Death By Police Suicide: Al Queda Sympathizer Mohammed Merah Cut Down By French Police As He Tries To Flee

LOS ANGELES — Robbers stabbed a clothing store employee and sexually assaulted another during an hours-long hostage drama that ended early Friday with a police SWAT team surging into the shop and rescuing 14 workers. No robbers were found. Police were seeking at least two men and also were trying to determine whether a car found abandoned in neighboring Culver City was the getaway vehicle.

French gunman Mohammed Merah, the self-styled al Qaeda jihadist accused of killing seven people, died in a hail of bullets Thursday as police moved in to end a day-long siege.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber rammed his car into a U.S. convoy in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 15 people including two American soldiers and four civilian contractors, officials said. The brazen attack made May the deadliest month this year for coalition forces. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Secretary, confirmed that the two soldiers from the NATO military coalition who were killed in the bombing were Americans. He would not comment on the nationalities of the civilian contractors.

The leader of an Islamist group whose members were targeted in a series of French police raids denies any contact with Toulouse gunman Mohammed Merah, lawyer Philippe Missamou said Saturday.

Facebook on Thursday removed a page that paid homage to the young Frenchman who died in a shootout with police after killing seven people, officials said.French interior ministry officials said the ministry had asked the social networking site to remove the page that went up shortly after Mohamed Merah was killed earlier Thursday in Toulouse.The page, which bore a picture of the self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda militant and was titled "Homage to Mohamed Merah", was consulted by more than 500 people before it was removed just hours after it appeared, they said.

HERKIMER, N.Y. — Authorities say the suspect in the fatal shooting of four men in neighboring upstate New York villages was holed up in a small, cluttered room in an abandoned bar when he died in a shootout with police SWAT teams.

QUETTA, Pakistan — A series of bombings in different parts of Pakistan killed 103 people on Thursday, including 69 who died in a sectarian attack on a bustling billiard hall in the southwest city of Quetta, officials said. The blasts punctuated one of the deadliest days in recent years in Pakistan, where the government faces a bloody insurgency by Taliban militants in the northwest and Baluch militants in the southwest.