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Reuters, Baghdad

Bomb atacks killed 59 people and wounded more than 120 across Iraq on Wednesday when suspected al Qaeda militants stepped up a campaign of violence coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In a mainly Shi'ite district of southwest Baghdad, twin car bombs killed 32 people in one of the biggest atacks to hit the Iraqi capital in weeks.

The bombs detonated shortly before dusk when most people were preparing for the evening meal which ends a daylong fast during Ramadan.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Iraq had made some progress on security but added: "We have a long way to achieve our goals for a secure, stable and prosperous Iraq."

Maliki said this month a security plan in Baghdad, backed by thousands of extra U.S. troops, had sharply reduced levels of violence in the Iraqi capital.

In northern Iraq a suicide bomber killed 10 people on Wednesday and wounded nine when he struck at the home of a tribal leader opposed to al Qaeda near the town of Sinjar. The bomber's target, Sheikh Kanan al-Juhaimur, was wounded.

At the start of Ramadan two weeks ago Sunni Islamist al Qaeda vowed to escalate atacks and specifically said it would target tribal leaders cooperating with security forces.

"There has indeed been an increase in violence in the last few days, largely in areas in which al Qaeda in Iraq operates and with al Qaeda in Iraq signatures," U.S. military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner said.

"This was an increase that was actually expected some weeks ago given past upturns in violence during Ramadan," he told a news conference. The number of atacks was down from levels last year and roughly in line with 2005.

U.S. President George W. Bush has approved plans to withdraw around 20,000 combat troops from Iraq by July, saying the move was justified by improved security in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.

The main Anbar sheikh working with U.S. forces, Abdul Satar Abu Risha, was killed two weeks ago in a bombing claimed by al Qaeda. The group said others who cooperated with the United States would share Abu Risha's fate.

Police said three car bombs in Mosul and three others in northern Iraq killed 13 people and wounded more than 50.

In the south, a roadside bomb outside a Sunni mosque in the town of Abi Khasib, five miles south of Basra, killed four people, police and a Sunni political party said.

Bergner displayed explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) which he said were discovered by Iraqi and U.S. soldiers on Tuesday and which he said were being stored by a militant group with links to Iran.

EFPs are a particularly deadly armor-piercing bomb which the United States says Iran is supplying to Shi'ite militias in Iraq to atack American troops -- a charge denied by Tehran.

"This weapons cache was supporting criminals in the Diwaniya area associated with groups that have relied in the past on support from Iranian sources," Bergner said.

Washington, already at odds with Tehran over Iran's nuclear program, has repeatedly accused Iran of arming Shi'ite militias to atack U.S. troops in Iraq.

Last week American soldiers arrested an Iranian man they accused of smuggling roadside bombs into Iraq and training foreign fighters. The U.S. military said he was a member of the Qods Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iranian and Iraqi officials said the man was a member of a trade delegation.

AFP, Gaza City

Eleven Palestinians, including five members of a militant group that claims links to Al-Qaeda, were killed on Wednesday in two separate Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.

Israel said it is targeting militants involved in firing rockets at Israeli border towns. Eleven rockets and two dozen mortar shells have hit Israel since Wednesday, the army said, despite warnings by Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he is moving closer to ordering a large-scale military offensive in Gaza. The rockets caused no injuries.

Last week, the Israeli government declared Gaza "hostile territory," seting the stage for a possible cutoff of electricity to the impoverished coastal territory that has 1.4 million residents.

On Wednesday, an Israeli missile strike targeted a jeep carrying members of the Army of Islam, a small militant group involved in the March kidnapping of a BBC journalist, since released, and the June 2006 capture of an Israeli soldier.

Five passengers were killed, the Army of Islam said. The Israeli military said the jeep was carrying rockets ready for use.

In northern Gaza, Israeli tanks and bulldozers briefly entered the town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday, following rocket fire from the area. At one point, a tank shell was fired toward a group of people between two houses, killing four and wounding 25, witnesses and hospital doctors said.

The army said the shell was fired toward militants carrying anti-tank missiles.

Israeli forces withdrew from Beit Hanoun later Wednesday.

Early Thursday, Israeli aircraft fired a missile toward a group of militants near Beit Hanoun, killing two and wounding five, hospital doctors said.

David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said Israel's strikes are part of a "continuous policy of preventing terrorist activity against our civilians, including our taking pre-emptive measures as needed to thwart these atacks."

AFP, Srinagar

Hundreds of villagers held angry protests in Indian Kashmir over the killing of a Muslim farmer by paramilitary forces, police and residents said.

Residents said 28-year old Bilal Bhat was shot dead Wednesday by paramilitary police after an argument

"Our men fired in self-defence after a group of villagers manhandled them and tried to snatch their weapon, resulting in the death of a villager," Central Reserve Police Force spokesman S.K. Singh told AFP. One of the paramilitary troopers had been detained as part of investigations, Singh said. Protest broke out immediately and continued Thursday.

More than 2,500 villagers marched to Pulwama town on Thursday to demonstrate, said a police officer who asked not to be named.

They were chanting slogans such as "we want freedom" and "hang the killers," he said.

Indian security forces are often accused of human rights violations in Kashmir, where a separatist insurgency erupted in 1989 and has left more than 42,000 people dead by official count

Another report adds: Eleven suspected Muslim militants and a policeman were killed in gunbatles in Indian Kashmir, police said, in the bloodiest fighting during this holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Four militants were killed Wednesday as they crossed into southern Poonch and northern Kupwara districts from the Pakistani-zone of the divided state, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. A de facto border divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, which both claim the scenic Himalayan region in full.

