Pakistan has summoned India’s top diplomat in the country to protest a pair of clashes along the disputed Kashmir border in the past week that killed two Pakistani soldiers.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says the Indian high commissioner was told Friday that the attacks were “unacceptable.”

The protest came a day after Pakistan said Indian troops fired on an army post in Kashmir, killing one soldier. Pakistan said the attack was unprovoked, but India said Pakistani troops fired first.

India staged a similar diplomatic protest earlier in the week after it said Pakistani soldiers crossed the border and attacked an army patrol Tuesday, killing two Indian soldiers. Pakistan denied the allegations.

Pakistan accused India of raiding one of its posts Sunday and killing one soldier. India denied the allegations.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian near the West Bank separation barrier on Tuesday, Palestinians said. The Israeli military said he had breached the barrier, which separated soldiers from protesters.

A classmate said a group of students threw rocks at soldiers near the barrier, a line of walls, trenches and fences Israel has built along and inside the West Bank. Muataz Awad said soldiers opened fire, killing Samir Awad from the village of Boudrous.

The military confirmed opening fire at protesters, saying some had cut through a section of the barrier fence. Military spokesman Capt. Eytan Buchman said troops “initiated standard rules of engagement, which included live fire.” An investigation into the shooting has been ordered, and Buchman said he could not comment further on the open-fire order.

Also Tuesday, about 50 armed Palestinians shut the main road leading into the Balata refugee camp with burning tires to protest repeated attempts by Palestinian security forces to disarm them.

The gunmen have links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, and their recent protests have drawn attention to growing discontent with Abbas’ rule. Abbas governs the West Bank, while Hamas militants have a rival government in the Gaza Strip.

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — France is tripling the number of troops deployed to Mali to 2,500, part of the massive preparation for a land assault to dislodge the Islamist extremists occupying the West African country’s north.

The increased total of French troops was confirmed in Paris Tuesday by a French Ministry of Defense official, who refused to give his name because he was not authorized to speak.

Despite a punishing, five-day campaign of aerial bombardments, the al-Qaida-linked rebels have continued to advance south, seizing a strategic military camp in central Mali, and embedding themselves in villages of thatched roofs, making it impossible to bomb without killing civilians.

The number of French soldiers in Mali is rapidly increasing from the Tuesday morning count of 800, including elite special forces. Every few hours, enormous transport planes are landing at Bamako’s airport, loaded with supplies and more soldiers.

Overnight, a regiment of 150 French soldiers drove overland from neighboring Ivory Coast, bringing in a convoy of 40 armored vehicles, including the ERC-90, a tank-like car, mounted with a 90 mm cannon.

Several thousand soldiers from the nations neighboring Mali are also expected to begin arriving soon, and Nigeria said nearly 200 would be coming in the next 24 hours.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — When do you not listen to the African wildlife expert? When he tells you to stand closer to the rhino.

That suggestion by a South African game park owner resulted in serious injuries to a 24-year-old woman from Johannesburg.

The Beeld newspaper reported Tuesday that Chantal Beyer said the game park owner snapped pictures and suggested that she “stand just a little bit closer” seconds before the attack. Photos show Beyer and her husband only feet away from two rhinos.

The paper said that just after the photo was snapped, the rhino attacked, and its horn penetrated Beyers’ chest from behind, resulting in a collapsed lung and broken ribs, the paper said. The Aloe Ridge Hotel and Nature Reserve, where the incident took place, declined to comment Tuesday.

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Islamist militants attacked and occupied on Wednesday a natural gas field partly operated by BP in southern Algeria early Wednesday, killing two people and holding foreigners hostage while surrounded by Algerian forces.

A militant group claimed responsibility for the attack saying it was in revenge for Algeria’s support of France’s operation against al-Qaida-linked Malian rebels groups far to the southeast. It said it was holding dozens of foreigners hostage.

In a statement BP said the site was “attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people,” and some of its personnel are believed to be “held by the occupiers.”

The number and identities of the hostages was still unclear, but Ireland announced that a 36-year-old married Irish man was among them, while Japan and Britain said their citizens were involved as well. A Norwegian woman said her husband called her saying he had been taken hostage.

In addition to the two foreigners killed — one of them a Briton — six others were wounded in the attack, including two foreigners, two police officers and two security agents, Algeria’s state news agency reported.

