Berlin  - Tourists are pouring into the German capital, bent on soaking up the fairyland atmosphere of Berlin's extraordinary range of Christmas markets.

Christian Taenzler, the city's tourism marketing media manager, says there are close on 50 such markets, including one on Gendarmenmarkt, the city's most prestigious square.

A thriving trading point in earlier centuries, Gendarmenmarkt is renowned for its German-French church architecture and ornate concert hall.

Berlin, Nov. 29 : Pakistani militants have become the focus of the investigation following the terror strikes in Mumbai, according to the Washington Post.

A Pakistani source said Islamabad is "already bending over backwards" to be cooperative, but did not "want to create more opportunities for Pakistan-bashing."

Pakistan''s Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told reporters in Islamabad, "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Berlin  ­ A 13-metre-high minaret competes for attention alongside pillars advertising the fast food outlets at a busy intersection in Pankow, a north-eastern suburb of Berlin.

Inside the mosque, the call to Friday prayer echoes as men fall to their knees. Upstairs, women turn to the loudspeakers relaying the imam's chant. It is not audible from the streets, where the mosque draws suspicious disapproval.

The Khadija Mosque, which opened on October 16, has met with strong opposition ever since its inception in 2006. The first purpose-built mosque to open in former East Germany, it provides a new centre for Berlin's Ahmadi community.

Berlin  - Marko Pantelic shot Hertha BSC to a place in the Champions-League Friday, spoiling with a 2-1 win Christoph Daum's anniversary celebration as a Bundesliga coach.

BERLIN, Nov. 28 -- A 104-year-old Dutch singer is suing an author in Berlin over claims that the singer performed for Nazi SS officers at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

Johannes Heesters said he was forced to visit the camp, which was located outside of Munich, Germany, as part of a Nazi plan to hide the truth about what was happening at the facility, but he denied ever performing for guards at the camp, Radio Netherlands reported Friday.

Heesters filed suit Friday against author and documentary filmmaker Volker Kuhn, 75, who said former Dachau prisoner Viktor Matejka told him during a 1990 interview that Heesters had performed for the SS, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Nairobi/Berlin - Somali pirates have seized a Liberian- flagged ship in the Gulf of Aden, although several crew members managed to escape overboard and were picked up by a German Navy helicopter, US Navy and German officials said Friday.

"The Liberian-flagged tanker Biscaglia was successfully attacked today in the Gulf of Aden," Commander Jane Campbell of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"Two helicopters from a coalition ship found several people in the water and transferred those individuals to a French ship that is on national tasking," she added.