Israel says it will prevent, if necessary by force, a nine-ship flotilla of peace activists and humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip.

RIYADH: A Saudi committee comprising influential scholars that is responsible for issuing fatwas has called on Muslim leaders to support Palestinians in their fight to stop the atrocities of Israel in their lands, the Saudi Press Agency has reported.

Omar al-Bashir has been sworn in as Sudan’s president for another term after winning elections that were boycotted by major opposition parties last month.

GAZA, (PIC)– Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at Palestinian resistance fighters stationed west of Beit Lahia town in northern Gaza Strip at dawn Tuesday, Palestinian sources reported.

North Korea has severed key communication links with South Korea after vowing to cut all ties with its neighbour in response to the South’s tightening of sanctions against Pyongyang over the deadly torpedoing of one of its warships.

Robbers in Iraq have killed 14 people in an attack on a Baghdad gold market, interior ministry sources have said. The robbers hit nearly a dozen stores in the Bayaa neighborhood, killing the store owners and planting bombs in several of the buildings before fleeing with an unknown amount of gold.

SANAA – Armed tribesmen kidnapped two US tourists and their Yemeni driver on Monday in Bani Mansour, 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, the driver and a tribal source said.

GAZA CITY – The Islamist Hamas movement said on Monday it would boycott Palestinian local elections in the occupied West Bank, saying the vote would worsen the internal Palestinian divide.

Dozens of masked men have broken into a UN-run Gaza summer camp for children and set it on fire, after beating up the guard and destroying the plastic tents.

Australia has ordered the explusion of an Isreali diplomat over the use of fake passports in the assassination of a senior Hamas commander in Dubai in January.