Algerian forces have surrounded the kidnappers and negotiations for the release of the hostages are ongoing, an Algerian security official based in the region said, adding that the militants had come from Mali. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

A group called the Katibat Moulathamine, or the Masked Brigade, called a Mauritanian news outlet to say one of its subsidiaries had carried out the operation on the Ain Amenas gas field, taking 41 hostages from nine or 10 different nationalities.

The group’s claim could not be independently substantiated and typically there would be fewer than 20 foreign staff members on site on a typical day, along with hundreds of Algerian employees.

The caller to the Nouakchott Information Agency, which often carries announcements from extremist groups, did not give any further details, except to say that the kidnapping was carried out by “Those Who Signed in Blood,” a group created to attack the countries participating in the ongoing offensive against Islamist groups in Mali.

He said the operation was to punish Algeria for allowing French jets attacking rebel groups in Mali to use its airspace.

French President Francois Hollande launched the surprise operation in its former West African colony on Friday, with hopes of stopping al-Qaida-linked and other Islamist extremists he believes pose a danger to the world.

Wednesday’s attack began with the ambush of a bus carrying employees from the gas plant to the nearby airport but the attackers were driven off, according to the Algerian government, which said three vehicles of heavily armed men were involved.

“After their failed attempt, the terrorist group headed to the complex’s living quarters and took a number of workers with foreign nationalities hostage,” said the statement, adding that authorities were following the situation very closely.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s two biggest airlines grounded all their Boeing 787 aircraft for safety checks Wednesday after one was forced to make an emergency landing in the latest blow for the new jet.

All Nippon Airways said a cockpit message showed battery problems and a burning smell was detected in the cockpit and the cabin, forcing the 787 on a domestic flight to land at Takamatsu airport in western Japan.

It said a later inspection of the plane found leaking electrolyte and burn marks around the main battery, located in an area below the cockpit.

The 787, known as the Dreamliner, is Boeing’s newest and most technologically advanced jet, and the company is counting heavily on its success. Since its launch, which came after delays of more than three years, the plane has been plagued by a series of problems including a battery fire and fuel leaks. Japan’s ANA and Japan Airlines are major customers for the jet and among the first to fly it.

Japan’s transport ministry said it received notices from ANA, which operates 17 of the jets, and Japan Airlines, which has seven, that all their 787s would not be flying. The grounding was done voluntarily by the airlines.

ANA executives apologized, bowing deeply at a hastily called news conference in Tokyo.

“We are very sorry to have caused passengers and their family members so much concern,” said ANA Senior Executive Vice President Osamu Shinobe.

The earliest manufactured jets of any new aircraft usually have problems and airlines run higher risks in flying them first, said Brendan Sobie, Singapore-based chief analyst at CAPA-Center for Aviation. Since about half the 787 fleet is in Japan, more problems are cropping up there.

“There are always teething problems with new aircraft and airlines often are reluctant to be the launch customer of any new airplanes,” Sobie said. “We saw it with other airplane types, like the A380 but the issues with the A380 were different,” he said.

Japan’s transport ministry categorized Wednesday’s problem as a “serious incident” that could have led to an accident, and sent officials for further checks to Takamatsu airport. The airport was closed.

It was unclear how long the Dreamliners would remain grounded. ANA said 14 flights were changed to other aircraft, while 31 domestic and seven international were canceled. JAL said eight were canceled, while two were changed to a Boeing 777.

One male in his 60s was taken to the hospital for minor hip injuries after going down an emergency slide from the aircraft, the fire department said. The other 128 passengers and eight crew members were uninjured, according to ANA.

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Fighting raged in one Mali town, airstrikes hit another and army troops raced to protect a third, on the seventh day of the French-led military intervention to wrest back Mali’s north from al Qaida-linked groups.

Banamba, a town located only 90 miles (144 kilometers) from Mali’s capital was put on alert overnight, and a contingent of roughly 100 Malian soldiers sped there on Thursday after a reported sighting of jihadists in the vicinity, marking the closest that the extremists have come to Mali’s largest city and seat of government.

France has encountered fierce resistance from the Islamist extremist groups, whose reach extends not only over a territory the size of Afghanistan in Mali, but also as much as 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) east in Algeria, where fighters belonging to the cells in Mali kidnapped as many as 41 foreigners at a BP-operated plant, including Americans. They demanded the immediate end of the hostilities in Mali, with a spokesman in Mali, saying that “no foreigner is safe … our movement is now global,” according to Oumar Ould Hamaha who spoke by telephone to The Associated Press.

