World Highlights

¤ A suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded 35 when he blew his car up in a market in the Iraqi northern city of Tal Afar yesterday, police said. Earlier police had said the attack targeted police and army headquarters in the city.

¤ Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Middle East peace brokers to end a foreign aid freeze on the Hamas-led government, warning of deeper instability in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At least 11 people were wounded in a second day of gun battles in the Gaza Strip between militant group Hamas, which rejects Mr Abbas's vision of a negotiated peace with Israel, and Mr Abbas's more secular Fatah faction.

¤ Egyptian police killed the leader of the group behind suicide bombings which killed 19 people in the Sinai peninsula last month, the Interior Ministry said.

Counter-terrorism units and police surrounded an agricultural area on the outskirts of the north Sinai town of El Arish in the morning after receiving information that Nasr Khamis el-Milahi was hiding there, it said in a statement.

¤ Senior members of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party tried to halt a damaging feud over its leadership as an opinion poll showed the party's support falling to a 14-year low.

Mr Blair, in office for nine years, has been under pressure from members of his own party to name a date to hand over the reins to finance minister Gordon Brown, his likely successor.

¤ UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland met Sudanese government officials to ask them to make it easier for aid workers to help refugees in Darfur. Days after a peace deal was signed between the Sudanese government and the main Darfuri rebel faction, Mr Egeland asked Khartoum to ease travel restrictions and bureaucracy which have hampered aid workers in the past.

¤ South Africa's former Deputy President Jacob Zuma apologised for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman and said he was resuming his duties at the ruling ANC party after his acquittal on rape charges.

"I apologise. I have no doubt about it and it (was) a mistake. The war against AIDS - I will stand for it and I will continue to preach, even using myself as an example. We need to fight HIV and AIDS because it is a dangerous thing," he told the SABC public broadcaster.