World Briefs

¤ Israeli troops shot dead an Islamic Jihad commander, the eighth gunman killed in a surge of attacks on militants ahead of the formation of a Palestinian government and an Israeli election. The biggest flare-up of violence since Ehud Olmert took over as Israeli interim prime minister last month included a Palestinian stabbing that killed an Israeli woman on Sunday and a rocket strike from Gaza on Friday that wounded a baby.

¤ A leader of the Islamist Hamas group said it was very likely that one of its members would become Palestinian prime minister after winning parliamentary elections last month. Hamas officials are holding talks in Egypt about forming a new Palestinian government following the group's landslide victory in the January 25 poll.

¤ A suicide bomber killed 13 people and wounded 13 when he set off explosives outside the police headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a government spokesman said. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said many more suicide bombers were waiting to strike.

¤ Throngs of voters, including many of Haiti's poorest forced to wait hours to cast their ballots, jammed polling centers in the chaotic Caribbean nation's first election since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed two years ago. Some cried fraud, and thousands of UN peacekeepers stood watch, as balloting began hours late at some stations, infuriating poor supporters of ex-president Rene Preval, a one-time Aristide ally who is favoured to win.

¤ Kuwait's new Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah appointed his brother Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah as the new crown prince and heir of the US-allied Gulf Arab oil producer. State news agency KUNA and state television said Sheikh Sabah also appointed a nephew, Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, a minister in charge of the emiri diwan (royal court), as the new prime minister.

¤ China said the Iranian nuclear standoff could still be defused through negotiations without a showdown in the United Nations, and urged countries to intensify efforts for a diplomatic compromise. China voted for an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution on Iran because it believed that decision would encourage further talks, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters in Beijing.

¤ A friend of the September 11 hijack leaders, convicted on terrorism charges in Germany, was unexpectedly freed from jail pending the outcome of appeals against his sentence. Mounir El Motassadeq, 31, was released from prison in Hamburg after the Constitutional Court upheld a defence motion that he be freed while the appeals process continues.