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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Hundreds of Albanian police, backed by armored vehicles, stormed a lawless southern village Monday after suspected marijuana growers allegedly fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns at officers during a drug raid.

Police said no one was hurt in the hostilities in and around Lazarat, a major marijuana-producing center 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of the capital, Tirana.

Gangs based in Lazarat are believed to produce about 900 metric tons of cannabis a year, worth about 4.5 billion euros ($6.1 billion) — roughly half of the small Balkan country's GDP. Over the past few weeks, Albanian authorities have launched a nationwide operation to uproot the cannabis plantations.

Around 500 lightly armed police, including special forces officers and the country's police chief, surrounded the village of 5,000 overnight after a smaller force was repelled over the weekend.

A police spokeswoman said officers took control of the village Monday after exchanging fire with nearly 30 armed men hiding in a four-story building complex. Spokeswoman Laura Totraku said the gunmen fled Lazarat and headed for a nearby mountain, pursued by police.

But more than three hours later, sporadic gunfire was still heard in the village. Authorities advised residents to stay indoors, while scores of police in body armor guarded the entrances to Lazarat.

Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri urged the gunmen to disarm and surrender.

Police destroyed seven plots with some 10,000 cannabis plants and 1,000 young trees ready to be planted. They also found six burnt barrels believed to have stored previously collected drugs and "other considerable amounts of unpacked narcotics."

Albania's private A1 channel said its TV crew covering the Lazarat operation was robbed at gunpoint by masked men who also burnt their vehicle.

Marijuana-growing gangs in the village have long seen themselves as beyond the reach of the law. In 2004, shots from the village forced an Italian drug-spotting helicopter to make a hasty retreat.

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Hektor Pustina in Lazarat contributed to this report.

When singer R. Kelly's teenager revealed himself as a transgender boy, the blogosphere erupted. Writer and activist Janet Mock discusses the do's and don'ts of writing about transgender minors.

MADRID (AP) — Eight people have been arrested in Spain and a further three in Germany for suspected links with jihadi groups, especially in Iraq and Syria, authorities said Monday.

A Spanish Interior Ministry statement said police detained the eight in Madrid early Monday on suspicion of recruiting jihadi militants for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

It said the cell was led by a person who lives in Spain but had previously been jailed in Guantanamo Bay after being arrested in Afghanistan in 2001.

Spain gave no immediate details on the nationalities of the arrested.

In Berlin, prosecutors' spokesman Martin Steltner said police on Saturday arrested a 30-year-old Frenchman suspected of "supporting a terrorist organization" by fighting in Syria for the group.

Steltner said the suspect, who wasn't named because of German privacy laws, was wounded in fighting. He has also allegedly appeared in ISIL propaganda videos.

A court will decide on his extradition to France in the coming weeks.

The French Interior Ministry said in a statement that the detainee had been identified by French intelligence agency DGSI as "dangerous and susceptible of acting on French soil." The statement said he was arrested upon arrival from Istanbul.

German police also arrested a 27-year-old German woman at Frankfurt Airport on Thursday, and a 17-year-old German in Stuttgart on Friday. Both are being linked to Islamist extremist groups.

European authorities have stepped up their cross-border co-operation since four people were killed in Brussels by a suspected French Islamic extremist returned from Syria.

The suspect in that shooting passed through Frankfurt Airport earlier this year, triggering an alert from German authorities to their French colleagues, but they didn't ask for his arrest.

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Angela Charlton in Paris and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. homebuilders are feeling more confident about the housing market but don't think it is healthy yet.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index rose to 49 in June, highest since January and up from 45 in May. Readings below 50 indicate that builders view sales conditions are poor rather than good. The index has been stuck below 50 since January. The low numbers earlier this year reflected a bitter winter that chilled economic activity across much of the U.S.

But warmer weather hasn't done much to help: Sales of new homes are running about half the rate of a healthy housing market.

Still, builders are the most confident they've been since January about new single-family home sales over the next six months. They report seeing more potential buyers shopping for homes, though traffic remains modest.

"Consumers are still hesitant, and are waiting for clear signals of full-fledged economic recovery before making a home purchase," said David Crowe, chief economist for the homebuilders group. "Builders are reacting accordingly, and are moving cautiously in adding inventory."

New home sales rose 6.4 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 433,000 from 407,000 in March. But they were down more than 4 percent from a year earlier. In a healthy market, the annual sales rate for new homes typically runs around 900,000.

Sales surged in the first half of last year but have sputtered since. Last year's gains and a limited supply of homes pushed up prices to levels that strained the household budgets of potential buyers. The median price for an existing home was $201,700 in April, up 5.2 percent from a year earlier.

"With affordability still hugely impaired compared to last year, don't expect a sustained revival in demand anytime soon," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a research note. "And if mortgage rates rise over the summer, as we expect, housing will take another turn for the worse."

Existing home sales came in at an annual rate 4.65 million in April, up 1.3 percent from March but down 6.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. In a healthy housing market, roughly 5.5 million existing homes are purchased each year.

The increase in home sales over the past year has occurred primarily among homes worth more than $750,000. Buying fell during the same period for homes worth less than $250,000, which make up the majority of all purchases.