Obama, Clinton denounce attacks on Israel(Photo-Video)

The White House and State Department denounced Thursday's attacks in southern Israel, in which gunmen armed with heavy weapons and explosives attacked buses, cars and an army patrol.

Israel said the Palestinian assailants from Gaza killed seven people after crossing through Egypt's Sinai

Peninsula. Within hours, Israeli aircraft bombed southern Gaza in retaliation.

"We condemn the brutal terrorist attacks in southern Israel today in the strongest terms," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement. "Our deepest condolences go to the victims, their families and loved ones, and we wish those injured a speedy recovery. The U.S. and Israel stand united against terror, and we hope that those behind this attack will be brought to justice swiftly."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also spoke out against the attacks:

The United States condemns today's attacks in southern Israel and all acts of terrorism in the strongest terms. These brutal and cowardly attacks appear to be premeditated acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. Our deepest condolences go out to the victims, their families and loved ones.

This violence only underscores our strong concerns about the security situation in the Sinai Peninsula. Recent commitments by the Egyptian government to address the security situation in the Sinai are important, and we urge the Egyptian government to find a lasting resolution.

The United States and Israel are united in the fight against terror. We hope that those involved in the planning of these gruesome attacks will be brought to swift justice. We stand by Israel as our friend, partner and ally -- now and always.

Rage at Police Fuels Egypt Rioting (Photo-Video)

CAIRO—The Egyptian military intervened Wednesday afternoon to quell the biggest riots since the country's former president fell in February, as new uprisings stymie the country's newly reformed civilian police force and threaten to delay the country's transition to democratic rule. As many as 5,000 protesters, many of them family members of those killed in Egypt's February uprising, overwhelmed the country's riot police Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. More than 1,000 people suffered light injuries from rock-throwing and tear

