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Terrified residents fled the Somali capital on Saturday, following a day of fierce fighting between government forces and Islamist hardline rebels that left at least 31 people dead.
   Most of those killed in Friday’s exchanges were civilians trapped in the crossfire or claimed by mortars. As soon as things calmed down many inhabitants packed up what they could and left Mogadishu.
   ‘The city is quiet Saturday morning and many people are fleeing to avoid upcoming attacks, I think the government is planning a further offensive,’ said Somali police officer Colonel Mohamed Adan.
   A witness, Abdulahi Warsameh, corroborated his information, saying, ‘Many residents have emptied their houses in (the) Wardhigley (district) because they fear new clashes.’
   Government forces encountered Friday fierce resistance as they tried unsuccessfully to drive the Islamist insurgents from the capital.
   With the president, Sharif Sheikh, Ahmed holed up in his compound with a handful of supporters, his embattled forces attacked insurgents in three positions they had lost in two weeks of fighting that have now killed close to 150 people.
   A toll compiled late Friday by AFP from medical sources, security officials and witnesses put the number of killed in the latest clashes at 29, including a young local journalist who was caught in crossfire.
   A resident on Saturday provided new information pushing up the toll. ‘We found the dead bodies of two civilians in the contested areas; they were caught in the cross-fire,’ said Mubarak Hassan.
   Aid agencies said on Wednesday that the first 12 days of clashes had displaced 46,000 people from Mogadishu.
   The Somali capital has been ravaged by 18 years of almost uninterrupted civil conflict and emptied of hundreds of thousands of residents by the violent fighting that followed Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion.
   The Shebab and Hezb al-Islamiya fighters are the main insurgents trying to topple Sharif’s internationally recognised transitional government.
   The rebels launched attacks against the government on May 7 and said they had received the support of foreign fighters to wage some of the worst clashes Mogadishu has suffered in months.
   The Horn of Africa nation has not had a central government since the ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 which set off a bloody cycle of clashes between rival factions.

The United States, in another move aimed at thawing relations with Cuba, has offered to resume migration talks with the communist-ruled island almost six years after they were suspended.
   ‘We intend to use the renewal of talks to reaffirm both sides’ commitment to face legal and orderly migration,’ a State Department official said on Friday.
   The official said Washington hoped the talks would ‘improve operational relations with Cuba on migration issues.’
   The United States and Cuba had carried out discussions on the issue every two years until they were suspended in 2003 by former president George W Bush.
   Washington is trying to facilitate reunification of Cubans who want to leave the country with kin in the United States, mainly in South Florida.
   Since coming to office in January, the US president, Barack Obama, has moved to repair ties with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, who officially took over the reins
   from older brother Fidel last year.
   In April Obama lifted travel and money transfer restrictions on Americans with relatives in Cuba.
   The new US administration has also acknowledged that Washington’s Cuba policy has been a failure, but Obama has said he will not, for now, end the 47-year-old economic embargo on Cuba, instead urging Havana to show progress on human rights.
   President Castro, for his part, said last month that Cuba will not make symbolic ‘gestures’ to please the United States, putting the onus of improving bilateral relations squarely on Washington.

The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said on Saturday Iraq was the best country in the Middle East for freedom of the press, despite the deaths of more than 240 media workers since the 2003 US-led invasion.
   ‘Iraq is in practice the best country in the region when it comes to freedom of the press,’ he told a conference of the International Federation of Journalists.
   ‘We are proud of the fact that there are no journalists in our jails because of press freedom... and there are no restrictions on the media apart from those aimed at preventing religious hate,’ Maliki said.
   ‘Our country is proud not to punish journalists and not to impose restrictions on their work.’
   Human rights and media groups say Iraq is one of the most dangerous nations on the planet for journalists, who have been regularly targeted by Shia militias and al-Qaeda insurgents.
   RSF also noted that violence in the country had forced a great many Iraqi journalists into exile.

