The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Gaza City

An Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip killed six Palestinian militants early Wednesday, medics said, including three from the Hamas movement that has ruled Gaza since June.

The overnight helicopter strike near the border fence with Israel wounded another 11 people, Palestinian medics said.

Earlier reports indicated that the fighters were all members of the armed wing of Hamas, but in a statement released Wednesday the Islamist movement said only three of the fighters came from its own ranks.

Another two militants came from the Popular Resistance Committees, and the sixth was a member of the armed wing of the radical Islamic Jihad movement.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said there was an operation in the northern Gaza Strip during which Israeli troops returned fire after coming under attack from small arms and anti-tank rockets and before calling in aircraft.

The latest deaths bring to 6,020 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.

On Tuesday Israeli shelling on central Gaza killed one member of Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June last year after violently ousting security forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Another report adds: Israel's network of roadblocks will remain in place across the West Bank, the defense minister said Tuesday, sparking an outcry from Palestinians who say they cannot rebuild their economy until people and goods move freely.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak's comments soured an already tense atmosphere between Israel and the Palestinians just days before President Bush's first visit to the region as U.S. president. Israeli construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and violence between Israelis and Palestinians - and among Palestinians themselves - threaten to overwhelm Bush's peace efforts.

In a newspaper interview ahead of the visit, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said for their own good, Israelis must consider giving up much of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

Jan. 1 is the day Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement celebrates its anniversary, but in Gaza, Hamas rulers banned fireworks and marches - setting off clashes that killed eight people and wounded more than 60. It was the worst outbreak of infighting since Nov. 11, when Hamas forces opened fire at a huge Fatah rally, killing eight.

The eight dead Tuesday included three Hamas and three Fatah supporters, officials said. Also killed were an elderly man caught in a crossfire in northern Gaza and a 14-year-old Hamas supporter shot in the southern town of Khan Younis after he left a mosque, relatives said.

By nightfall Tuesday, the internal fighting had died down. But before dawn Wednesday, an Israeli operation in central Gaza strip killed six militants, Hamas and Palestinian medical officials said. At least three of those killed were Hamas militants, Hamas said. The group had earlier announced that four of its members were killed. Five gunmen were wounded, the group said.

The Israeli army confirmed that troops had operated for a few hours in the area near Gaza City and that they had fired, together with Israeli aircraft, at gunmen who shot anti-tank missiles toward the soldiers.

AFP, Colombo

Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels set off a powerful roadside bomb in the Sri Lankan capital Wednesday, killing at least five people and wounding 26 others, police said.

The powerful Claymore mine -- a fragmentation bomb packed with ball bearings -- targeted an army bus transporting wounded soldiers, although hospital officials said most of the victims were civilians.

A police official at the scene said five people were killed in the attack -- three of them died instantly, while two others died en route to the hospital.

Twenty-six more were injured and rushed to Colombo National Hospital, officials said. Seven of them were in critical condition.

Hospital director Hector Weerasinghe said most of those killed or injured were civilians -- with just one soldier reported killed and 11 hurt. There were no reports of any foreign nationals among the casualties.

The mine went off as the army bus passed the low-budget Nippon Hotel in Colombo's commercial Slave Island area, where the military has several key installations, police and witnesses said.

"We suspect it was a roadside bomb," a police official at the scene said. "There are several civilian casualties. At least another civilian bus was also hit by the blast."

Sri Lanka's defence ministry blamed Tamil guerrillas, who have frequently used roadside bombs in their decades-old war for an independent homeland in the north and east of the ethnic Sinhalese-majority island.

AP, Baghdad

Relatives wept as the remains of victims from a suicide bombing at a funeral were placed into coffins Wednesday, while police increased the attack's death toll by four to 36 killed.

Tuesday's attack was a reminder of the dangers that persist despite the recent decline in violence in Iraq and of the peril for mass gatherings in a country where the bereaved often find themselves targets.

The bomber detonated his explosives amid men gathered in the capital's eastern Zayouna neighborhood for the funeral of Nabil Hussein Jassim, a retired Iraqi Army officer killed last week in a car bombing blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq that had killed 14 people.

"At the end of a three-day mourning period, a terrorist blew up himself in the mourning tent, leaving bodies scattered," one of the wounded men, who gave his name only as Abu Hasanain, told AP Television from his bed in al-Kindi Teaching Hospital Wednesday.

In the same Baghdad neighborhood of Zayouna, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded six people Wednesday - three police and three civilians, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.

To the north in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, police said they detained a senior local al-Qaida fighter in a joint operation with police from nearby Tikrit on Tuesday evening.

Reuters, Islamabad

President Pervez Musharraf will announce he is seeking international help in an investigation into the assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a close aide said on Wednesday. Musharraf, in a televised address to the nation due at 8 p.m. (1500 GMT), would also appeal for calm ahead of an election that was due on Jan. 8 but will be delayed for several weeks. The Election Commission will announce a new date for the poll before Musharraf's address. Pakistan has been under pressure from the United States and elsewhere, as well as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), to accept an outside investigation. Forensic experts believe that much of the evidence has been lost in the clean-up operation after the gun-and-bomb attack that killed Bhutto in the garrison town of Rawalpindi last Thursday.

Reuters, Islamabad

Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India exchanged lists of their civilian nuclear facilities on Tuesday, an annual exchange they undertake as part of a pact prohibiting attacks on such installations, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.

The agreement, dating back to 1988, requires the neighbours, which have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, to swap lists of their nuclear sites on the first working day of every year. While relations between the two countries have improved since they launched a peace process in early 2004, there was no major progress last year when Pakistan was preoccupied with domestic politics. Last week India put its forces on the border on high alert after Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi. It also suspended some transport links.