The first Malian troops arrived in Banamba late Wednesday, with a second group coming on Thursday. The small town northeast of Bamako is connected by a secondary road to the garrison town of Diabaly, which was taken by Islamic extremists earlier this week, and has been the scene of intense fighting with French special forces, who continued bombardments and a land assault there on Thursday.

A city official in Banamba who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly, and who has been involved in getting the Malian troops to defend the town, said they received reports that a rebel convoy had left Diabaly on the road connecting it to Banamba.

“We don’t have a (military) base here, we have no defenses. So the military has come to secure the town,” he said. “From Monday to today, no jihadists have entered our town. But there are reports that a column (of rebel vehicles) was seen heading toward us from Diabaly.”

Civil servant Moussa Kone, the head of the government’s planning, statistics, and territorial management office, said he had seen the soldiers arriving both Wednesday night and Thursday. “They have taken positions in the town, and they are out on patrol.”

France has stepped up its involvement every day, after launching the first air raids last Friday in an effort to stop the rebels’ advance, then only as far as the town of Konna, located 430 miles (690 kilometers) from the capital.

Fighting erupted anew Thursday in Konna between Islamists and Malian soldiers in the city whose capture by the militants first prompted French military intervention, while French forces kept up their bombardments of Diabaly, fleeing residents and officials said.

Meanwhile, France has increased its troops’ strength in Mali to 1,400, said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

“The actions of French forces, be it air forces or ground forces, are ongoing,” said Le Drian in Paris. “They took place yesterday, they took place last night, they took place today, they will take place tomorrow.”

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s ombudsman for children’s rights sought on Thursday to reassure American would-be adoptive parents that they will be allowed to take their children back to the United States. But some Americans with court rulings in their favor say they’re still in legal limbo.

A Russian law banning adoptions by U.S. citizens was rushed through parliament in December, and sped to President Vladimir Putin’s desk in less than 10 days in retaliation over a U.S. law calling for sanctions on Russians identified as human-rights violators.

Tens of thousands of people rallied in central Moscow on Sunday to protest the law, which the demonstrators say victimizes children to make a political point.

All such adoptions must be approved by a Russian court, and 52 U.S. families had won such rulings before the ban was enacted. But many of these families have told The Associated Press that authorities in Russia are still refusing to turn over these children.

Children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said Thursday that Russia would honor the court decisions but did not elaborate on the timeline or say what the families should do now. “All the children who have been approved to be adopted will be able to leave for the U.S.,” he said.

Astakhov vehemently defended the new law, saying that it would not be revoked “however big the protests are.”

Dozens of American families are in legal limbo because of the ban.

Brian and Rebecca Preece and Jeana Bonner, whose adoption of children with Down’s syndrome had received court approvals, have been in Moscow for days but officials this week refused to turn over children to them, quoting the new law.

Astakhov on Thursday blamed local officials for the bureaucratic cul-de-sac that’s been created and quoted his conversation with them. “What are you doing?” he said. “You’re making a scandal. There are court decisions in place — go and enforce them.”

But Brian Preece, who is waiting to adopt a 4-year-old boy, told the AP on Thursday that they have still not received any news from Russian authorities. “They’ve been quiet to us,” he said.

The Russian government says there are 654,000 children without parental custody in Russia and 105,000 of them live in orphanages.

LONDON (AP) — Thirteen years after he stood on the podium in Sydney, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his bronze medal from the 2000 Olympics because of doping.

The International Olympic Committee sent a letter to Armstrong on Wednesday night asking him to return the medal, just as it said it planned to do last month.

The decision was first reported Thursday by The Associated Press.

The IOC executive board discussed revoking the medal in December, but delayed a decision until cycling’s governing body notified Armstrong he had been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and all results since 1998. He then had 21 days to appeal.

Now that the deadline has expired, the IOC decided to take the medal away. The letter to Armstrong was also sent to the U.S. Olympic Committee, which would collect the medal.

“Having had confirmation from UCI that Armstrong has not appealed the decision to disqualify him from Sydney, we have written to him to ask for the return of the bronze medal,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told the AP. “We have also written to USOC to inform them of the decision.”

