close to the Canadian border for Richard Matt and David Sweat.
To scientists’ relief, spacecraft that landed on a comet wakes up after 7 months of silence
BERLIN — To scientists’ relief and delight, the Philae spacecraft that landed on a comet last fall has woken up and communicated with Earth after seven long months of silence, the European Space Agency announced Sunday.
Philae became the first spacecraft to settle on a comet when it touched down on icy 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November. But the solar-powered probe came down with a bounce and ended up in the shadow of a cliff instead of in direct sunlight.
As a result, Philae managed to conduct experiments and send data to Earth for only about 60 hours before its batteries ran out and it was forced to shut down its systems and go silent.
Scientists had hoped the probe would wake up again as the comet approached the sun, enabling Philae’s solar panels to soak up enough light to charge the craft’s main battery. But there were fears its mission would be cut short.
Those fears were dismissed Saturday when the lander sent a signal back to Earth.
By wire sources.