Quito's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Sept. 12 that the dramatic attack two days earlier by FARC guerillas on the border town of San Miguel in Colombia's Putumayo department was not launched from Ecuador. Patiño stressed that the attack, in which at least six Colombian National Police officers were killed, "has nothing to do with us." The foreign minister's statement came in reaction to the expressed concerns of the Colombian government that FARC fighters may have crossed into Colombia from Ecuador to launch the offensive and then fled back to hide in the neighboring country.

In what was probably Mexico's biggest jailbreak ever Sept. 10, 89 prisoners—66 facing or convicted of federal charges, mostly related to drugs and firearms—used ladders to scale the 20-foot walls of the Execution and Sanction Center (CEDES) in the border city of Reynosa in conflicted Tamaulipas state. Two guards at the facility disappeared along with them, and are assumed to have been in on the scheme. Tamaulipas' new public safety secretary, José Garza García, said 44 guards and employees of the prison are under investigation. Military sources said the Gulf Cartel is suspected of involvement. So far this year, 201 inmates have escaped from prisons in Tamaulipas. In April, armed men who arrived in 10 cars stormed another Reynosa prison and exchanged gunfire with guards, freeing 13 inmates. (AP, La Jornada, Sept. 11; EuropaPress, Sept. 10)

The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) strongly condemned weekend clashes between Albanians and Serbs in the divided town of Mitrovica, just days after the UN called for dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. Several people, including one EULEX police officer, were injured during the unrest. "These acts of senseless hooliganism have no place in any democratic society and need to be condemned by all," EULEX head of mission Yves de Kermabon said Sept. 12. Returning from the UN Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci insisted that the previous night's incident in Mitrovica does not jeopardize the creation of a multi-ethnic society in Kosova. KFOR commander Erhard Buhler said during a visit to Mitrovica that NATO-led troops will not tolerate violence in northern Kosova and will guarantee a safe environment for all.

Hundreds of protesters marched Sept. 9 in Galkayo, a town in Somalia's northern enclave of Puntland, against plans by a southern preacher in the US to hold a mass Koran-burning. The protesters, who marched through the town's main streets, chanted anti-American and anti-Christian slogans. Said march organizer Mohamed Abdullahi: "This is yet another proof of an anti-Islam sentiment in the western world." (The Nation, Kenya, Sept. 9)

From the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Sept. 5:

Release Human Rights Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh
The International Campaign for Human Right in Iran called for the immediate release of prominent human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was arrested at Evin prison on 4 September 2010, and for all charges against her to be dropped.

President Barack Obama is backtracking from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement comparing Mexico and Colombia. "Mexico is a large and progressive democracy with a growing economy," Obama said in a Sept. 9 interview with La Opinion, a Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles. "As a result, you can’t compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago."

Central American is again being hit by devastating floods, in a rainy season that has wreaked destruction across the isthmus. Officials in Guatemala have called off the search for 15 people missing after deadly landslides, fearing fresh mudlsides after the heaviest rains in 60 years. The decision by the Guatemalan disaster response agency CONRED Sept. 7 came as rescuers resumed their grim task of digging for corpses in a ravine next to the Pan-American Highway in Santa Ana Mixta, Sololá department.

Honduran police have blamed street gangs linked to Mexican drug cartels for the killing of at least 18 employees in a shoe factory in the northern industrial city of San Pedro Sula on Sept. 7. Up to four men armed with assault rifles burst into the factory and opened fire on the workers. All the victims were said to be young men. Several others were wounded. San Pedro Sula's police chief, Hector Mejia, said the attack was part of an escalating dispute between the rival Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 gangs. "This massacre is linked to the drugs the gangs receive as payment from the Mexican and Colombian cartels for helping to move drugs through the country," Mejia told Reuters. (BBC News, Reuters, Aug. 17)