MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday an extra contingent of its troops had begun arriving in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, a move Tbilisi said was an illegal act of military aggression.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel would likely agree to an informal truce with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip if cross-border rocket attacks and arms smuggling into the territory ended, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday.

(Reuters) – Diplomatic novice Dmitry Medvedev will take over next week as Russian president with a thick stack of foreign policy challenges in his in-tray.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Next week a lawyer with little foreign policy experience will become Russian president and lead a country with a nuclear arsenal, a UN veto and volatile relations with its neighbors and an energy-dependent West.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas underwent heart tests in a Jordanian hospital on Thursday, a spokesman said, describing his condition as good.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An explosion near a U.S. patrol in Baghdad killed nine Iraqis and wounded 23 on Thursday, Iraqi police said.

TBILISI (Reuters) – Moscow’s sabre-rattling over two disputed regions of Georgia is driven by Kremlin hardliners who want to push Russia’s next president into an anti-Western stance, diplomats in both countries said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Eight Afghan civilians, three of them children, were killed in two landmine explosions near the border with Pakistan, a senior provincial police official said on Thursday.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Eight people were killed and 20 injured when a bus carrying Canadian, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian tourists overturned and caught fire in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula on Thursday, police sources said.

TEHRAN (FNA)- An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale jolted three towns in Lorestan province, western Iran, injuring over 100 people.