Pakistan said security forces had closed five training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attack, and arrested 124 of its leaders and those of a related charity.
Tension between nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India has been simmering since the late November attack in which gunmen killed 179 people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
India has become increasingly frustrated with what it sees as Pakistan’s lack of action. Pakistan has been angered by an Indian suggestion Pakistani state agencies were involved and what it sees as repeated Indian hints …

For the first time in three weeks a fragile peace prevailed in the shattered Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral ceasefire by announcing a week-long truce of its own.
The Palestinian group fired at least 15 rockets and mortars into southern Israel to show that it had not been crushed. It then gave Israel seven days to withdraw its forces and open Gaza’s border crossings to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid.

United Nation helicopters circle in the cloudless sky above South Lebanon. The bumpy road below them is dotted with Lebanese army checkpoints.
Past them lies what is known here as the land of resistance – the villages where the Shia militant group Hezbollah controls hearts and minds.
From here, its fighters battled Israel in a fierce conflict in 2006 and now the portraits of Hezbollah fighters killed in that war look down from the roadside billboards.
Some look straight at Israel, which stretches just a couple of hundred of yards away beyond the …

GAZA: Israeli forces shelled areas deep inside Gaza City on Thursday, hitting the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and wounding at least three people among the hundreds taking shelter in the compound, UN officials and witnesses said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel expressed regret for the strike but said that Israeli forces were fired on by Hamas militants from just outside the UN compound and that the militants then ran inside to take cover, according to Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki …

Hamas officials say they have given Egyptian mediators their views on a Gaza cease-fire plan with Israel, and are waiting for Israel’s response.
Palestinian medics Wednesday said more than 1,000 people in Gaza have been killed in the 19-day conflict.
The head of the U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, says 300 children are among the dead.
Thirteen Israelis have died in the conflict, which Israel launched to stop Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Rockets fired from Lebanon struck Israel on Wednesday for the second time in a week while its Gaza offensive ground on, but there was no immediate sign the incident would escalate into wider violence.
There was no initial claim of responsibility for the attack, which triggered warning sirens in parts of northern Israel, and police said no one was hurt.
On Thursday, a similar salvo hit northern Israel but Lebanese and Israeli officials were quick to play down that incident, blaming not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas, but …

As Israel takes to the Internet in search of innovative ways to make its case about Gaza to the world, Jews around the globe also are utilizing innovative methods — and particularly new technological tools — to explain what the Jewish state is facing as it acts to protect its southern flank from rocket fire.
StandWithUs, a Los Angeles-based pro-Israel group, has established a round-the-clock Internet task force — in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel — to monitor Web sites and provide instant responses to attacks on the …

Israeli military officials said their 19-day offensive in the Gaza Strip had weakened Hamas but that a knockout blow was unlikely. The conflict showed no signs of ending Wednesday as diplomats reported little progress in negotiating a truce.
In Cairo, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon met Wednesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a bid to break the diplomatic impasse. Ban said he would keep pushing Israel and Hamas to observe a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire but was not optimistic.

Israeli ground forces fought fierce street battles with Palestinian militants in Gaza City Tuesday, while Israeli warplanes reportedly bombed areas along the Egypt-Gaza border.
Israeli soldiers, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into Gaza City’s densely-populated Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, but have yet to move on the center of the territory’s largest city.
On the territory’s southern tip, an official with the aid agency CARE International, Jawab Hab, said Israel has launched air strikes on houses in Rafah, 100 meters from the border with Egypt. Israel has said it is targeting tunnels in the …

On the 17th day of the war against Hamas, Israel said it launched around 15 air strikes overnight, fewer than in some recent nights, as Israeli troops pushed into a heavily populated area of Gaza City from the south on Sunday in fierce fighting that reportedly continued on Monday.
Senior Israeli officials said for the first time in the war that they believed that the Hamas military wing was beginning to crack and that Hamas leaders inside Gaza were looking for a cease-fire. News reports said Hamas fired at least one …