CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Tropical depression Felix is forecast to dump up to 25 inches of rain on parts of Nicaragua and Honduras, officials said early today, triggering fears of flooding and mudslides in areas where shantytowns cling precariously to hillsides.

At least three people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed as Felix pushed over Nicaragua and Honduras on Tuesday, officials said.

Hurricane Henriette, meanwhile, made landfall on the region's west coast just hours after Felix hit, and punished resorts on the southern tip of Baja California. Henriette forced airports to close and left tourists to face driving rain and 15-foot waves, but caused no deaths as it headed toward mainland Mexico.

Despite quickly diminishing from a Category 5 hurricane to a tropical depression, Felix sparked fears that the worst of its destruction is yet to come.

Nervous residents still remember Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which parked over Central America for days, causing flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two NATO soldiers were killed while on patrol in restive southern Afghanistan today, while more than 20 suspected insurgents were reported to have died in coalition airstrikes and ground battles, authorities said.The fighting on Tuesday and today came after Afghan forces claimed to have killed a Taliban commander involved in the kidnapping of 23 South Korean church workers in central Afghanistan in July.Taliban-led militants are waging a bloody resistance campaign against the Western-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, which replaced the hard-line Islamic militia after the U.S. invasion in 2001.The two dead soldiers were from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, the alliance said in a statement.

WROCLAW, Poland — A court today convicted an author of directing the killing of a businessman in a crime that bore eerie similarities to a murder he described in a novel three years later.The court ruled that Krystian Bala planned and directed the grisly killing of Dariusz Janiszewski, but said there was insufficient evidence to convict him of carrying out the murder himself. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison."The evidence gathered gives sufficient basis to say that Krystian Bala committed the crime of leading the killing of Dariusz Janiszewski," Judge Lidia Hojenska said. "He was the initiator of the murder; his role was leading and planning it."Hojenska said it was not clear who actually killed Janiszewski and who might have aided Bala in the crime, but that the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Bala's involvement in the events that led to Janiszewski's disappearance.Bala, 34, sat stone-faced between two policemen as Hojenska read the verdict. Bala's family and lawyer said they planned to appeal.