The move was confirmed on the same day that Armstrong’s admission of using performance-enhancing drugs — after years of denials — is to be broadcast in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. The timing of the IOC move, however, was not related to the TV interview.

Two months after winning his second Tour de France title in 2000, Armstrong took the bronze in Sydney in the road time trial behind winner and U.S. Postal Service teammate Vyacheslav Ekimov of Russia and Jan Ullrich of Germany.

The IOC opened a disciplinary case in November after a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report detailed widespread doping by Armstrong and his teammates. The report called it the most sophisticated doping program in sports.

The IOC will not reallocate Armstrong’s bronze medal, just as cycling’s ruling body decided not to declare any winners for the Tour titles once held by the American. Spanish rider Abraham Olano Manzano, who finished fourth in Sydney, will not be upgraded and the bronze medal will be left vacant in Olympic records.

In August, the IOC stripped Tyler Hamilton, a former Armstrong teammate, of his time-trial gold medal from the 2004 Athens Olympics after he acknowledged doping. In that case, Ekimov was upgraded to gold.

The IOC is also investigating Levi Leipheimer, a former Armstrong teammate who won the time-trial bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games. The American confessed to doping as part of his testimony against Armstrong in the USADA case.

The IOC is looking into the details of Leipheimer’s admitted doping, including when the cheating took place, before moving to strip his medal. Finishing fourth behind Leipheimer in 2008 was Alberto Contador, the Spaniard who was stripped of the 2010 Tour de France title after testing positive for clenbuterol.

LONDON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. is working with the British and Algerian governments to assess what is happening on the ground at a natural gas complex in the Sahara where Islamic militants are holding hostages from at least 10 countries.

The fate of many of the captives remained uncertain.

Speaking Friday at Kings College in London, Panetta said the U.S. is “working around the clock to ensure the safe return of our citizens.”

Panetta said the terrorists should be on notice they will find no sanctuary in Algeria or North Africa and said anyone who looks to attack the U.S. will have “no place to hide.”

Panetta met later Friday with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Discussion of Islamic militant operations in Mali and Algeria dominated the unscheduled meeting, senior U.S. defense officials said, though the two also discussed budget issues, Syria, Iran and how they can work with other countries to address counter-terrorism.

Senior U.S. defense officials said the two talked in-depth about Algeria, exchanging views and comparing notes about the situation unfolding there.

In Washington, the White House said President Barack Obama was being briefed Friday by his national security team. His top aides were in touch with Algerian officials as well as BP’s security office in London. BP jointly operates the natural gas plant.

Administration officials, seeking to explain the lack of information from the U.S., said the situation on the ground was fluid, and officials did not want to put the hostages at further risk by providing real-time updates.

BEIRUT (AP) — Two car bombs exploded in southern Syria and a rocket slammed into a building in the north, killing at least 12 people in a spike in civil war violence Friday that Syrian state media blamed on rebel fighters trying to topple President Bashar Assad.

The rocket attack in the northern city of Aleppo and the suicide car bombings in Daraa, south of Damascus, occurred during a particularly bloody week nearly two years after an uprising began against Assad’s regime. On Thursday, opposition activists said pro-government militia swept through a town in central Syria, torching houses and killing more than 100 people.

Both sides have been blaming each other for the recent attacks, and it was the second time in a week that the government accused rebels of firing rockets.

The state-run SANA news agency said the morning attack in Aleppo was carried out by terrorists, a term the regime uses for rebels. But the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an activist group, and the Aleppo Media Center, a network of anti-regime activists, accused the government of launching an airstrike.

On Tuesday, 87 people were killed in twin blasts at Aleppo University. The regime said rebels hit the university with rockets. Rebels said the deaths resulted from regime airstrikes.

Syria’s state-run TV claimed that shortly after the rocket hit the building in Aleppo, militants linked to an al-Qaida group detonated cars filled with explosives near a mosque in Daraa as worshippers were leaving following Friday prayers.

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali’s military claimed Friday that it has held control of a key town where Islamic extremists had battled forces for a week, though aid groups warned they were unable to reach the area to provide humanitarian assistance.

Meanwhile, the United Nations warned that some 700,000 civilians could be displaced by the fighting in Mali, where France launched a military intervention last week to oust the rebels from power in the north.

The French took action after the Islamist militants advanced from their stronghold in the vast, desert north toward the central Malian town of Konna.

