LOS ANGELES: A Canada-bound bus crashed through a guard rail on an icy road in Oregon on Sunday and careened into a ravine, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 18 others, state police said.
The bus fell a couple hundred feet before stopping, Oregon State Police said on its website, adding that the chartered bus was reportedly heading home to Vancouver, Canada from Las Vegas, Nevada.
Police in the northwestern state are still investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred in the morning near the city of Pendleton, in northeastern Oregon.
The rescue effort was complicated by the drop-off from the highway, and police said "personnel trained for rope rescues" were called in to help.
About 40 passengers appeared to have been onboard the bus, but the numbers have not yet been confirmed.
The names and nationalities of the victims and other passengers were not immediately released, but many "are believed to be out of country residents," according to police.
Although the bus driver survived the crash, investigators have not been able to interview him due to the severity of the injuries.
There was at least one other fatal crash in northeastern Oregon early Sunday due to snowy and icy conditions, police said, urging all drivers to take precautions while traveling.
YouTube made a brief reappearance in Pakistan yesterday after a three-month absence.
The video-sharing service, which was blocked by that country's government in September, was available to Internet users in Pakistan for somewhere between three minutes and three hours on Saturday, depending on which media outlet one believes. The ban on the site, which has been blocked since refusing to pull a clip that mocks the prophet Muhammad, was lifted then reinstated after it was found to still host "blasphemous" content.
YouTube was blocked in Pakistan on September 17 after the Middle East erupted in protests in reaction to "Innocence of Muslims," a video on YouTube that depicts the prophet Muhammad as a buffoon. Posted in July, the clip by Southern California filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula serves as a trailer for an upcoming movie.
The quick about-face appears to be the result of poor coordination inside Packistan's government. Interior Minister Rehman Malik announced on Twitter that the unblocking of YouTube was imminent. However, after the ban was lifted, government officials soon learned that "Innocence of Muslims" was still hosted on YouTube, leading Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to order his country's Internet service providers to re-block the video-sharing site.
The country has previously sought to block access to YouTube videos, including a clip of a Dutch lawmaker in 2008. In 2010, it also sought a blanket ban on "objectionable content" surrounding a Facebook page called "Post Drawings of the Prophet Mohammad Day."
NEW YORK New York City police have identified a man they say was shoved to his death in front of a subway train by a woman.
Police said Friday that Sunando Sen was pushed from the platform the night before. The 46-year-old Sen was from India and lived alone in Queens.
Investigators identified him through a smartphone and a prescription pill bottle he was carrying when he was struck by a 7 train. His family in India has been notified.
Police are searching homeless shelters and psychiatric units for the woman believed to have pushed him. Witnesses say she was mumbling before she shoved him without warning.
The incident happened around 8 p.m. Thursday on the elevated tracks at the 40th Street Station on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, CBS Station WCBS reports.
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Search on for suspect in 2nd subway push death
Police said witnesses saw the woman pacing and mumbling on the platform before taking a seat alone on a wooden bench. Then, as the train approached the station, witnesses said she suddenly shot forward, shoving the unsuspecting man onto the tracks, directly into the path of an oncoming Number 7 train.
The New York Police Department released surveillance video of the suspect running away from the scene. Police said the woman raced down two flights of stairs after the attack and then disappeared onto the crowded street.
Detectives described her as a heavyset Hispanic woman in her 20s, approximately 5-foot-5, with blonde or brown hair. She was last seen wearing a blue, white and grey ski jacket and grey and red Nike sneakers.
The incident marked the second deadly subway push this month. On December 3, police said 58-year-old Ki Suck Han was pushed to his death by 30-year-old Naeem Davis. The two were seen on cell phone video arguing just moments before Han was pushed to his death.
In the most recent incident, witnesses said the victim never encountered his attacker and never saw what was coming.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at (800) 577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto Crime Stoppers or texting tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
In the Bible, he is called Moses. In the Koran, he is the prophet Musa.
