BRUZGI, Belarus/WARSAW (Reuters) -- President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday Belarus seeks no confrontation with Poland but wants the European Union to take in 2,000 of the migrants stranded on its border, and he added that if the crisis deteriorated “too far, war is unavoidable”. The European Union accuses Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to cross into the EU via Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in retaliation for EU sanctions imposed on Minsk over Lukashenko’s crushing of protests against his disputed re-election last year. Lukashenko denies fomenting the migrant crisis, but EU countries including Germany on Monday again rejected his call on them to accept migrants in limbo at the frontier. Lukashenko, as quoted by the state-owned Belta news agency, said he did not want things to escalate. “We need to get through to the Poles, to every Pole, and show them that we’re not barbarians, that we don’t want confrontation. We don’t need it. Because we understand that if we go too far, war is unavoidable,” he said. “And that will be a catastrophe. We understand this perfectly well. We don’t want any kind of flare-up.”

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ROME (AP) — Italian customs police on Monday dismantled a Nigerian organized crime syndicate that forced dozens of young women into prostitution and begging on the streets of Italy and then smuggled out millions of euros in ill-gained revenues to Nigeria, with cash hidden in suitcase handles or pasta packages. The police said raids in cities in northern and southern Italy as well as on the island of Sardinia yielded 40 arrests. The suspects are being held for investigation of alleged money-laundering, facilitating illegal immigration, human trafficking, putting persons into slavery and exploiting prostitution. Dozens of others are also under investigation. Helping spark the investigation was the complaint of a Nigerian woman, brought illegally into Italy, that her fellow countrywomen were taking on debts as high as 50,000 euros ($56,000) to arrive, only to be forced into prostitution for the syndicate.

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GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -- Militiamen killed at least 12 people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo during a raid on a camp for displaced people, a military spokesperson said on Monday, and some civil society groups said the death toll was much higher. Fighters from the CODECO militia raided the village of Drodro in Ituri province, killing six children, four men and two women as they fled the army response, Jules Ngongo, a spokesperson for Ituri’s military government, told Reuters. Ngabu Lidja Chrysante, a priest and coordinator for the Catholic charity Caritas in Ituri, said his colleagues on the ground had seen the bodies of 35 people killed in the attack. Kivu Security Tracker, which maps violence in Congo, said 107 bodies had been found in Drodro and surrounding villages. CODECO, whose fighters are mostly drawn from the Lendu ethnic group, has been blamed for killing hundreds of civilians in Ituri’s Djugu district since 2019. A spokesperson for the group was not immediately available for comment.

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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -- Residents on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro on Monday found the corpses of at least seven people in a mangrove after a sustained gunbattle with local police. The bodies were found near a complex of slums called Salgueiro, in the city of Sao Goncalo, a poor and violent region that is part of metropolitan Rio. Locals told media outlets that they believed other bodies would be found. “The bodies were all thrown into a mangrove swamp, with signs of torture. They were tossed one on top of the other. This was clearly a massacre,” one resident told the G1 news website. The bodies were found after a weekend-long operation in the area, which began after a local police officer died while on patrol on Saturday. Sao Gonacalo is overseen by the 7th battalion, which has long been one of Rio state’s most deadly.

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TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) -- The top two contenders to be the next president of Honduras held boisterous final rallies over the weekend, one week ahead of an election that could end diplomatic support for Taiwan in the Central American country if the leftist candidate wins. Should poll leader Xiomara Castro, of the leftist opposition Libre Party, beat the ruling National Party’s Nasry Asfura and put an end to its dozen-year run in power, she would also become the first woman to be president in Honduras. Castro is running on an anti-corruption platform, while also favoring a diplomatic opening to China, which would mark a major shift from country’s current embrace of Taiwan over Beijing.

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SANTIAGO (Reuters) -- After two years of dramatic street protests and the election of a left-wing body to re-write the nation’s constitution, Chileans surprised analysts, markets and even themselves on Sunday night by favoring a right-wing presidential candidate and delivering significant gains to conservatives in Congress. With 99.99% of votes counted as of Monday morning, ultra-conservative former congressman Jose Antonio Kast had won 27.91% of the vote, while leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric had come in second, with 25.83%. As both fell well short of the 50% threshold needed to win outright, they will now advance to a Dec. 19 runoff.