NEW DELHI (AP) — Rescuers using gas cutters and shovels were searching in construction rubble Sunday for more than a dozen workers feared trapped in the second of two building collapses in India that together have killed at least 16 people.

The 12-story structure the workers were building collapsed late Saturday while heavy rains were pounding the outskirts of Chennai, the capital of southern Tamil Nadu state. Police said 26 construction workers had been pulled out so far and the search was continuing for more than a dozen others.

Two of the workers died on the spot and another three succumbed to injuries later in a hospital, said police officer George Fernandes.

Fifteen injured workers have been hospitalized, while six others were allowed to go home after medical attention on Saturday night, Fernandes said.

Nearly 300 policemen and fire service workers worked overnight, scouring the debris for survivors. They used gas cutters, iron rods and shovels to reach those trapped in the rubble.

Earlier Saturday, a four-story, 50-year-old structure toppled in an area of New Delhi inhabited by the poor. At least 11 people died and one survivor was being treated in a hospital, said fire service officer Praveer Haldiar.

Most homes in that part of the capital were built without permission and using substandard materials, police officer Madhur Verma said.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the New Delhi collapse was triggered by construction work on an adjacent plot.

Building collapses are common in India, where high demand for housing and lax regulations have encouraged some builders to cut corners, use substandard materials or add unauthorized extra floors.

In April last year, 74 people were killed when an eight-story building being constructed illegally in the Mumbai suburb of Thane in western Maharashtra state caved in. It was the worst building collapse in the country in decades.

Buildings collapse in India, killing at least 16

Rescuers are searching the rubble for more than a dozen workers feared trapped in one of the structures.
Several injured

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired two short-range Scud missiles into its eastern waters Sunday, a South Korean official said, in an apparent test just days after the country tested what it called new precision-guided missiles.

A South Korean military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department rules, said the missiles were fired from Wonsan and are presumed to be short-range Scud ballistic missiles. The official added that the military is determining what kind of Scud missiles the projectiles were. South Korean media quoted officials as saying the missiles are presumed to be Scud-C missiles, the same as ones fired in March. North Korea fired the missiles without designating no-sail zones, which the South Korean military views as provocative.

North Korea regularly test-fires missiles and artillery, both to refine its weapons and to express its anger over various developments in Seoul and Washington. North Korea has in recent days criticized alleged South Korean artillery firing drills near a disputed maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea that has been the scene of several bloody skirmishes between the rival nations in recent years. The missile displays also come days before the leader of North Korea's only major ally, Chinese President Xi Jinping, is set to meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Seoul and Beijing have long pressed North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.

North Korea said Friday that leader Kim Jong Un guided test launches of a newly developed precision-guided missiles, in a likely reference to three short-range projectiles South Korean officials say the North fired a day earlier.

It's not possible to tell if this assertion about the new missiles is an exaggeration, something North Korea has frequently done in the past when trumpeting its military capability, analysts say. Its army is one of the world's largest but is believed to be badly supplied and forced to use outdated equipment.

Still, the impoverished North devotes much of its scarce resources to missile and nuclear programs that threaten South Korea, Japan and tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the region. Outside analysts say North Korea has developed a handful of crude nuclear devices and is working toward building a warhead small enough to mount on a long-range missile, although most experts say that goal may take years to achieve.

After a brief period of warming ties earlier this year, animosity has risen on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has in recent months threatened South Korea's president, calling her a prostitute, and the South has vowed to hit North Korea hard if provoked. Pyongyang conducted a series of missile and artillery tests earlier this year in response to annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises it says it considers preparations for an invasion. North Korea also test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles and exchanged artillery fire with South Korea near the disputed boundary in the Yellow Sea.

On Thursday, North Korea's army accused South Korea of firing shells into the North's waters near the sea boundary.

Both Koreas routinely conduct artillery drills near the maritime boundary. A North Korean artillery attack in 2010 killed four South Koreans on a front-line Yellow Sea island.

