The death toll from clashes following a soccer match in Western Sahara on Sept. 25 has reached seven, Morocco's MAP official news agency reports, making it the worst violence in the occupied territory since last November. Residents in Dakhla, the site of the match, told Reuters that clashes between ethnic Sahrawi supporters of the home team and Moroccan settlers who supported the visiting team from a town near Casablanca continued until early on Sept. 27. Street-fighting spread through the town as police used teargas, and army troops were ordered into two neighborhoods to restore order.

The sentencing of a Saudi Arabian woman to 10 lashes after she drove a car demonstrates the scale of discrimination against women in the kingdom, Amnesty International said Sept. 27. "Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car," said Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Philip Luther, noting the irony that the sentence was handed down days after the Saudi monarchy had announced that women would be granted the vote in municipal council elections.

Bolivian Defense Minister Cecilia Chacón resigned in protest Sept. 26, the day after National Police used tear gas and mass arrests to halt a cross-country march by indigenous protesters in the Amazonian department of Beni. In an open letter to President Evo Morales, Chacón gave notice of her "irrevocable" resignation, stating: "I do not agree with the decision to intervene in the march and I cannot defend or justify the measure when other alternatives existed." The police charge on the protesters' encampment outside the village of Yucomo came hours after Morales proposed a regional referendum on the issue that sparked the protest—his proposed new road cutting through the rainforest to Brazil.

Reviving a protest movement that had become moribund in recent months, some 10,000 Moroccans marched in Casablanca Sept. 25, calling for a boycott of the upcoming elections. The February 20 movement has been continuing to hold weekly Sunday marches in Casablanca, the country's biggest city; after dwindling since the spring they have been growing again as the November parliamentary elections approach. Demonstrators who took to the streets in the sprawling low-income neighborhood of Sbata chanted slogans against government corruption, and the power of the king. "Head of the army, it's too much—head of the religion, it's too much," was one popular slogan, referring to some of the many powers the king keeps under the newly amended constitution. (Miami Herald, Sept. 25; AP, Sept. 18)

Four coordinated explosions killed 15 and injured at least 100 Sept. 25 in Iraq's Shi'ite holy city of Karbala. The first blast targeted a government building that issues ID cards. Three more explosions followed as police and emergency workers gathered, shearing off the facades of several buildings. The dead included five police and 10 civilians. Four children are among the wounded. This was the latest in a series of recent attacks in the city. On Sept. 22, a suicide bomber killed four pilgrims and wounded 17 as they made their way into Karbala. A Sept. 12 attack on a bus full of pilgrims in Anbar province close to the border of Karbala province and left 22 dead. On Aug.15, car bomb exploded near the police headquarters of Hindiya district, 15 miles east of Karbala, killing three and injuring 42. On July 15, three coordinated bomb blasts in the city targeted pilgrims, claiming more than 100 casualties.

Indigenous protesters armed with bows and arrows in the Bolivian Amazon broke through a police blockade to continue their cross-country march on La Paz Sept. 24—with Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca in the vanguard of their charge. One police officer was wounded, apparently by an arrow which struck his face. Officials said Choquehuanca was used as a "human shield" by the protesters, along with another government minister and a police commander, after they approached them to negotiate. Choquehuanca told EFE after his release: "I was preparing for talks when women surrounded me and then there were problems. There were some who were angry and they forced me to walk." But he also struck a conciliatory note: "The fact that they decided to free me is a sign that they want to resolve matters through dialogue."

At least 25 were injured on Sept. 25 as National Police fired shotguns and tear-gas bombs on protesters blocking access to the Toquepala copper mine in Peru's southern region of Tacna. Some 100 were also detained. Campesinos from the nearby villages of Huaytire, Camilaca and Cairani gathered at the mine site following public hearings for an environmental impact statement on plans to expand operations at the mine. In a paro, or civic strike, called to protest the expansion plans, schools and public transportation in the city of Tacna were also shut down for 48 hours. The mine is owned by Southern Peru Copper Corporation, a holding of the giant Grupo Mexico, and hopes to expand operations in order to begin exports to China. (RPP, Sept. 22; Mariátegui blog, Lima, Sept. 21; Reuters, Sept. 14)

A federal judge in Miami on Sept. 23 sentenced Bolivia's former top anti-drug official, Gen. Rene Sanabria, to 14 years in prison for cocaine trafficking—although the "Colombian drug lords" he thought he was dealing with were really undercover DEA agents, and the "conspiracy" to smuggle 300 pounds of coke via truck to Chile for export to the US was controlled by the DEA from start to finish. Sanabria's role in the pseudo-conspiracy was to assure that the shipment would be unmolested. Sanabria was President Evo Morales' chosen director of the Bolivian Center of Anti-Drug Information since 2009, and before that served as leader of the Special Force for Struggle Against Narco-trafficking (FELCN), an elite unit of the National Police. He was arrested in August 2010 in Panama and extradited to the US.