Rival factions in Madagascar have reached a tentative transition deal that could see interim leader Andry Rajoelina and the man he ousted, Marc Ravalomanana, face off in a new presidential election, mediators said Saturday.
   The parties agreed late Friday on the ‘principles’ for ‘establishing a neutral, peaceful and consensual transition’ until new elections can be held, a statement from the international mediators said.
   The proposed accord, which the parties have not yet signed off on, calls for ‘the participation of the former headers of state and the head of the transition in the next presidential election,’ the statement said, without indicating an election date.
   That would mark a turnaround for Rajoelina who last week declared he would not run for president as long as the other ex-heads of state bowed out of the poll he had vowed to hold by the end of 2010.
   Rajoelina, the 34-year-old ex-mayor of Antananarivo, forced Ravalomanana — the Indian Ocean island’s elected president — out of office in March after spearheading opposition protests for weeks and securing the army’s support.
   Ravalomanana, now in exile in South Africa, says he handed over power on March 17 to an army-backed council headed by Rajoelina to ‘avert a bloodbath’ but maintains he is still the country’s legitimate leader.
   The international mediators have called on the rival parties ‘to make concessions in order to reach agreement on questions still under discussion and bring the negotiations to a conclusion that achieves a planned transition,’ their statement said.

Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi, who was freed last week after four months in an Iranian jail, arrived Friday in the United States.
   ‘I am so happy to be back in the United States,’ Saberi told a friend while flanked by the two police officers at an airport outside Washington.
   Saberi, who left Iran one week ago and travelled with her mother, father, brother and a family friend to Vienna, Austria, arrived Friday at Dulles International Airport.
   The 32-year-old US-born journalist walked free from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran on May 11 after a court reduced her prison term for spying to a two-year suspended sentence, ending a four-month ordeal.
   ‘I wish I could personally thank all the people who supported me in my 100 days in prison,’ she told reporters, thanking the US president, Barack Obama, and the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, by name.
   She was initially detained in January and sentenced last month to an eight-year jail term on charges of spying in a case that caused deep concern in the United States and among human rights groups.

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, came face-to-face Saturday with the despair of Sri Lanka’s war-hit civilians as he toured the nation’s biggest refugee complex, home to 200,000 displaced by fighting.
   Just days after Colombo declared victory over Tamil Tiger, he toured the sprawling Menik Farm camp, 250 kilometres north of Colombo, which was jammed with civilians who had fled the war zone.
   ‘I’m very moved after what I have seen. I’ve seen so many wounded,’ he said after spending 20 minutes walking through the camp, a sea of makeshift corrugated iron shacks and tents.
   ‘There are huge challenges that can only be overcome by strong support from the international community,’ said Ban, on a 24-hour visit to Sri Lanka.
   He stopped at a government-run clinic where he saw around 100 elderly patients, some with gaping wounds, who had been caught up in the conflict.
   The camp, referred to by Sri Lankan authorities as a ‘welfare village,’ was surrounded by barbed wire and under heavy guard.
   Tamil activists have likened ‘welfare villages’ to concentration camps, while UN and aid agencies have complained about restrictions on vehicle access to the shelters.
   Asked whether the security was there to stop people leaving, Ban replied: ‘I don’t think they are holding them (the civilians) back for any particular purpose.
   ‘They’re trying to resettle them, to reintegrate them,’ he said. ‘That is the Sri Lanka government’s commitment.’
   But ‘there seems to be a clear limitation in their capacity to resettle these people. The UN is going to try to fill the gap.’
   Ban, due to return to Copehagen late Saturday, said the foreign minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, had promised him civilians would be resettled by year end.
   He said he would mobilise UN agencies and international non-governmental organisations to help with the resettlement.

The prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Saturday said attacks by US drones on Pakistani territory were ‘counter-productive’ because they undermined Islamabad’s efforts to isolate militants.
   ‘As far as drone attacks are concerned, the entire world has the same stand as Pakistan has that drone attacks are counter-productive,’ Gilani told reporters in a televised press conference in the eastern city of Lahore.
   ‘If the drone attacks had been useful, then we would have ourselves supported them.’
   Gilani said missile strikes by US drones on the northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan were in fact strengthening the militants.
   ‘Our policy is to isolate militants from the local tribes, but drone attacks unite them,’ Gilani said.
   Gilani said Pakistan had convinced the international community about the repercussions from drone attacks and was also urging the United States to stop them.
   ‘We have convinced the world, we have tried to convince the United States also and you will see that America would review its policy,’ he said.
   CIA director Leon Panetta earlier this week defended the use of unmanned aircraft to target al-Qaeda militants and said president Barack Obama’s policies had severely disrupted the network’s leadership.
   Pakistan has asked Washington for ‘ownership’ of US drones carrying out attacks on its territory, the president, Asif Ali Zardari, said earlier his month.
   Islamabad publicly opposes drone attacks, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace. Since August 2008, more than 40 such strikes have killed around 420 people.
   About the ongoing military operations against Taliban militants in northwestern Swat valley and the adjoining districts of Dir and Buner, Gilani said militants would not be allowed to take the nation hostage.
   ‘This is not possible that terrorists take us hostage and we sit at home fearing them,’ Gilani said.
   ‘We will launch military operations where the writ of the state is challenged and attempts are made to form a parallel government.’
   Officials say more than 1,060 militants and more than 63 soldiers have been killed since forces launched an offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest and some 1.7 million people had been displaced due to fighting.

Troops killed 60 militants and seized their largest-ever drugs haul in a just-ended operation that smashed an insurgent hub in southern Afghanistan, the military said Saturday.
   The four-day operation was in Helmand province where a British soldier was killed in a separate incident on Friday, officials said.
   The operation ended overnight when air strikes destroyed 92 tonnes of drugs and masses more heroin-processing chemicals and bomb-making materials collected in the sweep of Marja, southwest of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
   ‘A total of 60 militants were eliminated as they mounted an ineffective and uncoordinated defence against friendly forces,’ a joint US and Afghan military statement said, issuing a final tally.
   The statement said the troops had also ‘seized the single-largest drug cache by Afghan-led forces in Afghanistan to date’. They moved all ‘friendly elements’ from a bazaar in the area at midnight Friday, it said.
   ‘With the area cordoned off, precision air strikes destroyed the narcotics, bomb-making materials, weapons and munitions discovered during the operation,’ it said.
   ‘The air strikes targeted specific militant buildings used as command nodes and drug-making facilities in which attacks against Afghan and coalition forces were coordinated.’
   Helmand, where thousands of British troops are based for a NATO-led military force helping Afghanistan, is the main producer of Afghan opium, which accounts for more than 90 per cent of the world’s supply.
   Most of it is turned into heroin and smuggled to markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
   The vast province is also a stronghold for the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are now waging an al-Qaeda-linked insurgency.
   The operation had confirmed that Marja was a ‘hub of multiple types of militant and criminal activity’, the statement said.
   The haul included 92,271 kilograms of narcotics, including 75,000 kilograms of opium poppy seeds, 16,850 kilograms of black tar opium as well as morphine, heroin and hashish.
   The troops also seized an ‘unprecedented amount’ of heroin-processing materials, including tonnes of chemicals and soda ash.
   They also discovered large amounts of bomb-making materials, including 27 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, pressure plate triggers, explosives and various types of mortars, the statement said.

Pakistani troops stormed into the main town in the Swat valley and fought street battles Saturday in a bid to capture the capital of the northwest district from Taliban control, the military said.
   Chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said parts of Mingora had already been cleared and that 17 militants, including an important commander, were killed during the most recent fighting of Pakistan’s northwest offensive.
   The ground assault on Mingora, a city with an estimated population of around 300,000 — of whom many have fled — marks the most crucial part of the military’s blistering offensive against the Taliban in the scenic valley.
   Mingora has effectively been under Taliban control for weeks and — as the administrative and business hub of the entire district — its capture is essential for the military to be able to declare ultimate victory in Swat.
   Pakistan says up to 15,000 troops are taking on 4,000 well-armed fighters in Swat, where Islamabad has ordered a battle to eradicate fighters who advanced to within 100 kilometres of the national capital.
   ‘Today the most important phase of operation Rah-e-Rast, the clearance of Mingora, has commenced,’ the military said in a statement on its web site.

