BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian warplanes bombed rebel-held areas near Damascus on Thursday as President Bashar Assad’s troops battled opposition fighters for control of a strategic road that links the capital with the main airport.

The fighting around Damascus was part of the government offensive to dislodge rebels from towns and villages ringing the Syrian capital — areas that have been opposition strongholds since the uprising against Assad’s rule began nearly two years ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighter jets carried out eight airstrikes on Daraya, a strategic suburb close to a key military air base southwest of Damascus. The group, which relies on reports from activists on the ground, also said heavy fighting was reported near Damascus International Airport and that the regime was shelling the town of Aqraba along the airport road.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

According to the United Nations, more than 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which began when opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

Because of its strategic location near a military base, Syrian troops have been pounding rebel positions in Daraya for weeks. Earlier this month, the government claimed its troops had regained control over much of the district from where the rebels have been threatening Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power.

Activists posted a video of the Daraya fighting online that shows artillery shells slamming into concrete buildings, sending plumes of thick, white and gray smoke into the sky.

Daraya is flanked by the key districts of Mazzeh, which is home to the military air, and Kfar Sousseh, where the government headquarters, the General Security intelligence agency’s head office and the Interior Ministry are located.

State-run news agency SANA said troops have been battling rebels in the oil-rich province of al-Hasaka in the country’s northeast, killing and wounding several “terrorists” — the term the government and state media use to refer to rebels.

Also in the north, SANA said terrorists shot and killed a math teacher, Nabih Jamil al-Saad, on Wednesday near his home in the town of Hmaida in Raqqa province. A day earlier, rebels killed Mamdouh Abudllah Bin Abd Dibeh, a cardiologist, in front of his clinic in Sheik Mheddin area of Damascus, SANA said.

It was not clear if either the teacher or the doctor had ties to the regime. Rebels have targeted government officials, civil workers and prominent personalities, such as actors, who are known Assad supporters.

In a separate report, SANA said many residents of the central town of Salamiya in Hama province took part in a funeral procession for those killed in a car bomb explosion at a headquarters of a pro-government militia late Monday. The Observatory said earlier that at least 42 people were killed in the car bombing, but SANA did not say how many died.

In photographs published by the official news wire, dozens of men are seen standing in front of 11 caskets, wrapped into Syrian flags. Another photograph by SANA shows hundreds of men rallying at what the official news wire said was a funeral procession at Salamiya’s al-Huriyeh square.

Also on Thursday, in what Syrian state TV said was a live broadcast, Assad was seen sitting cross-legged on the floor of the al-Afram mosque in Damascus during prayers marking Prophet’s Muhammad’s birthday.

PARIS (AP) — A Frenchwoman who spent seven years in prison in Mexico on kidnapping charges returned to a hero’s welcome in Paris on Thursday, declaring she had been cleared by the Mexican court that ordered her freed.

Florence Cassez was greeted by France’s foreign minister as she left the plane, with the promise of a meeting Friday with the president. Her arrest, trial and 60-year prison sentence made her a cause celebre in France, where television networks carried her return live, hours after relatives of kidnap victims angrily shouted “Killer!” as a police convoy whisked her away from the Mexico City prison.

Two consecutive French presidents called for the release of Cassez, who was ordered freed Wednesday because of flaws in her trial, bringing to a close a case that had strained relations between the countries.

“I was cleared,” she said Thursday. “I suffered as a victim for more than seven years.”

Anti-crime activists in Mexico vigorously opposed the ruling to free her.

The wife of one kidnap victim showed up on Wednesday as reporters gathered outside the Mexico City prison where Cassez had been held. Michelle Valadez said her husband, Ignacio, was kidnapped and held for three months by Cassez’s boyfriend’s gang in 2005.

“We paid the ransom, but they killed him anyway,” she sobbed. “It’s not fair what they’ve done to us, it’s not fair they’re freeing her.”

The Mexican Supreme Court panel voted 3-2 to release Cassez because of procedural and rights violations during her arrest, including police staging a recreation of her capture for the media. The justices pointedly did not rule on her guilt or innocence, but said the violations of due process, the right to consular assistance and evidentiary rules were so grievous that they invalidated the original guilty verdict against her.

Cassez, 38, was arrested in 2005 and convicted of helping her Mexican then-boyfriend run a kidnapping gang.

“If she had been turned over to court custody promptly, if she had been allowed prompt consular assistance, this (raid) staging couldn’t have taken place, and the whole affair would have been totally different,” Justice Arturo Zaldivar said during discussion of the ruling.

Because the case was mishandled, the truth remains unknown, said the president of Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, Luis Gonzalez Placencia.

“In this country we can no longer ignore police obtaining evidence by tampering with it, by using torture, by staging raids,” Gonzalez said. “We will never know whether Florence is guilty or innocent, but we know for certain there are specific people who violated due process.”

Wednesday’s ruling put another spotlight on Mexico’s historically corrupt justice system and drew reactions from both countries’ presidents.

“I want to recognize the Mexican justice system because it put the law first,” French President Francois Hollande said on television on Wednesday. “That was the trust we put in it. And today we can say that between France and Mexico, we have the best relations that it is possible to have.”

Cassez, in a news conference at the airport in Paris, said the decision showed the Mexico is transforming its approach to human rights.

“It’s not just good for Florence Cassez. It’s good for all of Mexico,” she said. “I hope it will be a precendent.”

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a statement that he will “absolutely” respect the court’s decision.

Agustin Acosta, an attorney for Cassez, called the ruling “a resounding message in favor of justice and respect for human rights.” Police torture and fabrication of evidence have long been tolerated in Mexico.

Mexican police acknowledged they staged a raid on a ranch outside Mexico City to depict the hostages’ rescue and Cassez’s detention. After Cassez was detained and held incognito for a day, Mexican police hauled her back to the ranch and forced her to participate in the raid staged for television cameras, a type of display for the news media not unusual in Mexico.

The Frenchwoman said she had lived at the ranch, but did not know kidnapping victims were held there.

Cassez ultimately spent seven years in prison and became the center of a vigorous debate between Mexicans who say she was abused by the criminal justice system and those who say setting her free would only reinforce a sense that crimes such as kidnapping go unpunished.

Mexico has one of the world’s highest kidnapping rates, and there has been increasing public pressure to halt what is seen as widespread impunity for criminals.

At least one victim identified Cassez as one of the kidnappers, though only by hearing her voice, not by seeing her.

It was not immediately clear how the ruling might affect the case against Cassez’s ex-boyfriend, Israel Vallarta, who is charged with allegedly leading the gang and is being tried separately.

But the ruling provoked a backlash from Mexican anti-crime activists, including Isabel Miranda de Wallace, who led a successful decade-long fight to bring her son’s kidnappers to justice even though his body was never found.

“Today, they opened the door to impunity, today a lot of people are going to go free,” Miranda de Wallace told news media. “We already live without public safety, now it’s going to be worse.”

Ezequiel Elizalde, a kidnap victim who testified against Cassez, told local media that the ruling discredited the Mexican justice system. “Get a weapon, arm yourself, and don’t pay any attention to the government,” he said.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s top governing body warned Thursday that the regime will conduct its third nuclear test in defiance of U.N. punishment, and made clear that its long-range rockets are designed to carry not only satellites but also warheads aimed at striking the United States.

The National Defense Commission, headed by the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, denounced Tuesday’s U.N. Security Council resolution condemning North Korea’s long-range rocket launch in December as a banned missile activity and expanding sanctions against the regime. The commission reaffirmed in its declaration that the launch was a peaceful bid to send a satellite into space, but also clearly indicated the country’s rocket launches have a military purpose: to strike and attack the United States.

While experts say North Korea doesn’t have the capability to hit the U.S. with its missiles, recent tests and rhetoric indicate the country is feverishly working toward that goal.

The commission pledged to keep launching satellites and rockets and to conduct a nuclear test as part of a “new phase” of combat with the United States, which it blames for leading the U.N. bid to punish Pyongyang. It said a nuclear test was part of “upcoming” action but did not say exactly when or where it would take place.

