THRONGS MARCH OVER SOMALIA’S “9/11” ATTACK

Somali intelligence officials shared a detailed account of the country’s deadliest attack, while thousands marched Wednesday in Mogadishu in a show of defiance against the extremist group blamed for Saturday’s truck bombing that left more than 300 dead.

Two people have been arrested in the attack. Some desperate relatives still dug through the rubble with their bare hands in search of scores said to be missing.

Some in Somalia have called the bombing their “9/11,” asking why one of the world’s deadliest attacks in years hasn’t drawn more global attention. Nearly 400 others were wounded.

“You can kill us, but not our spirit and desire for peace,” said high school teacher Zainab Muse. “May Allah punish those who massacred our people,” said university student Mohamed Salad.

Analysts have suggested that al-Shabab, an al-Qaida ally, may have avoided taking responsibility because it did not want to be blamed for the deaths of so many civilians.

Suspect in Maryland office park shooting apprehended.

MD.» A EDGEWOOD, gunman who shot five of his co-workers at a Maryland office park Wednesday, killing three of them and setting off a manhunt, was arrested Wednesday night, authorities said.

Officials said it wasn’t clear why Radee Labeeb Prince, 37, open fired with a handgun after arriving at work. The two wounded colleagues were in critical condition.

He drove about 55 miles to Wilmington, Del., and targeted a man with whom he had “beefs” in the past, shooting him twice at a used car lot, police said. The victim was expected to survive.

Prince is a convicted felon who has 42 arrests in Delaware. Court records showed he had been fired from a Maryland job earlier this year after allegedly punching a co-worker and threatening other employees.

Judge orders U.S. government to allow abortion for teen.

WASHINGTON

» A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the government to allow a pregnant 17-year-old immigrant, who was detained after entering the country illegally, to undergo an abortion.

The teen is being held in Texas.

After a brief hearing, Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the government to move “promptly and without delay” to transport the teenager or allow her to be transported by others to the nearest abortion provider.

Government lawyers late Wednesday filed an emergency motion to ask the appeals court in Washington, D.C., to halt the effect of the judge’s ruling.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Stewart argued that the teenager was free to return to her home country and seek an abortion there but said “the government is entitled to favor childbirth” and shouldn’t be required to facilitate abortions.

Hotel guard describes getting shot before Las Vegas massacre.

LAS

In his only public recounting of the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 in Las Vegas, hotel security guard Jesus Campos told Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show Wednesday that he was heading down the hall after calling for a maintenance worker when he heard “rapid fire” gunshots through the nearby doors of Stephen Paddock’s suite in the Mandalay Bay.

“At first, I took cover. I felt a burning sensation. I went to go lift my pant leg up, and I saw the blood,” Campos said. “That’s when I called it in on my radio that shots had been fired.”

He didn’t say what time that was.

The hotel engineer, Stephen Schuck, who was sent to check a fire exit door that Campos found bolted shut, told DeGeneres he heard what he thought was the sound of construction.

Schuck said Campos leaned out from a door entrance and yelled for him to take cover.

“Within milliseconds, if he didn’t say that, I would have got hit,” Schuck said, describing bullets whizzing past his head.

Tillerson seeks stronger ties with India, chides China.

WASHINGTON» Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Wednesday for the U.S. and India to expand strategic ties. He also pointedly criticized China, which he accused of challenging international norms needed for global stability.

Tillerson’s remarks on relations between the world’s two largest democracies, ahead of his first trip to South Asia as secretary of state, risked endearing Washington to one Asian power while alienating another.

Tillerson said the world needed the U.S. and India to have a strong partnership. He said the two nations share goals of security, free navigation, free trade and fighting terrorism in the Indo-Pacific, and serve as “the eastern and western beacons” for an international rulesbased order which is increasingly under strain.

Both India and China had benefited from that order, but Tillerson said India had done so while respecting rules and norms, while China had “at times” undermined them.