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Iran on alert after election protests

TEHRAN, June 14 (UPI) -- Iranian protesters claiming ballot fraud threw rocks at police in Tehran Sunday as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared for a victory rally, witnesses said.

While police were able to control the 100 or so protesters, some feared the violence would escalate dramatically when Ahmadinejad's supporters appeared in the streets for his rally.

"We are all worried about that," Yashar Khazdouzian, a student, told CNN.

"People against people is the worst kind of riots in Iran."

Saturday, thousands of protesters shouting "Death to the dictatorship" torched police motorcycles and vandalized store fronts with rocks.

The demonstrators, many of them students, supported Ahmadinejad's rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Friday's presidential election.

While the Iranian government declared Ahmadinejad the winner, Mousavi, a former prime minister, called the election results fraudulent. It was not clear Sunday whether Mousavi had been placed under house arrest, CNN reported.

Eighty-five percent of Iran's 46 million eligible voters turned out Friday, a record number, said Iran's interior ministry, which gave Ahmadinejad 62.63 percent of the vote and Mousavi 33.75 percent.

Separate attacks kill 11 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 14 (UPI) -- A bomb in a rickshaw Sunday killed eight people while a suspected drone attack killed three militants in tribal country, Pakistani authorities said.

The bomb detonated in a market in Dera Ismail Khan, killing eight and wounding 20, Syed Mohsan Shah, the city's district coordination officer, told CNN.

Police arrested three suspects in the bombing, which was in retaliation for the Pakistani government's military offensive against the Taliban in the region, CNN reported.

Sunday's suspected drone attack killed three Taliban militants in South Waziristan, Taliban and local sources told CNN. No other details were immediately available.

Nine kidnapped in Yemen

SANA, Yemen, June 14 (UPI) -- Yemeni authorities Sunday said they were working to free nine hostages kidnapped by Shiite militants fighting the government's reconstruction efforts in Saada.

The seven Germans, one Briton and a South Korean were taken by Shiite Houthi rebels in the province of Saada, Yemen's state-run news agency SABA reported.

Three of those kidnapped were children. The kidnapped adults worked for the province's Jumhori Hospital.

Houthi rebels have been fighting the Yemeni government for years, trying to derail a peace and reconstruction process in Saada, SABA reported.

The kidnapping was the second within a week. Thursday, gunmen in Amran province kidnapped 24 medical workers, who later were released, Saba said.

U.N. official urges review of airstrikes

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 14 (UPI) -- U.S.-led Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan need to revise military strategies to reduce the number of civilian deaths, a United Nations official said.

"We cannot eliminate civilian casualties, but we cannot afford mistakes that lead to the loss of civilian lives, the alienation of the population and media headlines month after month that overshadow all the positive trends," said Kai Eide, chief of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

Eide's comments were released Saturday after his video call from Kabul to NATO ministers in Brussels, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Speaking in unusually firm terms, Eide called for an urgent review of the special operations raids, saying they need to include more Afghans in the decision-making, the Times reported.

The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased by 40 percent last year to an estimated 2,128, the United Nations said, attributing 828 of those deaths to airstrikes on villages from special operations forces. The rest of the deaths were blamed on Taliban fighters and other insurgents.