IVORY COAST:  A crash involving a freight lorry and a passenger bus in Ivory Coast today killed at least 17 people and left several injured, authorities said.

The vehicles collided in Ponan-Ouinlo, a village in the west of the country, the Ministry of Transport said in a statement, without specifying the cause of the accident. An investigation has been launched.

TURKEY: A fire at a ski resort hotel in north-western Turkey today killed at least 10 people and hospitalised 32 others, officials said.

The fire broke out at around 3.30am in the restaurant of the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel in the resort of Kartalkaya in Bolu province, officials and reports said. The cause of the fire was under investigation.

INDONESIA: Indonesian rescuers recovered the bodies of at least 17 people who were swept away in flash floods or buried under tons of mud and rocks that hit hilly villages on the country’s main island of Java, officials said today. Eight people were missing.

Torrential rains on Monday caused rivers to burst their banks, tearing through nine villages in Pekalongan regency of Central Java province, as mud, rocks and trees tumbled down on mountainside hamlets, said Bergas Catursasi, who heads the local Disaster Management Agency.

AFGHANISTAN: A prisoner swap between the United States and Afghanistan’s Taliban freed two Americans in exchange for a Taliban figure imprisoned for life in California on drug-trafficking and terrorism charges, officials said today.

The Taliban praised the swap as a step toward the “normalisation” of ties between the US and Afghanistan, but most countries in the world still don’t recognise their rule.