washingtonpost.com - World

JERUSALEM, Jan. 6 -- Israeli soldiers battling Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday fired mortar shells at a U.N.-run school where Palestinians had sought refuge from the fighting, killing at least 40 people, many of them civilians, Palestinian medical officials said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 5 -- From the school balcony, Marcos Cunha had an unobstructed view of Santa Marta, the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood that had been giving his fellow police officers so much trouble.

KABUL, Jan. 6 -- Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government has been accused by India of supporting a major terrorist attack there, vowed Tuesday to work closely with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to combat terrorism, saying it had become a menace to all countries in the region.

JERUSALEM, Jan. 6 -- It was shortly after noon Tuesday when Intisar Sultan walked through the clusters of dirty children and fatigued adults, leaving behind a U.N. school that had been turned into a refuge for families hoping to escape the fighting around them.

Five former Blackwater Worldwide security guards pleaded not guilty yesterday to federal charges that they unleashed an unprovoked salvo of bullets and grenades in a busy Baghdad square in 2007, killing at least 14 Iraqi civilians and injuring 20 others.