World Highlights

• The EU, jolted into action by waves of illegal migrants storming its borders, will play down security fears and instead vow to help Africa at a conference in Morocco this week, officials and diplomats said.

Ministers from over 50 countries gathering in Rabat aim to approve a draft plan to fight illegal migration and channel European aid to help poor African countries tackle social and economic woes that push young people north in search of work.

• Poland's ruling Law and Justice party yesterday chose a young former bank economist as the next finance minister, hoping the move would allay investor concern about a pending cabinet reshuffle.

• An Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a car in Gaza yesterday blowing it up and wounding five people, witnesses and medics said.

The Israeli army said it had attacked a car of militants carrying explosives that later also detonated after the strike.

Witnesses said the targeted vehicle was a van that belonged to Hamas militants.

• Dozens of people were gunned down by rampaging militia gunmen in a Sunni district of Baghdad, police said, in the bloodiest such incident of sectarian violence that has raised fears of civil war. The shooting began in an area close to a Shi'ite mosque in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, where a car bomb killed three people on Saturday. Houses were also burning.

• Momentum built to seek a diplomatic solution to the North Korean missile crisis, with Seoul distancing itself from Japanese-led UN moves to slap punitive sanctions on the reclusive state. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il said his country would not budge in negotiations with the US, adding Pyongyang was ready to meet any attack with a strong blow of its own, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

• Iran said European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana was not able to answer all Iran's questions about proposals backed by six world powers that aim to end a nuclear standoff with the West. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also said the Group of Eight countries, which meet in Russia in mid-July, should not take decisions that could harm the current positive atmosphere in efforts to resolve the issue.

• Diplomats welcomed an agreement to revive talks on ethnically-partitioned Cyprus but cautioned major problems lay ahead. Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed to a framework for resuming talks, easing a deadlock in a conflict which threatens Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

• Islamist militia attacked fighters loyal to defeated Somali warlords in Mogadishu in a heavy battle that killed at least 15 people and wounded scores including refugees, witnesses said. The death toll looked set to rise further in the most serious flareup since the Islamists took over the Somali capital from US-backed warlords on June 5.

• A Canadian soldier in Afghanistan's US-led coalition force was killed in a firefight as coalition troops tried to clear Taliban from an area near the main town in the Afghan south. US-led troops have mounted big offensives in Afghanistan's south and east in response to the most severe Taliban violence since the hardline Islamists were ousted in 2001.