World Highlights

¤ The Iraqi government yesterday announced a two-day vehicle ban in parts of Baghdad, fearing an attack on a major Shi'ite religious festival amid unrelenting sectarian bloodshed in the capital that has killed thousands.

Nearly 1,000 Shi'ite pilgrims were killed in a stampede during last year's ceremony, when a crowd heading towards the shrine of a revered imam in Kadhimiya in northern Baghdad was panicked by rumours of a suicide bomber.

¤ Reclusive North Korea, which last month defied the international community by test-firing missiles, could now be preparing its first test of a nuclear bomb, US media cited US officials as saying.

Analysts yesterday said North Korea could be trying an even more extreme form of sabre-rattling to force the international community, and Washington in particular, into making concessions to the poor and isolated state.

¤ Sri Lankan jets hit the Tamil Tiger front line yesterday as fighting raged on the northern Jaffna peninsula, cut off by the rebels, and residents with foreign passports begged their embassies to get them out.

Almost three weeks of ground fighting, the first since a 2002 ceasefire, has left the government-held Jaffna enclave largely cut off and areas near the port of Trincomalee under intermittent artillery fire.

¤ Nigerian troops raided a riverside slum in the southern oil capital of Port Harcourt yesterday, moving from house to house and shooting sporadically, forcing residents to flee, local radio reported.

The raid follows a government order for troops to use "force for force" against militants who have kidnapped more than a dozen foreign oil workers in a string of incidents in Africa's top oil producer this month.

¤ Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian gunmen yesterday and wounded two other people in confrontations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, medics and witnesses said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has put his proposal for an Israeli pull-out from parts of occupied West Bank on hold for now, following the war in Lebanon.