Religious scholars have long questioned whether of the story of a prophet leading God's chosen people in a great exodus out of Egypt and the freedom it brought them afterwards was real, but the similarities between a pharaoh's ancient hymn and a psalm of David might hold the link to his existence.
Tune in to Part 2 of Christiane Amanpour's ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus, on Friday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Christian scripture says Moses was content to grow old with his family in the vast deserted wilderness of Midian, and 40 years passed until the Bible says God spoke to him through the Burning Bush and told him to lead his people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. According to tradition, that miraculous bush can still be seen today enclosed within the ancient walls of St. Catherine's Monastery, located not far from Moses' hometown.
But there was another figure in the ancient world who gave up everything to answer the call from what he believed was the one and only true God.
Archaeologists discovered the remains of the ancient city of Amarna in the 1800s. Egyptologist Rawya Ismail, who has been studying the ruins for years, believes, as other archaeologists do, that Pharaoh Akhenaten built the city as a tribute to Aten, the sun.
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She said it was a bold and unusual step for the pharaoh to leave the luxurious trappings of palace life in Luxor for the inhospitable landscape of Amarna, but it might have been his only choice as the priests from the existing religious establishment gained power.
"The very powerful Amun-Ra priests that he couldn't stand against gained control of the whole country," Ismail said. "The idea was to find a place that had never been used by any other gods -- to be virgin is what he called it -- so he chose this place."
All over the walls inside the city's beautiful tombs are examples of Akhanaten's radical message of monotheism. There is the Hymn to the Aten, which translates, in part, to: "The earth comes into being by your hand, as you made it. When you dawn, they live. When you set, they die. You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you."
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Some attribute the writing of the hymn to Akhanaten himself, but it bears a striking resemblance to a passage that can be found in the Hebrew Bible: Psalm 104.
"If you compare the hymns from A to Z, you'll find mirror images to it in many of the holy books," Ismail said. "And if you compare certain parts of it, you'll find it almost exactly -- a typical translation for some of the [psalms] of David."
Psalm 104, written a few hundred years later, references a Lord that ruled over Israel and a passage compares him to the sun.
"You hide your face, they are troubled," part of it reads. "You take away your breath, they die, And return to dust. You send forth your breath, they are created, And you renew the face of the earth."
Like the psalm, the Hymn to Aten extols the virtues of the one true God.
"A lot of people think that [the Hymn to Aten] was the source of the [psalms] of David," Ismail said. "Putting Egypt on the trade route, a lot of people traveled from Egypt and came back to Egypt, it wasn't like a country living in isolation."
Ismail believes it is possible that the message from the heretic pharaoh has some connection to the story of Moses and the Exodus, as outlined in the Hebrew Bible.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Indian gang rape victim whose assault in New Delhi triggered nationwide protests died of her injuries on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, potentially threatening fresh protests in India where her case is a rallying point for women's rights.
The 23-year-old medical student, severely beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi two weeks ago, had been flown to Singapore in a critical condition by the Indian government on Thursday for specialist treatment.
"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4:45 a.m. on Dec 29, 2012 (3:45 p.m. ET Friday). Her family and officials from the High Commission (embassy) of India were by her side," Mount Elizabeth Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement.
Most rapes and other sex crimes in India go unreported and offenders are rarely punished, women's rights activists say. But the brutality of the December 16 assault sparked public outrage and calls for better policing and harsher punishment for rapists.
The case has received blanket coverage on cable television news channels. The woman has not been identified but some Indian media have called her "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure".
"We are saddened to learn that she has succumbed to her injuries, and would like to extend our deepest condolences to her family during this time of bereavement," Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Earlier on Friday, the hospital had reported that the woman's condition had taken a turn for the worse. It said that her family had been informed and were by her side.
T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore, said after her death that the family had expressed a desire for her body to be flown back to India. Moments later, the woman's body was loaded into a van and driven away.
Talking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Raghavan declined to comment on reports in India accusing the government of sending her to Singapore to minimize the possible backlash in the event of her death.