The Korean Peninsula is still technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel carried out airstrikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip early Sunday after a rocket attack, the military said, as the country's foreign minister suggested it consider reoccupying the Hamas-ruled territory to stop the increasing rocket fire.

There has been an increase in rockets launched from the Hamas-ruled territory toward Israel this month, as the army has carried out a wide-ranging operation against Hamas in the West Bank while searching for three Israeli teens who Israel says were abducted by the Palestinian militant group.

The military said it targeted 12 locations in Gaza on Sunday, including concealed rocket launchers, weapons manufacturing sites and what it called "terror activity" sites. The airstrikes were in retaliation for six rockets from Gaza that struck Israel the previous evening. Two of the rockets hit a factory in the town of Sderot, setting it ablaze.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said limited operations against militants in Gaza only strengthen Hamas.

"The alternative is clear," Lieberman said on Army Radio. "Either with each round we attack terror infrastructure and they shoot, or we go to full occupation."

Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but continues to control access to the territory by air, land and sea. Israeli leaders have said the pullout cleared the way for Hamas to seize control of the territory two years later and turn it into a base for rocket attacks on Israel, but there has been little support for reoccupying the territory.

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Israeli firefighters try to extinguish a burning factory hit by a rocket fired by Palestinian milita …

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian militants in Gaza who were members of the Tawhid Brigades, an ultraconservative Islamic militant group unaffiliated with Hamas, according to Palestinian security officials and militants from the group. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters and the militants because they operate underground.

The security officials had initially said the two fighters were members of a militant group allied with Hamas that often fires rockets at Israel.

Since the beginning of June, over 60 rockets have been launched from Gaza toward Israel — more than four times the amount in May — and 28 of the rockets hit Israeli territory, the military said. The crude, makeshift devices rarely wound anyone, but they have caused damage and sown panic in communities along the frontier.

Also on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has asked Israeli authorities to consider outlawing a Muslim group in Israel, following calls in support of abducting Israeli soldiers at a demonstration in an Arab-Israeli town.

"In many cases, those behind such calls and demonstrations are from the northern branch of the Islamic Movement," Netanyahu said. "It constantly preaches against the state of Israel and its people publicly identify with terrorist organizations such as Hamas."

Israel has arrested the movement's leader, Raed Salah, on a number of occasions, banning him from Jerusalem and accusing him of incitement. Salah has called for a third intifada, or Palestinian uprising, against Israel.

In 2003, Israel jailed Salah, an Israeli citizen, for more than two years, saying his organization funneled money to Hamas, which at the time was frequently carrying out deadly suicide bombings in Israel.

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Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this report.

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine's new president has enlisted support from the leaders of Germany and France for a call on Sunday to Vladimir Putin as a ceasefire deadline looms and after pro-Russian rebels released more European monitors.

President Petro Poroshenko is expected to be joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on the scheduled phone call to the Russian leader on the eve of the lifting of the ceasefire.

Sunday's teleconference is primarily meant to check on any visible shift in Moscow before the European Union and Washington consider unleashing biting sanctions against Russia's financial and defence sectors the following day.

Both Ukraine and its Western allies have been seeking concrete steps from Russia to back up the ceasefire Kiev extended with the militias on Friday in the hope of calming a deadly insurgency sparked by the country's new westward course.

The call also comes after pro-Kremlin rebels in eastern Ukraine on Saturday released four monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) -- one woman and three men -- after being pressed by Putin to meet the terms of the tenuous truce with Kiev.

The OSCE observers looked tired but relieved as they were handed over by heavily-armed rebels to one of the group's representative at a hotel in the eastern hub city of Donetsk.

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Refugees from east Ukraine are sheltered in a refugee camp in the city of Blagodatny, some 150 km fr …

"We are releasing the last four observers who were being held on the territory of the Lugansk People's Republic," the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic told reporters.

