In the World

ATHENS, Greece - Dozens of wildfires broke out across Greece, torching olive groves, cutting off villages, and sending residents fleeing yesterday as one of the largest blazes swept perilously close to the capital's northern suburbs.

The fires north of Athens were reported in an area more than 25 miles wide and forced authorities to evacuate two children's hospitals, camp sites, villages, and outlying suburban areas threatened by blazes that sent huge clouds of smoke over the capital and scattered ash on city streets.

Antiaircraft missiles were removed from a base north of Athens threatened by fire, the army said.

With planes and helicopters grounded after nightfall, Fire Service officials said their effort was concentrated on protecting several towns where homes were under threat. Volunteers and army conscripts helped hundreds of firefighters ring the towns. - AP

BEIRUT, Lebanon - An Iranian lawmaker vowed yesterday to examine allegations that dozens of unidentified people killed in the recent postelection unrest were secretly buried in the country's largest cemetery last month.

The reformist Web site Norooznews.org cited an unnamed employee Friday of the capital's Behesht Zahra cemetery as saying that 44 unidentified corpses were buried under heavy security July 12 and 15.

Majid Nasirpour, a reformist lawmaker who serves on Parliament's Social Affairs Committee, filed a request for an inquiry into the mass burial allegation, the Web site Parlemannews.ir reported. - Los Angeles Times

BOGOTA, Colombia - Police have captured a guerrilla suspected of killing a U.S. military contractor and a Colombian soldier after their surveillance plane crashed in the jungle in 2003, authorities said yesterday.

Judicial police director Luis Ramirez alleged that Jose Armando Cadena Cabrera, who went by the nom de guerre "Bronco," was personally responsible for killing contractor Thomas John Janis and soldier Luis Alcides Cruz and was part of a band of rebels that kidnapped three other American contractors who were on the plane.

The others - Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell - were rescued in 2008. They wrote in a book this year that a guerrilla named Sonia had told them she killed Cruz and Janis, who was from Montgomery, Ala. - AP

Islamic insurgents attacked a government checkpoint in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu yesterday, sparking a gun battle that killed at least five people on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A French far-right activist, Maxime Brunerie, was released from prison seven years after trying to assassinate then-President Jacques Chirac in a Bastille Day attack, a judicial official said.

German prosecutors are investigating about 100 professors across the country on suspicion they took bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees, authorities said.