Nigerian Islamist raid in northeast town kills 55: military

By Ibrahim Mshelizza

BAMA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected members of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram armed with machineguns laid siege on the northeastern town of Bama on Tuesday, freeing over 100 prison inmates and leaving 55 people dead, the military said.

Around 200 heavily armed members of Boko Haram arrived in buses and pick-up trucks and carried out a coordinated strike, first hitting the army barracks and the police station before breaking into the town's prison, military spokesman Sagir Musa told Reuters.

Musa said 22 police officers, 14 prison officials, two soldiers and four civilians were killed, while 13 of the group's own members died, in what was one of the rebel's most deadly single strikes since a 2009 uprising.

Gunmen freed 105 prisoners during the raid which began at around 5 a.m. (0400 GMT) and lasted almost five hours, Musa said. He said some of the attackers were dressed in army uniforms.

Bama's police station, army barracks and government buildings were set ablaze, he said.

"They came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers but were able to detect them," Musa said.

Bama is a small, remote town in northeastern Borno state, Boko Haram's home state and the nucleus of its attacks.

"The call to prayer was just being said at about 5 a.m. when the Boko Haram started shooting from all directions and we ran for our lives," eyewitness Amina Usman told Reuters.

"One woman who could not run burned to death," Usman added.

The Boko Haram sect and offshoots such as the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru, as well as associated criminal networks, pose the main threat to stability in Africa's top energy producer.

Western governments are increasingly concerned about Nigerian militants linking up with other jihadist groups in the West African region.

Boko Haram wants to carve out an Islamic state in a country split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims. One of its chief demands is that its imprisoned members and family members are released and it has carried out several prison breaks.

Attacks by Boko Haram have killed more than 3,000 people since 2009, based on figures from Human Rights Watch.

Violence in Nigeria's northeast has shown no signs of abating. Clashes between Islamists and a multinational force from Nigeria, Niger and Chad killed dozens of people last month.

A senator who visited the site said 228 people were killed, but the military puts the figure at 37.

President Goodluck Jonathan has set up a committee to work out the terms of an amnesty for the rebels but their leader, Abubakar Shekau, has shown no interest in it so far.

(Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Maiduguri; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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U.S., Russia push for rapid talks to end Syria carnage

By Thomas Grove and Erika Solomon

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia and the United States agreed to bury their differences over Syria and to try to convene international talks with both sides in the civil war to end the carnage that is inflaming the Middle East.

Visiting Moscow after Israel bombed targets near Damascus and as President Barack Obama faces new calls to arm the rebels, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia had agreed to try to arrange a conference as early as this month involving both President Bashar al-Assad's government and his opponents.

An East-West disagreement that has seen some of the frostiest exchanges between Washington and Moscow since the Cold War has deadlocked U.N. efforts to settle the Syrian conflict for two years, so any rapprochement could bring an international common front closer than it has been for many months.

But with Syria's factional and sectarian hatreds more entrenched than ever after 70,000 deaths, it is far from clear the warring parties are ready to negotiate. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government, which has offered reforms but dismisses those fighting it as "terrorists".

The late hour of the announcement in Moscow - Kerry was kept waiting for three hours by President Vladimir Putin - also meant leaders of the Western-backed opposition umbrella group the Syrian National Coalition were not available for comment. Many on the body have insisted Assad's exit is a condition for talks.

Inside the country, where rebel groups are numerous and have disparate views, a military commander in the north, Abdeljabbar al-Oqaidi, told Reuters he would want to know details of the U.S.-Russian plan before taking a view. "But," he added, "if the regime were present, I do not believe we would want to attend."

Alarmed at the prospect of the conflict spilling across an already volatile and economically important region, however, the major powers have, as Kerry told Putin on Tuesday, "very significant common interests" in pushing for a settlement.

"The alternative," Kerry later told a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, "is that Syria heads closer to an abyss, if not over the abyss and into chaos.

"The alternative is that the humanitarian crisis will grow. The alternative is that there may be even a break-up of Syria."

