Colombo  - Two persons were killed and at least 53 wounded in an air attack by two Tamil rebel planes on Colombo late Friday, with the Sri Lankan air force later saying both planes had been shot down or crashed after the attack.

Military officials and hospital authorities said the planes dropped two bombs close to the Air Force headquarters in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital.

Beirut  - Israeli forces fired late Friday bomb flares over areas near the Lebanese-Israeli border, shortly after news reports said an Israeli soldier went missing near Lebanon, Lebanese police said.

The Dubai-based Al-Arabia television channel said that an Israeli soldier disappeared while doing physical exercise near the border with Lebanon.

Shortly after the news report, bomb flares lit the sky over the border area of Naqoura, where the United Nations Interim Forces in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) is located.

UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bou Zayan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa "we absolutely have no information about a missing person."

Colombo  - Tamil rebel airplanes dropped two bombs close to the air force headquarters in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo late Friday, injuring at least 38 persons, military officials and hospital authorities said.

The Sri Lankan air force said it shot down one of the rebel planes as it was trying to escape.

Air Force spokesman Janaka Nanayakkara said that the rebel plane was brought down in near Katunayaka, 30 kilometres north of the capital while returning towards the northern part of the country.

Al-Arish, Egypt  - One man was killed and another was injured on Friday when a fire broke out in a tunnel used to smuggle petrol from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, a security source told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

The tunnel, which was used to smuggle petrol into the Gaza Strip through plastic pipes, caught fire on Friday morning, the security source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

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Baghdad  - Mostafa Hussein, a young man from Baghdad, once dreamed of joining Iraq's security forces to help end the fighting that has torn his country apart in recent years.

And so Hussein joined the Sunni tribal police as a first step. He tried not to let the death threats he received as a result bother him. Undeterred, he applied for a job with the Iraqi police.

When the police turned him down, Hussein did not give up. He tried bribing his way into a job, also without success. All the government jobs, he said, are reserved for friends and relatives of government officials.