World

The year's 43rd Palestinian terrorist bombing attack killed six people and injured more than 40 others aboard a bus in Tel Aviv, Israel. The blast, for which Hamas claimed responsibility, was the second inside Israel in less than 24 hours. The Palestinian Authority issued a statement of condemnation but did not call for an end to such attacks. Senior Israeli security officials were meeting as the Monitor went to press to decide on a response.

No draft of a new UN resolution on Iraq is expected until next week, senior diplomats said, as the US and Britain lobbied other permanent Security Council members for support. China, which has been expected to abstain rather than cast a veto, was not tipping its hand. Its ambassador said he hoped for "consensus and unity."

An unspecified US warship, a bar favored by American military personnel, and such critical installations as water-supply pipelines and chemical plants were to be the targets of 21 suspected terrorists arrested in Singapore, authorities said. The men, who were captured last month, allegedly took orders from an Indonesian Muslim cleric believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. Meanwhile, the government of Yemen said it needed no "intervention" from the US to "try" to hunt down Al Qaeda suspects on its soil.

With the president away on a state visit to Italy, an insurrection involving dissident Army troops erupted on several fronts across Ivory Coast. State-controlled television reports called it an attempted coup, and President Laurent Gbagbo was said to be preparing to return home. The reports said calm had been restored in Abidjan, the capital, but that the nation's second-largest city, Bouake, had fallen to the mutineers. Casualties, among them the government's interior minister and its former military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, were heavy.

All signs pointed to an outcome too close to call as campaigning wound down for Germany's crucial election Sunday. Two respected opinion polls indicated Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his conservative rival, Edmund Stoiber, were headed for a photo finish. One poll put Schröder's Social Democrats two percentage points ahead but had a 2.5 percent margin of error. In the other, Stoiber's Christian Democrats led by just 0.3 percent.