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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, March 20

Xinhua, March 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

A helicopter with 13 Indonesian troops on board crashed in Poso of Central Sulawesi province on Sunday, said a spokesman for the military command in the province.

The chopper went down on Sunday afternoon when it was conducting a routine task, Colonel I Made Sutia said. (Indonesia-Helicopter Crash)

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BARCELONA -- At least 13 students aged between 22 and 29 were killed and 30 were taken to hospitals in a coach crash in northeastern Spain on Sunday.

According to local media report, the crash took place in the town of Freginals, Spain's province of Tarragona, northeastern region of Catalonia. (Spain-Accident)

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ISTANBUL -- The Turkish authorities on Sunday identified the suicide bomber, whose attack in central Istanbul the day before killed four foreigners, as a member of the Islamic State (IS) group.

In a televised speech, Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said the man who carried out the attack was Mehmet Ozturk, an IS member born in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep in 1992. (Turkey-Bombing-IS)

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MOSCOW -- The flight recorders of a Dubai low-cost airline's passenger plane that crashed Saturday in southwestern Russia are badly damaged, authorities said Sunday.

"Specialists of the IAC (Interstate Aviation Committee), as well as experts from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France, have started to inspect and remove the memory modules from the recorders' protection storage place, in order to further restore the cable connections and prepare for the copying of information," the IAC, a supervisory body overseeing the management of civil aviation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, said in a statement. (Russia-Plane-Recorder)

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COTONOU -- Voting operations for Benin's second round of presidential election started early Sunday in most of polling stations across the country.

On early Sunday, voting devices were ready in most of polling stations in the economic capital Cotonou and the neighboring cities such as Godomey, Abomey Calavi and Akassato to allow smooth polling. (Benin-Elections) Endi