Bomb injures children in school yard

HEBRON, West Bank

Israeli police and Palestinian officials in the West Bank said they believe extremist Jewish settlers planted two bombs in a Palestinian school yard yesterday. One device exploded, injuring five children.

Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, spokesman for the Jewish Settlers' Council, said the bombing was an "immoral and illegal act."

Israeli military officials said the explosion occurred near a water cooler in the courtyard of the Ziff junction secondary school south of Hebron. The second bomb was found and safely detonated. The Israeli military controls the junction, a remote region populated mainly by Bedouins.

In other developments, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition by the families of two Palestinian suicide bombers to prevent the destruction of their homes by Israeli forces, Army Radio reported. The two bombers carried out a Dec. 1 attack in which 11 Israelis were killed. Relatives denied they knew of the suicide attackers' plans.

Israeli troops entered the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza earlier yesterday and blew up metal workshops where the Israelis say Palestinians were making weapons, the latest in a series of almost nightly raids by Israeli forces in Gaza.

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Musharraf vows to hunt down terrorists

KARACHI, Pakistan

One day after turning over key Sept. 11 suspect Ramzi Binalshibh to American authorities, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday vowed to root out any al-Qaida operatives remaining in his nation and promised that foreigners among them would be handed to the United States or other countries to face justice.

Al-Qaida fighters who fled Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime last year will be hunted down and will not be allowed to make themselves comfortable in Pakistan, Musharraf said in two appearances in this southern port city where security forces last week killed two al-Qaida suspects and captured 10 others.

Musharraf revealed that the captives included a Saudi, an Egyptian and eight Yemenis. Binalshibh and four others were turned over to U.S. custody Monday; the other five remain in Pakistan undergoing interrogation by the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's security agency.

Musharraf used his two-day visit here to underline his determination to rid Pakistan of the Islamic extremists who have also targeted him and his military government.

Police halt protests against president

KIEV, Ukraine

Several thousand riot police armed with shields and rubber truncheons broke up a tent camp and evicted protesters in front of the Ukrainian president's office before dawn yesterday, after tens of thousands of people marched to demand he resign or call early elections.

Following the country's biggest demonstrations since Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union 11 years ago, protesters representing an array of opposition groups from Communists to pro-western reformers set up 167 tents under a heavy downpour Monday evening.

They vowed to occupy the area until President Leonid Kuchma steps down from his current position.

"If we don't dismantle the system, there will be no way out of the political crisis," former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, a key opposition leader, told The Associated Press.

Al-Qaida claims it planned assassination

JAKARTA, Indonesia

Al-Qaida is responsible for a series of deadly church bombings in Indonesia and plotted the assassination of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, according to the confession of a top agent from the terrorist network caught here.

Omar Faruq, a Kuwaiti who described himself as al-Qaida's senior representative in Southeast Asia, said the group hoped to trigger a religious civil war in Indonesia that would lead to the formation of a "pure Islamic state," according to a confidential U.S. document obtained yesterday by the Los Angeles Times.

Faruq's statements indicate that al-Qaida has been much more active in Indonesia than the government has been willing to acknowledge. Top officials have repeatedly denied that terrorists have been operating in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country.