GENEVA AGREEMENT

Last year at a conference in Geneva in June, Washington and Moscow agreed on the need for a transitional government in Syria but left open the question of what would happen to Assad, whose departure Obama has called for but which Russia, accusing the West of meddling, says should be a matter for Syrians only.

Rejecting a characterization of Moscow as the protector of Assad, to whose army it has been a major arms suppliers since the days of his father's rule, Lavrov said Russia was not concerned by the fate of "certain" individuals.

"The task now is to convince the government and all the opposition groups ... to sit at the negotiating table," he said.

Kerry said the conference should be held "as soon as is practical - possibly and hopefully by the end of the month". Neither he nor Lavrov said where it might take place.

Kerry said there would be "a growing crescendo of nations who will want to push for a peaceful resolution, rather than the chaos that comes with the break-up of a country".

Kerry said the decision on who takes part in any transitional government should be left to the Syrians.

Lavrov said the aim would be "to persuade the government and the opposition together ... to fully implement the Geneva communique" on creating a transitional government.

Russia, backed by China which shares its mistrust of Western enthusiasm for toppling some autocrats, has refused appeals to consider sanctions on Assad, vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning his crackdown on opposition groups.

ASSAD DEFIANT

Recent developments have helped focus minds on the risks of wider war in the Middle East: intelligence reports that Assad's troops may have used chemical weapons had renewed calls for Obama to arm the rebels or even offer U.S. forces; Islamist fighters pledging allegiance to al Qaeda has highlighted how some of the rebels are also hostile to the West; and Israeli air strikes said to target Iranian arms headed for Lebanon's Hezbollah have underlined the risk of escalation.

In what appeared to be another sign of the country's travails, Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.

Google's Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from Syria suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). Most websites within Syria were rendered unreachable as well, other experts said, as the county appeared to shut itself off.

REBELS TAKE U.N. PEACEKEEPERS HOSTAGE

Speaking before the announcement in Moscow, Assad was quoted by a sympathetic Lebanese television channel as saying he would defy Israel, the United States and Arab powers who oppose him.

"The recent Israeli aggressions expose the extent of the complicity between the Israeli occupier, regional countries and the West in promoting the current events in Syria," he said.

"The Syrian people and their heroic army ... are capable of confronting this Israeli adventure, which represents one of the faces of terrorism that is targeting Syria every day."

While showing little desire to embroil U.S. forces in Syria after winding down engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has rejected criticism that he might back out of a commitment to act if Assad crossed a "red line" of using chemical weapons.

On Tuesday, he pointed to the killing of Osama bin Laden and the toppling of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, brought down by a U.S.-backed rebellion, as evidence that "we typically follow through on our commitments". It is still unclear if chemical weapons were used.

The chaos in Syria, where a fifth of the 25 million population has been driven from their homes, was underlined by the latest incident of rebels taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage on the ceasefire line with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the incident and called for the four Filipinos' immediate release. They were detained as they patrolled close to an area where 21 Filipino observers were held for three days in March.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade said the peacekeepers were seized for their own safety during clashes in the area.

More widely, the violence in a religiously and ethnically diverse country at the heart of the Arab and Muslim world has inflamed a confrontation between Iran and its fellow Shi'ite allies like Hezbollah on the one hand and the Sunni Arab powers, including U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, who back the Sunni rebels against Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Iran, at daggers drawn with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, warned of unforeseeable consequences if Assad were toppled and said only a political settlement to Syria's civil war would avoid a regional conflagration.

"God forbid, if there is any vacuum in Syria, these negative consequences will affect all countries," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Jordan. "No one knows what will happen."

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Arshad Mohammed, Timothy Heritage, Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Alison Williams and Mohammad Zargham)

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China calls U.S. the "real hacking empire" after Pentagon report

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Wednesday accused the United States of sowing discord between China and its neighbors after the Pentagon said Beijing is using espionage to fuel its military modernization, branding Washington the "real hacking empire".

The latest salvo came a day after China's foreign ministry dismissed as groundless a Pentagon report which accused China for the first time of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks.

The Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The People's Liberation Army Daily called the report a "gross interference in China's internal affairs".

"Promoting the 'China military threat theory' can sow discord between China and other countries, especially its relationship with its neighboring countries, to contain China and profit from it," the newspaper said in a commentary that was carried on China's Defense Ministry's website.