A Malian military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, said Friday that they were holding the town and that the Islamists had been chased out.

Telephone lines were cut off in the town, making it difficult to independently verify the claim.

Doctors Without Borders has been trying to get to Konna since Monday but all roads leading to the community in central Mali have been closed by the Malian military, said Malik Allaouna, director of operations for the group known as MSF by its initials in French.

“Despite our repeated requests, we are still being refused access to the Konna region,” he said. “It is essential to allow the delivery of neutral and impartial medical and humanitarian aid in the areas affected by the conflict.”

In Geneva, U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said that the number of displaced Malians is expected to increase dramatically in the coming months.

AIN AMENAS, Algeria (AP) — In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 19 hostages and 29 militants dead. Dozens of foreign workers remain unaccounted for, leading to fears the death toll could rise.

With few details emerging from the remote site in eastern Algeria, it was unclear whether anyone was rescued in the final operation.

The siege at Ain Amenas transfixed the world after radical Islamists linked to al-Qaida stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world, and then held them hostage surrounded by the Algerian military and its attack helicopters for four tense days that were punctuated with gunbattles and dramatic tales of escape.

GENEVA (AP) — A new and legally binding international treaty to reduce harmful emissions of mercury was adopted Saturday by more than 140 nations, capping four years of difficult negotiations but stopping short of some of the tougher measures that proponents had envisioned.

The new accord aims to cut mercury pollution from mining, utility plants and a host of products and industrial processes, by setting enforceable limits and encouraging shifts to alternatives in which mercury is not used, released or emitted.

Mercury, known to be a poison for centuries, is natural element that cannot be created or destroyed. It is released into the air, water and land from small-scale artisanal gold mining, coal-powered plants, and from discarded electronic or consumer products such as electrical switches, thermostats and dental amalgam fillings. Mercury compound goes into batteries, paints and skin-lightening creams.

BEIJING (AP) — Xiao Ru spent her last year of high school studying from morning until late at night. That didn’t help her complete one particular assignment in her first year of college: a 1,500-meter run.

With two friends setting the pace beside her, she finished the university fitness requirement — barely. Moments later, she doubled over and vomited.

“The weather got cold, so I haven’t been training much,” she murmured. “Then suddenly today I had to do this run … and I just … couldn’t do it.”

Clad in a purple wool sweater to fend off the winter morning chill, the 18-year-old student collapsed in the arms of her friends after the run at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. They held up each of her elbows as they escorted her from the track.

Such dramas are increasingly common on the tracks and fields of China, which, despite its formidable performance in recent Olympic Games, has seen the fitness of its young people decline.

“Our economic power has grown while our people’s physiques have not only failed to improve, but have deteriorated. That’s unacceptable,” said Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of China Youth and Children Research Center in Beijing. “This is something that worries the nation.”

The government has urged schools, especially K-12, to beef up their physical education following an outcry touched off by a series of events late last year.

Two Chinese college students collapsed and died when they were testing for an annual, mandatory 1,000-meter run in late November. Another two runners in their early 20s died in 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races during a sporting event in the southern city of Guangzhou. The sudden deaths were considered accidental, but the spate of them was enough to draw attention to physical education in China.

And several Chinese universities canceled their men’s 5,000-meter and women’s 3,000-meter events from their fall sports meets, for reasons including fear of liability and lack of interest.

The dismal state of fitness in the younger generation prompted a well-known and hawkish military officer, Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, to bemoan the prospects for China’s future in a recent editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper.

“Femininity is on the rise, and masculinity is on the decline,” Yuan thundered. “With such a lack of character and determination and such physical weakness, how can they shoulder the heavy responsibility?”

Sun attributes the decline to an obsession with academic testing scores in China’s cruelly competitive environment for college admissions, as well as a proliferation of indoor entertainment options like video games and surfing the Internet. Though air quality in many Chinese cities has deteriorated in recent years, physical educators have discounted air pollution as a major deterrent for outdoor activities.

Sun said an overwhelming majority of Chinese young students cited their academic performance as their parents’ top priority, with a chunk of the population saying it was the only thing that mattered to parents.

Lou Linjun, a former physical education teacher in Hangzhou in eastern China, said the grueling schoolwork has driven students out of the exercise yards. “It’s become a norm that schoolyards are empty in the afternoon at many of the city’s key high schools,” said Lou, who is now an assistant principal.

