World

Another car bomb exploded in Baghdad, killing at least eight people near the Education Ministry and wounding 29 others. Meanwhile, kidnappers released two Iraqis captured Monday along with an American and three other employees of a Saudi trading and construction company. No demands had been issued as the Monitor went to press. The freed Iraqis had been beaten and were threatened with death if they returned to the same employer.

Police and government soldiers surrounded two refugee camps in Sudan's Darfur region, cutting off access by humanitarian aid agencies and reportedly taking away an unknown number of people. The government denied that the operation was a "siege," although a UN spokes-man cited a "high level of discontent" among camp residents worried that they're to be relocated against their will. The camps hold roughly 160,000 "internally displaced people" because of ethnic cleansing of the region's non-Arab Muslims.

A runoff was scheduled for Nov. 21 to choose Ukraine's next president after its elections commission said the top two candidates were in a virtual tie. But the commission had yet to release the official tallies from Sunday's balloting for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yuschchenko, and the latter's allies accused the commission of fraud. Elections monitors from Europe have declared that the balloting was deeply flawed.

Suspicion fell on Islamist separatists in southern Thailand for the decapitation of a village leader, apparently to avenge last week's deaths of 85 rioters at the hands of police and government troops. The remains of the victim, a Buddhist, were found with a note calling those who died in the rioting or afterward "innocents." Buddhists and Muslims were named to an 11-member panel of inquiry charged with identifying those responsible for the 85 deaths.

A moviemaker who angered Muslims with his film on the treatment of females under Islam was found murdered on an Amsterdam street. Theo van Gogh had been under police protection after receiving death threats, but surveillance of his home eventually was discontinued because there was no unusual activity, a city prosecutor said. A suspect who holds dual Moroccan and Dutch citizenship was arrested after a shootout with police.