JERUSALEM

Report: Israel considering destroying Gaza settlements

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is considering dismantling Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip while simultaneously annexing blocs of West Bank settlements if peace efforts fail, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Sharon adviser Zalman Shoval stopped short of confirming the report, but suggested Israel would keep some areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and leave others, if it were to take unilateral steps in the absence of a peace deal.

Also Friday, a Palestinian intelligence officer was shot and killed by Israeli troops after he approached the fence of the Gaza Strip settlement of Nissanit, witnesses and hospital officials said. Witnesses said the officer had been trying to rescue a mentally retarded man who had wandered into the area.

Turkey

Police name one bomber, use DNA to identify another

Turkish police were conducting DNA tests to confirm the identity of a suspected Islamic militant who detonated an explosives-laden pickup truck outside a British bank in Istanbul last week, a newspaper reported Friday.

The newspaper Milliyet also said Feridun Ugurlu, a Turk believed to have fought with Islamic radicals in Afghanistan and Chechnya, was responsible for a near-simultaneous suicide bombing of the British Consulate.

The alleged attacker of the Istanbul headquarters of the London-based HSBC Bank on Nov. 20 was identified by the Milliyet newspaper as Habib Aktas, a Turk from the southeastern city of Mardin. The newspaper cited unidentified police sources.

Police refused to confirm the reports.

South Africa

Mandela urges world to fight AIDS like it fought apartheid

It will take greater unity and effort to conquer HIV than it took to tear down apartheid, former South African President Nelson Mandela told a host of music celebrities Friday, gathered in Cape Town for an AIDS benefit concert named in his honor.

“We are called to join the war against HIV/AIDS with the same and even greater resolve than was shown in the fight against apartheid,” Mandela said as he gave Annie Lennox, Bono and other artists a tour of Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years in jail under the racist Apartheid regime.

The musicians are in Cape Town as part of an appeal to fight AIDS. The appeal urges people in 17 countries to call a premium-rate line to hear a celebrity message and songs recorded by top artists that haven’t yet been released.