GAZA CITY (AFP) — Seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in a raid on the Gaza Strip Monday during festivities marking the end of Ramadan, in an operation President Mahmoud Abbas slammed as a “massacre”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a bid for political survival, struck an alliance Monday with a tough-talking politician who has called for stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship, executing lawmakers for talking to Hamas and bombing Palestinian population centres.

TEHRAN (AP) — Iran’s nuclear capability has increased “tenfold” despite Western pressure to roll back the country’s nuclear programme, the country’s firebrand president said Monday.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The prime minister on Monday announced a military crackdown to tame the country’s staggering armed violence, taking special aim at continuing lawlessness in the southern city of Amarah, where police have fled the streets as Mehdi Army fighters hunt them down in a brutal Shiite-on-Shiite settling of …

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — UN chief Kofi Annan has full confidence in his embattled special envoy to Sudan, whose status remains unchanged despite an expulsion order against him from Khartoum over his comments on the Darfur crisis, his spokesman said Monday.

SAQQARA — The arrest of tomb robbers led archaeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, protected by a curse and hidden in the desert sands for thousands of years in the shadow of Egypt’s most ancient pyramid, officials announced.

MOGADISHU (AP) — A senior leader of Somalia’s Islamists urged Ethiopians Monday to revolt against their government, calling it an oppressive regime led by an unpopular minority ethnic group.

TEL AVIV — Aghast at the destruction that ensued as Israel’s army and Hizbollah fighters waged war in Lebanon this year, Israeli David Sasson felt compelled to try to make contact with the Lebanese side.

GAZA — Fear of an escalating power struggle between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas added to the gloom on Monday for Palestinians marking a Muslim holiday that would normally be a festival of joy.

RAMALLAH — Last May Adel Samarra’s wife of 31 years left the West Bank to go to Jordan to renew her Israeli visa for the 126th time. On the 125 previous occasions the process had gone off without a hitch for the US passport holder, but five months ago Samarra’s …