Militants in two vehicles fired a rocket and guns at people in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, leaving five dead and 10 injured, a senior police official said.

Information taken from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan indicates that al Qaeda was mulling attacks on a handful of US cities, timed to significant dates, a US official said.

Libyan rebels won a financial lifeline potentially worth billions of dollars from a group of Western and Arab countries on Thursday, as NATO planes struck forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in the west.

Three people have been arrested in Morocco in connection with an explosion at a cafe in Marrakesh last month in which 16 people died, officials say.

Workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have entered one of its reactor buildings for the first time since it was hit by a powerful earthquake on 11 March.

A suicide attack on a police headquarters in central Iraq killed at least 21 officers and wounded 60 other people on May 5, health officials said.

The Secretary General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Surin Pitsuwan on May 4 called for coordinated efforts to prevent conflicts spreading far and wide.

President Barack Obama decided on Wednesday not to release photographs of slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's body, saying they could incite violence and be used by militants as a propaganda tool.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on Wednesday strongly voiced his concerns in a telephone call to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he called for an "immediate end" to violence against peaceful demonstrators in the Middle Eastern country.

Palestinian leaders formally ended a four-year rift between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas groups at a ceremony in Egypt on Wednesday, a reconciliation they see as crucial to their drive for an independent state.