The United States is "trumpeting China's military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers", the newspaper said, adding that it expects "U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money".

The remarks in the newspaper underscore the escalating mistrust between China and the United States over hacking, now a top point of contention between Washington and Beijing.

A U.S. computer security company, Mandiant, said in February a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks that targeted the United States and stole data from more than 100 companies.

That set off a war of words between Washington and Beijing.

China has said repeatedly that it does not condone hacking and is the victim of hacking attacks -- most of which it claims come from the United States.

"As we all know, the United States is the real 'hacking empire' and has an extensive espionage network," the People's Daily, a newspaper regarded as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, said in a commentary.

The article -- which was published under the pen name "Zhong Sheng", meaning "Voice of China" -- said "in recent years, the United States has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries".

"Cyber weapons are more frightening than nuclear weapons," the People's Daily said. "To establish military hegemony on the Internet by repeatedly smearing other countries is a dangerous and wrong path to take and will ultimately end up in shooting themselves in the foot."

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Sea cucumbers, abalone off the menu in China frugality drive

By Kevin Yao and Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) - President Xi Jinping's crackdown on Chinese government extravagance has emptied top-end restaurants and dented the sale of expensive food and drink, putting downward pressure on the world's second largest economy.

High-end caterers in Beijing and other big cities have borne the brunt of Xi's austerity drive, which he launched in November in an attempt to tackle pervasive corruption and allay criticism of the lifestyles led by some officials.

As the number of lavish official banquets has dwindled, the sale of pricey delicacies such as sea cucumbers and abalone has plunged, suppliers said.

Late last month, unlisted restaurant chain Merrylin closed its flagship outlet in western Beijing - the location of central government ministries and offices.

"We had to shut down due to heavy losses. The business was difficult to maintain as the restaurant had been relying on government spending," said Zhou Guihong, a manager at Merrylin.

Some 130 workers, including Zhou, have lost their jobs. The 4,000-square-metre restaurant had 38 banquet rooms.

Xiangeqing, China's first privately owned restaurant group to go public, posted a net loss of 68.4 million yuan ($11 million) in the first quarter, in contrast to a 46.2 million yuan profit in the same period last year.

Annual sales growth of the catering sector slowed sharply to 8.5 percent in the first quarter from 13.6 percent in the whole of 2012. Sales for large caterers dipped 2.6 percent in the first quarter, compared to a 12.9 percent rise last year, official data showed.

That put a drag on China's consumption, with annual retail sales growth slowing to 12.4 percent in the first quarter from 14.3 percent over all of 2012.

A raft of data this week is also likely to show subdued factory and investment growth in April, following surveys that showed the weakness in China's manufacturing sector is spreading to the services sector, which makes up almost half of gross domestic product.

SILVER LINING?

At the same time, the frugality campaign has raised optimism of increased private consumption over the longer term, which could put China on a more sustainable economic footing.

The anti-corruption drive could cut bloated government consumption, which accounts for an estimated 15 percent of GDP, and increase state spending on underfunded social welfare systems.

This would give ordinary Chinese more confidence to spend money instead of saving large chunks of their income for medical bills and other emergencies, analysts say.

Household consumption in China is about 35 percent of GDP - the lowest among major economies and less than half of that in the United States.

"It's negative for the economy in the near term, particularly in terms of government consumption. But it could be positive in the long term," said Haibin Zhu, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong.

FEELING THE PINCH

Many high-end restaurants are now offering cheaper dishes.

Meng Kai, Xiangeqing's founder and chairman, said in February his company would shift from high-end catering to the mass market. Xiangeqing's shares have fallen by around a third since mid-January.

The catering slowdown is spilling over to gourmet food and expensive liquor and cigarettes - all mainstays at alcohol-fuelled official banquets.

Seafood wholesalers in the Fengtai district of Beijing said the price of sea cucumbers, once a ubiquitous and notoriously expensive banquet staple, had dived.

"It's because our country's leader has issued rules saying government officials cannot eat this kind of thing anymore, or give them as presents," said a wholesaler surnamed Zhu, gesturing to rows of dried sea cucumber gift boxes, which once sold for thousands of yuan each, now gathering dust on his shelves.

