GENEVA – The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday demanded Israel lift its week-long blockade of Gaza, rebuking the Jewish state for violations in the Palestinian territories for the third time since it was set up in 2006.

MOSCOW – Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s biggest opposition party, may decide not to run in the March 2 presidential election, Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying on Thursday.

BAGHDAD – The death toll from a blast in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday had risen to 36 from 20, with another 169 people wounded, police said on Thursday.

CAIRO – The Islamist movement Hamas blew a hole in the Egyptian government’s policy on the border with the Gaza Strip when it knocked down the border wall and let tens of thousands of Palestinians pour into Egypt.

KABUL – Afghanistan launched its first prison for women in the capital Kabul on Thursday as part of a plan to build 15 such facilities, officials said.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – A police officer and two militants were killed in fighting during raids on suspected radical Islamist cells in southeast Turkey, police sources said on Thursday.

BRUSSELS – Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said on Thursday he still expected to be a candidate for a March presidential election despite the Central Election Commission saying it had grounds to disqualify him.

JERUSALEM – Hamas has exposed Israel’s inability to rein in the Gaza Strip, proving it holds the power to blow open the border and turn a crippling Israeli blockade into a public relations nightmare for the Jewish state.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip – Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after militants blew up a border wall, and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply because of an Israeli blockade.

BAGHDAD – The police chief of Mosul was seriously wounded in an explosion on Thursday as he toured the scene of a huge blast a day earlier which had killed at least 20 people in the northern Iraqi city, police said.