Sirens go off in Tel Aviv, 1 dead in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, Nov 17 AFP - Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 10 Palestinians and destroyed the Hamas government headquarters as Israel called up thousands more reservists for a possible ground war.

After Palestinian militants fired rockets at the heart of Israel on Friday, Israeli warplanes carried out 180 air strikes overnight, Israel TV reported, with the strikes levelling the headquarters of the Hamas government.

Medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 350 wounded since Israel launched an aerial campaign on the enclave on Wednesday afternoon, with at least five militants among the 10 people killed in Saturday's raids.

As the toll rose, sirens went off in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a third day running, sending people scuttling for cover, a day after a rocket crashed into the sea near the city centre, AFP correspondents said. The fire was claimed by Hamas's armed wing.

While Cairo was at the centre of efforts to halt the violence, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti appealed for a truce in a telephone conversation with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, Monti's office said.

He called for "a truce between the parties as soon as possible, to bring to an end the fighting and allow dialogue and peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin again".

Since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence, the Israeli army says militants have fired more than 600 rockets over the border, of which 404 hit and 230 were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.

Over the same period, three Israelis have been killed and 18 injured, including 10 soldiers, with the army saying the air force had hit more than 830 targets in Gaza.

On Saturday, four Israeli soldiers and five civilians were hurt in separate rocket attacks on the south which hit a building and a car, police and the army said. Another militant group in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, claimed those attacks.

The military said it had sealed off all main roads around Gaza and declared a closed military zone, in the latest sign it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since the 22-day campaign over New Year 2009.

Overnight, the air force hit Gaza City, targeting Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya's headquarters, other government buildings, including the interior ministry and police compound, militant training facilities and "dozens of terror sites", it said.

Correspondents at the scene said the headquarters, which had been emptied over attack fears, was reduced to a pile of rubble but there were no reports of casualties.

Air strikes in southern Gaza, notably Rafah, killed six people while three more died in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in central Gaza, medics said. Another man died of injuries sustained in a morning strike on Gaza City.

Saturday's violence came as Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem paid a brief solidarity visit to Gaza, a day after a similar mission by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil.

The world must stop Israel's "blatant aggression", Abdessalem told AFP on his arrival in Gaza City, where he visited the ruins of the cabinet building where a day earlier Haniya had received Qandil.

The Tunisian minister called on the Arab League to act to halt the aggression as it gathered for talks in Cairo.

Egypt and Turkey, meanwhile, put the onus on Israel to end the fighting, as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Cairo a day after Washington urged the two Muslim countries to pressure the Palestinians.

After a meeting with his counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr said they both agreed on "denouncing Israel's aggression and on the need to swiftly stop this aggression".

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Albania buries exiled king's remains

ALBANIA'S top leaders and thousands of people have paid their last respect to the country's only post-independence monarch, King Ahmet Zog I, half a century after he died and was buried in exile.

The nation's television stations on Saturday broadcast live the burial ceremony in the capital, a day after Zog's remains were returned from France.

He was buried in the family's mausoleum, alongside his Hungarian wife, Queen Geraldina, his son Leka I and his wife, Susan.

Zog proclaimed himself Albania's monarch in 1928 and ruled until 1939 when he fled Albania after it was occupied by fascist Italy. Albania's post-World War II communist regime abolished the monarchy in 1946.

Albania remains a parliamentary republic after the fall of communism in 1990.

The royal family returned to Albania in 2002, leading a quiet life though never relinquishing the claim to the throne.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that Albanians honour Zog "for his historic contribution in building up this country".

Berisha was joined at the ceremony by President Bujar Nishani and Kosovo's President Ahtifete Jahjaga. The ceremony was ignored by the country's opposition parties.

Nishani said Zog "is one of the most important figures of the Albanian history".

After Albania's communist regime fell in 1990, Zog's son, Leka I Zog, made two disastrous attempts to return home - first in 1993 when Berisha's government then threw him out and in 1997, when he was charged with leading an armed uprising after failing to convince Albanians to vote for monarchy in a referendum.

