Guru guilty, India mobs’ rioting deadly
PANCHKULA, India — Mobs rampaged across a north Indian state Friday, leaving 30 people dead and more than 250 others injured, after a court declared a quasi-religious sect leader guilty of raping two of his followers, authorities said.
Authorities lifted the curfew in the town of Panchkula, the main site of the unrest, after the night passed relatively peacefully and the area was cleared of protesters, police officer Pradeep Kumar said.
On Friday, mobs set fire to government buildings and attacked police and TV journalists in the town, smashing the windshields of news vans and breaking broadcast equipment.
Police initially used tear gas and water cannons and then fired bullets in the air to control the surging mobs as they vandalized bus stations and government vehicles.
Haryana state Police Chief B.S. Sandhu said 28 people died, six of them from bullet wounds, and more than 250 others were injured. More than 1,000 of the guru’s supporters were detained on charges of arson and destruction of public property, he said.
The Press Trust of India said another two people were killed in the town of Sirsa, where the sect’s headquarters are.
The special court announced the guilty verdict Friday after hearing closing arguments in the 15-year-old case against the guru, who calls himself Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insaan.
The guru had denied raping the two women at his ashram in 2002.
Belgian troops gun down knife attacker
BRUSSELS — Belgian soldiers fatally shot a man Friday evening in downtown Brussels after he attacked the troops with a knife in what prosecutors described as a “terror attack.”
Spokesman Esther Natus of the federal prosecutor’s office said the man twice shouted “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” as he ran at the soldiers.
“We do consider it a terror attack,” Natus said. She declined to identify the man, saying only that “the suspect is dead” and one of the soldiers was slightly wounded.
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said three soldiers came under attack and one had been hospitalized.
Media outlets reported that the assailant was 30 years old and from Somalia.
Belgium has been on high alert since suicide bombers killed 32 people in attacks March 22, 2016, at Brussels’ main airport and on the subway system.
Somali forces’ raid said to kill farmers
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Ten civilians, including three children, were killed in a raid by foreign and Somali forces on a farm in southern Somalia, a deputy governor said Friday.
The U.S. Africa Command confirmed that it supported a Somali operation in the area and said it would look into the incident.
The farmers were killed “one by one” and “mercilessly” after soldiers stormed the farm in Barire village early Friday, the deputy governor of Lower Shabelle region, Ali Nur Mohamed, told reporters in Mogadishu.
But Somalia’s information ministry said al-Shabab extremists were killed.
Three children ages 8 to 10 and a woman were among the dead, the deputy governor said. Their blanket-wrapped bodies were laid out in a grassy courtyard for display.
Top Angola party wins, but rival gaining
JOHANNESBURG — Angola’s ruling party has won the national election but lost ground to the opposition, the electoral commission said Friday.
Defense Minister Joao Lourenco will replace President Jose Eduardo dos Santos after 38 years in power. The victory for the ruling party represents continuity, though some observers hope Lourenco, a dos Santos loyalist who has pledged to fight widespread corruption, will work on transparency.
Dos Santos is expected to remain head of the ruling party. Lourenco is a former governor who fought in the war against Portuguese colonial rule as well as the long civil war that ended in 2002.
The ruling MPLA party won the election with 61 percent of the vote, the country’s election commission said after 98 percent of votes from Wednesday’s election were counted. The MPLA had 4 million votes, while the leading opposition UNITA party had 1.8 million votes, or nearly 27 percent, the election commission said. About 23 percent of eligible voters did not go to the polls.