Word: mi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Trinidad, a town in the department of Esteli, about 60 miles from the Honduran border. Comandante (Colonel) Javier Carrion, 31, the commander of the northern military zone, rushed one counterinsurgency battalion, or BLI, plus local troops to the town and called in air support from three Soviet-built Mi-24 Hind helicopters, the gunships equipped with machine guns and rockets that are being used by the Soviets in Afghanistan. The contras retreated and have not mounted a major assault since. A senior U.S. official in Washington conceded two weeks ago that the Sandinista counteroffensive had pushed...
...disaster could have been far worse. In much of the 890 sq. mi. of Mexico City, an area that is home to 18 million people, life had returned to something akin to normal last week. The most severe damage was confined to a 13-sq.-mi. zone that encompasses the city's business district. Even there, the pattern of damage was quirky. Said Richard Bonneau, a member of a French rescue team that arrived in Mexico City two days after the quake: "We thought we would find one part of the city destroyed. But it's a building here...
...striking the Mexican capital, the killer quake could not have chosen a more vulnerable target. Mexico City is at the heart of the world's most populous metropolitan area. Some 18 million people, a fourth of the nation's inhabitants, are jammed into a mere 890 sq. mi., or roughly 1% of the predominantly rural country's land area. By one estimate, nearly a third of all families in Mexico City huddle together in a single room--and the average family has five members...
...accuracy of that assessment is difficult to verify, but one thing was clear last week: ferocious fighting was taking place in Afghanistan, some of it within a few miles of the Pakistani border. About 20,000 Soviet paratroopers, backed by Mi-24 helicopter gunships, artillery and armor, blasted the Afghan border provinces of Paktia and Nangarhar. They were resisted, at times in bitter hand-to-hand fighting, by an estimated 5,000 Afghan rebels known as mujahedin. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed on both sides. At least 300 rebel casualties were carried into refugee camps on the Pakistani side...
...week's end about the third-worst airline disaster in history.* Bits and pieces of the wreckage plucked from the sea were sometimes heartbreaking: a red slipper, a limp rag doll, a waterlogged Teddy bear. Irish and British naval vessels and helicopters fanned out over a 5-sq.-mi. area. They retrieved 131 bodies, and by week's end the bulk of the wreckage had been located...