Eating and drinking together is an indispensable part of Chinese elite culture as business deals are usually discussed and sealed at the dining table.

Xi has made battling corruption a top task of his administration, warning the problem is so severe it could threaten the ruling Communist Party's survival.

"This is a campaign against conspicuous consumption. It will go on for the foreseeable future," said Willy Lam, a China politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

But Xi may have to take bolder steps to reduce the government's role in the economy - the root cause of widespread official rent-seeking and corruption, analysts say.

"This (austerity) is a good start but reforms are needed. We don't need to worry about the downward pressure on the economy," said Xu Hongcai, senior economist at the China Center for International Exchange, a government think tank. ($1 = 6.1667 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Dean Yates)

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Assad's forces capture strategic town in southern Syria

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army captured a strategic southern town from rebel fighters on Wednesday after a ferocious two-month bombardment, in an advance likely to result in President Bashar al-Assad's forces regaining control of an international transit route, opposition sources said.

The fall of Khirbet Ghazaleh, situated in the Hauran Plain on the highway to Jordan, came after a Jordanian-backed Syrian opposition military council failed to supply weapons to the town's defenders.

This raised resentment among opposition fighters over what they saw as a lack of Jordanian support for their efforts to defeat Assad's forces in the region, according to rebel commanders and activists in the area.

The Hauran Plain, which extends to the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, is the birthplace of the revolt against four decades of family rule by Assad and his late father, which erupted in the city of Deraa in March 2011.

Rebel fighters, operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, cut off the highway to Jordan two months ago. But keeping the road off-limits to Assad's forces depended on retaining Khirbet Ghazaleh, which is at a crossroads leading west to the contested city of Deraa, the sources said.

Before the uprising in Syria, billions of dollars in goods traded between Gulf countries, Turkey and Europe were transported along the highway, which passes Khirbet Ghazaleh before ending at the Nassib border crossing to Jordan.

About 1,000 rebel fighters withdrew from Khirbet Ghazaleh on Wednesday after losing hope that reinforcements would come from Jordan, which has been cautious about provoking a military response from Assad, activists and opposition fighters said.

"Assad's forces started advancing from the north and west and I can still go back to Khirbet Ghazaleh but I cannot do anything," Abu Yacoub, commander of the Martyrs of Khirbet Ghazaleh brigade, told Reuters by telephone from Hauran.

"I can get a thousand fighters back but it is useless because I don't have ammunition in my hands."

Abu Yacoub said he had contacted Ahmad Nemaah, head of the Jordanian backed military council, before ordering the rebel fighters to withdraw, but Nemaah told him he could not do anything.

"If we lost a battle it does not mean we lost for good. But everyone has turned against Nemaah," Abu Yacoub said.

Nemaah could not be reached for comment.

'BIG TRAGEDY'

"Tomorrow, the big tragedy will happen, the regime's supply route to Deraa will reopen and the officers will go back and ammunition will be resupplied and the bombardment will resume," said Abu Yacoub. "For 61 days we had choked them by controlling Khirbet Ghazaleh."

Abu Yacoub said he had lost 35 fighters in two months.

Al Mutasem Billah, an activist with the Sham News Network opposition monitoring group, said most of the rebel brigades in the south blame Jordan and the military council for the defeat.

"The council follows Jordanian Intelligence, which is more concerned about setting up a proxy unit than an effective force on the ground to take on Assad," he said.

Abu Bakr an activist in the nearby Ghweireh village said most civilians had fled Khirbet Ghazaleh but fear was growing that the remaining residents would face summary executions, similar to massacres in other towns overrun by Assad's forces.

"The people of the area are now fleeing because they fear the army will sweep across the region," he said. "The Free Syrian Army will continue to withdraw and won't face the army along the highway because they no longer have ammunition."

Hauran, which borders Jordan and the Golan Heights, has become a significant battleground as the capital of Damascus comes under pressure, with Assad's forces and loyalist militias hitting back.

The intensified fighting has also led to an influx this year of hundreds of thousands of refugees through Jordan's 370 km (230 mile) border with Syria.

