IN BRIEF.(Main)

Byline: NEW MEXICAN WIRE SERVICES

In brief

Counter-terror efforts continue after attack on CIA

WASHINGTON -- The deaths of seven CIA employees in Afghanistan probably will not be the last. The U.S. isn't pulling back on covert operations to hunt terrorists there and in Pakistan and will go on taking chances on human tipsters to help.

In fact, the United States struck back at militant targets in Pakistan on Wednesday with explosives apparently launched from an airborne drone -- the fifth such attack since the bombing that killed several top CIA operatives at a secretive eastern Afghan base reportedly used as a key outpost in the effort to identify and target terror leaders.

The latest attack was a lethal message that the Obama administration views its airstrikes as too effective to abandon, even though they are unpopular with civilians and the U.S.-backed governments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The apparent strike killed 13 people in an area of Pakistan's volatile northwest teeming with militants suspected of directing the suicide attack last week across the border in Afghanistan.

Gunmen kill seven at Egypt

church after Mass

CAIRO -- Three men in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd of churchgoers in southern Egypt as they left a midnight Mass for Coptic Christmas, killing at least seven people in a drive-by shooting, the church bishop and security officials said.

Egypt's Interior Ministry said the attack Wednesday just before midnight was suspected as retaliation for the November rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town.

The attack took place in the town of Nag Hamadi in Qena province, about 40 miles from the famous ancient ruins of Luxor. Bishop Kirollos of the Nag Hamadi Diocese said six male churchgoers and one security guard were killed.

Accused Holocaust museum shooter dies before trial

WASHINGTON -- The 89-year-old white supremacist charged in a deadly shooting at Washington's Holocaust museum died Wednesday in North Carolina, where he'd been held while awaiting trial, authorities said.

James von Brunn died shortly before 1 p.m. at a local hospital in Butner, N.C., said Denise Simmons, the spokeswoman for the federal prison where von Brunn had been held. He had been suffering from chronic congestive heart failure, sepsis and other health problems, she said.

Von Brunn had faced charges that carried the death penalty.

Authorities say von Brunn carried a rifle as he walked up to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10 and then shot security guard Stephen T. Johns.

Officials at the prison hospital had previously said chronic medical problems had complicated a psychiatric evaluation for the suspect, who prior to the shooting had written racist and anti-Semitic screeds on the Internet.

U.S. mother, baby girl killed

by elephant in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A lone elephant charged out of the brush as an American family was hiking near Mount Kenya and trampled to death a mother and the 1-year-old daughter she held in her arms, officials said Wednesday.

Four adults and the baby were walking with an unarmed guide just outside Mount Kenya National Park on Monday morning when the elephant charged, said Kenya Wildlife Service official Michael Kipkeu.

The family was hiking on a nature trail about 1 mile from the Castle Forest Lodge, where the family was vacationing, said the owner, Melia van Laar.

Officials identified the woman as Sharon Brown, 39, and said her daughter's name was Margaux. Brown, originally from New York, and her husband are listed as faculty members at the International School of Kenya.

New Mexican wire services