JUBA, Sudan — Millions of jubilant south Sudanese started voting yesterday in a long-awaited independence referendum that is expected to see their war-ravaged region emerge as a new nation. Huge queues built up outside polling stations before dawn in the southern capital Juba where banners describe

TUNIS — Eight civilians were killed in clashes with police in two provincial towns in the past 24 hours, the Tunisian government said yesterday, the deadliest incidents yet in an unprecedented wave of unrest. Witnesses said another three people were killed in clashes yesterday in a third town, but t

ALGIERS — Three people have been killed and over 800 injured in riots in Algeria linked to rising food costs and unemployment, yesterday’s press quoted the interior minister as saying. Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia also said that around 1,000 protesters had been arrested, many of them minors,

ADEN — Motorcycle-borne assailants killed three people including a soldier in Yemen’s south yesterday when they strafed a car with bullets in a failed bid to steal money, a security official said. “Two gunmen on a motorbike stopped an electricity utility (company) car which was heading to Zinjibar

HEBRON, West Bank — Israeli troops killed a 65-year-old Palestinian in his bedroom yesterday during a pre-dawn raid to seize a Hamas suspect who lived in the same building, the dead man's wife and local residents said. The troops swooped on houses in the West Bank to re-arrest six members of the Ha

BAGHDAD — Gunmen shot dead five people, including the sister of an Iraqi policeman, in their beds in a house northeast of Baghdad early yesterday morning, a police official said. The gunmen killed the policeman's sister, her husband's mother and father, their daughter and a child in their home in Hu

TEHRAN — Iran yesterday hanged two convicted drug traffickers in a prison in the western city of Borujerd, the official Irna news agency reported. The report identified the pair as Abdollah Derafshi and Ardeshir Niazi, convicted of "carrying and keeping 4.99 kilos of crack (cocaine)." "Due to the am

TUNIS/PARIS — A wave of protests in Tunisia over unemployment and living costs gained momentum yesterday when teachers joined in a strike call. Earlier, lawyers in the North African country had called a strike, as meanwhile criticism of government censorship surfaced. The journalists rights group Re

RAFAH — Around 100 pro-Palestinian activists, part of an aid convoy from Asia, crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt early yesterday, an AFP photographer said. The convoy’s aid cargo is expected to arrive in Gaza later yesterday, after travelling separately from Syria to Egypt by boat, Indian organ

JUBA, Sudan — Almost four million people have signed up to vote in southern Sudan’s independence referendum due to begin on Sunday, with more than 95 per cent of them in the south, organisers announced yesterday. “The total number of people registered in the south Sudan, in the eight countries abro