"We consider that we have fulfilled all our obligations," Oleksandr Borodai said.

- Ceasefire 'only the start' -

The first group of observers detained on May 26 in the Donetsk province was handed over to the OSCE on Thursday.

The Vienna-based organisation said the second team includes nationals from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia.

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2014 …

"We welcome the return of the last four of the missing OSCE special monitoring teammates after a month away," deputy mission head in Ukraine, Mark Etherington, said in a statement.

"The detention of OSCE monitors has substantially constrained the operations of the mission in eastern Ukraine at a time when a flow of objective information has never been more important."

The OSCE -- a 57-nation body created in the 1970s to oversee European security during the Cold War -- has played a central role in trying to mediate an end to a 12-week insurgency convulsing the ex-Soviet state.

Germany also commented on the release of the OSCE team, expressing relief and stressing the need to maintain the ceasefire.

The extended ceasefire "is a positive sign but it is only the start of a process," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a statement.

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A member of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) detained by pro-Russian s …

"The weapons must be silenced in a lasting way to give negotiations a chance of succeeding," he said.

- Monday truce deadline -

After signing a landmark trade and political association accord with the European Union on Friday, Poroshenko decided to extend the fragile ceasefire until Monday evening.

He added the condition that Russia requires the insurgents to return border crossings to Ukrainian forces and set up a monitoring mechanism for a long-term truce to halt the rebel uprising that has already claimed 450 lives.

A spokesman for Ukraine's eastern campaign told AFP Saturday that the past day of fighting had seen three soldiers killed and six others wounded outside the rebel stronghold city of Slavyansk.

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People wearing vyshyvankas, traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts, take part in a Vyshyvanka Marc …

"Everyone knows that a bad peace is better than a good war," Defence Minister Mykhailo Koval told Ukraine's UNIAN news agency.

Putin has publicly backed the ceasefire's extensions and promoted direct talks between Poroshenko and top rebel commanders.

But the West wants the Kremlin chief to call on the fighters to lay down their weapons and relinquish control of state buildings they had seized across a dozen eastern cities and towns.

EU leaders agreed at their Brussels summit Friday "to reconvene at any time to adopt further significant restrictive measures if a detailed list of concrete steps are not taken by Russia and the separatists by Monday".

The United States stressed that it was also ready to act at any point.

But public statements in Russia have thus far suggested that it was busy preparing an economic counter-offensive against Ukraine that would put up prohibitive barriers to its trade.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Moscow would treat Ukraine and the ex-Soviet states of Georgia of Moldova, which also signed EU trade deals on Friday, "based on one criterium -- how (the agreements) might hurt Russian trade".

Russian and EU ministers have tentatively agreed to meet on July 11 to discuss how Moscow's concerns might best be addressed.

Ukraine, Europe leaders talk with Moscow before ceasefire expiresUkraine, Europe leaders talk with Moscow before ceasefire expires.

Ukraine turns to European leaders for help

President Petro Poroshenko asks Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande for support in talks with Russia.
Cease-fire deadline looms

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi helicopter gunships struck suspected insurgent positions in Tikrit on Sunday as part of a government offensive to retake the predominantly Sunni hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein from Sunni militants led by the al-Qaida breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, residents and officials said.

The Iraqi military launched its push to wrest back Tikrit, a hotbed of antipathy toward Iraq's Shiite-led government, on Saturday with a multi-pronged assault spearheaded by ground troops backed by tanks and helicopters. Security officials said the army is coordinating its campaign with the United States.

Tikrit is one of two major urban centers that fell to insurgents earlier this month during their lightning offensive across the country's north and west.

The insurgents appeared to have repelled the military's initial push for Tikrit, and remained in control of the city on Sunday, but clashes were taking place in the northern neighborhood of Qadissiyah, two residents reached by telephone said.