“Students are less likely to be willing to endure hardship and do not like to run anymore.”

The results are clear from the annual fitness tests that Chinese university students are required to take. Education Ministry data show that in 2010, male college students ran 1,000 meters 14 to 15 seconds slower on average than male students who ran a decade earlier. Female students slowed by about 12 seconds in running 800 meters. Students also fared worse in other physical tests, jumping shorter distances and completing fewer sit-ups.

Meanwhile, obesity rates among Chinese college students have gone up. In 2010, 13.3 percent of urban male students were obese, compared to 8.7 percent a decade earlier. Still, that compares with rates in the United States of 19.6 percent for males aged 12-19, and 33.2 percent for males aged 20-39 for the same period.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — A Bulgarian who tried to shoot a gas pistol at the leader of his country’s ethnic Turkish political party testified Tuesday that his only regret is that his weapon didn’t work.

“I did not intend to kill Ahmed Dogan. I just intended to scare him,” Oktay Enimehmedov told a court hearing.

Enimehmedov, 25, has been charged with making a murder threat and hooliganism for aiming the gas pistol at Dogan’s head on Jan. 19 as the leader of Bulgaria’s Movement for Rights and Freedom was on a stage giving a speech at his party’s annual conference in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

The gun didn’t fire and Dogan, 58, was not harmed, but Dogan pushed the gunman’s hand, then dove to the floor as other people at the conference wrestled Enimehmedov to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked him.

“I regret only that my gun misfired,” Enimehmedov told the court hearing, which denied him bail for two reasons: he could flee and his own safety could be at risk.

Experts say a gas pistol is a nonlethal weapon used for self-defense, but that when fired from close range it can cause life-threatening injuries.

A TV video of the attack, which went viral on Internet, has prompted hundreds of Bulgarians to demand that delegates who beat Enimehmedov be brought to justice. On Tuesday, Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov told reporters an investigation of the beating of Enimehmedov is under way and that those responsible could face charges.

Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedom party mainly represents ethnic Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria, who make up 12 percent of the nation’s 7.3-million people. Dogan has been the party’s leader since he founded it in 1990, and the Jan. 19 conference chose Lyutvi Mestan, Dogan’s deputy, as his successor.

On Tuesday, an alliance of European political parties issued a statement asking the European Union to hold a plenary hearing about the rule of law and personal freedoms in Bulgaria in the wake of the assault on Dogan.

Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, said: “It was a miracle that the incident did not end up tragically and should not be dismissed lightly.” He said that such an attack on a party leader “raises broader questions on the state of democracy in Bulgaria.”

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry’s assertion that he has killed Taliban fighters while deployed as a helicopter gunner in Afghanistan drew intense media coverage in Britain on Tuesday and sparked concerns about possible reprisals.

He made the assertion in a pooled interview first published Monday night after he was safely out of Afghanistan following a 20-week deployment in which he served as a co-pilot and gunner in a heavily armed Apache attack helicopter.

Asked if he had killed from the cockpit, the third-in-line for the British throne said that he and a lot of other people had done so while in combat.

The response was immediate: The Daily Mirror ran a page-one headline “Royal Sensation Harry: I Killed Taliban” on Tuesday along with a photo of a macho-looking Harry in combat gear and designer shades.

Other newspapers ran similar gung-ho stories about the prince’s military exploits. “Harry: I Have Killed” was the story in the Daily Mail. Video shot during the prince’s deployment was shown dozens of times on Britain’s major news networks.

Not everyone was applauding the soldier-prince.

Lindsey German, leader of the Stop the War Coalition, called Harry’s comments “arrogant and insensitive” and raised the prospect that Harry might have targeted Afghan civilians.

Former officer Charles Heyman, who edits a yearbook on British forces, said the prince’s words may raise the already high threat level against Harry.

“The royal family are all targets, and he now probably becomes the prime target, royal family-wise,” Heyman said.

“But he can live with that. He’s a soldier, he knows what he’s doing. By and large the world’s elite make sure their sons and daughters go nowhere near the firing line. So it brings credit to the royal family, and it’s good for army morale, that Harry’s not sitting back in London saying, ‘Well done boys.’”

Heyman said that as an Apache gunner, Harry would have opened fire when directed to do so by a ground controller who would most likely have been under enemy fire. Harry typically would have been firing at Taliban forces in bunkers or protected in some way, not troops out in the open, said the former officer.

