BEIJING (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake in southwest China has killed up to 5,000 people and left as many as 10,000 injured, state media said, as hundreds of children remained trapped in at least eight collapsed schools.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces killed three gunmen who attacked their patrols in the Baghdad stronghold of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the military said on Monday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Incoming Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced his cabinet team on Monday, keeping most key ministers in their posts and taking powerful Kremlin figures with him to his new job.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A top Egyptian mediator said on Monday he had "high expectations" that a ceasefire deal could be reached between Israel and Hamas Islamists controlling the Gaza Strip.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Clashes resumed in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli on Monday and security sources said at least 36 people had been killed on Sunday in fighting between Hezbollah and its pro-government Druze opponents east of Beirut.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe will not invite election observers from Western countries to monitor a presidential run-off unless they remove sanctions, state media said on Monday, rejecting opposition demands in a political crisis.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Monday he would launch more attacks on Sudan's capital Khartoum until the government fell.

YANGON (Reuters) - The first U.S. military aid flight landed in Myanmar on Monday, but relief supplies continued to just dribble into the reclusive state nine days after a devastating cyclone.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's pro-European alliance sought a coalition deal with smaller parties on Monday to stave off a challenge from nationalist runners-up who say they too can form a government after Sunday's parliamentary election.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused Colombia of seeking to provoke war, renewing regional tensions after a Colombian attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador sparked the worst Andes diplomatic crisis in a decade.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Eighty-year-old Beatrice Habesch sobbed when she caught sight of her father's house in Jerusalem on Sunday and remembered how it was taken over by Jews in 1948.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday the OPEC nation will buy Chinese military training planes, expanding recent arms purchases and further cementing a growing relationship with China.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Top party members closed ranks behind Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday, praising his response to bribery suspicions that could force him from office and disrupt peace efforts with the Palestinians.

CITE SOLEIL, Haiti (Reuters) - It is a measure of success for President Rene Preval that calm prevailed in Haiti's largest and most violent slum during recent food riots in the Caribbean nation.

YANGON (Reuters) - Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine but aid workers said thousands of them would die if emergency supplies do not get through soon.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel will host an Egyptian mediator on Monday to hear a proposal for a truce with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though the Jewish state would still shun direct negotiations with the Islamist faction, Israeli officials said.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbs began voting on Sunday in an election that will show whether the lure of European Union membership outweighs their anger over the Western-backed secession of Kosovo.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah gunmen battled supporters of the government on Sunday on the fifth day of a campaign by the Iranian-backed group that has dealt a severe blow to Washington's allies in Lebanon.

DJIBOUTI (Reuters) - Rare peace talks between Somalia's interim government and opposition exiles have made a slow start in Djibouti, but a senior U.N. official said he was encouraged both sides had turned up.