Lebanon accused Israel today of launching “a widespread barbaric aggression” aimed at bringing the small nation to its knees and urged the international community to end the military offensive.

ISRAEL'S leaders held the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority responsible for the deadliest suicide bombing in 20 months but stopped short of branding it an "enemy entity" or ordering a large-scale military operation.

Israel warned today that a new “axis of terror” – Iran, Syria and the Hamas-run Palestinian government – was sowing the seeds of the first world war of the 21st century.

The German government “emphatically” welcomed today’s unanimous decision of the UN General Assembly to establish an annual day to commemorate the six million predominantly Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust, the foreign minister said.

The UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel comply with a world court decision and tear down the barrier it is building to seal off the West Bank.

THE United Nations General Assembly demanded yesterday that Israel halt building work on a barrier jutting deep into the West Bank and pull down the section already built.

Syria demanded that the UN Security Council condemn Israel’s airstrike against an alleged terrorist training camp near Damascus, but the United States said it would not support any resolution that does not also criticise attacks against Israel.

ISRAEL has not adopted a formal decision to kill Yasser Arafat, Israel's foreign minister said yesterday in an apparent attempt to soften remarks by the vice premier who said that assassination was an option.

Israel’s ambassador has used a UN Security Council meeting on terrorism to attack Syria as “one of the world’s foremost sponsors of terrorism”.