“They would have been opening fire to relieve pressure on the ground, maybe even to rescue people on the ground,” Heyman said. “If he was using machine guns, there is no way he could say categorically he destroyed the target, but if he was using the Hellfire missiles against a bunker, he would be able to say categorically that he destroyed the target.”

If you see a large explosion, and if there is no more enemy fire from the area, the gunner can be “pretty sure” the enemy has been eliminated, Heyman said.

Col. Richard Kemp, a former British commander in Afghanistan, said the fevered press response to Harry’s words reflects a certain naivety about the realities of war.

“He’s flying an attack helicopter armed with missiles and machine guns, and its purpose is predominantly to come in and provide fire support for troops fighting the Taliban, so it would be very, very surprising if he didn’t swoop in and kill,” Kemp said. “I know it’s a delicate subject, but I’m surprised by how much people have seized on what he said. If he’d been bragging about killing, that would have been wrong, but he didn’t brag about it.”

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged Wednesday to offer citizens a vote on whether to leave the European Union if his party wins the next election, prompting rebukes from European leaders accusing the premier of putting the bloc’s future at risk over domestic politics.

Claiming that public disillusionment with the 27-nation EU is “at an all-time high,” Cameron used a long-awaited speech in central London to say that the terms of Britain’s membership in the bloc should be revised and the country’s voters should have a say.

Cameron proposed that his Conservative Party renegotiate the U.K.’s relationship with the EU if it wins the next general election, expected in 2015.

“Once that new settlement has been negotiated, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in-or-out choice to stay in the EU on these new terms. Or come out altogether,” Cameron said.

The speech was seen by many as a gamble to shore up support from Cameron’s fractured, increasingly anti-EU party that risked antagonizing other countries focused on stemming the euro zone debt crisis.

The fiercely independent island nation has never been an enthusiastic member of the bloc, seeing itself as culturally different and balking at having policy dictated by Brussels. But the drumbeat has grown over fears that new EU regulations to address the debt crisis will further restrict the country’s control over its own economic policies.

Many EU member states, which had in the run-up to the speech stressed the importance of Britain’s presence in the bloc, took a sharper tone after Cameron spoke.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, said Cameron was playing “a dangerous game,” and accused him of playing domestic politics.

“This was an inward-looking speech that does not reflect European reality and will not impress many of the U.K.’s European partners,” Schulz said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius likened the EU to joining a soccer club — “you can’t say you want to play rugby,” he told France-Info radio.

Britain does not use the euro currency, but membership of the EU has given the U.K. access to the massive joint European market as well as a say in how the region should govern itself and run its financial markets. The country has also benefited from EU funds to build infrastructure such as broadband networks.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said his country wants Britain “to remain an active and constructive part” of the EU, but suggested that countries could not be allowed to write their own terms for EU membership, saying “a policy of cherry-picking won’t function.”

Cameron stressed that his first priority is renegotiating the EU treaty — not leaving the bloc.

“I say to our European partners, frustrated as some of them no doubt are by Britain’s attitude: work with us on this,” he said.

Cameron said a new EU treaty should reshape the bloc, protect and complete the single market, allow the transfer of powers on issues from crime to working hours back from Brussels to national governments, and make Europe’s economy more competitive and its institutions more flexible and democratically accountable.

Cameron insisted Wednesday that a “one size fits all” approach to the EU is misguided.

“Let us not be misled by the fallacy that a deep and workable single market requires everything to be harmonized,” he said. “Countries are different. They make different choices. We cannot harmonize everything.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany is “of course prepared to talk about British wishes, but we must always bear in mind that other countries have other wishes.”

Her foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer added that Britain could lose future economic benefits if it exits the EU, for example if tentative talks on a free trade deal between the U.S. and EU are successful.

“If such negotiations lead to a conclusion the fruits will only be available to those who are members of the union,” he told reporters in Berlin.

Even as he raised the specter of a referendum, Cameron reiterated his view that Britain should stay in the EU.

“I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part,” Cameron said. “There is no doubt that we are more powerful in Washington, in Beijing, in Delhi because we are a powerful player in the European Union.”

The timeline Cameron laid out mostly hinges on a Conservative victory in the next general election. But he said legislation will be drafted before 2015 so that if his party wins, it can be introduced and passed quickly to ensure a vote could be held “in the first half” of the next Parliament.

