Donors and investors have pledged 3.55 billion dollars for the development of resource-rich but neglected east Sudan, officials said on Thursday at the end of a two-day conference in Kuwait City.

"Total pledges made by participants in the east Sudan donors and investors forum came at 3.55 billion dollars," said Mustafa Osman Ismail, an advisor to the Sudanese president and head of the organizing committee.

An oceanic white tip shark badly mauled four Russian tourists swimming close to their beach hotels in two separate attacks at an Egyptian Red Sea resort, a local conservation official said on Wednesday.

Director of Sinai Conservation Mohammed Salem said the shark attacked two Russians swimming in the Ras Nasrani area near the famed Sharm el-Sheikh resort in the Sinai Peninsula and bit their arms off.

Kuwait has donated 500 million dollars for the development of east Sudan, the Gulf state's foreign minister said Wednesday at the start of an international conference for donors and investors.

"I am pleased to announce the donation by the state of Kuwait of 500 million dollars for east Sudan development," Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed al-Sabah announced at the opening ceremony.

Egypt's spy master revealed his service recruited agents in Iraq and Syria to counter Iranian support for militants in his country, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.

Omar Suleiman told U.S. top military commander Admiral Michael Mullen in a 2009 meeting that Iran had tried to recruit Bedouins to smuggle weapons into Hamas-controlled Gaza and that Egyptian security had rounded up a cell of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hizbullah.

The Lebanese government is increasingly "subordinate" to Iran and Syria, who have been helping Hizbullah rearm, a top U.S. lawmaker told U.N. special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.

Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the diplomat on Tuesday that she was "concerned" U.S. and U.N. efforts in Lebanon were failing to counter Hizbullah's growing power.

Five Palestinians were injured Tuesday by Israeli gunfire while scrounging for construction material in the rubble near Gaza's northern border with Israel, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli military said it had opened fire on three Palestinians approaching the border fence after they failed to respond to warning shots.

Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a building near the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on Thursday, targeting suspected militants, the military said.

Witnesses said the strikes hit a multi-storey building and that tanks also opened fire shortly afterwards. Palestinian medical sources said there were no casualties and that a group of people inside the building were able to escape.

Jewish Israelis are divided on the question of removing some settlements as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians, with 50 percent in favor and 43 percent opposed, a poll said on Thursday.

The survey, which was conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute, found that just 28 percent of Jewish Israelis thought the government would need to remove all settlements, including major blocs.

A prominent Arab-Israeli human rights activist was convicted on Wednesday of spying for Lebanon's Hizbullah, a statement from the Israeli justice ministry said.

In a plea bargain submitted to the Haifa district court, Amir Makhoul "confessed to and was convicted of ... espionage and aggravated espionage," the statement said.

Israeli police and stone-throwing Arabs clashed in northern Israel on Wednesday as a group of extreme right-wing Israelis tried to march through the Arab Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm.

Hundreds of police clad in riot gear fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse angry Arab youths, many with scarves wrapped around their faces, who burned tires and hurled stones in protest ahead of an extremist rally in their town.