gas, the Ministry of Health reported, but only 16 people remained hospitalized Wednesday afternoon. Police arrested 40 people, including an American and a British national, according to MENA, Egypt's official state news agency. The renewed violence, and the police's apparent inability to control Cairo's streets without military assistance, mark a significant setback for Egypt's provisional government, which had sought to re-establish internal security before guiding the country toward parliamentary elections scheduled for September. The abiding instability, along with paroxysms of sectarian violence over the past several months, come as several mostly secular political leaders say Egypt isn't ready to complete its transition to democracy November's scheduled presidential elections. Whether Egypt's police can offer adequate security for parliamentary elections is already a point of anxiety for the transitional government. In contrast with recent protests that had clear political aims, the past day's violence revived Egypt's police as a focus of public anger. Police brutality and corruption was a primary grievance of the protesters who toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February. Those protests reached a turning point when the police yielded control of the streets to Egypt's more-trusted military, before melting largely from sight. Since then, Egypt's Ministry of Interior has sought to earn public trust by reform from within as its forces have trickled back onto streets. The ministry oversees regular police as well as Egypt's Central Security Forces—a paramilitary law-enforcement agency normally tasked with riot control—and Homeland Security, the successor to Egypt's reviled State Security agency. Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger and pro-democracy activist, said the past day's events reveal that the stated reforms within these law-enforcement agencies have proven inadequate. "The Ministry of Interior as it is at the moment should be dissolved completely. It should be demilitarized," said Mr. Abbas, who was present at some of the recent protests. "It's the same Central Security using tear gas with peaceful protesters, rubber bullets, violence—the same as during Mubarak's time." Unlike in previous protests, few among those who convened on Tahrir Square appeared to be connected with the protest movement that ousted Mr. Mubarak. According to some witnesses, some appeared to be local youths spoiling for a fight. Accounts of the latest riots at times diverge. But common to most retellings, including a statement posted by the Ministry of Interior on its official Facebook page, is that family members of the "martyrs" killed by police officers earlier this year during the revolution gathered Tuesday evening at a theater in the Cairo suburb of Agouza for a ceremony that had been planned in their honor by a local organization. According to the ministry and some witnesses, police officers arrived to prevent nonrelatives from entering the theater. After scuffles broke out between the family members and police, the officers used hand-held weapons to subdue the crowd. The ministry blamed unidentified "thugs" for the attacks on the families. Family members then crossed the Nile River to demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Interior, the object of popular ire during the February uprising. Witnesses said officers from Egypt's Central Security Forces, a paramilitary law-enforcement agency normally tasked with riot control, threw rocks at the protesters, whose numbers had by then swelled to several thousand. By about 10 p.m. Tuesday, the protesters fled to nearby Tahrir Square,the focus of the protests during Egypt's revolution, and lobbed rocks at police for about 15 minutes before the riot police employed tear gas to disperse the crowds. Close-combat fighting raged in Tahrir Square until at least 3:00 a.m. and resumed again later on Wednesday before the military inserted themselves between protesters and police officers who were defending the ministry's outer walls. The rioting came two days after relatives of slain protesters attacked police outside a Cairo courthouse following a judge's decision to delay the trial of former interior minister Habib Al Adly, who is charged with ordering demonstrators' murders. Mustafa Shishtawy, 23, said he rushed to Tahrir Square on Tuesday night when he heard that the families of deceased protesters had been attacked by police. "It was a déjà vu of 28th of January," said Mr. Shishtawy, referring to the "Friday of Rage" in the early days of Egypt's revolution. "They threw too much tear gas on us," he said. "It was definitely revenge from the police because some of them were injured when we were throwing stones." Egypt's attorney general said Wednesday his office will investigate the Tahrir Square events. The violence forms the first major rebuke for Egypt's efforts to hastily reform its police after they abruptly disappeared during the uprising in late January. Since then, the military has handled the bulk of the day-to-day law enforcement while Egypt's vast security force tried to heal itself from within. "Any country that changes from a regime institution to a democratic institution has to pass through a liquid period like this," said Aasr Nigm Al Din, the head of training for Egypt's Homeland Security, which earlier this year replaced the State Security agency. The twin pressures to both reform and redeploy have been a major challenge for the police, an institution that many Egyptians had long considered corrupt beyond repair. Mr. Mubarak's regime had used the police as a means of preserving power rather than ensuring public safety, said Mr. Nigm Al Din. He and other officers have led the internal police reform effort over the past few months by focusing on holding officers accountable and depoliticizing police work. Tuesday and Wednesday's clashes in downtown Cairo were the police's first test against a large-scale demonstration without military support, and Mr. Nigm Al Din acknowledged that the violence will harm efforts by the interior ministry to gain public trust.

Obama set for outreach to skeptical Arab world

President Barack Obama will lay out a new U.S. strategy toward a skeptical Arab world on Thursday, offering fresh aid to promote democratic change as he seeks to shape the outcome of popular uprisings threatening both friends and foes.

In his much-anticipated "Arab spring" speech, Obama will try to reset relations with the Middle East, but his outreach could falter amid Arab frustration over an uneven U.S. response to the region's revolts and his failure to advance Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Obama is expected to unveil new economic aid packages to bolster political transitions in Egypt and Tunisia, nudge autocratic allies like Yemen and Bahrain to undertake reforms and harden his line against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Struggling to regain the initiative in a week of intense Middle East diplomacy, Obama is seizing what the White House called a "window of opportunity" in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs.

"Having wound down the Iraq war ... and having taken out Osama bin Laden, we are beginning to turn the page to a more positive and hopeful future for U.S. policy in the region," a senior administration official told reporters in previewing parts of the president's speech.

Obama aims to articulate a more coherent approach for dealing with unprecedented political upheaval that has swept the Middle East and North Africa in recent months, upending decades of U.S. diplomatic assumptions.

His speech, set for 11:40 a.m. EDT at the State Department, is meant to counter criticism that he has been slow and inconsistent in responding to the swirl of events.

