Around The World

Early results for Sierra Leone\nFREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Freetown's people cheered unofficial, incomplete results showing President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah far in the lead in war-scarred Sierra Leone's elections. Results Wednesday showed the party of reconstituted rebels trailing well behind. Precinct by precinct, the results from Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary votes were read out on the radio. The number of votes came in the triple digits for Kabbah and his party, and in the single digits for former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front Party. Final, official results are unlikely to be completed before Friday.\nWar criminals surrender to U.N.\nTHE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A former Croatian Serb rebel leader and an ex-Yugoslav army officer turned themselves in Wednesday to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands. Milan Martic led rebel Serbs opposed to Croatia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. He was indicted by the tribunal in connection with the shelling of the Croatian capital of Zagreb in May 1995, which killed several civilians and injured dozens. Gen. Mile Mrksic commanded a Yugoslav army unit which in 1991 besieged and relentlessly shelled for months the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar. He later commanded Croatian Serb troops under Martic.\nBattles rage in northern Colombia \nBOGOTA, Colombia -- Fighting between rebels and paramilitaries in two separate battles in northwest Colombia has killed at least 24 fighters from the outlawed warring sides, authorities said Wednesday. Eight soldiers also died. The bloodier battle erupted Tuesday in a rural area near the town of Campamento, 185 miles northwest of Bogota. Rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, faced off with the right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, officials said. \n"At the moment, we have confirmed 24 dead from reports of peasants, who saw the bodies by the side of the highway," Dairo Quinones, a Campamento government official, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.\nEthiopian troops attack Somali town\nMOGADISHU, Somalia -- Several hundred uniformed Ethiopian troops attacked a Somali border town on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in donkey carts and wheelbarrows, witnesses said. The Ethiopian forces, who used armored vehicles and were supported by Somali militia, captured Bulo Hawo, a few miles south of Ethiopia's border, after first shelling the town, according to the witnesses who did not want to be identified. The town, in southwestern Somalia, had been controlled by a faction supporting Somali President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan's transitional government. Ethiopia denied the reports.