Issue: 27 June-1 July 2011

An overnight assault by Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers on a major hotel in Kabul has ended with the killing of the attackers by security forces and the deaths of at least 10 civilians.

"The operation is over now," Sediq Sediqqi, an Afghan interior ministry spokesman, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

"All eight suicide bombers and the terrorists were killed. The operation has ended now and the area is being cleared."

"We have unfortunately 10 victims of the incident, eight of them civilians and two of them police officers," Sediqqi added.

A manager on duty at the Inter-Continental Hotel spoke to Al Jazeera about Tuesday's attack on the building.

Yusuf Hakimi said that the hotel camera's showed that nine attackers entered the hotel and made their way to the fifth floor of the hotel.

A United Nations-backed court has handed down indictments requesting the arrest of four members of the Shia movement Hezbollah in connection with the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, according to media reports.

Lebanon state prosecutor Saeed Mirza has received the indictments, which are meant to remain sealed for 30 days to allow him to examine them. But local and international media, some citing judicial sources, immediately reported that the arrest warrants named four men: Mustafa Badreddine, Salim al-Ayyash, Hassan Issa and Asad Sabra.

Badreddine is Hezbollah's chief operations officer, according to the Daily Star, an English-language newspaper based in Beirut. He replaced his former cousin and brother-in-law Imad Mugniyeh in that position after Mugniyeh was assassinated in Syria in 2008, the newspaper reported.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son and his spy chief, citing evidence of crimes against humanity committed against political opponents.

Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng announced the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel in The Hague Monday, saying the warrants were meant to force Gaddafi and his two confidantes to appear before the court and prevent the possibility of a cover-up.

It was the second time in the ICC's nine-year history that it issued an arrest warrant for a sitting head of state. The ICC indicted the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, in 2009, though he has yet to be arrested.

"State policy was designed at the highest level of the state machinery, and aimed at quelling by any means, including by the use of lethal force, demonstrations of civilians against the regime of Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi," Monageng said.

Risks are growing that incidents at sea involving China could lead to war in Asia, potentially drawing in the United States and other powers, an Australian think tank warned on Tuesday.

The Lowy Institute said in a report that the Chinese military's risk-taking behavior in the South and East China Seas, along with the country's resource needs and greater assertiveness, had raised the chances of an armed conflict.

"The sea lanes of Indo-Pacific Asia are becoming more crowded, contested and vulnerable to armed strife. Naval and air forces are being strengthened amid shifting balances of economic strategic weight," report authors Rory Medcalf and Raoul Heinrichs wrote.

"China's frictions with the United States, Japan and India are likely to persist and intensify. As the number and tempo of incidents increases, so does the likelihood that an episode will escalate to armed confrontation, diplomatic crisis or possibly even conflict," they said.

Security was tightened Monday in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri after suspected Islamists tossed bombs and fired on a crowded beer garden killing at least 25 people, security sources said.

Sunday's attack was one of the deadliest in the troubled northern city in recent months and coincided with the day a special task force of crack troops and other security personnel took control of security operations in the city.

"The JTF (joint task force) deployed to Maiduguri is an integrated force, a new approach to assist the existing security outfit in Borno State to fight serious crime," army spokesman General Ralph Isah told AFP.

The JTF, made up of soldiers, navy, air force, police, customs, immigration and secret police officers, will remain in the troubled city until law and order is restored, he said.

A report released by the US State Department suggests that militants in Pakistan use children to fight or carry out suicide attacks. In a statement delivered with the Trafficking in Persons report, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

“Every year, we come together to release this report, to take stock of our progress, to make suggestions, and to refine our methods. Today, we are releasing a new report that ranks 184 countries, including our own.”

The report stated that non-state militant groups were kidnapping children or forcing parents with false promises into giving children as young as 12 away.

The Pentagon is sending nearly $45 million in military equipment, including four small drones, to Uganda and Burundi to help battle the escalating terrorist threat in Somalia.

The latest aid, laid out in documents obtained by The Associated Press, comes as attacks intensify in Somalia against the al-Qaida-linked terror group al-Shabab, including an airstrike late Thursday that hit a militant convoy, killing a number of foreign fighters, according to officials there.

No nation immediately took responsibility for the latest airstrike, though U.S. aircraft have attacked militants in Somalia before.

The United Nations said Tuesday it was concerned about the fate of 7,000 Sudanese civilians last seen being forced by authorities to leave the protection of a U.N. compound in the tense border region between the North and South.

North Sudan authorities have denied requests by the global body to meet with the civilians, who are believed to have been taken to the nearby town of Kadugli in South Kordofan province last week, said U.N. spokeswoman Corinne Momal-Vanian.

"There is no certainty on anything for the moment and the mission is asking for access," she told reporters in Geneva. "Naturally the mission is concerned."

Syrian tanks shelled a hill region in the northwestern province of Idlib, residents and activists said, in a military assault to suppress protests in rural areas that have already driven thousands of refugees to Turkey.

The overnight assault was launched a day after the authorities announced they would invite opponents to talks on July 10 to set a framework for a dialogue promised by President Bashar al-Assad, who has faced criticism from Western governments over the military campaign to crush a three-month uprising against his rule.

Opposition leaders have dismissed the offer, saying it is not credible while mass killings and arrests continue.

At least 26 Yemen government soldiers and 17 Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda were killed on Wednesday in heavy fighting for control of a stadium near the southern city of Zinjibar, officials said.

The military setback, following reports that 300 of his soldiers had defected to the opposition, was another blow to President Ali Abdullah Saleh as recovers in Saudi Arabia from injuries sustained in an attack on his palace in early June

. Yemen, the poorest Arab state and a neighbor of the world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, has been shaken by months of protests against Saleh's three-decade rule, a resurgent wing of al Qaeda and a separatist rebellion in the south.