“We do not hide that a variety of satellites and long-range rockets which will be launched by the DPRK one after another and a nuclear test of higher level which will be carried out by it in the upcoming all-out action, a new phase of the anti-U.S. struggle that has lasted century after century, will target against the U.S., the sworn enemy of the Korean people,” the commission said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be done with force, not with words, as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival,” the commission said.

It was a rare declaration by the powerful commission once led by late leader Kim Jong Il and now commanded by his son. The statement made clear Kim Jong Un’s commitment to continue developing the country’s nuclear and missile programs in defiance of the Security Council, even at risk of further international isolation.

North Korea’s allusion to a “higher level” nuclear test most likely refers to a device made from highly enriched uranium, which is easier to miniaturize than the plutonium bombs it tested in 2006 and 2009, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. Experts say the North Koreans must conduct further tests of its atomic devices and master the technique for making them smaller before they can be mounted as nuclear warheads onto long-range missiles.

The U.S. State Department had no immediate response to Thursday’s statement. Shortly before the commission issued its declaration, U.S. envoy on North Korea Glyn Davies urged Pyongyang not to explode an atomic device.

“Whether North Korea tests or not, it’s up to North Korea. We hope they don’t do it. We call on them not to do it,” he told reporters in Seoul after meeting with South Korean officials. “It will be a mistake and a missed opportunity if they were to do it.”

Davies was in Seoul on a trip that includes his stops in China and Japan for talks on how to move forward on North Korea relations.

South Korea’s top official on relations with the North said Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development is a “cataclysm for the Korean people,” and poses a fundamental threat to regional and world peace. “The North Korean behavior is very disappointing,” Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik said in a lecture in Seoul, according to his office.

North Korea claims the right to build nuclear weapons as a defense against the United States, its Korean War foe.

The bitter three-year war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953, and left the Korean Peninsula divided by the world’s most heavily fortified demilitarized zone. The U.S. leads the U.N. Command that governs the truce and stations more than 28,000 troops in ally South Korea, a presence that North Korea cites as a key reason for its drive to build nuclear weapons.

For years, North Korea’s neighbors had been negotiating with Pyongyang on providing aid in return for disarmament. North Korea walked away from those talks in 2009 and on Wednesday reiterated that disarmament talks were out of the question.

North Korea is estimated to have stored up enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight bombs, according to scientist Siegfried Hecker, who visited the North’s Nyongbyon nuclear complex in 2010.

In 2009, Pyongyang declared that it would begin enriching uranium, which would give North Korea a second way to make atomic weapons.

North Korea carried out underground nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, both times just weeks after being punished with U.N. sanctions for launching long-range rockets.

In October, an unidentified spokesman at the National Defense Commission claimed that the U.S. mainland was within missile range. And at a military parade last April, North Korea showed off what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Satellite photos taken last month at a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, in far northeast North Korea, showed continued activity that suggested a state of readiness even in winter, according to analysis by 38 North, a North Korea website affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Another nuclear test would bring North Korea a step closer to being able to launch a long-range missile tipped with a nuclear warhead, said Daniel Pinkston, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“Their behavior indicates they want to acquire those capabilities,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to have a robust nuclear deterrent.”

CAIRO (AP) — Two years after Egypt’s revolution began, the country’s schism was on display Friday as the mainly liberal and secular opposition held rallies saying the goals of the pro-democracy uprising have not been met and denouncing Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

With the anniversary, Egypt is definitively in the new phase of its upheaval.

From the revolt that began Jan. 25, 2011 and led to the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the country has moved into a deeply divisive struggle between ruling Islamists, who say a string of election victories the past year gives them to right to reshape Egypt, and their opponents, who say Islamists are moving to take complete power.

Overshadowing their struggle is an economy in free-fall that threatens to fuel public discontent. The vital tourism sector has slumped, investment shriveled, foreign currency reserves have tumbled and prices are on the rise, with more pain likely in the coming months if the government moves to implement new austerity measures.

In Cairo’s central Tahrir square, where the January 2011 uprising was born, and the area outside Morsi’s palace in the city’s Heliopolis district were rapidly filling up with protesters by Friday afternoon. There were similar if smaller crowds in central squares in the Mediterranean cities of Alexandria and Port Said as well as the Mehalla in the Nile Delta, Suez at the southern entrance of the Suez Canal, Assiut and Luxor in the south and Fayoum southwest of Cairo.

The crowds chanted the iconic slogans of the revolt against Mubarak, this time directed against Morsi — “Erha! Erhal!” or “leave, leave” and “the people want to topple the regime.”

Clashes broke out for a second day on some side streets near Tahrir and police fired tear gas to disperse the young men throwing stones. There were also clashes in Alexandria and Suez, and In the Delta town of Menouf protesters blocked off railway lines, disrupting train services to and from Cairo. Some two thousand demonstrators also surrounded the colossal state TV and radio building in central Cairo, chanting slogans against Morsi and his Brotherhood.

The immediate goal of the protesters is a show of strength to push Morsi to amend the constitution, which was pushed through by his Islamist allies and rushed through a national referendum. But more broadly, protesters are trying to show the extent of public anger against what they call the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization Morsi hails from, which they say is taking over the state rather than setting up a broad-based democracy.

“I am asking everyone to go out and demonstrate to show that the revolution must be completed and that the revolution must continue,” opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised message posted on his party’s website.

“There must be a constitution for all Egyptians. A constitution that every one of us sees himself in it,” said the Nobel peace Laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Unlike in 2012, when both sides made a show of marking Jan. 25 — though, granted, not together — the Brotherhood stayed off the streets for Friday’s anniversary. The group said it would honor the occasion with acts of public service, like treating the sick and planting trees. The Brotherhood’s ultraconservative allies known as Salafis are also staying off the streets. Their absence may reduce, but not entirely remove, the possibility of violence.

The night before, Morsi gave a televised speech that showed the extent of the estrangement between the two sides. He denounced what he called a “counter-revolution” that is “being led by remnants of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s regime to obstruct everything in the country.”

Brotherhood officials have increasingly depicted the opposition as undemocratic, trying to use the streets to overturn an elected leadership.

In another sign of the increasingly bitter tone, new militia-like groups opposed to the Islamists have declared in video messages posted on social networks this week their intention to defend the opposition protesters if attacked. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds injured in December when Morsi’s supporters descended upon protesters camped outside his palace, starting clashes that lasted for hours with firebombs, swords, knifes and firearms.

Police and protesters near Cairo’s central Tahrir square were clashing for the second successive day on Friday, with police using tear gas. Clashes began in Cairo on Thursday when the protesters tried to dismantle a concrete wall erected by police to protect the nearby buildings housing parliament and the Cabinet. Scores were injured.

The demands of Friday’s protesters vary. Some on the extremist fringe of Egypt’s loosely knit opposition want Morsi to step down and the constitution adopted last month rescinded. Others are calling for the document to be amended and early presidential elections held.

Morsi, a U.S.-trained engineer, took office in June after a narrow election victory with just under 52 percent of the vote to become the country’s first freely elected president.

On the horizon are key elections to choose a new lower house of parliament. The opposition is hoping it can leverage public anger into a substantial bloc in the legislature, but it is still trying to weld together an effective campaign coalition in the face of Islamists’ strength at the ballot box.

Last winter, the Brotherhood and Salafis won around 75 percent of the lower house’s seats, though the body was later disbanded by court order.

Opponents say Morsi and his Islamist backers have taken that election mandate too far, accusing the secretive, closed Muslim Brotherhood of simply stepping in to fill the shoes of Mubarak’s ousted ruling party, only now with a conservative religious bent.

The most glaring example is the constitution itself: Islamists finalized the draft in a rushed, all-night meeting, throwing in amendments to fit their needs, then pushed it through a swift referendum in which only a third of voters participated. The result is a document that could bring a much stricter implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, than modern Egypt has ever seen.

At the same time, Morsi has kept government policy-making and the choice of appointments almost entirely within the Brotherhood. Members and supporters of the group are being installed bit by bit throughout the state infrastructure — from governor posts, to chiefs of state TV and newspapers, down to preachers in state-run mosques.

“Egypt is in a bad place, It’s been wholly consumed with issues of power, and governance has been left by the wayside. None of this had to be,” said Michael W. Hanna, a senior fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation. “It was a conscious decision to eschew reform by consensus. … For them (the Brotherhood) it’s not about reform it’s about power.”

