Genocide aim of Europe, says Iran's president

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's hard-line president who has said the Holocaust was a myth, now has charged that European countries sought to complete the genocide by establishing a Jewish state in the midst of Muslim countries.

"Don't you think that continuation of genocide by expelling Jews from Europe was one of their aims in creating a regime of occupiers of Al-Quds [Jerusalem]?" the official Islamic Republic News agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Sunday. "Isn't that an important question?"

Ahmadinejad said Europeans had decided to create a "Jewish camp" as the best means for ridding the continent of Jews. He said the camp, Israel, now enjoyed support from the United States and Europe in the slaughter of Muslims.

He said anti-Semitism had a long history in Europe, while Jews had lived peacefully among Muslims for centuries.

2 Palestinians killed as Israeli truce ends

Two Palestinians were killed in Israel's first deadly airstrike in a Gaza border area it recently put off limits, just as a truce that has drastically reduced violence between the two sides formally ended.

Israel said its air force attacked insurgents about to fire a rocket at Israel late Saturday. The Palestinian Interior Ministry condemned the Israeli strike, saying a shell hit a Palestinian post, hindering police efforts to stop fighters from firing a rocket.

Also Sunday, Palestinian security officers stormed a building where an Italian hostage was being held, freeing the man after a shootout with his kidnappers, Palestinian officials said. Alessandro Bernardini, an Italian peace activist, had been kidnapped while traveling on a minibus carrying 10 foreigners, including European lawmakers, in Khan Younis early Sunday.

Italian tourists seized by tribesmen

Tribesmen seized five Italian tourists Sunday, but released three female hostages after a government negotiator convinced the kidnappers that abducting women violated tribal values, Yemeni officials said.

Sheik Darham al-Damaa, secretary-general of a government council in Marib Province, said negotiations were continuing for the release of the two Italian men, according to the Web site of Yemen's ruling party.

The kidnapping came a day after the government negotiated the release of a family of five Germans who also were taken hostage while on vacation. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh pledged Sunday to hunt down "outlaws" who kidnap foreigners.

Wildlife officials kill 41 beached whales

Wildlife officers shot 41 pilot whales that beached on New Zealand's South Island, the Department of Conservation said.

A total of 49 whales came ashore Saturday near Farewell Spit in the second major stranding in the area within two weeks. Eight died on the beaches, and the remaining animals were shot when heavy seas prevented any attempt to refloat them.

Officials said the latest stranding was likely unconnected to another last month when 129 pilot whales came ashore close by. Conservation officers and volunteers managed to refloat more than 100 in that stranding, but 21 whales died.

"There have always been strandings at Golden Bay," said Mike Rogers, a Department of Conservation worker, noting that the tide goes out as much as four miles and the animals "get trapped on this gentle sloping beach."

Compiled from The Associated Press