KABUL, Afghanistan -- Dozens of protesters blocked a road Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, claiming U.S.-led coalition forces killed three civilians, and a local official said police fatally shot one of the protesters and injured three of them.

The coalition said its troops were attacked Friday while searching compounds in the Shinwar district of Nangarhar province.

"Several militants were killed" and nine insurgents were arrested, the coalition said in a statement Saturday.

The coalition said the operation was targeting a "foreign fighter network" and that militants in the area had recently attacked coalition forces. The troops destroyed several automatic rifles, grenades and ammunition discovered in the compounds.

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia is haunted anew by the ghost of Slobodan Milosevic.

Eight years after the late Serbian strongman was toppled in a popular revolt, and a little more than two years after his death while on U.N. trial for genocide and crimes against humanity, his former loyalists have never been closer to regaining power.

On the eve of Sunday's parliamentary elections, experts warned that nationalists who have tapped into widespread outrage over Kosovo's independence may ride an unprecedented wave of anti-Western sentiment to victory.

"People here just can't shake the feeling that Europe isn't fair and just toward Serbia," Braca Grubacic, a prominent political analyst, said Saturday. "Serbia is not like it used to be, but the problems and the political agenda are the same as they were during the Milosevic era."

A pro-democracy movement ousted Milosevic in 2000, and the man who presided over the bloody 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia died in March 2006 in a prison cell in The Hague, Netherlands, where a U.N. tribunal was trying him for atrocities in the Balkans.

Milosevic is gone, but he's far from forgotten.

The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party -- whose leader, Tomislav Nikolic, proudly proclaims himself even more of a hard-liner than Milosevic was -- clung to a slim lead heading into Sunday's vote.

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Hundreds of rebels from war-ravaged Darfur clashed with Sudanese security forces on the doorstep of the capital Saturday in a dramatic widening of the five-year-old conflict.

It was the first foray into the seat of the Sudanese government by a rebel group once confined to the western region, which is deeply scarred by the struggle between the ethnic African rebels and the Arab-dominated central government.

The country's interior minister said government forces successfully "chased" away the rebels by nightfall, about three hours after the first outbreak of violence, and killed a rebel leader and his aide. State television showed footage of the fighters in handcuffs and soldiers driving confiscated jeeps through empty streets, saluting colleagues standing at attention.

But a rebel leader denied his fighters suffered heavy casualties and said some took up positions inside Khartoum, while others remained in its twin city, Omdurman.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Saturday that he will return to his homeland despite threats to his life to take part in a runoff against President Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai, addressing reporters in the capital of neighboring South Africa, said his supporters would feel "betrayed" if he did not face Zimbabwe's ruler of 28 years.

"A runoff election could finally knock out the dictator for good," Tsvangirai said. "I am ready and the people are ready for the final round."

No runoff date has been set. Tsvangirai said Saturday it should be held within 21 days of the May 2 announcement of presidential results, but Zimbabwean government officials have said the electoral commission has up to a year to hold the vote.

Tsvangirai said he will return shortly to Zimbabwe and intends to "begin a victory tour." He maintains he won the first round outright and that official figures showing a second round was necessary were fraudulent.

Opposition officials and independent human rights activists have accused Mugabe of orchestrating violence against the opposition since the first round on March 29. Tsvangirai and other top opposition figures have stayed out of Zimbabwe since the initial voting.

Sri Lanka elections marred by irregularities

BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka -- Allegations of fraud, voter intimidation and sporadic violence marred elections in Sri Lanka's east Saturday despite the government's claims they would be a celebration of democracy for the region recently liberated from the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The vote was intended to show that a "new dawn" was coming to the impoverished area, to give minority communities a degree of self-rule and to counter rebel demands for an independent state.

Many voters said the new provincial government should focus on ending the chaos and violence in the east, which is divided among Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim communities.

"We hope things will be straightened out," said a doctor voting in the town of Batticaloa, who, like nearly every other voter interviewed, declined to give his name out of fear of reprisals.

The government, with the help of a breakaway group of former rebels known as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, or TMVP, seized control of the province late last year after 13 years of rebel rule. Civil war continues to rage around the separatists' de facto state in the north.

The ruling party ran in a coalition with the TMVP, which has been accused of threatening voters and opposition candidates, while the main opposition United National Party joined with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.

Independent monitors said the election went smoothly in some areas, but quickly unraveled in others.