World datelines

KABUL —The U.S. military said airstrikes by its attack helicopters hit two vehicles carrying insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. The province's governor said 22 civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said Friday the airstrikes in Nuristan province hit militants who earlier attacked a U.S. military base with mortars. The helicopters identified the militants' firing positions, tracked them down and destroyed the vehicles they were traveling in, said 1st Lt. Nathan Perry.

Belarus: Bomb injures dozens

MINSK— A homemade bomb tore through a crowd that included the country's authoritarian president early Friday, wounding more than 50 people at an all-night holiday concert, health officials said.

The blast was unusual in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic, where President Alexander Lukashenko harshly suppresses dissent and public violence is rare. Officials blamed unspecified "hooligans" for the bombing.

Lukashenko was not wounded in the blast, and it was unclear if the attack was an assassination attempt. There were no reported claims of responsibility.

El Salvador: Bus crash kills 29

SAN SALVADOR— Rescue crews recovered 29 bodies Friday from a raging, rain-fed river that swept a bus carrying members of an evangelical church off a bridge in El Salvador's capital.

Crews were still looking for at least one other person believed aboard the bus when it was carried away by the Acelhuate river in southern San Salvador Thursday night, said Raul Murillo, spokesman for the national civil protection service.

Iraq: Shiite leader assassinated

BAGHDAD — Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated an official of Iraq's biggest Shiite party Friday in the southern city of Basra, police said.

Sheik Salim al-Dirraji was gunned down in the Hayania district, which had been a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr until a security crackdown last spring. Al-Dirraji was a local official of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the leading rival of al-Sadr's party within the Shiite community.

Mexico: 3 more bodies found

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities say they have found the bodies of three decapitated men accompanied by a dead snake and threatening messages.

A report from the state prosecutor's office obtained by The Associated Press says the bodies were found Friday in a car trunk in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. They were mutilated and riddled with bullets. The discovery comes two days after four other decapitated bodies were found in the city.

Peru: Ancient textiles found