The rebels say they have captured large quantities of weapons, ammunition and vehicles, which has helped them to maintain an offensive after a long period in which the southern border area was relatively quiet compared to the northern and eastern parts of Syria.

Jordan has stepped up security and deployed more troops to the border.

Diplomatic and regional intelligence sources also said Amman was allowing limited supplies of light arms to the military council, which is opposed to the Nusra front, an Islamist militant group suspected of links to al Qaeda and blacklisted by the United States as a "terrorist group."

Al-Nusra members, however, have been largely uninvolved in the Khirbet Ghazaleh fighting, activists and opposition military sources said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Khaled Yacoub Oweis. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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North Korea missiles moved away from launch site: U.S. officials

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has taken two Musudan missiles off launch-ready status and moved them from their position on the country's east coast, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, after weeks of concern that Pyongyang had been poised for a test-launch.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea last month that it would be a "huge mistake" to launch the medium-range missiles, but the prospects of a test had put Seoul, Washington and Toyko on edge.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the missiles were still mobile and the fact that they had been moved was no guarantee they would not be set up elsewhere and fired at some point.

"It is premature to celebrate it as good news," said another U.S. official, Daniel Russel, the senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

However, a third U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States did not believe the missiles had gone to an alternate launch site and that they were now believed to be in a non-operational location.

The Musudan missiles have a range of roughly 3,000 to 3,500 kilometers (1,900 to 2,200 miles). A possible test launch, depending its trajectory, could have dramatically escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea's move coincided with preparations by President Barack Obama to meet South Korean President Park Guen-hye at the White House on Tuesday, where they will hold talks and have a working lunch followed by a joint news conference.

Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the status of the North Korean missiles.

"I wouldn't again comment on intelligence. But what we have seen recently is a 'provocation pause.' And we think that's obviously beneficial to efforts to ensure we have peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," Little told reporters.

The heightened tensions, including North Korean threats to attack U.S. bases in the Pacific, coincided with U.S.-South Korean military drills that Pyongyang had branded "a rehearsal for invasion." Those drills ended on April 30.

In a rare show of force during the drills, two nuclear-capable, bat-winged B-2 stealth bombers flew 37 1/2 hours from their U.S. base to drop dummy munitions on a South Korean range, and then returned home.

Asked what may have contributed to Pyonyang's latest move, Little noted various possibilities, including the fact that, North Korea's previous cycles of provocation had ended after a while.

He also noted that the Chinese government had made some helpful statements.

"We do think they (China) probably - again I can't speak for them - they probably heard very loudly from us and from others the need to ratchet it back and lower the temperature," Little said.

The White House's Russel told reporters it was too early to determine whether North Korea's apparent move away from a launch was an encouraging development.

"It's premature to make a judgment about whether the North Koreans' provocation cycle is going up, down or zigzagging," he said. "The decision to launch or not launch missiles, to conduct a provocation or to stand down or defer it, is a decision that rests with the North Koreans."

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Israel says 'no winds of war' despite Syria air strikes

By Dan Williams and Khaled Yacoub Oweis

JERUSALEM/AMMAN (Reuters) - Israel played down weekend air strikes close to Damascus reported to have killed dozens of Syrian soldiers, saying they were not aimed at influencing its neighbor's civil war but only at stopping Iranian missiles reaching Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

Oil prices spiked above $105 a barrel, their highest in nearly a month, on Monday as the air strikes on Friday and Sunday prompted fears of a wider spillover of the two-year-old conflict in Syria that could affect Middle East oil exports.

"There are no winds of war," Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, told reporters while out jogging with troops.

"Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?" he said, according to the Maariv NRG news website.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under veiled criticism in Beijing, where he began a scheduled visit in an apparent sign of confidence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not retaliate. China urged restraint without mentioning Israel by name.

Russia, Assad's other protector on the U.N. Security Council, said the strikes by Israel "caused particular alarm". President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Tuesday to try to tackle differences over the Syrian crisis.

Israeli officials said the raids were not connected with Syria's civil war but aimed at stopping Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, acquiring weapons to strike Israeli territory.