Cameron’s proposals drew lukewarm support from the foreign minister of the Netherlands, where the prime minister was initially slated to give his speech last week before it was postponed due to the Algeria hostage crisis.

Frans Timmermans said in a statement that the Netherlands agrees with many of Cameron’s criticisms of the EU.

“That’s why we want to keep the British on board in the EU,” he said. “Because you reform the EU from within, not by walking away.”

BEIRUT (AP) — A rocket fired by Syrian regime forces slammed into a northern rebel-held village Wednesday, killing six members of a single family, activists said, while Turkey’s foreign minister called on the international community to declare the Syrian regime’s bombardment of its own citizens a war crime.

With violence escalating and hopes of a political solution dwindling, Russia announced for the first time that it has evacuated families of its diplomats in Syria some time ago but said it is not planning a large-scale evacuation of the tens of thousands of its citizens still in the country.

Russia has been the main protector of President Bashar Assad, shielding him from U.N. sanctions over his crackdown on an uprising that began in March 2011.

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sought to play down the significance of evacuation of 77 of its citizens who had fled Syria and were flown back to Moscow on Wednesday. He told reporters that about 1,000 Russians residing in Syria contacted consular officials to express their interest in leaving the country, but no large-scale evacuation was immediately planned.

Both sides have increased attacks over the past weeks as diplomatic efforts have floundered with the opposition rejecting any dialogue with Assad in power and Syrian officials saying the president will stay until the end of his term in mid-2014, and will be running for re-election.

Syria’s conflict started 22 months ago as an uprising against Assad, whose family has ruled the country for four decades. It quickly morphed into a civil war, with rebels taking up arms to fight back against a bloody crackdown by the government. The regime also has turned increasingly to airstrikes.

“Aleppo and many other cities are being bombarded by airplanes indiscriminately,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He added that “this is a criminal act” even at a time of war and urged the international community to declare the bombardment a war crime and to insist on humanitarian access to areas of central Syria.

The rocket landed in the village of Abu Taltal in Aleppo province after midnight Wednesday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. The groups frequently report government bombardment of rebel-dominated regions.

The Observatory said a man, his wife and their four children aged two to 11 were killed. The LCC said the family name was Hazrouni.

The United Nations says more than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted. Syrian activist groups say the death toll includes hundreds of children.

The Observatory and the LCC also reported violence elsewhere in the country with air raids around the capital Damascus and clashes and shelling in the southern province of Daraa and the central region of Homs.

The Observatory said troops shelled rebel-held neighborhoods of the central city of Homs and the nearby region of Houla, which includes a string of villages. Houla has witnessed clashes and shelling between troops and rebels since after the start of the uprising and was the scene of the killing of more than 100 people last year.

Also Wednesday, Human Rights Watch reported that armed opposition groups appeared to have deliberately destroyed religious sites in mixed areas of northern Syria in the last two months of last year.

The New York-based group said investigations showed an armed opposition group destroyed two churches in the coastal region of Latakia and a Shiite Muslim place of worship in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Evidence and witness testimony suggested that all three attacks took place after the areas fell to opposition control and government forces had left, the group said.

Mainly Sunni Islamic extremists have joined the rebels in their fight against Assad, including the al-Qaida linked group Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. has declared a terrorist organization.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented the destruction and looting of a mosque in Taftanaz, Idlib, by Syrian government forces.

“The destruction of religious sites is furthering sectarian fears and compounding the tragedies of the country, with tens of thousands killed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Syria will lose its rich cultural and religious diversity if armed groups do not respect places of worship. Leaders on both sides should send a message that those who attack these sites will be held accountable.”

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A road tunnel in northern Norway will be shut for several weeks after a 27-ton truckload of sweet goat’s milk cheese caught fire.

Regional traffic department chief Geir Joergensen says flames engulfed the tunnel last week and gases from the melting, brown load hindered firefighters. It took four days to put it out.

The driver was not hurt and no other vehicles were in the 3.6-kilometer (2.2-mile) tunnel at the time.

Joergensen said Wednesday that the tunnel near the small Arctic municipality of Tysfjord, some 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) north of the capital, Oslo, likely will be closed for two more weeks.

Goat’s milk cheese, a sweet delicacy with a high sugar and fat content, is an essential part of many Norwegians’ daily diet.