Since then, the family has been given back some of its old royal properties and granted diplomatic passports. Zog's grandson, Leka II Zog, has since served as an adviser to several Albanian governments.

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New Syrian envoy to France named

CLASHES have raged in southern Damascus, a monitoring group says, as rebels and regime troops exchanged mortar fire in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp on the edges of the capital, while in Paris, the French government recognised the new opposition coalition.

Elsewhere, Syria's air force dropped deadly explosive-filled barrels on rebel-held areas on Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In rebel-held Harasta east of Damascus, shelling by regime forces killed at least nine civilians including four women and four children, said the Britain-based watchdog.

In eastern Syria, after battles lasting several weeks, rebels seized control of Hamdan airport in the town of Albu Kamal in Deir Ezzor province on the border with Iraq, said the Observatory.

Syria's military had used the agricultural airport as a base for helicopter gunships. Rebels also seized several tanks and mortars the army had stored there.

"The rebels now control large swathes of land in the area," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"The army has lost control of practically all the eastern border area, barring the Mayadeen military base" some 50 kilometres northwest of Albu Kamal, he said.

France boosted its support for Syria's new opposition coalition with a promise to let it appoint an envoy to Paris, but remained cautious about supplying weapons to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

France has been one of Assad's harshest critics and this week became the first Western country to recognise the opposition coalition - formed last weekend in Doha - as the sole representative of the Syrian people.

President Francois Hollande met the coalition's leader, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, in Paris on Saturday and afterwards told reporters that he planned to let the group appoint an ambassador to the French capital.

The post is to be filled by Monzer Makhous, an academic, although it was unclear if this would happen before the transitional government was formed.

Most of Saturday's air strikes targeted Idlib province in the northwest, Aleppo in the north and Damascus province. All three provinces are home to highly organised rebel groups.

In southern Damascus, rebels and troops clashed in Yarmuk and Tadamun district, where anti-regime sentiment is strong.

At least five civilians and two rebels were killed in Damascus on Saturday, the Observatory said.

State television said rebels shelled the mainly Christian and Druze district of Jaramana in southeastern Damascus, killing six people.

Warplanes also buzzed the Eastern Ghuta area, east of Damascus, said the Observatory, as regime forces cut several roads leading to the capital.

In Aleppo, two rebels were killed and regime forces launched several air strikes near the embattled city, including on the towns of Hreitan and Anadan, the Observatory said.

Warplanes also targeted the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan, which rebels captured on October 9, and which lies on the road linking Damascus to Aleppo.

Despite near-daily air strikes and combat on the town's edges, the army has been unable to recapture it.

At least 47 people were killed across Syria on Saturday - 29 civilians, one soldier and 17 rebels - said the Observatory which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers for its information.

More than 39,000 people have been killed in violence nationwide since the outbreak of the anti-regime revolt in March last year, it says.

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Mali's north tense after Tuareg offensive

AL-QAEDA-LINKED fighters have gathered reinforcements in the tense Gao region of northeastern Mali and are waiting to see if the Tuareg rebels that launched a failed offensive a day earlier would regroup for a fresh assault.

The desert area of Gao has been a focus of Islamist and Tuareg activity since the once-allied fighters seized the region, along with much of Mali's arid north, following a coup and military collapse in Bamako March.

Though the dusty town of Gao and its surroundings were initially under the control of Tuaregs, who are fighting to establish an independent state, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) ousted them at the end of June.

On Friday, Tuaregs with the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) attacked the Islamist fighters but suffered a heavy defeat that saw about a dozen of their men killed, regional security sources said.

To prepare for a possible new offensive, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is linked to MUJAO, sent about 300 reinforcements from Timbuktu, about 300 kilometres west of Gao, witnesses told AFP.

