In brief: Citywide Ebola lockdown concludes

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – Frustrated residents complained of food shortages in some neighborhoods of Sierra Leone’s capital on Sunday as the country reached the third and final day of a sweeping, unprecedented lockdown designed to combat the deadly Ebola disease, volunteers said.

While most residents welcomed teams of health care workers and volunteers bearing information about the disease, rumors persisted in pockets of the city that poisoned soap was being distributed, suggesting that public education campaigns had not been entirely successful.

The streets of the capital, Freetown, were again mostly deserted on Sunday in compliance with a government order for the country’s 6 million residents to stay in their homes.

Spread by contact with bodily fluids, Ebola has killed more than 560 people in Sierra Leone and more than 2,600 across West Africa in the biggest outbreak ever recorded, according to the World Health Organization. The disease, which has also touched Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal, is believed to have sickened more than 5,500 people.

Bombs, mortar fire kill 13 in Iraq

BAGHDAD – Bombs and mortar fire killed 13 people in Shiite areas in and around Baghdad on Sunday, as Iraqi security forces said they succeeded in breaking a siege on soldiers who had been surrounded by Islamic State militants west of Baghdad.

Police officials said three mortar shells landed on a residential area in Sabaa al-Bour, a town just north of Baghdad, killing six, including a 12-year old-boy. Several cars were damaged in the attack, which wounded 17. Later, a bomb blast in a commercial street killed four people and wounded 11 in the capital’s northeastern district of Shaab.

At night, a bomb explosion at a commercial street in the Shiite part of Baghdad’s district of Bayaa killed three people and wounded seven others, said police.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty tolls.

Attacks against Shiite civilians are a common tactic of the Islamic State militant group, which considers Shiites heretics. The group has captured large chunks of territory in western and northern Iraq as well as in Syria.

China says two killed in explosions

BEIJING – Multiple explosions in a county in China’s western region of Xinjiang have killed at least two people and injured many others, regional authorities said today.

The explosions happened at about 5 p.m. Sunday in at least three places of Luntai county, according to a report on the Tianshan news portal, which is run by the regional branch of the Communist Party. Luntai county is in central Xinjiang, 220 miles southwest of the capital, Urumqi.

“Public security officers quickly handled the situation,” it said, without giving details.

The brief statement said the unspecified number of injured had been taken to hospital and an investigation was under way.

Xinjiang has experienced rising unrest in recent months blamed on militants from the region’s native Muslim Turkic Uighur ethnic group seeking to overthrow Chinese rule.

Pope to Muslims: Condemn extremism

TIRANA, Albania – Pope Francis called Sunday for Muslims and all religious leaders to condemn Islamic extremists who “pervert” religion to justify violence, as he visited Albania and held up the Balkan nation as a model for interfaith harmony for the rest of the world.

“To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman,” Francis told representatives of Albania’s Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic communities during a half-day visit to Tirana in which he recalled the brutal persecution people of all faiths suffered under communism.

Francis wept when he heard the testimony of one priest, the Rev. Ernest Troshani, 84, who for 28 years was imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to forced labor for refusing to speak out against the Catholic Church as his captors wanted.

“Today I touched the martyrs,” Francis said after embracing the man.

Security was unusually tight for the pope’s first trip to a majority Muslim country since the Islamic State group began its crackdown in Iraq and announced its aim to extend its self-styled caliphate to Rome.