In Egypt, the danger for the Brotherhood now is that it stands alone as it faces the difficult task of stopping the accelerating slide of the economy. That will require some highly unpopular decisions, including raising taxes and reducing subsidies on fuel and basic foodstuffs. Morsi’s government has so far not put forward a cohesive plan, and public anger is growing over mounting prices, unemployment and poverty.

If Morsi and the Brotherhood can’t fix the economy, they may try to keep the support of their Islamist base by focusing instead on “the culture war,” pushing through a religious agenda of stricter Shariah and more sectarian rhetoric against Egypt’s Christian minority, warns Hanna. “We’ll see more polarized politics, and that’s a bad omen for actually governing,” he said.

Syrian regime urges opposition, refugees to return

BEIRUT (AP) — Twin car bombs in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights have killed eight people, activists said Friday as the government called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents.

The persistent violence and the moribund peace plan offered by President Bashar Assad — now enforced by his appeal to refugees and political opponents to come back — underlines the intractable nature of the 22-month conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people and left the international community at a loss to find a way to end the bloodshed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the town of Quneitra on Thursday, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said. The Syrian government has not commented on the attacks.

There was no claim of responsibility for the blasts. Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.

Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.

Since the conflict began, more than half million Syrians have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Those who left include opposition activists and defectors, both ordinary soldiers and army officers who switched to the rebel side, which is fighting to topple Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades.

The state-run SANA news agency said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left “legally or illegally.” Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to an Interior Ministry statement carried by SANA late Thursday.

If they “have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria,” the ministry said.

The proposed talks are part of Assad’s initiative to end the conflict that started as peaceful protests in March 2011 but turned into a civil war. Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.

Opposition leaders, who have repeatedly rejected any talks that include Assad, could not immediately be reached to comment the Syrian regime’s latest appeal. The opposition — including the rebels fighting on the ground — insists he must step down. Their demand is backed by the international community, but Assad clings to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.

Both sides remain convinced they can win militarily, and while Assad’s forces maintain control over the capital, the rebels have in recent weeks captured large swaths of territory in the country’s north and east, including parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and its main commercial hub.

Also Friday, regime troops shelled Homs and soldiers battled rebels around the central province with the same name, which was a major frontline during the first year of the revolt. An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. The sound of heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

Another video showed thick black and grey smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. “The city of Homs is burning… Day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn’t stop,” the narrator is heard saying.

Troops also battled rebels around Damascus in an effort to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in towns and villages around the capital. The troops fired artillery shells at several districts, including on Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Observatory.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus.

Both groups depend on a network of activists on the ground around the country.

As violence in the past weeks continued unabated in the south and in central Syria, thousands have been fleeing their homes daily, according to aid agencies, seeking shelter in Jordan and Lebanon, where authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented refugee influx.

The Britain-based Save the Children said Friday that 10,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, fled to Jordan over the last 24 hours due to intense fighting between troops and rebels in southern parts of the country, including in Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first erupted.

More than 3,000 of those have reached Jordan’s overcrowded Zaatari refugee camp, where five buses, crammed with “frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry,” pull up every hour, according to Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker of Save the Children in Zaatari.

Last month, the United Nations refugee agency said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the region, while $500 million was required to help refugees in Jordan. The UNHCR says 597,240 refugees have registered or are awaiting registration with the agency in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Some countries have higher estimates, noting many have found accommodations without registering.

Jordan hosts more than 300,000 Syrians.

MOPTI, Mali (AP) — Mali’s military and French forces have pushed toward the Islamic extremist stronghold in the city of Gao, in their farthest push east since launching an operation two weeks ago to retake land controlled by the rebels, residents and a security official said Friday.

The soldiers were seen in the town of Hombori, according to residents, who said they stayed several hours in the area before heading back westward.

“They were in eight all-terrain vehicles and two armored vehicles,” said Maouloud Daou, a resident of Hombori. “They asked us if there were Islamists in the town and we told them they had left. People were very happy to see the Malian and French military.”

A Malian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, confirmed the advance.

Hombori is located 93 miles (150 kilometers) beyond the current line of control in Douentza, which came back under government forces earlier in the week. The eastward push puts them just 155 miles (250 kilometers) away from Gao, one of the three main northern cities held by Islamists since last April when the rebels took advantage of the chaotic aftermath of a coup in Mali’s capital.

Malian soldiers are attempting to recapture northern Mali from the Islamic extremists with the help of the French military and troops from other African nations.

The Islamists have retreated from several cities in central Mali following a barrage of French air strikes, but the extremists still control the north including Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

The French currently have some 2,400 forces in the country and have said that they will stay as long as needed in Mali, a former French colony. However, they have called for African nations to take the lead in fortifying the Malian army’s efforts.

There are currently some 1,750 troops from countries in the region, including Togo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Senegal, Niger and Chad.

The Malian army, however, has been accused of committing retaliatory violence against civilians who appear to be northerners or those with suspected links to Islamists.

A French-based human rights group — the International Federation for Human Rights, or FIDH by its French acronym, charges that Malian forces have been behind about 33 killings since fighting erupted on Jan. 10.

Malian Army Capt. Modibo Traore called the allegations “completely false” but declined to comment further. A government statement issued Thursday called on the military to respect human rights, saying “the army should be irreproachable.”

Human rights groups have long expressed concerns about retaliatory violence against northern Malians or anyone seen as having ties to the Islamists whose capture of the north has divided the country in two.

Meanwhile, the West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS said it was organizing an emergency session of defense chiefs from the 15 countries that make up the group. The gathering on Saturday will be held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Afraid of crocodiles? Then you may want to stay away from the South Africa-Botswana border.

About 7,000 crocodiles escaped a crocodile farm when the gates on a dam were opened this week to alleviate pressure created by rising flood waters. About 2,000 have been recaptured, the Beeld newspaper reported Friday.

Video from the scene shows people hunting down the small-ish crocs at night, tying them up and taking them back to the Rakwena Crocodile Farm, in northern South Africa. The farm, which didn’t respond to an email or calls seeking comment, used to hold 15,000 crocodiles.

The farm’s website shows goods like crocodile-skin purses and hats for sale.

Northern South Africa and neighboring Mozambique have seen massive floods over the last week.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two months after President Enrique Pena Nieto took office promising to reduce violent crime, the killings linked to Mexico’s drug cartels continue unabated.

Only the government’s talk about them has dropped.

Eighteen members of a band and its retinue were kidnapped and apparently slain over the weekend in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon by gunmen who asked them to name their cartel affiliation before they were shot and dumped in a well. Fourteen prisoners and nine guards died in an attempted prison escape in Durango state. Nine men were slain Christmas eve in Sinaloa. In the state of Mexico, which borders the capital, more than a dozen bodies were found last week, some dismembered.

The difference under this administration is that there have been no major press conferences announcing more troops or federal police for drug-plagued hotspots. Gone are the regular parades of newly arrested drug suspects before the media with their weapons, cash or contraband.

Pena Nieto has been mum, instead touting education, fiscal and energy reforms. On Monday, he told a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Chile that he wants Mexico to focus on being a player in solving world and regional problems.

Some political observers praise him for trying to change the conversation and presenting an alternative face of Mexico. Critics suggest the country’s new leaders believe that the best way to solve a security crisis is to create distractions.

“What Pena Nieto is doing is … sweeping violence under the rug in hopes that no one notices,” said security expert Jorge Chabat. “It can be effective in the short term, until the violence becomes so obvious that you can’t change the subject.”

The Pena Nieto government didn’t immediately respond to requests for interviews. Secretary of Interior Jose Osorio Chong had a closed-door meeting with the governors of Mexico’s central states about security on Monday. In a press conference afterward, he promised to increase patrols along a highway system already bristling with military and police roadblocks and checkpoints.

The apparent weekend killing of 18 members of Kombo Kolombia, which had played at a private performance late Thursday, was the largest mass kidnapping and killing since 20 tourists disappeared and were later found dead in 2011 near the resort city of Acapulco. Searchers this week were pulling bodies from a well in northern Mexico that they said likely belonged to the band.

