Israel has said it is calling up another 16,000 reservists, giving the military the ability to substantially widen its bloody Gaza offensive.

In the Big Fella’s home county of Cork, thousands flocked from as far away as France to celebrate his birthday and view the proud tradition of the army stationed at the barracks named after him.

Thousands flocked to an open day in Cork, some from as far away as France, as they celebrated the birthday of Michael Collins and came to view the proud tradition of the army stationed at the barracks named after him.

An Post has taken a trip down memory lane and issued two stamps to mark the 50th anniversary of US president John F Kennedy’s visit to Ireland.

The death toll from a garment factory building that collapsed more than two weeks ago near the Bangladeshi capital has soared past 1,000, with no end in sight to the stream of bodies being pulled from the wreckage.

A senior Israeli military intelligence official has claimed Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons last month in his battle against insurgent groups.

Irish troops could be training Somalian armed forces in Mogadishu within months, it emerged today.

Israeli strikes hit two media centres in the Gaza Strip today as Israel warned it was widening its range of targets to go after military commanders of the territory’s Hamas rulers.

Palestinian militants fired nearly 150 rockets into Israel today, killing three people and striking the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Syria’s most prominent defector has put himself forward as someone to unite the fractured opposition as the disparate factions were set to gather in Qatar today to try to agree on a transitional leadership if Bashar Assad’s regime is toppled.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pleaded once more for global sanctions against the Syrian regime as president Bashar Assad was rocked by the defection of a top aide.

Attacks across Iraq including a car bombing in a northern city have left five people dead, officials said.

A senior army officer who coordinated security for UN agencies in war-torn Syria has assumed command of the Defence Force’s 1st Southern Brigade.

The Irish soldier responsible for transferring African dictator Charles Taylor to the International Court in Hague to answer charges of war crimes was last night honoured with a civic reception to mark his retirement.

Pakistan’s army has rejected a US investigation into the Nato air strikes that killed 24 of its soldiers.

Pakistan blocked vital supply routes for US-led troops in Afghanistan and demanded Washington leave a base used by American drones after coalition aircraft allegedly killed 24 troops at two posts along a mountainous frontier that serves as a safe haven for militants.

An estimated 200 insurgents were killed or captured in two Nato military operations that have just ended in eastern Afghanistan.

IT was a day when the world turned a little differently.

Renegade warlord Ibrahim “IB” Coulibaly, a two-time coup plotter who began the pro-democracy battle for Abidjan, was killed fighting his one-time allies, Ivory Coast state television said.

South Korea mobilised troops, tanks, helicopters and fighter jets today for its largest winter military drills in a show of force a month after North Korea’s deadly shelling of a front-line island.

Afghan and international forces have killed about 40 Taliban fighters east of the Afghan capital Kabul as part of operations to provide security ahead of parliamentary elections next month, Nato said today.

The wreckage of an Israeli military helicopter that crashed into a mountain in central Romania has been found, and none of the seven soldiers aboard – one Romanian and six Israeli – appear to have survived the crash.

Thousands of Iraqis marched through the city of Najaf today for an annual march to mark the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

Elite US Marine reconnaissance teams were dropped behind Taliban lines by helicopter today as coalition forces stepped up operations in Afghanistan to break resistance in the besieged insurgent stronghold of Marjah.

Sniper teams attacked US Marines and Afghan troops across the Taliban haven of Marjah in Afghanistan as several gun battles erupted on the third day of a major offensive to seize the extremists’ southern heartland.

THE Israeli military said yesterday it has reprimanded two high-ranking officers for approving the firing of artillery shells toward a UN compound during the Gaza Strip war last year – the first admission of any high-level wrongdoing during the offensive.

THE fire at a wedding tent in Kuwait that killed 41 women and children consumed the structure in a blazing inferno lasting just three minutes, the fire department chief said yesterday.

A new Taliban code of military conduct that tells fighters to limit suicide attacks and avoid killing civilians is a sham that doesn’t reflect the true nature of the insurgents, Nato and Afghan officials said.

Iraqi forces today arrested an al Qaida-linked member of a Sunni paramilitary group who was believed to be a mastermind of the assassination of a prominent Sunni politician in Baghdad, officials said.

A police chief said today that Burma had been considering releasing pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest this week, but cancelled the decision after an American swam to her house.

Thousands of Iraqis held without charge by the US on suspicion of links to insurgents or militants will be freed by the summer because there is little or no evidence against them.

THE new deputy force commander for the UN peace enforcement mission in Chad is a well-known Corkman who captained his county minor football team to All-Ireland glory in 1972.

Israel ignored mounting international calls for a ceasefire, vowing not to stop its crippling 10-day assault until “peace and tranquillity” was achieved in towns in the line of Palestinian rocket fire.

A SUICIDE bomber struck a crowded restaurant in northern Iraq yesterday where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders to discuss long-standing ethnic tensions, killing at least 55 people, police said.

ISRAEL should remove 10 major West Bank checkpoints to give a badly needed boost to the Palestinian economy, a group of Israeli ex-generals and Palestinian officials said in a joint report yesterday.

In a stunning turnaround, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay says he will be a defence witness for the driver of terror chief Osama bin Laden.

THE Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the September 11 attacks.

Twenty members of the Polish military were killed on their way back from a flight-safety conference when their plane crashed in a wooded area.

US missile defence experts today visited a Russian-operated radar station in Azerbaijan that Moscow is offering to share to counter potential missile threats from nations including Iran, but a top US general suggested its technology was outdated.

Waves of Shiite pilgrims today descended on Karbala for a festival this week marking the birth of the 9th century Hidden Imam.

Rescuers dug through the muddy wreckage of collapsed clay houses in north-west Iraq today, uncovering at least 200 bodies from suicide truck bombings the US military blamed on al-Qaida.

A parked car bomb exploded near a market in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad today, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 60, police said.

Iraqi security forces seized 200 explosive belts today along the Syrian border, a police spokesman said, reinforcing Baghdad’s claims that its western neighbour isn’t doing enough to stop the flow of fighters and weapons to al Qaida in Iraq.

A handful of Sunni mosques were attacked or burned today, but curfews and increased troop levels kept Iraq in relative calm a day after suspected al Qaida bombers toppled the towering minarets of a revered Shiite shrine.