A roadside bomb killed two soldiers in Somalia’s chaotic capital Mogadishu on Thursday, witnesses said, hours after two aid workers were shot dead in an overnight attack in the north of the country.

A possible rape charge against disgraced President Moshe Katsav has been dropped after he accepted a plea bargain for sexual offences on Thursday, in the worst scandal involving an Israeli leader.

A car bomb killed 25 people on Thursday at a busy intersection in Baghdad where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers, while a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.