Some Indian medical experts had questioned the decision to airlift the woman to Singapore, calling it a risky maneuver given the seriousness of her injuries. They had said she was already receiving the best possible care in India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has been battling criticism that it was tone-deaf to the outcry and heavy handed in its response to the protests in the Indian capital.
"It is deeply saddening and just beyond words. The police and government definitely have to do something more," said Sharanya Ramachandran, an Indian national working as an engineer in Singapore.
"They should bring in very severe punishment for such cases. They should start recognizing that it is a big crime."
"SIGNIFICANT BRAIN INJURY"
The Singapore hospital said earlier that the woman had suffered "significant brain injury" and was surviving against the odds. She had already undergone three abdominal operations before being flown to Singapore.
Protests over the lack of safety for women erupted across India after the attack, culminating last weekend in pitched battles between police and protesters in the heart of New Delhi.
New Delhi has been on edge since the weekend clashes. Hundreds of policemen have been deployed on the streets of the capital and streets leading to the main protest site, the India Gate war memorial, have been shut for long periods, severely disrupting traffic in the city of 16 million.
Commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration that many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social and economic issues.
Many protesters have complained that Singh's government has done little to curb the abuse of women in the country of 1.2 billion. A global poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.
New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in New Delhi and Saeed Azhar and Edgar Su in Singapore; Editing by Michael Roddy and Mark Bendeich)
PARIS: As the clock strikes 12 on Monday, millions will pop champagne corks and light fireworks while others indulge in quirkier New Year's rituals like melting lead, leaping off chairs or gobbling grapes.
One of the world's oldest shared traditions, New Year's celebrations take many forms, but most cultures have one thing in common -- letting one's hair down after a long, hard year.
For much of the globe this involves sipping bubbly with friends until the sun comes up, seeing out the old year with bonfires and flares and off-key renditions of Auld Lang Syne.
But others have rather more curious habits, often steeped in superstition.
In Finland, say tour guides, people pour molten lead into cold water to divine the year ahead from the shape the metal sets in. If the blob represents a ship it is said to foretell travel, if it's a ball, good luck.
In Denmark, people stand on chairs and jump off in unison as the clock strikes midnight, literally leaping into the new year.
The Danes also throw plates at their friends' homes during the night -- the more shards you find outside your door in the morning the more popular you are said to be.
The Dutch build massive bonfires with their Christmas trees and eat sugary donuts -- one of many cultures to consume round New Year's foods traditionally believed to represent good fortune.
Spaniards, in turn, gobble a dozen grapes before the stroke of midnight, each fruit representing a month that will either be sweet or sour.
In the Philippines, revellers wear polka dots for good luck, while in some countries of South America people don brightly coloured underwear to attract fortune -- red for love and yellow for financial success.
Despite regional and cultural differences, for most the New Year's festivities are a chance to let off steam before the annual cycle starts all over again.
"This is a holiday that is about relaxation and letting go," explained George Washington University sociologist Amitai Etzioni.
"The whole year people are chained by social requirements, morals, laws... "And then there comes some occasion in which society says for today, 24 hours, for this evening, all bets are off, all norms are suspended, and it's OK.
"The next day we have to get back in line."
Historians say people have been marking the year change for thousands of years.
The ancient Romans, who gave us the solar calendar, celebrated in a way similar to ours.
Playing, eating, drinking
"It was a day of public celebration. People spent the day playing, eating and drinking," according to French historian John Scheid of the College de France.
"During the period of the empire, the first four centuries AD, this originally Roman custom became a general festival in the whole Roman world, and so it remained until today."
January 1 became the day widely marked as New Year's Day only in 46 BC, when the emperor Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar. March 1 had been the first day of the year until then.
Medieval Europe, though, continued celebrating New Year's Day on dates with religious significance, including Christmas.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian one, correcting mathematical inconsistencies.
Most Catholic countries immediately adopted the calendar and its January 1 start, but Protestant nations did so only gradually.
Britain and its then-colonies, including the United States, were among the last to introduce the new calendar, from 1752.
While most of the world has now adopted January 1 as the official start of the year, some still hold their festivities on other dates.