An area known as the Laguna, where Coahuila and Durango states meet, has been the scene of numerous battles between factions of the Sinaloa the Zetas cartels.

The State of Mexico has had 70 slayings so far this year, according to Gov. Eruviel Avila. La Familia has moved in from the neighboring state of Michoacan and is fighting for territory with a smaller gang known as the United Warriors. Meanwhile, masked vigilantes patrol towns in the southern state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast, where citizens have grown tired of organized crime usurping local authority.

Communications expert Ruben Aguilar said the Pena Nieto government is right to change the focus from security, which had been the main topic throughout the six-year administration of President Felipe Calderon, who left office on Dec. 1.

“On the subject of security, President Calderon went against all logic and turned it into the country’s only issue,” said Aguilar, who was spokesman for previous President Vicente Fox. “The theme itself is addictive for the media, and generates a negative social mood.”

It’s difficult to say if drug violence has risen because the government no longer provides numbers, something that started under Calderon, who last released drug-war death statistics in September 2011.

The newspaper Reforma, one of several media outlets that count murders linked to organized crime, said that in December, the first month of the new government, there were 755 drug-related killings, compared to 699 in November. In Calderon’s six-year term, some 70,000 people lost their lives to drug violence, the newspaper reported, with at least 20,000 believed missing.

Pena Nieto’s election marked the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran Mexico for 71 years. Under Calderon, violence exploded and cartels splintered. Many Mexicans believed drug violence would start to wane with the return of the PRI, assuming it would negotiate to keep the peace — something party leaders have consistently denied.

Upon taking office Dec. 1, Pena Nieto announced that he would work to restore peace, saying the government would change its security strategy to reducing murders, kidnappings and extortion more than going after cartel leaders . He released a security plan that was not clearly different from Calderon’s. Among the few specifics was a plan to establish a gendarmerie to patrol dangerous areas, a force that will take several years to build. Meanwhile he is keeping the military on the streets, just as Calderon did.

The Pena Nieto government also said that it will only talk about violence in terms of “hard data.”

Eduardo Sánchez, the undersecretary for media in the Interior Ministry, told Mexico’s official news agency last week that the federal government will no longer present detainees to the media or mention prisoners’ aliases — be it “the Squirrel” or “El Brad Pitt” — a highly criticized practice under Calderon.

The idea, Sanchez said, is to avoid glorifying violence, which is already celebrated in some circles through music and clothing styles.

“We don’t want the youth in this country to feel like crime is attractive or a good place in increase your social economic status,” Sanchez told local reporters last week.

He said the government has arrested 854 people for drug-related crimes its first month in office, and said 69 criminals were killed in confrontations with the armed forces. But he would not say to which organized crime groups they belonged or the circumstances of their deaths or capture.

Carlos Reyes, spokesman for the congressional delegation of the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, was critical of the new approach.

“The actions of the government need to be transparent in terms of being precise about the level of the problem and how you’re going to address it, not evade or disguise it,” he said.

Edna Jaime, director of the policy analysis firm Mexico Evaluates, it’s too early to criticize the new government’s approach.

“The dynamic of violence is not going to change in a month or a month and half,” she said, though she added that the government should have a strategy by now. The narrative will change “when it’s accompanied by real change,” she added.

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — International aid officials are framing their latest gathering on Syria’s humanitarian crises in terms not seen in the region since the height of the Iraq war: Refugee numbers possibly swelling toward 1 million, more than double that number in need of help inside the country and political policymaking among Bashar Assad’s foes torn between the battlefield strategies and the civilian costs.

The urgency for a dramatic increase in international relief funds for Syria — seeking total pledges of $1.5 billion — will be the central message Wednesday in Kuwait from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders such as Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose nation is struggling with more than 320,000 refugees and more arriving every day.

The meeting also seeks to reorient some of the political calculations among Western nations and allies supporting the Syrian rebels. With the civil war nearing its two-year mark and no end in sight, U.N. officials and others are pressing governments to recognize the potential long-term humanitarian burdens and spread resources and support to both the Syrian opposition and the millions of people caught in the conflict.

“The crisis is not easing on any front,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. office in charge of coordinating humanitarian affairs. “It’s relentless.”

The venue in Kuwait also highlights the increasingly high-profile role of Persian Gulf nations in Syria’s civil war.

The Gulf states, led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have been key backers of the political opposition against Assad and have urged for stepped up arms shipments to rebel fighters — a call that has met resistance from the U.S. and Western allies fearing that heavy weapons could reach Islamist militant factions that have joined the rebellion.

Now, the wealthy Gulf nations may come under direct calls to significantly boost contributions for U.N.-led humanitarian efforts in addition to their own pledges, including $100 million promised by Saudi Arabia in December for Syrian relief and $5 million from the United Arab Emirates this month for the refugees in Jordan.

Representatives from more than 60 nations are expected at the one-day conference, possibly including envoys from Assad’s main allies Iran and Russia. They are unlikely to be put under specific diplomatic pressures, but could face uncomfortable descriptions of civilian deaths in a nearly 2-year-old civil war that the U.N. says has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Syria’s bombardment of citizens should be declared a war crime and aid groups must be given greater access to help displaced or suffering people inside the country. Relief groups, however, have struggled in Syria because of shifting front lines and risks of kidnapping or convoys commandeered. The U.N. also has pulled back some staff in Damascus as fighting intensified in the capital.

Also in Davos, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, called the Syrian humanitarian situation “already catastrophic.”

“What we are seeing now are the consequences of the failure of the international community to unite to resolve the crisis,” she said before heading to Damascus for a two-day visit that included talks with Syrian officials.

While the Kuwait meeting is certain to showcase the strong international coalition against Assad’s regime, it also will underscore the shortfall in nailing down funds for humanitarian relief.

Laerke said the U.N. has in hand less than 4 percent of $519 million sought for aid inside Syria. Nearly $1 billion more in emergency money is now needed for the refugee influx into neighboring nations. U.N. officials say more than 21,000 Syrian refugees have arrived at Jordan’s sole refugee camp in just the past week.

“This is the just the six-month price tag,” he said. “This just gets us through the middle of year.”

On the eve of the Kuwait meeting, President Barack Obama authorized an additional $155 million in humanitarian aid for the Syrian people as his administration grapples for a way to stem the violence there without direct U.S. military involvement.

The fresh funding brings the total U.S. humanitarian aid to Syria over two years to $365 million, according to the White House. Officials said the money was being used to immunize one million Syrian children, purchase winter supplies for a half million people, and to help alleviate food shortages.

“The relief we send doesn’t say ‘Made in America,’ but make no mistake — our aid reflects the commitment of the American people,” Obama said in a video announcing the addition funding, which was posted on the White House website.

The European Union also promised another 100 million euros ($134 million) for Syrian relief aid, said the EU humanitarian aid commissioner, Kristalina Georgieva, in Brussels.

“They seem to be taking the appeals more seriously now when the conflict appears to be taking the shape of a crisis that will last for some time,” said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London. “Most expected the Assad regime would be toppled by now, ending the crisis. In reality, however, the Assad regime is still there and the international community has no alternative but to face the crisis and managing refugees costs money.”

The U.N. estimates more than 700,000 Syrian refugees have fled to surrounding countries — mostly Jordan and Turkey, but others to Lebanon and smaller numbers to Iraq. At least 2 million people inside Syria have been uprooted or face shortages of food or medicine.

Laerke said the refugee figures could push toward 1 million later this year if the current exodus remains. That could reach about half the refugee figure for Iraq in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Amos, the U.N. humanitarian chief, said she hoped the Kuwait conference will bring “a wider range” aid donors than previous appeals that brought mostly Western pledges. She also is likely to stress the desperation of many in the cold months.

In Beirut on Monday, she described visiting a shelter in Damascus where many children were sick or had respiratory problems because of lack of heating fuel.

“It is so cold right now, health care is really important,” she said.

In Jordan, about two dozen refugees moved into a school built by aid funds from Bahrain after their tents in the main camp were blown over by wind or flooded. The school is set to reopen next week.

“They haven’t given us heaters, tents or trailers,” said Abu Mohamed, a 35-year-old businessman who fled Damascus with his family. “Rain is forecast again. Doctors tell us at the camp hospital that our children are sick from the cold.”