By Saturday morning an uneasy calm had settled over the region as locals waited to see if the MNLA would again try their luck, witnesses said.

According to Moussa Salem, an MNLA fighter, "our goal remains to retake Azawad from the hands of AQIM and its allies. We can fall back, but it's only to be able to better push forwards after."

Azawad is the Tuareg name for all of northern Mali.

MUJAO spokesman Walid Abu Sahraoui said his group would continue to pursue the MNLA across the entire region.

"We are in control of the situation," he said.

Since their defeat at the hands of the radical Islamists on June 27, the more secular Tuaregs have no longer controlled any town in this massive desert region that spans two-thirds of Mali's territory.

In the regions under their control, Islamist groups have implemented sharia law and carried out brutal punishments of transgressors, including the stoning to death of an unmarried couple and the amputations of hands and feet of accused thieves.

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49 children killed in Egypt bus tragedy

AT least 49 nursery school children have been killed when a train smashed into their bus in central Egypt after a railway signal operator fell asleep, officials say, prompting protests and resignations.

Transport Minister Rashad al-Metini stepped down after the tragedy, which also killed the bus driver and his assistant, saying he "accepts responsibility".

President Mohamed Morsi accepted the Egyptian Railway Authority head's resignation.

"There are now 49 deaths and 18 injuries," with almost all of the casualties children, Assiut provincial governor Yehya Keshk told state television.

"There is a team of 45 doctors looking after the injured children."

The bus taking about 60 children aged between four and six on a school trip organised by their nursery was struck on a railway crossing in Manfalut, 356 kilometres south of Cairo, police said.

The worker manning the level crossing - which had been left open - was asleep when the bus tried to cross the tracks, Keshk said. "He has been arrested, of course."

Parents of the children were staging angry demonstrations near the scene of the horrific accident, demanding the death penalty for those responsible, police said.

A state television correspondent described the scene as "terrifying" with the blood-splattered bodies of children on the ground, before they were taken to nearby Manfalut hospital.

In a brief television address, Morsi offered his condolences to the families and said those responsible would be referred to the public prosecutor.

"On my and the Egyptian people's behalf, I offer my sincerest condolences to the families," the president said. "I am referring all those responsible to the public prosecution."

Earlier, Morsi ordered the prime minister, the defence and health ministers, and the Assiut governor "to offer all assistance to the families of the victims", the official news agency MENA said.

Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and his interior minister headed to Assiut, MENA said.

Activist groups have called for the resignation of Qandil's cabinet.

"This accident proves the failure of Qandil's government and strengthens the demands for the resignation of a government that has failed, over several months, to produce anything to improve the suffering of Egyptians," the April 6 movement said.

Keshk has ordered the "formation of a fact-finding committee" to probe Saturday's accident, but in similar tragedies in the past, such panels have done little to shed light on the details and less still to bring about accountability.

In a separate road accident, 12 people were killed and three injured when a truck smashed into a minibus near the Egyptian capital on Saturday.

Officials said a speeding truck driving on the wrong side of the road crashed into a minibus carrying 15 passengers. The truck driver was arrested at the scene in the 6th October area, as rescue services worked to extract the bodies, police said.

Egyptians have long complained that the government has failed to deal with the country's chronic transport problems, with roads as poorly maintained as train lines.

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ASEAN urges China 'hotline' over sea row

SOUTHEAST Asian nations will propose opening a "hotline" with China aimed at defusing tensions over the South China Sea, ASEAN's chief says.

Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said after a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers on Saturday that they had agreed to back the plan first mooted by Indonesia.

"This of course will be brought up to our Chinese friends," Surin told reporters ahead of a gathering of leaders from the region that begins in Cambodia on Sunday.

"We can call it a red line, we can give it a sense of urgency that if there is anything developing that we all will be phoned ... trying to consult, trying to coordinate, trying to contain any possible spillover of any ... incident, accident, miscalculation, misunderstanding," he added.

ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, have claims to parts of the sea, home of some of the world's most important shipping lanes and believed to be rich in fossil fuels.

China insists it has sovereign rights to virtually all of the sea, and the Philippines and Vietnam have expressed concerns that their giant Asian neighbour has become increasingly aggressive this year in staking its claim.

Philippine and Chinese vessels engaged in a standoff at a remote shoal in the sea in April, escalating the dispute between their countries dramatically.

The proposal comes as ASEAN and China struggle to make progress on a code of conduct (COC) to ease tensions in the sea that was first envisaged a decade ago.

"What Indonesia is now looking for while we are working on the COC is a commitment on the part of ASEAN and China to open a hotline of communication," Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters in Phnom Penh.

"So that if there were to be an incident in the future ... we can commit to have communication and have dialogue if there were to be disputes."

ASEAN leaders will hold their annual summit in Phnom Penh on Sunday. This will be followed by a two-day East Asia Summit involving Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, US President Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the leaders of five other countries.

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Obama heads for Asia with stop in Myanmar

PRESIDENT Barack Obama heads to Asia for a tour of three countries on his first foreign trip since winning re-election that will see him make a once unthinkable stop in Myanmar (Burma).

The first trip by a US president spent entirely in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War, the visit that will also take in Thailand and Cambodia aims to emphasise the Obama administration's focus on the dynamic and largely US-friendly region where several nations worry about a rising China.

But his tour also comes at an awkward time amid a spiralling conflict between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas with the Jewish state poised to launch its first ground offensive on the Palestinian territory in four years.

At home, Obama is in tough negotiations with legislators to avoid steep automatic budget cuts and tax hikes that could send the country back into recession.

Obama launched a so-called "pivot" to Asia in his first term that included greater military cooperation with Australia, Thailand and Vietnam and a plan to shift the bulk of the US navy to the Pacific by 2020.

Virtually no nation has seen a greater shift towards the United States under Obama than Myanmar. The nation formerly known as Burma was for years a close ally of China and treated as a pariah by Western nations.

Surprising sceptics, Myanmar launched reforms after its nominal end to nearly half a century of army rule last year.

President Thein Sein, a former general, released political prisoners, opened dialogue with ethnic rebels and allowed once-confined opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run for parliament.

Thailand is the oldest US ally in Asia, famously offering elephants to Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. But the kingdom has been consumed by internal disputes, which escalated in 2010 into violence that left more than 90 people dead.

Obama will be the first sitting US president to visit Cambodia, a staunch China supporter.

On the sidelines of an East Asia Summit there, Obama will meet China's outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan, amid a dispute between the two countries over islands in the East China Sea and the oil and gas fields in the disputed waters.

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Hamas chief in Cairo for talks

HAMAS chief Khaled Meshaal is in Cairo to confer on ending the Gaza conflict, but the Islamist group is reluctant to agree a ceasefire without guarantees Israel will honour it, a senior Hamas official says.

Meshaal was scheduled on Saturday to meet with Egypt's intelligence chief as well as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, both visiting Cairo, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hamas, now its fourth day of conflict with Israel around the Gaza Strip, doubts that any country could guarantee terms for a ceasefire, he said.

"Through Egyptian mediation, we reached an understanding for a truce and it was broken in about 48 hours," he said of an Israeli air strike on Wednesday that killed the Hamas military chief, after rockets were fired from Gaza.

"Egypt now cannot say: 'I guarantee a truce'," he said, adding it would require a stronger effort by the "international community".

Hamas's last sustained conflict with Israel in December 2008-January 2009 ended with an Egyptian mediated truce that was meant to guarantee a loosening of Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Palestinian medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 350 wounded since Israel launched an air campaign on the enclave on Wednesday. Three Israelis were killed by a Hamas rocket.

Since Israel's last major offensive on Gaza, the Arab Spring uprisings that brought an Islamist to power in Cairo have put more pressure on Israel to halt its campaign before it expands into a ground operation.

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