World Highlights

¤ Leaders of the Shi'ite and Kurdish blocs that emerged triumphant in this month's Iraqi election agreed to push ahead with efforts to bring Sunni and other parties into a grand coalition government.

¤ Israeli warplanes struck the Gaza Strip early after threatening to enforce a buffer zone to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets from the territory that Israel evacuated three months ago.

Jewish settlers set up 13 makeshift outposts in the occupied West Bank in a show of strength ahead of Israeli elections that could swing on the growing debate over the territory.

¤ A Kuwaiti court sentenced to death six suspected militants linked to al Qaeda for bloody attacks in the country.

The six were among 37 Islamists on trial as members of the "Peninsula Lions" group believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

¤ Romania discovered a new outbreak of bird flu in a village 90 kilometres east of Bucharest, indicating that the disease might be spreading towards the capital, the farm ministry said.

¤ Fuelling fears of a return to civil war, suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed 11 soldiers in the island's far north in the second mine attack in less than a week, the military said.

¤ Chadian President Idriss Deby lobbied the African Union to condemn neighbour Sudan for what he says is Khartoum's support for rebels seeking to overthrow him.

¤ Fuelling fears of a return to civil war, suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed 10 soldiers in the island's far north in the second mine attack in less than a week, the military said.

¤ Philippine prosecutors charged four US Marines with raping a 22-year-old Filipino woman early last month but cleared two other soldiers who had also been accused.