Orthodox churches celebrate on January 14 (January 1 on the Julian calendar), while the Chinese New Year can fall on any date between January 21 and February 20, depending on the position of the moon.
New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority finally joined the smartphone era today by releasing an iOS app showing train arrival times for seven subway lines.
Available for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad, MTA Subway Time will display train arrival times for 156 stations on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 lines and the S shuttle line. Though officially in a test version for the time being, the app will use the same arrival times shown on station countdown clocks and on the MTA's Web site.
"The ability to get subway arrival time at street level is here," said MTA Chairman and CEO Joseph J. Lhota in a statement. "The days of rushing to a subway station only to find yourself waiting motionless in a state of uncertainty are coming to an end."
According to the statement, the app can handle up to 5,000 incoming requests per second. The information comes from a feed that can be accessed by developers for other mobile operating systems.
Though the MTA has existing apps for bus arrivals and the drive times on its bridges and tunnels, this is the first time that the country's busiest transit agency has developed an app for subway service.
NEWTOWN, Conn. The children at the Sandy Hook Elementary school won't be returning to classes for another week, but officials from the town, school district and local agencies are doing their best in the meantime to keep them occupied following a massacre at their school two weeks ago.
The students have not attended school since a gunman killed 20 of their schoolmates and six adults on Dec. 14. They are slated to return to a different school next Thursday.
In the meantime, they've been treated to field trips, toy giveaways and some organized play time.
"A couple of the teachers have done pizza parties," said Janet Robinson, Newtown's school superintendent. "Another met her kids at the library so they could have a little reading time together. The most important thing has been connecting the students back to their teacher and their classmates."
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Newtown schools superintendent: We have to move forward
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Victims of Conn. school shooting
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Newtown police get a break on Christmas
The Newtown Youth Academy, a nonprofit sports center, opened its doors to all kids in town at no cost shortly after the shooting. But from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. last week, the building's turf field, basketball and tennis courts, and giant inflatable obstacle course were reserved just for Sandy Hook Elementary students.
There have been arts and crafts for the smaller kids, as well as face-paintings. Some celebrities, including two members of the Harlem Globetrotters and former University of Connecticut basketball star Tina Charles, also have stopped by to play with the children.
UConn's men's basketball team and its coaches made a trip to the academy Thursday and played games with the kids, posed for photos and signed autographs. "It was great for us to be able to see some smiles on their faces and to spend some time with them," Coach Kevin Ollie said.
On Thursday afternoon, school buses were loading up at the Youth Academy for a trip to Stamford and a larger complex, Chelsea Piers, which also has ice rinks and an indoor swimming pool, said academy owner Peter D'Amico. Sports celebrities, such as Brooklyn Nets forward Kris Humphries, planned to meet them there.
"The idea was to get them away from the house, the television and all the coverage of this tragedy and get them to a place where kids can just be kids," said D'Amico, a longtime youth coach in town.
University of Connecticut psychologist Julian Ford, who spent time counseling in Newtown in the first days after the shooting, said it's important for the grieving process to include an outlet that lets children know that while things will never be the same, it's OK to enjoy life.
"They are all going to be thinking about what happened," he said. "That, unfortunately, is inescapable. But this gives them a chance to say, `Life is carrying on.' Nothing will be the same, but it's also continuing in ways that it should be."
Some students and their parents on Thursday toured the Chalk Hill school in Monroe, a former middle school being reopened next week for the Sandy Hook students. An open house is planned for Wednesday.
"Getting back into the school is like getting back on the horse," Robinson said. "Some of the scariness is gone once they cross that threshold. They are just so happy to see their teachers."
State police said they plan to keep their contact with the children to a minimum as they continue investigating the shooting.
"We certainly don't want to traumatize them any more than they've already been traumatized," said Lt. J. Paul Vance, the department's spokesman. "If (an interview is) not necessary it won't be done. Our investigators will make all those determinations."
In the meantime, Ford has encouraged parents to keep the kids involved in a normal holiday routine and deal with the tragedy as it comes up, rather than making it a focal point of their lives.
