African Union and Somali government troops battled Shebab rebels in the anarchic capital Mogadishu Thursday, as Kenyan troops in the south continued their assault on Islamist positions there.

Heavy fighting broke out before dawn in Mogadishu as AU-backed Somali forces advanced on holdout Islamist Shebab positions, officials and witnesses said.

Turkish air force jets bombed Kurdish rebels camps in northern Iraq overnight in response to the attacks which killed 24 soldiers in the southeast, local security sources said Thursday.

Military activity at the air base in mainly Kurdish Diyarbakir province was very intensive throughout the night with many F-16 jets taking off to bomb the hideouts of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), they said.

A major offensive is under way against Haqqani militants in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan must act to remove safe havens on its side of the border, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.

"We are taking action against the Haqqanis. There was a major military operation inside Afghanistan in recent days," she told a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The Palestinians are not ready to resume dialogue with Israel as sought by the Mideast diplomatic Quartet, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Wednesday.

"Our own assessment is that the conditions are not ripe at this juncture for a meaningful resumption of talks," he said at the annual gala for the American Task Force on Palestine, a pro-Palestinian lobby.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed delight Thursday at the birth of his new daughter, declaring it a "very profound joy, a joy all the deeper because it is private."

Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy had decided not to officially announce the birth, but Sarkozy reacted warmly when waste-processing plant workers gave him gifts during a visit to the western Mayenne region.

The United States said Wednesday it will hold rare direct talks with North Korea next week on ending the authoritarian state's nuclear program and announced it was replacing its chief envoy.

The State Department said that U.S. and North Korean officials will meet Monday and Tuesday in Geneva but insisted that the talks were "exploratory" and that Pyongyang needed to offer proof that it was serious about dialogue.

Syria's largest opposition group threatened on Wednesday to seek outside help to stop the regime's "irresponsible" deadly crackdown against pro-democracy protesters.

Speaking in the Libyan capital, Syrian National Council member Najib Ghadbian also told reporters that a peaceful revolution could bring down the regime of embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. Security Council could vote as early as November 11 on whether to grant the Palestinians full U.N. membership as a state, a top Western diplomat said Wednesday.

"There will be further discussions on 11 of November with possibly a vote (that would mark) the end of the consideration process," the diplomat said.

Gaza's ruling Hamas movement announced on Wednesday it would give $2,000 to each prisoner released by Israel to the coastal territory under a landmark prisoner exchange deal.

"It has been decided that to honor the freed prisoners each of them will be given 2,000 U.S. dollars," said a statement from the office of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas government in Gaza.

Algeria should cooperate with the new regime in Libya over members of the Gadhafi family who took refuge there, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told reporters Wednesday.

The fugitive leader's daughter Aisha fled to Algeria late in August with her brother Hannibal, their mother Safiya -- Gadhafi’s second wife -- and his eldest son Mohammed. Aisha has since given birth to a baby girl.