The world in brief

Syrian security forces and ÿreÿghters gather Tuesday at the scene of an explosion in the central city of Homs.
Syrian security forces and ÿreÿghters gather Tuesday at the scene of an explosion in the central city of Homs.

Bombers, car blow up as Syrians close in

photo

AP/HERI JUANDA

A Shariah law official whips one of two men convicted of consensual gay sex, during a public caning Tuesday outside a mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

BEIRUT — An explosion claimed by the Islamic State extremist group in the central Syrian city of Homs on Tuesday killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen, Syria’s state media and the militant group reported.

Homs police commander Lt. Gen. Khaled Hilal told state TV that two suicide attackers detonated their explosives-laden car as they were being surrounded by troops. Along with the four killed, Syrian state TV said 30 people were wounded in the explosion.

The blast in Homs came two days after the government took control of the entire city of Homs, for the first time since the conflict began in 2011, after the evacuation of rebels from their last holdout, the besieged al-Waer neighborhood.

More than six years after the conflict began, most major Syrian cities have at this point reverted to government control. Syria’s civil war has left about 400,000 people dead and has displaced millions.

Bahrain police, cleric’s backers clash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bahrain police raided a town Tuesday that is home to a prominent Shiite cleric facing possible deportation, arresting 286 people in an assault in which officers fired tear gas and shotguns at protesters. At least five demonstrators were killed and others wounded.

The Interior Ministry said the operation targeting Diraz, home to Sheikh Isa Qassim and a long-running sit-in supporting him, was to “maintain security and public order.” It called the area a “haven for wanted fugitives from justice.”

Police arrested 286 people, including “terrorists and convicted felons” who hid inside of Qassim’s home, the Interior Ministry said. It said 19 members of the country’s security forces were wounded in the raid that saw protesters throw gasoline bombs.

“Forces were able to remove a series of illegal road blocks and barricades,” the ministry said in a statement. “Police remain deployed in the area to ensure the safety of people.”

Amnesty International said Qassim was not arrested.

At least five protesters were killed, activists and police said.

The operation followed a Sunday court decision giving Qassim a year’s suspended prison sentence and seizing assets belonging to him and his ministry. Two of his aides received similar sentences.

At least 26 people die in Afghan strife

KABUL, Afghanistan — Militant attacks, including a Taliban assault on an Afghan military outpost, and a roadside bombing elsewhere in Afghanistan killed at least eight soldiers, seven civilians and a policeman, officials said Tuesday.

According to Defense Ministry spokesman Daulat Waziri, the attack on the outpost took place in the southern province of Kandahar, in the Shah Wali Kot district. Along with the eight killed, seven troops were wounded in the attack late Monday, he said. At least 10 Taliban fighters also died, with their bodies left lying on the ground, Wasiri added.

Also in Kandahar, three civilians died when their tractor hit a roadside bomb Tuesday, said Samim Khpolwak, spokesman for the provincial governor. The explosion in Maiwand district also wounded four other civilians, he said.

2 gay men publicly caned in Indonesia

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Two men in Indonesia’s Aceh province were publicly caned, struck dozens of times Tuesday for having consensual gay sex, a punishment that intensifies an anti-gay backlash in the world’s most populous Muslim country and which rights advocates denounced as “medieval torture.”

More than 1,000 people packed the courtyard of a mosque to witness the caning, which was the first time that Aceh, the only province in Indonesia to practice Shariah law, has caned people for homosexuality.

The crowd shouted insults and cheered as the men, ages 20 and 23, were whipped across the back and winced with pain. Many in the crush of spectators filmed the caning with cellphones as a team of five robed and hooded enforcers took turns inflicting the punishment, relieving one another after every 20 strokes for one of the men and 40 for the other.

The couple were arrested in March after neighborhood vigilantes in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, suspected them of being gay and broke into their rented room to catch them having sex.

A Shariah court last week sentenced each man to 85 strokes, but they were caned 83 times after a remission for time spent in prison. Four heterosexual couples also were caned Tuesday, receiving a far lesser number of strokes for affection outside marriage.

Upcoming Events