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (AP) — The repercussions of a tragic nightclub fire that killed more than 230 people in southern Brazil widened Tuesday as mayors around the country cracked down on such venues in their own cities and investigators searched two other nightspots owned by a partner in the club that caught ablaze.

The government of the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, promised tougher security regulations for nightclubs and other places where many people gather. President Dilma Rousseff promised Monday that “we have the responsibility to make sure this never is repeated.” Mayors in other cities pledged to follow suit, especially with the upcoming start of Carnival, which floods nightclubs with celebratory crowds.

Since the fire, a Rio de Janeiro consumer complaint hotline has received more than 60 calls denouncing hazardous conditions at night spots, theaters, supermarkets, schools, hospitals and shopping malls around the state. Blocked emergency exits and non-existent fire alarms and extinguishers top the list of most common complaints.

Meanwhile, the Rio Grande do Sul state forensics department raised the death toll from the blaze from 231 to 234 to account for three victims who did not appear on the original list. Authorities say more than 120 people remain hospitalized for smoke inhalation and burns, with dozens of them in critical condition.

G1, Globo television network’s Internet portal, said police searched two other Santa Maria nightspots owned by Mauro Hoffmann, one of the partners of the Kiss nightclub, for evidence that could help shed light on the investigation. Monday night’s searches yielded no evidence and the site reported that computers that stored images recorded by the Kiss club’s security cameras have not yet been found. G1 cites a police investigator as saying the club owners have insisted the club’s closed-circuit camera system hadn’t worked in months.

A judge has frozen the assets of both of the club’s owners, pending the investigation.

The actions added to a national sense that the early Sunday nightclub fire marked a possible turning point for a country that has long turned a blind eye to safety and infrastructure concerns. One of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, O Globo, published an editorial Tuesday saying it was time for action.

“The tragedy in Santa Maria forces us to seriously reflect over our national culture of leniency, contempt and corruption,” it said. “We must start from the principle that the mea culpa belongs to us all: public servants, owners of establishments that disregard safety regulations, and regular citizens who flout them.”

Soccer legend Pele, too, urged the Brazilian government to “make safety and security a priority in this country.”

“So many young people are no longer with us, they had entire lives ahead of them. I ask God to protect them and take care of their families,” he wrote on Twitter.

Preliminary investigations into the tragedy have revealed that there was no alarm, working fire extinguisher or sprinkler system and only one working exit in the Kiss nightclub, turning it into a death trap.

Police were leaning toward the idea that pyrotechnics set off by a band playing at the time were the cause of the blaze, which killed dozens of students from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Inspector Antonio Firmino, part of the team investigating the fire, said it appeared the club’s ceiling was covered with an insulating foam made from a combustible material that ignited.

Firmino said the number and state of the exits are under investigation but that it appeared that a second door was “inadequate,” as it was small and protected by bars that wouldn’t open.

The disaster, the worst fire of its kind in more than a decade, raises questions of whether Brazilian authorities are up to the task of ensuring safety in such venues as the country prepares to host next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

An estimated 30,000 people marched peacefully outside the nightclub Monday night to remember the victims, and demand justice. Some carried signs with slogans such as, “May God’s justice be carried out.”

“We hope that the justice system … succeeds in clarifying to the public what happened, and gives the people an explanation,” said Eglon Do Canto, who joined the march.

Brazilian police said they detained three people Monday in connection with the blaze, while Brazilian media indicated two members of the band Gurizada Fandangueira and the club’s two co-owners had been detained. Police Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Junior said the detentions were part of the ongoing police probe and those detained can be held for up to five days.

According to state safety codes here, clubs should have one fire extinguisher every 1,500 square feet as well as multiple emergency exits. Limits on the number of people admitted are to be strictly respected. None of that appears to have happened at the Santa Maria nightclub.

Rodrigo Martins, a guitarist for the group playing that night, told Globo TV network in an interview Monday that the flames broke out minutes after the employment of a pyrotechnic machine that fans out colored sparks, at around 2:30 a.m. local time.

He added that the club was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people.

“I thought I was going to die there,” Martins said. “There was nothing I could do, with the fire spreading and people screaming in front.”

Witnesses said security guards who didn’t know about the blaze initially blocked people from leaving without paying their bills. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they’re allowed to leave.

Inside the club, metal barriers meant to organize the lines of people entering and leaving became traps, corralling desperate patrons within yards of the exit. Bodies piled up against the grates, smothered and broken by the crushing mob.

About 50 of the victims were found in the club’s two bathrooms, where the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.

Most of the dead were college students 18 to 21 years old, but they also included some minors. Almost all died from smoke inhalation rather than burns. The Rio Grande do Sul state health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said 84 people remained hospitalized Tuesday in serious condition.

The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.

Sunday’s fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub anywhere in the world since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea launched a satellite into space from its own soil for the first time Wednesday amid increased tensions after archrival North Korea accomplished a similar feat and was condemned by the United Nations.

The South Korean rocket blasted off from a launch pad in the southwestern coastal village of Goheung. Science officials told cheering spectators minutes later that the rocket delivered an observational satellite into orbit. Officials expected to know Thursday whether the satellite is operating as intended.

A crowd gathered around a TV at a train station in downtown Seoul to watch the launch. “I’m proud we have entered the ranks of satellite powers,” office worker Hyun Day-sun said.

The launch is a culmination of years of efforts by South Korea — Asia’s fourth-largest economy — to advance its space program and cement its standing as a technology powerhouse whose semiconductors, smartphones and automobiles command global demand. North Korea’s long-range rocket program, in contrast, has generated international fears that it is getting closer to developing nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S.

South Korea’s success comes amid increased tension on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea’s threat to explode its third nuclear device. Pyongyang is angry over tough new international sanctions over its Dec. 12 rocket launch and has accused its rivals of applying double standards toward the two Koreas’ space programs.

Washington and Seoul have called North Korea’s rocket launch a cover for a test of Pyongyang’s banned ballistic missile technology.

North Korea recently acknowledged that its long-range rockets have both scientific and military uses, and Kong Chang-duk, a professor of rocket science at South Korea’s Chosun University, said the same argument could apply to the South.

Seoul may eventually be able “to build better missiles and scrutinize North Korea with a better satellite,” Kong said. “… There are dual purposes in space technology.”

Both Koreas see the development of space programs as crucial hallmarks of their scientific prowess and national pride, and both had high-profile failures before success.

South Korean satellites were already in space, launched from countries including Japan, the United States and Russia. Seoul tried and failed to launch satellites on its own in 2009 and 2010; more recent launch attempts were aborted at the last minute.

U.S. experts have described the North’s satellite as tumbling in space and said it does not appear to be functioning, though Pyongyang has said it is working.

Pyongyang’s state television made no mention of the South Korean launch, but about an hour after liftoff it showed archive footage of North Koreans cheering the North’s three-stage rocket from last month. Images from the launch frequently appear in North Korean propaganda.

The satellite launched by Seoul is designed to analyze weather data, measure radiation in space, gauges distances on earth and test how effectively South Korean-made devices installed on the satellite operate in space. South Korean officials said it will help them develop more sophisticated satellites in the future.

South Korea did need outside help to launch the satellite: The rocket’s first stage was designed and built by Russian experts. North Korea built its rocket almost entirely on its own, South Korean military experts said earlier this month after analyzing debris retrieved from the Yellow Sea in December.

Kim Seung-jo, South Korea’s chief space official, told reporters that his country should be able to independently produce a rocket capable of putting a satellite into orbit by as early as 2018.

Spending on science and technology is expected to increase under South Korea’s incoming President Park Geun-hye, who takes office next month. She pledged during her campaign to increase such spending to 5 percent of the South Korea’s GDP by the end of her five-year term.

SEVARE, Mali (AP) — France’s foreign minister said Wednesday that French forces would depart Mali “quickly” following their success in taking control of the airport in Kidal, a key position in the last remaining urban stronghold of Islamist extremists in northern Mali.

French and Malian troops have recaptured two of the other provincial capitals, Timbuktu and Gao, in recent days. Once France, with its thousands of troops, fighter planes and helicopters, leaves, Mali’s weak army and soldiers from neighboring countries Islamists might be hard-pressed to retain control of northern Mali’s cities if the Islamists attempt a comeback from their desert hideouts.

