Gunmen

Two gunmen robbed an armored car delivering money to an Elkridge bank yesterday, police said. Both of the robbers fled and were being sought by police. The amount stolen from the armored car was not disclosed. Police said the Brinks car arrived at the FCNB Bank in the 7200 block of Montgomery Road shortly before 10 a.m. Two guards were with the car, and as one of them unloaded cash from the vehicle, a blue pickup truck backed up to it. Two men brandishing handguns got out of the truck.

JERUSALEM - In an incident that boded ill for the interim Palestinian government's efforts to keep order, gunmen in the Gaza Strip unleashed bursts of automatic-weapons fire yesterday near Yasser Arafat's apparent successor, Mahmoud Abbas, panicking his bodyguards and leaving two security officers dead. Abbas, 69, was unhurt in the hail of gunfire that erupted just after he and his entourage arrived at a mourning tent set up in Gaza City in honor of Arafat, who died early Thursday. Abbas and other Palestinian officials played down the significance of the incident, saying it was not an assassination attempt.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen fired at vehicles carrying the chief envoys of Bahrain and Pakistan in separate attacks yesterday in what apparently is a campaign to intimidate nations from upgrading ties with Iraq. The Bahraini diplomat, Hassan Ansari, was wounded in what his government said was an attempt to kidnap him. Pakistan's envoy escaped injury, but his Foreign Ministry said it would pull him out of Iraq until security here improves. Yesterday's attacks came three days after Egypt's top diplomat was abducted from a Baghdad street.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Mazen Hussein didn't get back to his hotel room until just before dawn yesterday, having spent all night at a party where he regaled guests with stories about being trapped for 39 days in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. He slept for a few hours in the hotel and was out the door again by 11 a.m., this time to a buffet lunch at a local university where students honored him for standing up to the Israeli army. "They have good hospitality here," said Hussein, clean-shaven and casually dressed in brown loafers, slacks and button-down shirt.

Two gunmen clad in black and wearing ski masks terrorized and robbed a group of young people early today at a home in Phoenix and shot at a Baltimore County police officer before they escaped into a nearby cornfield.They fled, police said, with at least $2,800 in cash after pistol-whipping, kicking and threatening several people in the house, at 12616 Dulaney Valley Road.Authorities searched the area at daybreak, using at least a dozen officers, a helicopter and three K-9 dogs. But the suspects could not be found, according to Sgt. Steven Doarnberger, police spokesman.

MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq - Gunmen killed an Iraqi police chief and two other police officials in two incidents yesterday in the latest example of attacks aimed at those cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition. A 60-year-old bystander was killed in the second attack, witnesses said. Yesterday's violence came less than 24 hours after another police chief was slain in the town of Kufa, south of here. Killed yesterday was Wisam Hussein, the 45-year-old police chief in Mahmoudiya, on the west side of the Tigris River, 20 miles south of Baghdad.

MEXICO CITY - Gunmen thought to be street gang members opened fire at a bus in Honduras on Thursday night, killing 28 people, including four children, who were on their way home from work and Christmas shopping. The attack occurred about 7 p.m., authorities said, in one of the poorest sections of the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. Several men in a pickup truck cut in front of the moving bus, which was carrying more than 70 passengers, and opened fire with automatic weapons. A spokesman for the Security Ministry, Leonel Sauceda, said 28 passengers were killed and 29 wounded.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A senior member of Afghanistan's government was assassinated by gunmen lurking outside his office in Kabul yesterday, prompting confusion in the capital and marking the latest political attack on the U.S.-backed government. The official, Haji Abdul Qadir, a vice president and one of the few ethnic Pashtuns to join the newly installed government of President Hamid Karzai, was shot in the head when a pair of gunmen sprayed his car with assault rifles as it left his ministry.

Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons sprayed a crowded West Baltimore street corner yesterday, killing two men and wounding two others as people screamed and ran for cover.Police said there were two gunmen with semiautomatic weapons who fired at least 40 shots in a matter of seconds. Bullets hit two parked cars and passed through windows into a store and at least three nearby row houses. None of the occupants was hurt."From the area where it was and the fact there was such massive gunfire, it's looking like some kind of drug dispute," said Dennis S. Hill, a police spokesman.

MUMBAI, India - Coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India's commercial capital, last night, killing more than 100 people in machine-gun and grenade assaults on at least two five-star hotels, the city's largest train station, a movie theater and a hospital. Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of terrorist attacks this year, the assaults were particularly brazen and different in scale and execution. The attackers used boats to reach the urban peninsula where they hit, and their targets were sites popular with tourists.