Israel aimed to avoid "an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime," veteran lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.

MOST CASUALTIES FROM ELITE UNIT

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group based in Britain, said at least 42 Syrian soldiers were killed in the strikes and 100 were missing.

Other opposition sources put the death toll at 300 soldiers, mostly belonging to the elite Republican Guards, a praetorian unit that forms the last line of defense of Damascus and includes mainly members of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s.

As well as the heavily fortified Hamah compound, linked to Syria's chemical and biological weapons program, the warplanes hit military facilities manned by Republican Guards on Qasioun Mountain overlooking Damascus and the nearby Barada River basin.

Residents, activists and rebel sources said the area is a supply route to the Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah, but missiles for Hezbollah did not appear to be the only target.

Air defenses comprising Russian-made surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns on Qasioun and overlooking the rebellious Damascus district of Barzeh were also hit, they said. Their statements could not be verified due to restrictions on media.

"The destruction appeared to be massive," said one activist in Damascus, who did not want to be identified.

Russia said it was concerned the chances of foreign military intervention in Syria were growing, suggesting its worry stemmed in part from reports about the alleged use of chemical weapons in the conflict that has killed 70,000 people.

"The further escalation of armed confrontation sharply increases the risk of creating new areas of tension, in addition to Syria, in Lebanon, and the destabilization of the so-far relatively calm atmosphere on the Lebanese-Israeli border," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

Assad's government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist "terrorists" and said the strikes "open the door to all possibilities". It said many civilians had died but there was no official casualty toll.

CALCULATING

Israeli officials said that, as after a similar attack in the same area in January, they were calculating Assad would not fight a well-armed neighbor while preoccupied with survival against a revolt that grew from pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Israel has not confirmed the latest attacks officially, but has reinforced anti-missile batteries in the north. It said two rockets landed, by mistake, on Monday, in the Golan Heights, the Israeli-occupied area near Syria's border with Israel.

"They were fired erroneously as a byproduct of internal conflict in Syria," an Israeli military spokesman said.

Syria would be no match for Israel in any direct military showdown. But Damascus, with its leverage over Lebanon's Hezbollah, could consider proxy attacks through Lebanon.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Iran's Shi'ite Islam, denied Israel's attack was on arms for Hezbollah. Hezbollah did not comment.

Moscow and Beijing have blocked Western-backed measures against Assad at the United Nations Security Council, opposing any proposal that has his exit from power as a starting point.

Allegations of the use of chemical weapons - long described by Western leaders as a "red line" that would have serious consequences - have added to regional and international tension.

After months of increasingly bitter fighting, Assad's government and the rebels have each accused the other of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks.

In Washington, an influential U.S. senator introduced a bill on Monday that would provide weapons to some Syrian rebels.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that Assad had crossed a red line and "the U.S. must play a role in tipping the scales toward opposition groups".

President Barack Obama has taken a cautious approach to the reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, saying he would not allow himself to be pressured prematurely into deeper intervention in the conflict.

The White House has said the Syrian government has probably used chemical weapons. A U.S. official said on Monday Washington had no information to suggest that rebels had used them.

Syria is not part of the international treaty that bans poison gas but has said it would never use it in an internal conflict. Rebels say they have no access to chemical arms.

A U.N. inquiry commission said on Monday war crimes investigators had reached no conclusions on whether any side in the Syrian war has used chemical weapons, after a suggestion from one of the team that rebel forces had done so.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk in Moscow, Michael Martina in Beijing, Marwan Makdesi in Damascus, Jonathon Burch in Ankara and Patricia Zengerle in Washington Writing by Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Peter Graff and Mohammad Zargham)

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At least 20 dead in Islamist protests in Bangladesh

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) - At least 20 Bangladeshis were killed on Monday in clashes between police and hardline Islamists demanding religious reforms, as violence spread beyond the capital Dhaka to other parts of the country.

The clashes began on Sunday after 200,000 Islamist supporters marched in Dhaka to press demands critics said would amount to the "Talibanisation" of a country that maintains secularism as state policy, but they were met by lines of police firing teargas and rubber bullets.

On Monday, hundreds of protesters, many wearing white Muslim skull caps and throwing stones, re-grouped and police fired teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse them.

