Angolan police fired tear gas Saturday at hundreds of demonstrators who were protesting in the capital Luanda against the killing of two young opposition activists, an Agence France Presse journalist witnessed.

The demonstrators, some wearing T-shirts with the slogan "stop kidnappings and torture", were marching towards the Angolan capital's center when police moved in to disperse the crowd.

Angolan soldiers have invaded the southwest of the neighboring Republic of Congo in pursuit of rebels and allegedly taken Congolese troops hostage, local sources said Thursday.

Last weekend, the Angolan troops entered the region of Kimongo, a main town in the Niari district, and took charge of five places including the border post, a local resident and a journalist told AFP.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour was informed on Tuesday that Lebanese citizen Moeen Azmi Yazbek has been kidnapped in the Angolan capital Luanda.

"Lebanese chargé d'affaires in Pretoria in South Africa Ara Khachaturian informed Mansour that 22 years old Yazbek was kidnapped in Luanda,” the state-run National News Agency reported.

Evangelical churches are blooming in Angola, a traditionally devout Catholic nation, as its impoverished people turn to the promises of proselytism and Protestantism.

In a country of about 19 million people, Pope Benedict XVI drew a crowd of one million faithful when he visited the former Portuguese colony in 2009, and three in five Angolans belong to the faith.

Sixteen migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo died and three were seriously injured when the truck they were hiding in flipped over on a road in Angola, regional police said Sunday.

All 19 were undocumented immigrants and had been traveling from the border post of Soyo to the capital Luanda when the accident occurred in the northern town of N'zeto late Saturday.

The Roman Catholic Church in Angola on Wednesday demanded new laws to outlaw witchcraft, claiming the practice had reached "chronic" proportions.

"It is affecting more and more followers, it destroys family ties and affects relations among people," said Francisco Viti, the archbishop of the central city of Huambo.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was poised to extend his 33-year rule, as his party took a hefty lead on Saturday in this week's vote, despite frustrations among the poor at being left out of Angola's oil boom.

With more than half the ballots counted, his People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) took 74 percent of the vote from Friday's general elections.

Jonas Savimbi, the vicious, charismatic rebel who fought Angola's socialist government in a 27-year civil war, died 10 years ago Wednesday, leaving behind a haunting legacy of violence.

Savimbi was killed in a firefight with government forces on February 22, 2002, the denouement of a brutal conflict that grew out of Angola's messy independence from Portugal in 1975 and lasted until the signing of a peace treaty six weeks after his death.

China, the biggest buyer of Iran's oil, has publicly rejected U.S. sanctions aimed at Tehran's energy industry while American allies Japan and South Korea are scrambling to find a compromise to keep critical supplies flowing.

Beijing is buying less Iranian crude this month but analysts say China is unlikely to support an oil embargo. Instead, they say, the smaller purchases might be a tactic aimed at obtaining lower prices as the West squeezes Tehran.

Angola has expelled 140 foreign nationals, including 16 Lebanese, on suspicions of terrorism and money laundering, a government official told Agence France Presse

"These foreigners were expelled from Angola because of their illegal status and for money laundering and for terrorism," said Fretas Neto, who heads Angola's foreign migration office (SME).