A senior civil servant at Syria’s electricity ministry was killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car today in central Damascus.

13 gunmen died carrying out revenge attacks on Army checkpoints in north Iraq on Tuesday after dawn clashes between protesters and security forces left 27 people dead, top Army officers said.

A car bomb hit the France embassy in Libya on Tuesday, wounding two French guards and causing extensive damage, in the first attack on a foreign mission since militants stormed the US consulate in Benghazi in September.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have broken up an al-Qaida cell comprising seven Arabs who were plotting attacks in the Gulf state, an official statement said on Thursday.

A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Iran near the border with Pakistan on Tuesday and tremors were felt in India and Gulf states.

Thailand and Cambodia took their dispute over land around a flashpoint temple to the UN’s highest court today, in a case Phnom Penh warned could end friendly relations between the countries.

A government official in Somalia says the death toll from al-Shabab’s attack on Mogadishu’s Supreme Court complex has risen to 35.

An international rights group says the Syrian regime has been carrying out indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians that have killed at least 4,300 people since last summer.

North Korea’s decision to pull its workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone and suspend all commercial operations at the complex “cannot be justified,” South Korea said Monday.

A Syrian government official says a car bombing in central Damascus has killed at least 10 people.