OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Jihadists attacked a town in northern Burkina Faso and killed 35 civilians, most of them women, and ensuing clashes with security forces left 80 jihadists dead, the West African nation’s president announced late Tuesday.

The violence, which erupted in the town of Arbinda in Sahel region near the country’s border with Mali, lasted for several hours, according to a military statement.

“The heroic action of our soldiers has made it possible to neutralize 80 terrorists,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said. “This barbaric attack resulted in the death of 35 civilians, most of them women.”

It was not immediately clear where the women were at the time of the attack and why so many died.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. A number of Islamic extremist groups are known to operate in Burkina Faso, though they generally do not usually come forward when civilian casualties are high.

For years Burkina Faso was spared the kind of Islamic extremism long seen across the border in Mali, where it took a 2013 French-led military intervention to dislodge jihadists from power in several major towns.

That changed with a pair of deadly attacks in 2016 and 2017 in the capital of Ouagadougou, both of which targeted spots popular with foreigners.

While Burkina Faso’s military has received training from former colonizer France and the United States, it has so far failed to stem the surge in extremist violence.

Israeli army: Civilian deaths unexpected in Gaza airstrike

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military Tuesday said that it has wrapped up an investigation into an airstrike that killed nine members of a Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip. The report admitted it didn’t expect the strike to result in civilian casualties.

The Nov. 14 airstrike in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah came in the closing hours of a fierce two-day burst of fighting between Israel and the Islamic Jihad militant group.

The military said its investigation found the building had served as a “military compound” used by Islamic Jihad.

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, said there was evidence that militant groups have intentionally targeted Israeli civilians and used Gaza’s own civilian population as human shields.

Officials: NH hotel fire, blast injures 2 firefighters, 8 guests

LEBANON, N.H. — An explosion and fire in a hotel in New Hampshire sent two firefighters and eight guests to the hospital Tuesday, officials said.

None of the injuries suffered at the Element Hotel in Lebanon was life-threatening, officials said. But a firefighter with a broken arm and broken ribs was expected to spend Christmas in the hospital, Lebanon Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos told WMUR-TV.

“I’ve been doing this for 37 and a half years and, by far, this has been the worst incident I’ve been involved in in my life,” the chief said.

The explosion happened in the early morning, just after crews responded to a fire alarm, according to the New Hampshire Fire Marshal’s office. Officials do not believe the cause was criminal in nature.

Court files: Feb. 3 trial set for Iowan charged in hate crimes

DES MOINES, Iowa — A trial has been scheduled for an Iowa woman accused of hate crimes in the Des Moines area, including intentionally running over a girl she thought was Mexican.

Nicole Marie Poole is charged with assault in violation of individual rights in connection with an incident at a convenience store and is scheduled to go on trial Feb. 3 in Des Moines. Court documents indicate she also goes by the name of Nicole Franklin.

Poole went to a convenience store Dec. 9 where she threw items at a clerk and directed racial epithets at him and customers, West Des Moines police said in a court document. She also was charged with operating a vehicle under the influence, second offense. Poole has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

UN: Bomb attacks hamper aid groups in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen — A dozen humanitarian organizations in war-torn southern Yemen suspended their operations following a string of targeted attacks, the United Nations said, while the country’s rebel-led health ministry announced on Tuesday that severe outbreaks of swine flu and dengue fever have killed close to 200 people since October.

The suspension of aid work came after unknown assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades at three aid organizations in the southwestern province of Dhale over the weekend, according to the U.N. Humanitarian Office in Yemen, wounding a security guard and damaging several office buildings.

The bombings signaled “an alarming escalation in the risks faced by humanitarian workers” and halted the provision of badly needed aid to 217,000 residents, the U.N. said.

28 killed as

bus plunges into ravine

in Indonesia

PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A bus plunged into a ravine on Indonesia’s Sumatra island after its brakes apparently malfunctioned, killing at least 28 people and injuring 13 others, police and rescuers said Tuesday.

The accident occurred just before midnight Monday on a winding road in South Sumatra province’s Pagaralam district.

One of the injured was in critical condition, local police chief Dolly Gumara said.

Gumara said the bus plunged into a 262-foot-deep ravine and crashed into a fast-flowing river after the driver lost control of the vehicle in an area with a number of sharp declines.

Survivors told authorities that the vehicle’s brakes apparently malfunctioned, but police were still investigating the cause of the accident, Gumara said.

Spelling error: Some spelling mistakes are tough to see, but that doesn’t include the one that was made on 10,000 trash bins in Prichard, Ala.

The city’s new residential garbage cans say the town is located in “Mobile Country,” but they were supposed to say it’s located in “Mobile County” without the extra “r.” The mistake is printed in large letters on two sides of the big, gray cans.

Prichard Mayor Jimmie Gardner told WPMI-TV the city’s public works department had the duty of making sure the writing was spelled correctly.

The city doesn’t plan to replace the bins, and that’s fine with some people.

“It doesn’t really matter as long as they pick it up,” said resident Murlean Henderson.