Police said government troops also shot dead two "wanted" commanders of the pro-Pakistan rebel group Hizbul Mujahedin in southern Doda district early Wednesday.

Five more militants and a policeman were killed in three gunbatles in Poonch, Kupwara and Kulgam districts late Tuesday, the spokesman added.

"It is the bloodiest fighting since the start of Ramadan," the spokesman said. Ramadan began in Muslim-majority Kashmir on September 14.

Reuters, Batikot

U.S. troops opened fire on civilians near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Thursday after a failed suicide car bomb atack on their convoy, a Reuters witness said.

There was no immediate comment on the reported incident either from U.S.-led coalition forces or from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The witness said three suicide bombers in one vehicle atacked a convoy of U.S. troops in the village of Bati Kot, 15 km (9 miles) east of Jalalabad, but none of the soldiers was hurt

Two of the bombers were immediately killed in the blast The third, dressed in a police uniform, survived only to be shot dead by troops, the witness said. A fire brigade vehicle arriving at speed at the scene then suffered brake failure and rammed into the U.S. vehicles. Troops inside then opened fire, wounding a number of bystanders.

"I saw everything," said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai. "I saw the suicide bomb atack t

"I saw the fire brigade vehicle rushing to the area at top speed, somehow its brakes failed and hit one police vehicle and coalition vehicles, then the Americans started firing at the people and everyone lay flat on the ground and then fled the area."

Sherzai said a number of people had been wounded in the atack, but he did not know how many. "I ran away to save my own life."

At least two people were taken away by ambulance, he later said. U.S. troops cordoned off the area.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide atack.

An ISAF spokesman in Kabul said the force was aware of the atack but that there were no casualties reported.

Afghans staged angry protests in Jalalabad in March after U.S. Marines killed at least 10 civilians there following a suicide bomb atack.

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday formally applied to run in the October 6 presidential poll, in a bid for five more years of power that could yet be derailed by the Supreme Court Two opposition candidates also filed nomination papers to stand against Musharraf -- a key US ally who seized power in a 1999 coup -- saying that he cannot be re-elected while he remains army chief. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and several cabinet ministers swept up to the election commission in Islamabad in a convoy of black limousines to lodge the nomination on behalf of Musharraf. Hundreds of riot police and commandos were deployed around the building and at the Supreme Court across the road to guard against protests by the opposition and all key roads were sealed off. The government has defied international condemnation and detained hundreds of opposition workers in raids which started at the weekend to thwart planned demonstrations.

AP, United Nations

Iraq's prime minister said national reconciliation was the key to ending the daily barrage of violence in his country, calling on world leaders to help bring bickering factions together but offering few political solutions of his own. Nouri al-Maliki told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that terrorism was threatening to erode any recent successes in reducing sectarian killings and establishing democratic principles in Iraq. His statements came as a wave of bombings and shootings swept Iraq, killing at least 50 people and raising fears of a new al-Qaida offensive. "We look at national reconciliation as a life boat, a perpetual peace project and a safe harbor for the political process and the democratic experience," al-Maliki said. But he said healing is "not the responsibility of the government alone." "Today we feel optimistic that countries of the region realize the danger of the terrorist atacks against Iraq, that it is not in their interest for Iraq to be weak," he said. Al-Maliki spoke at the high-level ministerial session during a day of pointed atacks against President Bush, many focusing on the president's Iraq policy.

Reuters, United Nations

Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, accused U.S. President George W. Bush of "rank hypocrisy" on Wednesday for lecturing him on human rights and likened the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison to a concentration camp. "His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities," Mugabe said in a typically fiery speech to the U.N. General Assembly. "He kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And this is supposed to be our master on human rights?" Mugabe, 83, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was speaking the day after Bush scolded the governments of Belarus, Syria, Iran and North Korea as "brutal regimes" in his speech to the General Assembly. Bush criticized the Zimbabwe government headed by Mugabe as "tyrannical" and an "assault on its people."

AP, Rome

A doctor alleged Wednesday that Pope John Paul II violated Catholic teaching against euthanasia by refusing medical care that would have kept him alive longer - a charge immediately dismissed by Vatican officials. In an article in the Italian journal Micromega, Dr. Lina Pavanelli, an anaesthesiologist, questioned why John Paul was only outfited with a nasal feeding tube on March 30, 2005, three days before he died. She said he clearly was in need of artificial nutrition well before then.John Paul was rushed to Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic hospital two times in February 2005 with breathing crises related to his Parkinson's disease; he was released for the last time March 13. He died in his Vatican apartment on April 2, from what the Vatican said was septic shock and cardiocirculatory collapse. The Vatican announced March 30 that John Paul had been outfited with a nasal feeding straw to improve his nutrition so he could recover strength.

AP, Katmandu

Nepal's leading party announced its support Wednesday for declaring the country a republic, moving the government a step closer to abolishing the monarchy that has ruled this Himalayan nation for centuries. Leaders of Nepal's largest political party, the Nepali Congress, passed a resolution calling for the special assembly, which is expected to be elected in November, to order the world's last Hindu king to give up his throne, a key demand of former communist rebels, said Sushil Koirala, acting president of the Nepali Congress. "Today we have made a historic decision," Koirala said. "This has ended 250 years of history and created a new history." The decision comes a week after the former Maoist rebels, who waged a decade-long armed rebellion to turn Nepal into a republic before joining the government this year, withdrew from the ruling coalition over demands that the monarchy be immediately abolished.