By Ed Cropley and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - With hymns and eulogies, South Africans of all colors and creeds remembered Nelson Mandela in a day of prayers on Sunday, holding him up as a symbol of freedom, forgiveness and hope for the nation and the world. Mandela, South Africa's first black president who steered his nation out of apartheid and into multi-racial democracy, died on Thursday at the age of 95 after months of illness. Crowds have piled flowers, candles, balloons and messages outside his Johannesburg home. At the cavernous Regina Mundi church in Soweto, South Africa's largest Catholic Church, hundreds of mourners, young and old, gathered to pray for Mandela and the nation's future.

One person was killed and five wounded in Libya's eastern city Benghazi on Sunday when a car bomb exploded at a funeral for an assassinated army officer, security and medical sources said. When relatives and friends gathered for his funeral at noon On Sunday a car bomb exploded in the crowd. The security situation has sharply deteriorated in Libya's second-largest city in the past few months. Most countries closed their consulates in Benghazi after a series of attacks and some foreign airlines have stopped flying there.