S. Africa church attack claims 5 lives
JOHANNESBURG -- Five people are dead and more than 40 have been arrested after an early-morning hostage situation at a long-troubled church near Johannesburg, police in South Africa said Saturday.
A statement said police and military who responded to reports of a shooting at the International Pentecostal Holiness Church headquarters in Zuurbekom found four people "shot and burned to death in a car" and a security guard shot in another car. Six other people were injured.
Police said they rescued men, women and children who had been held hostage and appeared to have been living at the church. It was not clear how many were rescued.
The attack by a group of armed people "may have been motivated by a feud" among church members, the police statement said.
The church is one of the largest -- and reportedly richest -- in South Africa.
Photos tweeted by the police showed more than a dozen men lying on the ground, subdued, along with rifles, pistols, a baseball bat and boxes of ammunition --including at least one marked "law enforcement."
Among those arrested were members of the police, defense forces and correctional services.
Mali protests smaller on second day
BAMAKO, Mali -- Police fired tear gas Saturday in Mali's capital as scattered groups turned out for a second-straight day of anti-government protests, defying the president's latest call for dialogue.
The turnout was far smaller than the thousands who surged through the streets Friday, briefly occupying the state television station and setting fires.
At least one person was killed Friday, said Djime Kante, spokesman for the Gabriel Toure hospital in Bamako.
Tear gas wafted into the hospital on Saturday, and the wounded continued to arrive. "At this moment there are more than 40," Kante said.
Friday's developments marked a major escalation in the growing movement against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who still has two years left in office in the West African country long destabilized by Islamic extremists.
His overnight address to the nation took a conciliatory gesture days after he had tried to appease the protesters by promising to revamp the constitutional court whose legislative election results in April have been disputed by several dozen candidates.
The anti-government movement still wants the National Assembly dissolved. Its name, the June 5 Movement reflects the day demonstrators first took to the streets en masse.
While the group has officially backed down from its calls that Keita leave office, some protesters still want him gone.
Roadside blast kills 6 Afghan civilians
KABUL, Afghanistan -- At least six civilians, including women and children, were killed when the vehicle they were traveling in hit a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial official said Saturday.
Wahidullah Jamazada, spokesman for the governor of Ghazni province, said eight other civilians were wounded in the afternoon attack in the Jaghatu district.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Jamazada blamed Taliban insurgents who are active in the province.
In an attack Wednesday by Taliban insurgents, a roadside bombing in the same province targeted and killed a district police chief and his two bodyguards in the Dayak district.
Habibullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was inspecting checkpoints early in the morning when the attack happened.
Separately, the Defense Ministry said Afghan soldiers repelled Taliban attacks Friday at army checkpoints in the district of Azra in eastern Logar province. The statement said that at least eight Taliban fighters were killed and four others wounded.
The Taliban accuse government forces of targeting them in their homes, with their families bearing the brunt of those operations. Kabul, meanwhile, has accused the Taliban of stepping up attacks against both civilians and the security forces.
Throngs back jailed Russian governor
MOSCOW -- Thousands of demonstrators in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk have held a protest against the arrest of the region's governor on charges of involvement in several slayings.
The Saturday demonstration in the city 3,800 miles east of Moscow was unsanctioned but no arrests were reported. Media reports gave estimates of the crowd ranging from 5,000 to 35,000.
Sergei Furgal, the Khabarovsk region governor, was arrested Thursday and flown to Moscow where he was interrogated and ordered held in jail for two months. Russia's main criminal investigation body says he is suspected of involvement in several killings of businessmen in 2004 and 2005, before his political career began.
Furgal, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, was elected governor in 2018 and is widely popular in the region. His unexpected victory in the gubernatorial election reflected growing public frustration with President Vladimir Putin's policies and marked a painful setback for the main Kremlin party, United Russia.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
