In brief: Vigilantes lynch two in Egypt

CAIRO – Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing a motorized rickshaw on Sunday and then hung them by their feet while some in a watching crowd chanted “Kill them!” Both men died, security officials said.

The killings come a week after the attorney general’s office encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers and hand them over to police. They are emblematic of the chaos sweeping Egypt and a security breakdown of frightening proportions.

It was one of the most extreme cases of vigilantism in two years of sharply deteriorating security following the 2011 uprising. Gruesome photos circulated quickly on Facebook and other social media outlets, showing images taken by people in the crowd of thousands who watched and recorded the lynchings on cellphone cameras.

The killings were in the town of Samanod, about 55 miles north of Cairo in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya.

Five confess to rape of tourist in India

NEW DELHI – Five men have been arrested and have confessed to raping a Swiss woman who was attacked in central India while on a cycling vacation with her husband, police said.

Two other suspects are being sought, said D. K. Arya, a senior police officer. The five men arrested in Datia on Sunday are from villages near where the attack occurred Friday night as the Swiss couple camped in a forest in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh state.

The couple told police that the woman had been raped by seven or eight men, but that it was dark and they could not be sure of the exact number, Arya said. They said the husband also was attacked by the men.

The woman, 39, was treated Saturday at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior and was released later that day, police said. Arya said the couple were heading to the Indian capital of New Delhi, 250 miles to the north, later Sunday.

Car bombs kill nine in southern Iraq

BAGHDAD – Two car bombs went off Sunday in the Iraqi city of Basra, killing nine and wounding 24 in a rare attack in the Shiite-dominated south of the country.

All nine deaths resulted from a blast near an outdoor market, said Ali Ghanim, the head of the security committee in the Basra provincial council. He said 19 were wounded in that explosion.

Fifteen minutes earlier, five people were wounded when another car bomb went off near a parking lot near the Tax Department in the port city’s downtown, Ghanim said.