HASHARON PRISON, Israel (Reuters) – Israel released five Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of a swap deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group that brought the bodies of two Israeli soldiers home.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israel has agreed to release roughly 120 to 150 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead a Sudanese man as he tried to sneak across the border to Israel on Wednesday, bringing to 19 the number of migrants killed at the frontier this year, medical and security sources said.

ANKARA/BAKU (Reuters) – An explosion on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline on Tuesday night in eastern Turkey has halted the oil flow along the one million barrels per day pipeline, a senior Turkish Energy Ministry official said.

MINSK (Reuters) – Russia may consider deploying strategic bombers or station tactical missiles in its close ally Belarus as a counter-measure to a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe, Moscow’s envoy to Minsk said on Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia accused Georgia of sending warplanes into a Georgia’s separatist region of South Ossetia overnight, an allegation swiftly denied by Tbilisi.

GILGIT, Pakistan (Reuters) – A landslide triggered by torrential rain killed seven people and soldiers were searching for eight others buried under the rubble of their homes in a mountain village in northern Pakistan, police said on Wednesday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German-Afghan citizen has gone missing in Kabul and German officials believe he has been kidnapped, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said on Wednesday.

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in a town in Pakistan’s insurgency racked province of Baluchistan on Wednesday, killing four people, police said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s 4-month-old civilian government has suspended a decree issued last month to put the military’s powerful and controversial spy agency under Interior Ministry control, according to an official statement.