Iraq invasion harmed historic Babylon site

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's U.S.-led invaders inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archaeological sites, experts for UNESCO said Thursday.

"The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on this internationally known archaeological site," said a report which the U.N. cultural agency presented in Paris.

UNESCO officials stressed that the damage didn't begin with the U.S. military's arrival nor fully end after it left. Archaeologists took away some of Babylon's finest treasures in the 19th century, Saddam Hussein embellished the site with his own structures, and looters returned when the Americans handed the site back to the Iraqis 21 months after the March 2003 invasion.

Now Babylon is the object of turf war between newly empowered Iraqi officials. At the national level, Iraq's state antiquities office, focused on conservation, is up against officials of the province surrounding Babylon who want to attract tourists. They have already provoked concern by leveling a section of the site to create a picnic area.

Afghan blast kills 25, half of them children

KABUL -- A truck filled with explosives that police believe may have been destined for Kabul blew up on a highway Thursday, killing 25 people -- more than half of them children walking to school. Two American soldiers died in combat as the U.S. military reported the number of roadside bombs in Afghanistan last month was nearly three times the figure for Iraq.

The attacks served as a grim reminder that the bloody conflict is widening, even as thousands of U.S. troops are being sent to Afghanistan to try to turn the tide against the Taliban-led insurgency, which has made a comeback after the Islamic extremist movement was ousted from power in 2001.

The blast occurred about 7 a.m. as police were trying to clear a traffic jam on a highway in Logar province after the truck, which was loaded with timber, had overturned the night before. Suddenly, explosives hidden beneath the timber detonated, killing 21 civilians and four policemen, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary said.

At least 13 of the dead were children on their way to school, provincial official Kamaluddin Zadran said. Three children were missing, he added. It was unclear why the explosives detonated.

Provincial police chief Mustafa Khan said the truck overturned late Wednesday as it traveled on the main road from Logar to Kabul and militants detonated it remotely when police tried to clear the way.

Afghan marriage law toned down

KABUL -- Afghanistan's government has revised a law that stirred an international outcry because it essentially legalized marital rape, officials said Thursday. The new version no longer requires a woman submit to sex with her husband, only that she do certain housework.

The changes, which parliament is expected to approve, likely reflect a calculation by President Hamid Karzai that his reputation as a reformer is more important than support from conservative Shiites who favored the original bill.

Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said the revisions show that Karzai has followed through on a pledge made in April to expunge the offensive parts of the marriage law, which applies only to minority Shiite Muslims.

Women's rights activists welcomed the new draft, but many said the government had not done enough and that little will change in day-to-day life.