The UN Security Council on Saturday expressed its concern over the political impact of the detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Myanmar.
   The 15-member body, in a press statement, reiterated the importance of the release of all political prisoners and asked the Myanmar government to create favourable condition for a genuine dialogue with different parties.
   The council said ‘create the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all concerned parties and ethnic groups in order to achieve an inclusive national reconciliation with the support of the United Nations.’
   The Security forces arrested Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the National League for Democracy, and two aides on May 14 and took them to Insein Prison, where they were charged by a special court.
   They are said to have been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after an uninvited United States citizen gained access to their home, and her trial is currently under way.
   Last week, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that ‘her continued detention, and now this latest trial, breach international standards of due process and fair trial.’
   Meanwhile, the UN Security Council renewed calls for the release of political prisoners in Myanmar.

A fresh wave of revelations about British MPs’ expense claims on Saturday revealed that one spent thousands of pounds on security gates, as the middleman behind the leaks said he was ‘proud’ of his role.
   The latest lawmaker targeted by the Daily Telegraph newspaper is Conservative business spokesman Jonathan Djanogly, who will now pay back 25,000 pounds (28,000 euros, 40,000 dollars) of expense claims out of more than 77,000 pounds he reportedly spent at his property.
   Djanogly had automatic security gates installed at his constituency in Huntingdon, eastern England, at a cost of nearly 5,000 pounds.
   In a statement, the MP said this was on police advice because of threats from animal rights activists.
   The son of a multi-millionaire businessman and philanthropist also spent nearly 13,000 pounds on gardening and nearly 14,000 pounds on cleaning expenses, the paper reported.
   In the last two weeks, The Telegraph has published the expense claims, paid for from the public purse, of over 200 of Britain’s 646 lawmakers, prompting a furious reaction from commentators and the public.
   The most high-profile casualty was House of Commons speaker Michael Martin, who said this week he would quit, while several other MPs will not now stand at the next general election.
   Saturday’s Telegraph also carried the first interview with John Wick, a former special forces officer who acted as middleman between the anonymous source of the story and the newspaper.
   ‘I have played my part in history. It is now for others to decide on the best way to move forward and punish those who have been exposed,’ Wick, a Conservative supporter, told the paper.
   ‘I feel proud to have played my part in what The Telegraph rightly describes as ‘a very British revolution.’’
   He also criticised ‘lax and unprofessional’ security among House of Commons administrators which had allowed the information to emerge.
   ‘The protective classification given to this project was described to me by one of those involved as offering the same protection as a wet paper bag,’ Wick said.
   Many lawmakers returning to their constituencies late Friday for a 10 day recess faced an angry reaction over the expenses scandal, highlighting the furious mood of voters.
   One Conservative backbencher, Nadine Dorries, has said there are fears of a suicide in the House of Commons and described The Telegraph’s campaign as ‘almost a McCarthy-style witch-hunt’.
   ‘The atmosphere in Westminster is unbearable. People are constantly checking to see if others are OK. Everyone fears a suicide,’ she wrote on her blog this week. Her party has distanced itself from the comments.
   Two-thirds of voters want the prime minister, Gordon Brown, to call a general election before the end of the year, according to Saturday’s Guardian/ICM phone poll of 1,010 people conducted on May 20
   and 21.

India’s new government said Saturday it was ready extend ‘the hand of friendship’ to arch-rival Pakistan as long as Islamabad moves to dismantle Islamic militant groups based on its soil.
   SM Krishna, who was named foreign affairs minister earlier in the day, said the government’s policy was to boost ties with neighbours, including Pakistan, blamed for involvement in a militant attack that killed 172 people in Mumbai last year.
   ‘We would like to live in peace with our neighbour... that has been our desire and we are pursuing that,’ Krishna, 77, told his first news conference in the job.
   ‘We stand ready to extend our hand of friendship and partnership to Pakistan if they take determined and credible action to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism operating from their territory,’ he said.
   ‘We cannot change our neighbours,’ the politician added, announcing the policies of the Congress-led government, which scored a resounding victory in month-long general elections.
   Pakistan and India began a peace process in 2004 but it came to a halt after New Delhi blamed last November’s attacks in Mumbai on the Pakistan-based militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba.
   New Delhi also said it had ‘overwhelming evidence’ that ‘official agencies’ in Pakistan were involved in plotting and carrying out the attacks, an apparent reference to Pakistan’s spy agency and army.
   Indian prosecutors also claim they have evidence that ‘undoubtedly and conclusively’ links the attacks to Pakistan, including mobile and satellite phone communications between the gunmen and their LeT ‘handlers.’