Muhanad Saif al-Din, who lives in the city center, said he could see smoke rising from Qadissiyah, which borders the University of Tikrit, where troops brought by helicopter established a bridgehead two days ago. He said many of the militants in Tikrit had deployed to the city's outskirts, apparently to blunt the military attack.

Military spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi told reporters Sunday that the military was in full control of the university and had raised the Iraqi flag over the campus.

"The battle has several stages. The security forces have cleared most of the areas of the first stage and we have achieved results," al-Moussawi said. "It is a matter of time before we declare the total clearing" of Tikrit.

A provincial official reached by telephone reported clashes northwest of the city around an air base that previously served as a U.S. military facility known as Camp Speicher. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Jawad al-Bolani, a security official in the provincial operation command, said the U.S. was sharing intelligence with Iraq and has played an "essential" role in the Tikrit offensive.

"The Americans are with us and they are an important part in the success we are achieving in and around Tikrit," al-Bolani told The Associated Press.

Washington has sent 180 of 300 American troops President Barack Obama has promised to help Iraqi forces. The U.S. is also flying manned and unmanned aircraft on reconnaissance missions over Iraq.

Meanwhile, a top Iranian military commander said Tehran was ready to send in any type of military assistance the Iraqi government forces need, including drones.

"Iran will never spare any help in any field that Iraq needs, even drones. ... We are waiting to help them, in case Iraqi officials ask," the deputy head of Iran's armed forces, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, told the Iranian state-run Arabic-language station, Al Alam TV.

None-Arab and mostly Shiite, Iran has been playing the role of guarantor of Shiites in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It has maintained close ties with successive Shiite-led governments since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who oppressed the Shiites.

U.S. officials said Iran has been flying surveillance drones in Iraq, controlling them from an airfield in Baghdad. A top Iraqi intelligence official said Iran was secretly supplying the Iraqi security forces with weapons, including rockets, heavy machine guns and multiple rocket launchers.

Iraq's government is eager to make progress in Tikrit after weeks of demoralizing defeats at the hands of the Islamic State and its Sunni allies. The militants' surge across the vast Sunni-dominated areas that stretch from Baghdad north and west to the Syrian and Jordanian borders has thrown Iraq into its deepest crisis since U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011.

More ominously, the insurgent blitz, which prompted Kurdish forces to assert long-held claims over disputed territory, has raised the prospect of Iraq being split in three, along sectarian and ethnic lines.

For embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, success in Tikrit could help restore a degree of faith in his ability to stem the militant tide. Al-Maliki, a Shiite who has been widely accused of monopolizing power and alienating Iraq's Sunni and Kurdish minorities, is under growing pressure to step aside. But he appears set on a third consecutive term as prime minister after his bloc won the most seats in April elections.

The government received a boost in its battle with the militants with the arrival in Baghdad late Saturday of five Sukhoi 25 warplanes purchased secondhand from Russia. The aircraft is designed to provide close air support to ground forces and to destroy mobile targets.

Iraqi air force commander Lt. Gen. Anwar Hama Amin said the military is "in urgent need of this type of aircraft during this difficult time."

"These jets will enter service within a few days — the coming three or four days — in order to support the units and to fight the terrorist ISIL organization," he said, referring to the al-Qaida breakaway group that has spearheaded the Sunni militant offensive.

The planes could be deployed in the fight for Tikrit, a city of more than 200,000 some 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, where anger toward Iraq's Shiite-led government runs deep.

The Islamic State, which already controls vast swaths in northern and eastern Syria amid the chaos of that nation's civil war, aims to erase the borders of the modern Middle East and impose its strict brand of Shariah law.

In Iraq, the group has formed an alliance of sorts with fellow Islamic militants, as well as former members of Saddam's Baath party, with all of them hoping to overthrow al-Maliki's Shiite-led government.

The militants have tapped into deep-seated discontent among Iraq's Sunnis, who largely dominated the country until the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam brought the Shiite majority to power. Since then, Sunnis have complained of discrimination and said they are unfairly targeted by the country's security forces.

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Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.