World Highlights

¤ Israel decided to release to the Palestinians tax revenues it froze after Hamas's election victory but said future transfers, vital to the Palestinian economy, were unlikely.

News of the payment coincided with a disclosure by the Palestinian attorney-general that Palestinian Authority officials had stolen or squandered at least $700 million from its coffers over the past few years.

¤ Interpol issued a global security alert over the escape of at least 13 convicted al Qaeda militants who tunnelled their way out of a jail in Yemen, calling them a "clear and present danger to all countries".

The world police body circulated a warning to its 184 member states over the missing prisoners, including the leaders of attacks on US and French ships in 2000 and 2002, and urged them to take extra precautions at their borders.

¤ A bomb exploded on a bus in south-western Pakistan, killing at least 13 people and wounding 20, the latest incident in worsening separatist violence in troubled Baluchistan province, officials said.

The blast in a pass at Kolpur, about 60 kilometres south of Baluchistan's capital Quetta, came hours after eight people were killed when suspected tribal militants fired rockets into a town in the province near the country's main gas field.

¤ A roadside bomb killed six Afghan policemen and wounded five in the southern province of Kandahar, a provincial official said.

In a separate incident, a Taliban commander, Mullah Sabir Momin, was killed in a clash with Afghan security forces on the border with Pakistan, an Afghan security official said.