World datelines

Colombia: Bombing

BOGOTA — The death toll from a car bombing has risen to nine in Colombia's Pacific port of Buenaventura.

Local Red Cross director Carlos Ivan Marquez also said Thursday that 36 people were wounded by the blast near offices of the mayor and prosecutors. No one has claimed responsibility for the Wednesday bombing.

As Colombia's only major Pacific port, Buenaventura is a key cocaine trafficking hub and is rife with rival criminal bands.

Mexico: Jailbreak

MEXICO CITY — Police were searching for two prison guards and 41 inmates who disappeared after a pre-dawn jailbreak Thursday in the Mexican city of Matamoros across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

Prison director Orlando Saucedo Pinto has been put on temporary leave as investigators review how the prisoners broke out, Mexican prison officials told a news conference. Prison staff are also being investigated, they said.

All but three of the prisoners who escaped had been charged under federal law but were being held at the state institution.

China: Sentencing

BEIJING — A Chinese university student who stabbed his sleeping roommate to death because he snored too much was given a suspended death sentence, state media reported today.

The court in Changchun, capital of northeast Jilin province, handed down the sentence to 24-year-old Guo Liwei, who confessed to stabbing his roommate to death in November, the official Xinhua News Agency said today. A suspended death sentence is usually changed to life in prison after two years, if the person shows good behavior.

Somalia: 6 freed

PARIS — After a chase on the high seas and exchanges of fire between private security contractors and pirates off Somalia, the European Union Naval Force released six men who had tried to commandeer a cargo ship heading for Mogadishu, the naval force said Thursday.

The six were freed because the captain of the ship they were accused of attacking declined to identify them for the purposes of legal action, Cmdr. John Harbour, the spokesman for the naval force, said in a telephone interview. The men were placed in a skiff and given enough fuel and water to reach the shore, he added.

Israel: U.S. demand