By Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two rockets hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of southern Beirut on Sunday and wounded several people, residents said, a day after the leader of Lebanese Shi'ite militant movement Hezbollah said his group would continue fighting in Syria until victory. It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions. ...
By Noah Browning and Ali Sawafta DURA, West Bank (Reuters) - In his sparse village home adorned only with framed verses from the Quran, Mohammed Ghannam opens his shirt, pointing silently to his bruised chest. Ghannam, 44, whose job was to deliver the call to prayer in Dura's local mosque, said plainclothes security forces from the Palestinian Authority (PA) detained him last month for belonging to the Islamist movement Hamas and beat him mute. "They didn't ask me any questions, just punched me hard in the face and the chest," he wrote limply on a notepad. ...
By Arshad Mohammed ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry urged Egypt to act swiftly on economic reforms to secure a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan, saying the measures were needed to get further aid from the U.S. Congress, an American official said. Kerry met Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi for about an hour on the sidelines of an African Union summit on Saturday, discussing Syria's civil war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, human rights in Egypt and the country's faltering economy, the official said. ...
By Joe Brock MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nuradin Mohammed used to resent and fear the troops who swept past his fish stall in this northeast Nigerian city on the trail of Islamist insurgents Boko Haram. Now, for the first time, he thinks they may be on his side. "We are pleased the president has finally recognized our peril and we pray his plan works," Mohammed said, frying fish by the roadside as a crowd of young children looked on hungrily and trucks packed with troops rumbled past. ...