KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Militants managed to penetrate one of the safest nooks of Kabul to detonate a massive car bomb Saturday, shaking the confidence of voters just five days before presidential elections.
The powerful blast, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, killed seven Afghan civilians and wounded 91 more. The bomb went off outside NATO headquarters just after 8:30 Saturday morning, the beginning of the Afghan workweek. It sent a plume of smoke visible around Kabul and knocked out glass windows more than 500 feet away.

Indonesian police Saturday were studying DNA evidence from the remains of two suicide bombers who carried out twin attacks on luxury Jakarta hotels, as security was tightened across the country.
Suspected Islamist suicide bombers detonated powerful devices at the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in an upmarket business district Friday, leaving nine dead and up to 50 injured including at least 18 foreigners.
A New Zealand businessman was confirmed dead and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is due in Jakarta later Saturday, said he feared the worst for three missing Australians, …

The civilian death toll during the final days of Sri Lanka’s civil war was between 3,000 and 5,000, a senior government official estimated Thursday.
Rajiva Wijesinha, permanent secretary in Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, told a British newspaper, The Guardian, that earlier reports of many as 20,000 civilians being killed in the end stages of the years-long Tamil Tigers uprising were unverified and wrong.

Palestinian Fatah has said it was “encouraged” by the meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his US counterpart in the White House, while Hamas said the encounter would lead to nothing.
“Palestinians are encouraged by the commitment President Obama and his administration have shown to Middle East peace,” Saeb Erakat, a Fatah member and the Palestinians’ top official said on Friday.

Colombo – Amnesty International called Saturday for an independent probe into the number of civilians killed in the final weeks of Sri Lanka’s civil war and also urged the UN to reveal its own estimates.
The call by the rights group followed a report in the Times of London newspaper on Friday citing confidential UN reports that more than 20,000 civilians were killed by Sri Lankan army shelling.
The report followed weeks of allegations that large numbers of civilians had been killed as the army closed in on Tamil Tiger rebels to …

Pakistani forces battled militants in South Waziristan on the Afghan border on Sunday as a government official said an offensive in the Swat valley could be over in two or three days.
Pakistani forces have undertaken their most concerted offensive against an expanding Taliban insurgency that has raised fears for the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal.
The focus of the fighting has been the former tourist destination of Swat, 120 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, which the Taliban virtually took as the government alternated …

Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility on Thursday for a suicide gun and bomb attack in the city of Lahore the previous day that killed 24 people and wounded nearly 300.
The government said the attack in a high-security area where a police headquarters, emergency services building and a military intelligence office are located, was revenge for an offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad.
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South Korea and the United States raised the military alert level for the peninsula on Thursday after the communist North warned the truce ending the Korean War was dead and it was ready to attack.
North Korea ramped up tensions this week with a series of provocations rarely seen since the 1950-53 Korean War, including war threats, missile launches and a nuclear test that puts it closer to having an atomic bomb.
The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops that support South Korea’s 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a …

Israel’s air force on Thursday wrapped up a large-scale four-day exercise which simulated its ability to defend against missile and jet strikes from Syria and Iran, a military official said.
The exercise was aimed at testing the air force’s ability to counter rocket and missile attacks from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and archfoe Iran, as well as the infiltration of jets overland, the official told AFP.
This is the first time the Israeli army has simulated strikes from the Islamic republic, located more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away, he said.

The Sri Lankan Government has blocked access to aid workers trying to help the nearly 300,000 civilians displaced by the army’s victory over the Tamil Tigers, raising the prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe.
In the capital, Colombo, President Rajapakse announced the “complete defeat” of the rebels yesterday as state television showed pictures of what was said to be the corpse of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers’ leader. Mr Rajapakse vowed in an address to the nation to press ahead with a “homegrown political solution” to end ethnic divisions between the majority Sinhalese …