“Now it’s up to African countries to take over,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Le Parisien newspaper. “We decided to put the means — in men and supplies — to make the mission succeed and hit hard. But the French aspect was never expected to be maintained. We will leave quickly.”

Haminy Maiga, the interim president of the Kidal regional assembly, said French forces met no resistance when they arrived late Tuesday.

“The French arrived at 9:30 p.m. aboard four planes, which landed one after another. Afterwards they took the airport and then entered the town, and there was no combat,” said Maiga, who had been in touch with people in the town by satellite phone as all the normal phone networks were down.

“The French are patrolling the town and two helicopters are patrolling overhead,” he added.

In Paris, French army Col. Thierry Burkhard confirmed that the airport was taken overnight and described the operation in Kidal itself as “ongoing.”

On Tuesday, a secular Tuareg rebel group had asserted that they were in control of Kidal and other small towns in northern Mali. Maiga said those fighters had left Kidal and were at the entry posts on the roads from Gao and Tessalit.

France, the former colonial ruler, began sending in troops, helicopters and warplanes on Jan. 11 to turn the tide after the armed Islamists began encroaching on the south, toward the capital. French and Malian troops seized Gao during the weekend and took Timbuktu on Monday. The Islamists gave up both cities and retreated into the surrounding desert.

In Gao’s main market, women returned to work on Wednesday without the black veils required by the Islamists. They wore vibrant patterned fabrics and sported makeup.

While most crowds in the freed cities have been joyful, months of resentment toward the Islamists bubbled into violence in Gao.

Video footage filmed by an amateur cameraman and obtained by The Associated Press shows a mob attacking the symbol of the oppressive regime, the Islamic police headquarters.

Some celebrate cheering “I am Malian,” while others armed with sticks and machetes attack suspected members of the Islamist regime. The graphic images shot Saturday show the mob as they mutilate the corpses of two young suspected jihadists lying dead in the street.

Gao’s mayor and governor met Wednesday with community elders in an attempt to bring a halt to the vigilante attacks.

There are 3,500 French troops involved in the operation and 2,900 Africans, according to the latest figures from the French Defense Ministry.

Mali’s military was severely affected by a military coup last year coup and has a reputation for disorganization and bad discipline. Malian soldiers have been accused of fatally shooting civilians suspected of links to the Islamists. The military has promised to investigate the allegations.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Lebanese military said Wednesday that Israeli warplanes have sharply increased their activity over Lebanon in the past week, including at least 12 sorties in less than 24 hours in the country’s south.

The flights come amid Israeli concerns about the civil war in neighboring Syria and fears that advanced weapons could reach hostile groups in Syria or the militant anti-Israel Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

Among Israeli security officials’ chief fears is that Hezbollah could get its hands on Syrian chemical arms and SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. If that were to happen, it would change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel’s ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

Israel believes that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.

Earlier this week, Israel moved a battery of its new “Iron Dome” rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli army called that move “routine.”

A Lebanese army statement said the last of the sorties took place at 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. It said four warplanes which flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura hovered for several hours over villages in southern Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.

It said similar flights by eight other warplanes were conducted Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

A Lebanese security official said the flights were part of “increased activity” in the past week but did not elaborate. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The area of Lebanon where the flights took place borders southern Syria.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon and Lebanese authorities routinely lodge complaints at the U.N. against the flights.

VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency has told member nations that Iran is poised for a major technological upgrade of its uranium enrichment program, in a document seen Thursday by The Associated Press. The move would vastly speed up Tehran’s ability to make material that can be used for both reactor fuel and nuclear warheads.

In an internal note to member nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it received notice last week from Iran’s nuclear agency of plans to install high-technology enriching centrifuges at its main enriching site at Natanz, in central Iran. The machines are estimated to be able to enrich up to five times faster than the present equipment.

The brief note quoted Iran as saying new-generation IR2m “centrifuge machines …will be used” to populate a new “unit” — a technical term for an assembly that can consist of as many as 3,132 centrifuges.

It gave no timeframe and a senior diplomat familiar with the issue said work had not started, adding it would take weeks, if not months, to have the new machines running once technicians started putting them in. He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge confidential information.

Phone calls to Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief IAEA delegate, for comment went to his voice mail.

The planned upgrade deals a further blow to international efforts to coax Tehran to restore confidence in its aims by scaling back its nuclear activities and cooperating with agency attempts to investigate allegations of secret weapons work.

It complicates planned talks next month where the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will press Tehran to cut back on enrichment. Indirectly criticizing the Iranian plan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted Thursday that Moscow and its fellow U.N. Security Council members “have called on Iran to freeze enrichment operations during the negotiations.”

Separately, IAEA experts are scheduled to visit Tehran Feb. 13 in their more than year-long effort to restart a probe of the weapons allegations.

Iran insists it does not want nuclear arms and argues it has a right to enrich for a civilian nuclear power program. But suspicion persists that the real aim is nuclear weapons, because Iran hid much of its program until it was revealed from the outside more than a decade ago and because of what the IAEA says are indications that it worked secretly on weapons development.

Defying U.N. Security Council demands that it halt enrichment, Iran has instead expanded it. Experts say Tehran already has enough enriched material for several nuclear weapons.

Nonproliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick described the planned upgrade as a potential “game-changer.”

“If thousands of the more efficient machines are introduced, the timeline for being able to produce a weapon’s worth of fissile material will significantly shorten,” said Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“This won’t change the several months it would take to make actual weapons out of the fissile material or the two years or more that it would take to be able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile, so there is no need to start beating the war drums,” he said. “But it will certainly escalate concerns.”

A Western diplomat accredited to the U.N. agency said IAEA delegation heads from the United States and its allies planned to discuss Iran’s plans later in the day. He too demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the issue.

Iran is smarting under U.N. and other international sanctions for refusing to curb enrichment and physicist Yousaf Butt, a consultant to the Federation of American Scientists, said Iran was “using the only leverage it has — its enrichment program — as a means to coax some sanctions relief.”

Iran says it is enriching only to power reactors and for scientific and medical purposes. But because of its nuclear secrecy, many countries fear that Iran may break out from its present production that is below the weapons-grade threshold and start enriching to levels of over 90 percent, used to arm nuclear weapons.

Tehran now has more than 10,000 centrifuges enriching uranium at its main plant at Natanz, 225 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Tehran, to fuel grade at below 4 percent. Its separate Fordo facility, southwest of Tehran, has close to 3,000 centrifuges — most of them active and producing material enriched to 20 percent, which can be turned into weapons-grade uranium much more quickly.

Iran has depended on domestically made and breakdown-prone IR-1 centrifuges whose design is decades old at both locations up to now, but started testing more sophisticated prototypes in the summer of 2010.

David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Technology serves as a resource for some U.S. government branches, estimated in a 2011 report that 1,000 of the advanced machines “would be equivalent to about 4,000-5,000 IR-1 centrifuges” in production speed.

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s most prominent Muslim cleric, the sheik of al-Azhar, has warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against interfering in Arab Gulf countries or trying to spread Shiite influence.

Ahmadinejad, on a landmark visit to Egypt on Tuesday, received an uneasy reception from Ahmed el-Tayeb at al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s foremost Islamic institution.

El-Tayeb particularly warned mainly Shiite Iran against interference in Bahrain and said Egypt rejects any spread of Shiism in the Sunni world. El-Tayeb did not join Ahmadinejad at a press conference afterward to two held talks.

The iciness reflected deep Sunni supiscions of Shiites and worries over Iranian power in the mainly Sunni Mideast. Islam split into the two sects after the death of the Prophet Muhammed in the 7th Century.

LONDON (AP) — The art world loves hype. Works are touted as the biggest, the rarest, the most expensive.

Even in an age of superlatives, the British Museum has something special — the oldest known figurative art in the world.

The artworks on display in the new exhibition “Ice Age Art” are so old that many are carved from the tusks of woolly mammoths.

But it’s not just their age that may surprise visitors. It’s their artistry.

These are artworks, not just prehistoric artifacts. Some of the sophisticated carvings, sculptures and drawings of people and animals look like something Pablo Picasso or Henry Moore might have created.