But he is not expected to stray far from his approach of balancing support for democratic aspirations with a desire to preserve longtime partnerships seen as crucial to fighting al Qaeda, containing Iran and securing vital oil supplies.

However, the risk for Obama is that his policy blueprint, calibrated for an audience ranging from the Arab masses to Middle Eastern leaders to the American public and lawmakers, will be too vague and nuanced to satisfy any of them.

Easier to predict is that he will stoke Arab disappointment with what will be left out -- fresh U.S. proposals for breaking the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.

The decades-old conflict remains a central preoccupation of the Arab world.

GLOW FADES AFTER CAIRO SPEECH

While Obama will renew his call for the two sides to return to the table after talks broke down late last year over Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, his push is not expected to be forceful enough to revive negotiations.

Neither is any significant progress expected when Obama holds talks on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has had a strained relationship.

Obama had raised hopes with his 2009 speech in Cairo promising a "new beginning" with the Muslim world after years of estrangement under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But the glow has faded and polls show anti-Americanism on the rise again.

Unlike Obama's Cairo speech, Thursday's address will focus on new flashpoints in the Arab world. He is not expected to use the chance to present an overarching strategy to supplant the case-by-case response he has applied so far, aides say.

"It won't be a one-size-fits all policy from the United States, but it will be a recognition that we need pragmatically to see that change is coming and try to shape it," said Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress in Washington.

The administration's announcement on Wednesday of its first sanctions directly targeting Assad over Syria's violent crackdown on protests was seen in part as an attempt to quell criticism that Washington was responding too cautiously.

Obama's domestic opponents have also accused him of acting too timidly in Libya to break the stalemate between Muammar Gaddafi and rebels trying to oust him, and of not being tough enough with autocratic allies in Yemen and Bahrain.

Trying to show reform efforts will not go unrewarded, Obama will use his speech to unveil aid plans for Egypt and Tunisia, where longtime rulers were toppled by popular revolts.

Senior advisers to Obama said the United States would offer debt relief totaling roughly $1 billion over a few years to Egypt. Washington would also guarantee up to $1 billion in borrowing for Egypt to finance infrastructure development and boost jobs, the officials said.

Osama Bin Laden: Al-Qaeda releases posthumous message

A recording purported to have been made by Osama Bin Laden shortly before he died has been released by al-Qaeda.

In the message, he praises the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and speaks of a "rare historic opportunity" for Muslims to rise up.

The 12-minute audio message appeared on a video posted on Islamist websites, and has been translated by the US monitoring group SITE intelligence.

Bin Laden was shot dead by US Navy Seals at a Pakistan compound on 1 May.

In the recording, Bin Laden refers to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt but makes no mention of the uprisings in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

"I think that the winds of change will blow over the entire Muslim world, with permission from Allah," he says.

"There is a serious crossroads before you, and a great and rare historic opportunity to rise up with the Ummah (Muslim community) and to free yourselves from servitude to the desires of the rulers, man-made law, and Western dominance," he also says.

"So, what are you waiting for? Save yourselves and your children, because the opportunity is here".

Al-Qaeda is generally perceived to have been caught off guard by the Arab Spring uprisings that began in January in Tunisia and swiftly followed in Egypt - toppling the long-time leaders of both countries.

Analysts say that while both al-Qaeda and the West back the uprisings sweeping across several Arab nations, they seek very different outcomes. The West hopes they will lead to democratic reforms, while al-Qaeda wants to see new governments based on their interpretation of Islamic law.

Egypt detains Mubarak and sons over corruption, abuse of authority

Egypt's prosecutor general announced Wednesday a 15-day detention for former President Hosni Mubarak to investigate accusations of corruption and abuse of authority, hours after announcing the detention of his sons Alaa and Gamal.

News of the reported detention order came a day hours after Mubarak, 82, was hospitalized with heart problems as investigations began over his own role in corruption and suppressing the protests that eventually led to his ouster.

