Tel Aviv/New York - US Senator John Kerry, who narrowly lost the 2004 presidential election, entered the Gaza Strip Thursday in a rare visit by a US elected official.

Kerry, who was the centre-left Democratic Party's previous presidential nominee, met with Karen Abu Zaid, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

New York  - With major hostilities having ended in Gaza Strip in the past month, the territory is faced with a renewal of fighting because of the lack of a "proper ceasefire," the UN special coordinator for Middle East peace said Wednesday.

Negotiations have been underway under Egyptian mediation for a permanent ceasefire while Israel has declared several unilateral ceasefires.

Jerusalem  - Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert was to convene the security cabinet Wednesday to discuss a proposal whereby any truce in the Gaza Strip would be conditioned on the release of an Israeli soldier held in the salient for the past two and a half years.

The militant groups in the Strip were demanding that as part of any truce, Israel open the crossing points into the salient and end its blockade of the enclave.

Tel Aviv  - Israeli fighter jets bombed tunnels running to Egypt and a Hamas post early Wednesday in the southern Gaza Strip, apparently in retaliation for a mortar fired overnight by Palestinian militants into Israel, Israeli media reports said.

Seven tunnels were hit near Rafah and one other target was hit in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military spokesman told the Haaretz newspaper, which identified the second strike as hitting a Hamas post in Khan Younis.

The report did not mention any casualties.

Amman - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday met his Jordanian counterpart Salah Bashir to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East and international efforts to enable a peaceful settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Bashir underlined the importance of reviving serious and effective Palestinian-Israeli negotiations at the earliest possible time with a view to reaching a settlement on the basis of the two- state solution, the Arab peace initiative and the relevant UN resolutions," a foreign ministry statement said.

Oslo - The Islamic Council of Norway on Monday distanced itself from remarks attributed to a leading Islamic scholar quoted as saying the Holocaust was a "divine punishment" against the Jews.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born, Qatar-based scholar made the alleged comments in a speech on the Arab broadcaster al-Jazeera in January, prompting widespread condemnation.