That shock of recognition is the aim of the show, which is subtitled “arrival of the modern mind” and explores the moment the human brain began to embrace abstraction, symbolism and imagination.

We don’t know what these distant ancestors believed or how they communicated, but we know how they thought — like us.

“They are fully modern humans,” Jill Cook, the museum’s curator of Paleolithic exhibitions, said Tuesday. “What these works of art show is that they have a visual brain capable of imagination and creativity.

“They really are us. They are our ancestors.”

Although early humans were making sophisticated tools, abstract items and music in southern Africa 100,000 years ago, the earliest surviving works representing people and animals appear after groups of people moved into eastern and central Europe some 45,000 years ago.

The plentiful wildlife roaming the grassy plains helped these communities of hunter-gatherers grow and flourish.

“The living was quite easy,” Cook said.

Then, some 40,000 years ago, the weather took a change for the icy. Suddenly, humans were struggling for survival, and this seems to have brought a surge of creativity.

Cook said that “faced with increasingly difficult conditions, finding the courage to go on” required of early humans “a fixing on things outside the human,” — the spiritual, perhaps.”

From its own collection and others across Europe, the museum has gathered artworks, made between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, that reveal a world vastly different from ours. Few are made from wood, a precious commodity during the Ice Age that had to be hoarded for fuel. They are made from bones, tusks and antlers, and sometimes rocks or clay. They depict animals that are now rare or extinct — mammoths, bison, lions, wolverines.

And yet, as art, they are instantly recognizable and remarkably sophisticated.

They play with ideas like perspective and scale, toy with abstraction and capture movement. Some of the animals show strength and grace: a delicate yet powerful bison, a mammoth poised to charge, a delicate carving of two reindeer swimming.

Ice Age artists could depict imaginary creatures, such as the man with a lion’s head found in a cave in Germany and created 40,000 years ago. They made musical instruments; there are flutes carved from swan bones and ivory.

The works are displayed alongside pieces by modern artists, including Henri Matisse — whose drawing of a voluptuous nude hangs near a plump female ceramic figure — and Henry Moore, whose rounded abstract sculptures can appear timeless and elemental.

Cook said the modern works are there partly to reassure visitors that this is an exhibition of art and not just archaeological artifacts — “You can look at them without being intimidated.”

There is also a more direct link. Some 20th-century modernists drew inspiration from the bold abstraction of ancient artworks. Picasso was fascinated with a 21,000-year-old ivory sculpture of a naked woman found in southwestern France in 1922 and kept replicas of it in his studio.

Despite the strong resonances, there remains much we don’t know about the distant past.

The exhibition includes many depictions of female figures, from girlish youths to pregnant women to mature matrons. Were they carved by men or, as Cook speculates, created “by women for women”? Many are realistic about large hips and bellies, and show an image of the female body Cook likens to the “does my bum look big in this” view in the dressing room mirror.

There’s also a 27,000-year-old puppet discovered in what is now the Czech Republic — possibly used in some shamanistic ritual, though it’s hard to be certain. Tools and cave walls were inscribed with a form of calligraphy which we can’t read.

And while Cook says these pieces are, “as far as we know, the oldest figurative art in the world,” many ancient mysteries remain.

“Discoveries tomorrow might change that,” she said. “And that would be fantastic.”

“Ice Age Art” opens Thursday and runs to May 26.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani officials say the death toll from a suspected U.S. drone strike in a restive tribal region has risen to 9, all of whom were militants.

Two intelligence officials said Saturday that three members of the Pakistani Taliban movement wounded in the Friday strike on a militant compound died overnight. They had originally put the death toll at six.

The officials said their field informants confirmed two members of al-Qaida, Abu Majid Al Iraqi and Sheikh Abu Waqas Al-Yamani, were among the dead. They said the remaining seven were all members of Pakistan’s branch of the Taliban. Both officials spoke anonymously as they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

The Taliban did not immediately comment on the strike in the Bobar Ghar area of South Waziristan.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A bus carrying fans of a Chilean soccer team has plunged into a ravine, killing 16 people.

Fire department officials say most of those who died in Saturday’s crash are 13 to 18 years old. One is an infant a few months old. Twenty-one people are reported injured.

Officials say the bus plunged roughly 500 feet (150 meters) into a ravine in a mountainous zone about 280 miles (470 kilometers) south of the capital.

The bus was carrying fans of the O’Higgins team back from a match the squad won against Huachipato de Talcahuan.

State television says the Chinese-made bus had no seatbelts for its 27 intended passengers and was intended only for urban use.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Starting his public farewell to his flock, a weary Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff, presiding over Ash Wednesday services hours after a bittersweet audience that produced the extraordinary scene of the pope explaining his decision to step down directly to the faithful.

The mood inside St. Peter’s Basilica was somber during the Mass, as if the weight of Benedict’s decision and the finality of his pontificate had finally registered with the thousands of faithful present. But the basilica erupted in a rousing, minutes-long standing ovation as Benedict exited for the last time as pope, bringing tears to the eyes of some of his closest collaborators.

“We wouldn’t be sincere, Your Holiness, if we didn’t tell you that there’s a veil of sadness on our hearts this evening,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Benedict’s longtime deputy, told the pope at the end of the service, his voice breaking.

“Thank you for having given us the luminous example of the simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” Bertone said, quoting Benedict’s own words when he first appeared on the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square after he was elected pope.

“Viva il papa!” the crowd yelled as Benedict stepped off the altar.

Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent, the most solemn season on the church’s liturgical calendar that ends with Holy Week, when the faithful commemorate the death of Christ and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. By this Easter, on March 31, the church will likely have a new pope.

The scene was festive earlier in the day, when Benedict took the extraordinary step of speaking directly to his flock about why he had broken with 600 years of tradition and decided to retire on Feb. 28.

“As you know, I have decided to renounce the ministry that the Lord gave to me on April 19, 2005,” Benedict said, to warm applause. “I did this in full liberty for the good of the church.”

He thanked the faithful for their prayers and love, which he said he had “physically felt in these days that haven’t been easy for me.” And he asked them to “to continue to pray for me, the church, and the future pope.”

Benedict looked tired but serene as he basked in a standing ovation when he entered the packed hall for his traditional Wednesday catechism lesson. His speech was interrupted repeatedly by applause, and many in the audience of thousands had tears in their eyes.

A huge banner reading “Grazie Santita” (Thank you Your Holiness) was strung up at the back of the room and a chorus of Italian schoolchildren serenaded him with one of his favorite hymns in German — a gesture that won over the pope, who thanked them for singing a piece “particularly dear to me.”

He appeared wan and spoke very softly, but his eyes twinkled at the flock’s welcome — warm and heartfelt if somewhat bittersweet.

“He gave us eight wonderful years of his words,” said Ileana Sviben, an Italian from the northern city of Trieste who couldn’t hide her sadness. “He was a wonderful theologian and pastor.”

The Rev. Reinaldo Braga Jr., a Brazilian priest studying theology in Rome, said he, too, was saddened when he first heard the news.

“The atmosphere was funereal but nobody had died,” he said. “But then I realized it was a wise act for the entire church. He taught the church and the world that the papacy is not about power but about service.”

It was a sentiment the retiring Benedict himself emphasized Wednesday when he told his flock that the “path of power is not the road of God.”

Benedict is the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years, and the decision has placed the Vatican in uncharted waters: No one knows what he’ll be called or even what he’ll wear after Feb. 28.

The Vatican, however, revealed some details of his final day as pope, saying he would attend a morning farewell ceremony with his cardinals and then fly off by helicopter at 5 p.m. to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo.

Under that timetable, Benedict will be far from the Vatican when he ceases being pope at 8 p.m. — a deadline decided by Benedict himself because that’s when his normal workday ends.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said no formal or symbolic act was needed to make his resignation official at that time, because Benedict has already done all that was required to resign by affirming publicly he had taken the decision freely.

Benedict’s final official acts as pope will include audiences with the Romanian and Guatemalan presidents this week and the Italian president on Feb. 23.

Making sure the transition goes smoothly, Benedict made an important appointment Wednesday, naming the No. 2 administrator of the Vatican city state, Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, as a legal adviser to the camerlengo.

