Militants captured two villages from government forces and their allies in the northern province of Aleppo after days of heavy fighting that left scores of fighters dead, activists said Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the four-day offensive by different militant groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, killed 86 troops and pro-government gunmen, including 25 members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. Police have locked down a village in southern China to ward off fresh anticorruption protests nearly five years after an uprising there made it an internationally known symbol of grass-roots defiance against the ruling Communist Party. A resident from Wukan in Guangdong province said officers swept in late Friday to surround government buildings and take away the village’s democratically elected leader, Lin Zuluan, who had planned protests Saturday against illegal land grabs. Police announced on social media that Lin had been detained on bribery charges and urged villagers to maintain social stability. Thousands of people were stranded on both sides due to the closure of the Torkham border last Sunday, when Pakistan and Afghanistan began trading fire and two Afghan border guards and one Pakistani army officer were killed. The United Nations secretary-general visited camps Saturday on the Greek island of Lesbos, where hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants first set foot in Europe over the past 18 months on their way to the continent’s prosperous heartland.
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