David Connors, who has 8-year-old triplets who attend Sandy Hook, said he and his wife have made play dates with their friends, brought the kids to see family for the holidays and participated in the class get-togethers and recreation events.
"That's been, I think, helpful at least in the short term just to kind of keep them doing things, keep them seeing their friends and being nearby and talking to family," Connors said.
Todd Wood of Newtown has five children, the youngest age 4 and the oldest in college. His children's piano teacher lost a child in the shooting, and the family knows other victims as well.
He said he's found that each child has reacted differently to the tragedy. He said he is not making the shooting the center of his family's life but is not pretending it didn't happen, either.
"We did Christmas, we had our lights here, we've tried to make things as normal as possible," he said. "But we also went down to see the memorials. I don't want to shield them from it. I want to let them grieve in their own way."
Ford said that is healthy. He said children will remember their friends as they go about doing normal kid things.
Chris Wolcott, the sport's academy's operations manager, said the best part of having the kids at the center is that the tragedy is pushed aside, at least for a little while.
"A couple times someone would drop a weight (in the facility's health center) and you would hear a bang and there would be a kid who would freeze for a second," he said. "But that would last a split-second. Most of the time, everyone just had a great time."
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the retired general credited with leading U.S.-allied forces to a victory in the first Gulf War, has died at age 78, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
He died today in Tampa, Fla., where he lived in retirement, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.
Schwarzkopf, called "Stormin' Norman" because of his reportedly explosive temper, actually led Republican administrations to two military victories: a small one in Grenada in the 1980s and a big one as de facto commander of allied forces in the Gulf War in 1991.
"'Stormin' Norman' led the coalition forces to victory, ejecting the Iraqi Army from Kuwait and restoring the rightful government," read a statement by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "His leadership not only inspired his troops, but also inspired the nation."
Schwarzkopf's success during that fight, also known as Operation Desert Storm, came under President George H.W. Bush, who through his office today mourned "the loss of a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation."
"Gen. Norm Schwarzkopf, to me, epitomized the 'duty, service, country' creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great nation through our most trying international crises," Bush said. "More than that, he was a good and decent man -- and a dear friend."
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Bush's office released the statement though the former president, himself, was ill, hospitalized in Texas with a stubborn fever and on a liquids-only diet.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today called Schwarzkopf "one of the great military giants of the 20th century."
Schwarzkopf, the future four-star general, was born Aug. 24, 1934, in Trenton, N.J. He was raised as an army brat in Iran, Switzerland, Germany and Italy, following in his father's footsteps to West Point, earning an engineering degree and being commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1956.
Schwarzkopf's father, who shared his name, directed the investigation of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping as head of the New Jersey State Police, later becoming a brigadier general in the U.S. Army.
The younger Schwarzkopf earned three Silver Stars for bravery during two tours in Vietnam, gaining a reputation as an opinionated, plain-spoken commander with a sharp temper who would risk his own life for his soldiers.
"He had volunteered to go to Vietnam early just so he could get there before the war ended," said former Army Col. William McKinney, who knew Schwarzkopf from their days at West Point, according to ABC News Radio.
In 1983, as a newly-minted general, Schwarzkopf once again led troops into battle in President Reagan's invasion of Granada, a tiny Caribbean island where the White House saw American influence threatened by a Cuban-backed coup.
But he gained most of his fame in Iraq, where he used his 6-foot-3, 240-pound frame and fearsome temper to drive his forces to victory.
"He was known as a soldier's general," said retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, as he explained the "Stormin' Norman" nickname to ABC News Radio. "In other words, he really liked the troops and was soft on the troops. But boy, on his general officers, his officers, his NCO's, he was very, very tough and he had a real quick temper."
Gruff and direct, Schwarzkopf said during the Gulf War that his goal was to win the war as quickly as possible and with a focused objective: getting Iraq out of Kuwait.
BANGUI (Reuters) - The president of the Central African Republic appealed on Thursday for France and the United States to help push back rebels threatening his government and the capital, but Paris said its troops were only ready to protect French nationals.
