The Red Cross says that of the 39 killed Dec. 28 in a clash between government forces and the Yan Kala-Kato Islamic sect in the Nigerian state of Bauchi, some 60% were students aged between nine and 15. Sect leader Malam Badamasi was reportedly among those killed by a joint army and police squad at Zango. Fighting broke out at Zango, on the outskirts of Bauchi city, after a sermon delivered by the sect's leader created a disturbance. Preachers reportedly threatened those who refused to convert to their brand of Islam with being expelled from the area. (BBC News, IPS, Dec. 29)

A UN High Commissioner for Refugees official protested Thailand's move to forcibly repatriate some 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to Laos. "UNHCR is extremely dismayed that Thailand has commenced the deportations of the Lao Hmong today from the camp in Phetchabun," said Ariane Rummery, UNHCR spokesperson in Bangkok. "We don't have access to the area, but we have had reports that deportations began this morning and about 400 people have been removed so far."

In a fourth consecutive day of protests during the Ashura holy period in Iran, police fired teargas Dec. 28 to disperse supporters of reformist leader Mirhossein Mousavi who gathered in Tehran to express their condolences over his nephew's death in an anti-government rally. Iranian authorities say the death toll in the past 48 hours stands at eight, with some 60 injured. (Reuters, Dec. 28)

A bomb ripped through a procession marking Ashura in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, outside Kirkuk, killing five and wounding 27, including five women and one police officer. The attack came a day after three Shi'ites were killed when bombs struck separate Ashura processions in Baghdad. Over the past six days, 32 have been killed and more than 160 wounded in violence targeting Ashura, including attacks on worshippers in Karbala and Baghdad. (AFP, Dec. 28)

A suicide bomb in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administrated Kashmir, killed at least 15 and injured over 100 in an attack on a Shi'ite religious procession marking the Ashura holy period Dec. 28, while another explosion near a procession in the port city of Karachi injured 35. Police said the Karachi blast was triggered by a build-up of gas in a manhole, but doctors who treated the victims found pellets in the bodies, suggesting that an explosive device was detonated. (ANI, Dec. 28)

On Dec. 26, Dora "Alicia" Recinos Sorto, 32, was assassinated—the second anti-mining activist killed this week in the small community of Nueva Trinidad in El Salvador's Cabañas department. Recinos Sorto was eight months pregnant and carrying her two-year old child when she was shot on her way back from doing laundry at a nearby river. She and her husband, José Santos Rodríguez, were outspoken opponents of the non-operational El Dorado mine which Vancouver-based Pacific Rim is seeking to reopen despite widespread community opposition.

José Alberto Velázquez López, owner of the Mexican newspaper Expresiones de Tulum in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, died this week after being shot in his car by a gunman aboard a motorcycle, according to local news reports. His death brings to 12 the number of reporters killed this year in the country.

In a heart-warming display of holiday spirit, the New York Times runs a Christmas Eve op-ed, "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran" by one Alan J. Kuperman, making the case for pre-emptive military strikes. The writer is named as "the director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin"—but this entity apparently isn't important enough to rate its own web page. It appears to be a project of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Pretty ironic, given that pre-emptive strikes on Iran without UN authorization would be clearly illegal. Maybe they should call it the Robert S. Strauss Center Against International Security and Law.