World

Apparently turning the tables on most-wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a masked group calling itself the Salvation Movement said it would kill him unless he left Iraq immediately with "his followers and everyone who gives shelter to him." In its threat, broadcast by al-Arabiya TV, the group accused Zarqawi, a Jordanian, of defiling Islam by using it to justify murder. Meanwhile, in the fifth airstrike in two weeks, the US bombed a suspected safe house in Fallujah for Zarqawi's followers, killing 15 people. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said his government had provided the intelligence for the attack.

In other developments in Iraq:

• At least 13 people were killed when terrorists exploded a car bomb at the wake for victims of an attack two days earlier. The bomb went off in Khalis, near the volatile city of Baqouba, one of the hotbeds of resistance in postwar Iraq.

• A US marine thought to have been decapitated by Muslim terrorists is alive and has been freed by his captors, relatives said. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun's status could not be confirmed by American military spokesmen, however. Various news organizations reported that he may have deserted the military.

A runoff in September appeared all but inevitable to decide the winner of Indonesia's presidential election. As vote-counting from Monday's first round neared 25 percent completion, retired Army general and cabinet minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono led incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri by seven points. But ex-armed forces chief Wiranto, in third place, was close enough behind that he also could not be ruled out of the runoff.

Although it "would prefer not to," the government of Sudan agreed to accept deployment of hundreds of African troops to protect unarmed ceasefire monitors in the deeply troubled Darfur region. The agreement came as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned of "a catastrophe" that could destabilize the region. An ethnic cleansing campaign by Arab militias known as Janjaweed has killed an estimated 30,000 poor black farmers and driven more than 1 million others from their homes, many of them into exile in Chad.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was ruled fit enough to resume his trial before the UN war crimes tribunal for the Balkans. But the three-judge panel reviewing his status said Tuesday that Milosevic may not be sufficiently strong to continue to act as his own attorney.