World Highlights

¤ US troop reinforcements have begun arriving in Baghdad to help Iraqi forces try to regain control of the streets amid worsening sectarian violence that US generals fear is pushing the country towards civil war.

In the northern town of Tikrit, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mourning ceremony, killing at least 10 people and wounding 20, police said.

¤ Iran vowed to expand its atomic fuel work and warned that any UN sanctions aimed at halting its uranium enrichment would incur a painful riposte, possibly including a cut in oil exports.

Chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Iran would expand the number of atomic centrifuges it was running. Centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speeds.

¤ Floods killed about 150 people in eastern Ethiopia when heavy rains caused a river to burst its banks, sending a wall of water into a town that killed most of the victims as they slept, police said.

¤ An Iraqi army medic described a scene of horror to a US military hearing that will decide if four US soldiers are to be court-martialled for the murder and rape of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family.

The medic, who was not named, said that when he entered the house in Mahmudiya in March, he found 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi naked with her legs spread and burned from the waist up, with a single bullet wound beneath her left eye.

¤ Tens of thousands of people from around the world gathered in Hiroshima to pray for peace and urge the world to abandon nuclear weapons on the 61st anniversary of the first atomic bombing.

In an annual ritual to mourn the more than 220,000 people who ultimately died from the blast, a crowd including survivors, children and dignitaries gathered at the Peace Memorial Park, near ground zero where the bomb was dropped.

¤ Sudan asked Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to help improve its relations with the US, soured by Khartoum's refusal to accept UN peacekeepers in the volatile Darfur region.

After meeting Wade in Khartoum, Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said economic sanctions imposed by Washington were hindering his country's development.