• Dozens of al Qaeda-led militants stormed an Iraqi jail in the northern city of Mosul and freed up to 140 prisoners in one of the biggest prison breaks since the US-led invasion in 2003, police said. As many as 300 militants led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, attacked Mosul's northwestern Badoush prison just after sunset in the ethnically mixed city and overwhelmed police, who were forced to call the US military for backup, officials said.

• The number of US troops needed to carry out President George W. Bush's Iraq security plan could approach 30,000, significantly more than he projected in January, a senior Pentagon official said. In testimony to the House of Representatives Budget Committee, Deputy Secretary of Defence Gordon England said US military commanders in Iraq were requesting varying numbers of support troops to augment the additional 21,500 soldiers Bush has ordered into combat.

• Nato began its spring offensive against the Taliban, launching its biggest attacks since the 2001 war on Taliban rebels and Afghan drug lords. Operation Achilles, which will involve 4,500 Nato and 1,000 Afghan troops, began around dawn in southern Helmand province, the poppy-growing heartland of the world's top opium producer.

• The European Union plans to tell a UN nuclear meeting that Iran's expansion of efforts to enrich uranium, a possible path to atom bombs, is deplorable but a negotiated solution remains possible. The message was in a statement to be given to a session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing body scrutinising Iran's defiance of UN demands.