Protesters set fire to vehicles, including two police cars, and stormed a police post on the outskirts of the capital, police said.

Two policemen and a member of a paramilitary force were among the 13 people killed in the capital, said police official Shah Mohammad Manzur Kader.

Five more died in the southeastern city of Chittagong after police opened fire on protesters attacking their station and two were killed in Bagerhat in the south.

On Sunday, four people were killed and hundreds injured in the clashes, according to hospital officials.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all sides to end the violence and express their views peacefully.

"The Secretary-General urges political and religious leaders to engage in constructive dialogue and help defuse the tensions," he said in a statement.

The protests are led by a group called Hefajat-e-Islam, which set the government a May 5 deadline to introduce a new blasphemy law, reinstate pledges to Allah in the constitution, ban women from mixing freely with men and make Islamic education mandatory.

The government of the overwhelming Muslim country has rejected the demands.

The clash of ideologies could plunge Bangladesh into a cycle of violence as the two main political parties, locked in decades of mutual distrust, exploit the tension between secularists and Islamists ahead of elections that are due by next January.

Bangladesh has been rocked by protests and counter-protests since January, when a tribunal set up by the government to investigate abuses during a 1971 war of independence from Pakistan sentenced to death in absentia a leader of the main Muslim party, the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Jamaat opposed Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan in the war but denies accusations that some of its leaders committed murder, rape and torture during the conflict.

The Hefajat-e-Islam emerged from the protests over the tribunal.

More than 100 people have been killed in the clashes this year, most of them Islamist party activists and members of the security forces.

The troubles have cast a shadow over economic prospects at a time when industrial accidents, such as the April 24 collapse of a garment factory complex where more than 600 people died , are raising questions about investing and buying cheap products from the country.

(Editing by Robert Birsel and Mike Collett-White)

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Bombs, mosque attack kill 17 in Iraqi capital: police

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 17 people were killed by three bombs and a grenade attack on a mosque in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Monday, medics and police said.

Unidentified assailants threw hand grenades at Sunni Muslim worshippers as they left a mosque on Monday evening, killing six people, police and medics said.

Earlier in the day, two car bombs exploded near police checkpoints at the entrance to the Shi'ite district of Hussainiya in the north of the city, killing one policeman and seven civilians.

A third bomb near a restaurant frequented by police killed three civilians in the southern district of Doura, medics and police said. At least 33 people were wounded in the three attacks.

Iraq has become increasingly volatile with fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims under strain from the largely sectarian civil war in neighboring Syria. Tensions are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Iraq is home to a number of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups including a local al Qaeda affiliate that has launched regular attacks to undermine the Shi'ite-led government and provoke wider confrontation.

Violence is still well below the height of the country's sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07. But April was the bloodiest month since 2008, with 712 people killed in bombings and other violence, the United Nations Iraq mission said last week. About 1,500 people have been killed this year.

(Reporting by Kareem Raheem, writing by Aseel Kami, editing by Andrew Heavens)

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China reports four more bird flu deaths, toll rises to 31

BEIJING (Reuters) - Four more people in China have died from a new strain of bird flu, bringing to 31 the number of deaths from the mysterious H7N9 virus, with the number of infections rising by two to 129, according to Chinese health authorities.

Among the deaths, two occurred in the eastern province of Jiangsu; one was from eastern Zhejiang; while another was from central Anhui, based on a Reuters analysis of the data provided by Chinese health authorities on Monday.

The government did not provide more details of the victims.

Chinese health authorities said two new infections were reported in the eastern coastal province of Fujian. The virus, which was mostly concentrated in the region around the commercial capital of Shanghai, spread to Fujian in late April.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) has said it has no evidence that the new strain of bird flu, which was first detected in patients in China in March, is easily transmissible between humans.

Chinese scientists have confirmed that the H7N9 strain has been transmitted to humans from chickens. But the WHO has said 40 percent of people infected with H7N9 appear to have had no contact with poultry.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the current strain of bird flu cannot spark a pandemic in its current form - but he added that there is no guarantee it will not mutate and cause a serious pandemic.

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Michael Perry)

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