The camerlengo, or chamberlain, helps administer the Vatican bureaucracy in the period between Benedict’s resignation and the election of a new pope. The current camerlengo is Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

He and the dean of the College of Cardinals, his predecessor Cardinal Angelo Sodano, will have a major role in organizing the conclave, during which the 117 or so cardinals under the age of 80 will vote on who should succeed Benedict.

The Vatican has made clear that Benedict will play no role in the election of his successor, and once retired, he will be fully retired. He plans to live a life of prayer in a converted monastery on the far northern edge of the Vatican gardens.

But his continued physical presence within the Vatican walls has raised questions about how removed he really will be from the life of the church. Lombardi acknowledged that Benedict would still be able to see his friends and colleagues.

“I think the successor and also the cardinals will be very happy to have very nearby a person that best of all can understand what the spiritual needs of the church are,” Lombardi said.

Benedict is expected, however, to keep a low public profile.

As a result, Benedict’s final public appearances — his last general audience will be Feb. 27 — are expected to draw great crowds, as they may well represent some of the last public speeches for a man who has spent his life — as a priest, a cardinal and a pope — teaching and preaching.

And they will also give the faithful a way to say farewell under happier circumstances than when his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, died in 2005.

JERUSALEM (AP) — A U.S.-based rights group said Israel violated laws of war in a series of airstrikes it conducted during an eight-day military operation last November against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Human Rights Watch said it counted 14 airstrikes in which there didn’t appear to be a valid military target, and four others targeting militants, but which used disproportionate force.

HRW said the attacks killed more than 40 Palestinian civilians. They included a bomb attack on a home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jebalia that killed Fouad Hijazi, a 46-year-old janitor, and two of his children, ages 4 and 2.

Israel’s air assault came after weeks of increased rocket fire by Palestinian militants in Gaza toward Israeli communities.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army “established an inquiry board” headed by a major general to look into the eight-day operation, including incidents raised by HRW. She said the board’s work hadn’t yet been completed.

“It is regrettable that the organization has opted to publish unverified claims,” the spokeswoman said. She could not be identified, citing military policy.

HRW based its report on interviews with residents, who were asked whether there was militant activity nearby attack sites. It also crosschecked the names of slain Palestinians against lists issued by Gaza militant groups to ascertain whether they were civilians. Gaza militant groups tend to announce the deaths of their fighters.

In the past, Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the group uses schools, mosques and residential areas for cover while carrying out attacks. But cases of mistaken identity or faulty intelligence have also been known to result in civilian casualties.

The HRW report said attacks included bombings of civilian locations like homes and farm groves, “without any apparent military objective.”

That included a strike on Nov. 21 that killed a 48-year-old farmer, Talal al-Asaly, and two of his children, Ayman, 19, and Abeer, 11, in northern Gaza while working in their garden.

Another drone strike two days earlier killed Ibrahim al-Astal, 48, and his nephew, Omar al-Astal, 14, in the southern area of Khan Younis.

In each case, residents said they did not observe Palestinian militants trying to fire missiles nearby, the usual target of such Israeli strikes.

The report said other strikes appeared to have military targets but caused disproportionate harm to human life and property.

They cited an attack on Nov. 20 may have targeted the home of a Palestinian militant, killing three civilians and wounding at least 20 others. Another strike hit the home of a man that Israeli officials identified as a Hamas militant, killing 12 civilians.

The report comes after other criticisms of Israel’s conduct during the military operation, including attacks on reporters working for Palestinian news outlets sympathetic to militants. One attack killed two cameramen, another wounded seven media workers and a third strike on a media office inside a residential building killed a 2-year-old boy.

Human Rights Watch has also criticized Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s neighbors bolstered their military preparations and mobilized scientists Wednesday to determine whether Pyongyang’s third nuclear test, conducted in defiance of U.N. warnings, was as successful as the North claimed.

The detonation was also the focus of global diplomatic maneuvers, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reaching out to counterparts in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo. President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to assure U.S. allies in the region and warn of “firm action.”

“Provocations of the sort we saw last night will only isolate them further as we stand by our allies, strengthen our own missile defense and lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats,” Obama said.

The nuclear device detonated Tuesday at a remote underground site in the northeast is seen as a crucial step toward North Korea’s goal of building a bomb small enough to be fitted on a missile capable of striking the United States.

North Korea said it tested a “smaller and light A-bomb, unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power.” Still, just what happened in the test was unclear to outsiders.

Intelligence officials and analysts in Seoul raised the possibility of another nuclear test and of ballistic missile test-launches. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the latest test was merely its “first response” to what it called U.S. threats and that Pyongyang will continue with unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity” if Washington maintains its hostility.

South Korea has raised its military readiness alert level, and on Wednesday it used aircraft and ships, as well as specialists on the ground, to collect air samples to analyze possibly increased radiation from the test, according to the Defense Ministry. Japanese fighter jets were dispatched immediately after the test to collect atmospheric samples. Japan has also established monitoring posts, including one on its northwest coast, to collect similar data.

Underground nuclear tests often release radioactive elements into the atmosphere that can be analyzed to determine key details about the blast. One of the main points that intelligence officials want to know is whether the device was a plutonium bomb or one that used highly enriched uranium, which would be a first for North Korea.

In 2006 and 2009, North Korea is believed to have tested devices made of plutonium. But in 2010, Pyongyang revealed it was trying to enrich uranium, which would be a second source of nuclear bomb-making materials — a worrying development for the United States and its allies.

Generally, it takes about two days for such radioactive byproducts from the North’s test site to reach South Korea, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said Wednesday.

South Korea also said Wednesday it has deployed cruise missiles with “world-class accuracy and destructive power” that are capable of hitting any target in North Korea at any time, and is speeding up the planned deployment of ballistic missiles.

Kim said Seoul believes North Korea made test preparations at two underground tunnels and may still be able to conduct another atomic test in the second unused tunnel.

In an emergency session, the U.N. Security Council unanimously said the test poses “a clear threat to international peace and security” and pledged further action.

It remains to be seen, however, whether China will sign on to any new, binding global sanctions. Beijing, Pyongyang’s primary trading partner, has resisted measures that would cut off North Korea’s economy completely.

The test was a defiant North Korean response to U.N. orders that it shut down its atomic activity or face more sanctions and international isolation. It will likely draw more sanctions from the United States and other countries at a time when North Korea is trying to rebuild its moribund economy and expand its engagement with the outside world.

The test “was neither a surprise nor an occasion for panic,” said Robert Hathaway, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia program. “Nonetheless, this latest provocation clearly constitutes a serious challenge to U.S. and international efforts to block the North from acquiring a nuclear weapons arsenal.”

Tuesday’s test was North Korea’s first since young leader Kim Jong Un took power over a country long estranged from the West. The test will likely be portrayed in North Korea as a strong move to defend the nation against foreign aggression, particularly from the U.S.

The U.N. Security Council recently punished North Korea for a rocket launch in December that the U.N. and Washington called a cover for a banned long-range missile test. Pyongyang said it was a peaceful launch of a satellite into space. In condemning that launch, the council demanded a stop to future launches and ordered North Korea to respect a ban on nuclear activity or face “significant action” by the U.N.

It wasn’t immediately clear to outside experts whether the device exploded Tuesday was small enough to fit on a missile. A successful test would take North Korean scientists a step closer to building a nuclear warhead that could reach U.S. shores — seen as the ultimate goal of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Uranium would be a worry because plutonium facilities are large and produce detectable radiation, making them easier for outsiders to find and monitor. However, uranium centrifuges can be hidden from satellites, drones and nuclear inspectors in caves, tunnels and other hard-to-reach places. Highly enriched uranium also is easier than plutonium to engineer into a weapon.

“North Korea will want to send a message that its nuclear and missile issues cannot be resolved with sanctions and that high-level talks with the U.S. are necessary,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea, referring to the possibility of another nuclear or missile test.

Despite tensions, he predicted U.S.-North Korea diplomatic talks could occur later this year.

“The biggest U.S. concern is whether the North has made progress in its uranium enrichment program. It’s a matter of nuclear proliferation. To resolve this, the U.S. cannot help but talk with North Korea,” he said.