Australia Saturday defended its escalation of swine flu protection measures as global health chiefs said a vaccine could be ready as early as June and worldwide cases continued to rise.
   The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said it was inconvenient but necessary to ramp up Australia’s pandemic threat response as the country reported its 14th confirmed infection.
   Japan, which has 321 confirmed cases — most of them domestic infections — meanwhile relaxed measures imposed to limit the spread of the disease. The world remains at flu alert level five, signalling an ‘imminent pandemic,’ as China, South Korea and Hong Kong also reported new cases on Saturday, a day after Moscow recorded its first infection.
   Although it continues to spread around the world, the new swine virus has a far lower fatality rate than the H5N1 avian flu that has sparked fears of a pandemic in recent years. Canberra raised its alert level to a containment phase on Friday, after recording the country’s first case of human-to-human transmission of the A(H1N1) virus.
   The victim is a 10-year-old girl who contracted the disease from a classmate who was taken ill on her return from the United States. The new phase allows for the closure of schools and other public places and the cancellation of major events, with three schools already shut following the confirmation of cases among students and further closures likely.

The bodies of two Palestinians were recovered on Saturday from a collapsed smuggling tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, medics said.
   The two dead men were aged 20 and 22, they said. Egyptian emergency services managed to release three men who had been trapped in another tunnel that had collapsed overnight on the border between Egypt and Gaza, an Egyptian security official said.
   The tunnel, one of many linking Egypt’s border town of Rafah with the blockaded Palestinian enclave, caved in at the Egyptian end, the official said. The tunnel had been used to smuggle food and fuel, he added.
   The official said the three men have been detained, as has another Palestinian who was captured as he emerged from a different, uncollapsed, tunnel.

The president, Barack Obama, has named Charles Bolden as NASA administrator, the White House announced Saturday, making him the first African American and only the second ex-astronaut to lead the agency.
   Obama also announced his plan to nominate his campaign space advisor, Lori Garver, as deputy administrator of NASA.
   ‘These talented individuals will help put NASA on course to boldly push the boundaries of science, aeronautics and exploration in the 21st century and ensure the long-term vibrancy of America’s space programme,’ Obama said in a statement.
   The announcement comes at a time of rising costs and flagging public enthusiasm for the space mission.
   And Bolden, a retired Marine Corps general, could encounter questions about his past connections to corporations involved in major NASA rocket contracts, media reports have said.
   If confirmed by the Senate, as seems likely, his appointment would be the culmination of a career that has taken him to the heights of the US space and military establishments from a childhood in the segregated US south. He was born in Columbus, South Carolina August 19, 1946.
   He won admission to the US Naval Academy where he was voted president of his graduating class of 1968.

Gunmen kidnapped a French tourist in Pakistan on Saturday, snatching him from a group of compatriots, who included women and children, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, the police said.
   The kidnapping took place in an area where ethnic Baluch separatist groups and Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban are known to operate around 80 kilometres from the Afghan border.
   A group of six kidnappers armed with Kalashnikovs stopped the French party, travelling by car, at Landi, a small town around 200 kilometres east of the Iranian border, said police officer Merrullah.

Eleven people, including reportedly a US businessman, were killed in Brazil when a small executive jet they were travelling in crashed in the northeast of the country, the police said late Friday.
   The accident occurred at the airport of the seaside resort town of Trancoso, in the state of Bahia, police officials said.
   The King Air 350 jet that had arrived in Trancoso from Sao Paulo crashed near the runway as it was attempting to land in the middle of a heavy storm.
   ‘Those on board included eight passengers and three crew members,’ a police official said. ‘There were no survivors.’
   Authorities are trying to establish the exact cause of the crash.