Authorities arrest 8 kidnap suspects

Kabul, Afghanistan Afghan police have arrested eight people suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an Italian aid worker freed after three weeks in captivity, the interior minister said Saturday.

An official said the eight have been detained separately since May 16, when Clementina Cantoni, 32, was abducted at gunpoint in the Afghan capital, Kabul. She was freed Thursday and flew home Friday.

On Saturday, Cantoni said she would return to Afghanistan one day.

But she said the situation remains “unstable and of high risk, not only for international aid workers, but also and especially for the Afghans.”

Syria raids suspected hideout for terrorists

Damascus, Syria Syrian forces raided a suspected terrorist hideout near the capital, killing two men, arresting a third and foiling alleged bombing plots against the nation’s Justice Palace, the official news agency reported.

A member of the Syrian forces was killed and another was wounded in the Thursday clash in the Daff al-Shouk suburb of Damascus, according to a late Friday report by SANA.

The group’s leader, Abu Omar, and an accomplice were killed and another suspect was arrested, SANA said. Identity cards were found alongside the bodies in the names of Omar Barakat and Arfan Yassin, both Syrian. It was not clear whether the cards belonged to the dead men.

Renowned surgeon Hamilton Naki dies

Cape Town, South Africa Hamilton Naki, a former gardener who was so skilled in complicated surgery that he helped in the world’s first heart transplant – but had to keep his work secret in apartheid South Africa – has died. He was 78.

Naki, a black man who left high school because his family couldn’t afford the fees, took his first job at the age of 14, cutting grass at the University of Cape Town.

Doctors who observed Naki’s work described how he could join minute blood vessels with amazing delicacy and accuracy.

It was only after the demise of apartheid in 1994 that Naki’s contributions became widely known.