The exchanges came as regional African leaders tried to broker a ceasefire deal and as rebels said they had temporarily halted their advance on Bangui, the capital, to allow talks to take place.
Insurgents on motorbikes and in pickup trucks have driven to within 75 km (47 miles) of Bangui after weeks of fighting, threatening to end President Francois Bozize's nearly 10-year-stint in charge of the turbulent, resource-rich country.
French nuclear energy group Areva mines the Bakouma uranium deposit in the CAR's south - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.
The rebel advance has highlighted the instability of a country that has remained poor since independence from Paris in 1960 despite rich deposits of uranium, gold and diamonds. Average income is barely over $2 a day.
Bozize on Thursday appealed for French and U.S. military support to stop the SELEKA rebel coalition, which has promised to overthrow him unless he implements a previous peace deal in full.
He told a crowd of anti-rebel protesters in the riverside capital that he had asked Paris and Washington to help move the rebels away from the capital to clear the way for peace talks which regional leaders say could be held soon in Libreville, Gabon.
"We are asking our cousins the French and the United States, which are major powers, to help us push back the rebels to their initial positions in a way that will permit talks in Libreville to resolve this crisis," Bozize said.
France has 250 soldiers in its landlocked former colony as part of a peacekeeping mission and Paris in the past has ousted or propped up governments - including by using air strikes to defend Bozize against rebels in 2006.
But French President Francois Hollande poured cold water on the latest request for help.
"If we have a presence, it's not to protect a regime, it's to protect our nationals and our interests and in no way to intervene in the internal business of a country, in this case the Central African Republic," Hollande said on the sidelines of a visit to a wholesale food market outside Paris.
"Those days are over," he said.
Some 1,200 French nationals live in the CAR, mostly in the capital, according to the French Foreign Ministry, where they typically work for mining firms or aid groups.
CEASEFIRE TALKS
The U.N. Security Council issued a statement saying its members "condemn the continued attacks on several towns perpetrated by the 'SELEKA' coalition of armed groups which gravely undermine the Libreville Comprehensive Peace Agreement and threaten the civilian population."
U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. embassy had temporarily suspended operations and the U.S. ambassador and other embassy personnel had left the country.
Officials from around central Africa are due to meet in Bangui later on Thursday to open initial talks with the government and rebels.
A rebel spokesman said fighters had temporarily halted their advance to allow dialogue.
"We will not enter Bangui," Colonel Djouma Narkoyo, the rebel spokesman, told Reuters by telephone.
Previous rebel promises to stop advancing have been broken, and a diplomatic source said rebels had taken up positions around Bangui on Thursday, effectively surrounding it.
The atmosphere remained tense in the city the day after anti-rebel protests broke out, and residents were stocking up on food and water.
Government soldiers deployed at strategic sites and French troops reinforced security at the French embassy after protesters threw rocks at the building on Wednesday.
In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry said protecting foreigners and embassies was the responsibility of the CAR authorities.
"This message will once again be stressed to the CAR's charge d'affaires in Paris, who has been summoned this afternoon," a ministry spokesman said.
He also said France condemned the rebels for pursuing hostilities and urged all sides to commit to talks.
Bozize came to power in a 2003 rebellion that overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse.
However, France is increasingly reluctant to directly intervene in conflicts in its former colonies. Since coming to power in May, Hollande has promised to end its shadowy relations with former colonies and put ties on a healthier footing.
A military source and an aid worker said the rebels had got as far as Damara, 75 km (47 miles) from Bangui, by late afternoon on Wednesday, having skirted Sibut, where some 150 Chadian soldiers had earlier been deployed to try and block a push south by a rebel coalition.
With a government that holds little sway outside the capital, some parts of the country have long endured the consequences of conflicts in troubled neighbors Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo spilling over.
The Central African Republic is one of a number of nations in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local forces try to track down the Lords Resistance Army, a rebel group responsible for killing thousands of civilians across four African nations.
(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas and Louis Charbonneau; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Paul Simao)