The former Egyptian president was deposed Feb. 11 after 18 days of popular protests and has been under house arrest in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for the last two months.

According to a statement posted on the Facebook page of the prosecutor general's office early Wednesday, Mubarak, as well his sons have been detained for 15 days.

"The prosecutor general orders the detention of former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons Gamal and Alaa for 15 days pending investigation after the prosecutor general presented them with the current state of its ongoing investigations," it read.

The statement says the ongoing investigation was into the orders to open fire on demonstrators as well as any abuse of the president's authority for personal gain.

Mubarak's reported detention came just hours after Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of his two powerful sons over their role in violence against protesters and corruption allegations are investigated.

Alaa and Gamal Mubarak are, like their father, to be detained for 15 days, Egyptian state television said on Wednesday. State prosecutors are probing accusations of embezzlement.

Many of Mubarak's top associates are now being questioned for their activities in the previous regime, but the detention of his sons is by far the most startling development since his Feb. 11 removal from office.

Gamal Mubarak, his younger son, was a top official in the ruling party and was widely seen as being groomed to succeed his father before popular protests brought down the regime.

While the ex-president was in the hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he has been living since being removed from power, his sons were taken for questioning to the nearby courthouse by prosecutors from Cairo.

An angry crowd of 2,000 people gathered outside and demanded the two be arrested.

In the early hours of the morning, the head of provincial security in the South Sinai told the crowd that Gamal and his businessman brother Alaa would be detained.

"Brothers, whatever you wanted, you have got ... 15 days," said Maj. Gen. Mohammed el-Khatib, as the crowd erupted in cheers. Egyptian state television later confirmed the order.

As a police van took away the two brothers, the crowd pelted it with water bottles, stones and their flip-flops, a sign of disrespect in the Arab world.

In the two months since Mubarak stepped down, the council of generals ruling the country have initiated a series of investigations of top regime officials.

Gadhafi Says Foreign Elements Responsible for Libya Uprising

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is repeating his claim that foreign operatives are responsible for the uprising against his government.

Addressing a group of people from the town of Zentan, Gadhafi blamed outside elements from Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and the Palestinian territories for the rebellion. The remarks were broadcast on state television Wednesday.

Troops loyal to Gadhafi attacked the rebel-held city of Zawiya for a fifth day Tuesday, part of renewed assaults aimed at reclaiming ground lost to rebel forces. Eyewitnesses said the city, 50 kilometers west of the capital, came under heavy mortar fire.

Rebel officials in the city said dozens of people have been killed in the assault and hundreds wounded, including women and children.

The various reports could not be independently confirmed because electricity, phone and Internet services in Zawiya have all been cut.

To the east, much of which is under opposition control, Libyan warplanes carried out several airstrikes on anti-government positions around the key oil port of Ras Lanuf. The city was bombed heavily as pro-Gadhafi forces targeted the town's water reservoir among other installations. But as of late Tuesday, rebel officials said they still controlled the area.

Anti-government forces are seeking to recapture the city of Bin Jawad, 160 kilometers east of Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, after pulling out in the face of reinforced government troops.

Opposition leaders based in the eastern city of Benghazi initially suggested they made an amnesty offer to Gadhafi, but later denied any back-channel negotiations were under way. A spokesman for the rebel National Libyan Council, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, said the group is not prepared to negotiate.

Ghoga called again for foreign powers to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and effectively ground Gadhafi's air force.

Rebel representatives said they have had contacts with some foreign governments, and have sent envoys to several European cities seeking support. An Italian diplomatic delegation was in Benghazi Tuesday meeting with opposition leaders. It was the first official public visit by Western diplomats since the establishment of the provisional rebel government.

But activists say the Benghazi council's authority remains tentative and has yet to unite with disparate, divided opposition groups abroad.

A council official told European officials Monday that Gadhafi is relying on his air force because he lacks adequate ground troops to put down the uprising. Mahmoud Jebril said the Libyan leader relies largely on security brigades led by his sons and loyal officers.