TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad extended his congratulations to Asif Ali Zardari on his victory in Pakistan’s presidential poll Saturday and said he hoped ties between the two countries would expand.

JERUSALEM, Sept 5, (Agencies): Ninety thousand Muslims attended the first prayers of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday amid tight security, police said. The Israeli authorities deployed thousands of police but reported no incidents in the Holy City.

GAZA, Egypt and the Arab League (AL) will not allow Palestinian political crisis to go on beyond October, Palestinian sources said on Saturday.

AVIGNON, France: France is looking at the possibility of sending a European Union (EU) mission to help security in the Palestinian territories, diplomats said yesterday before a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.

DAMASCUS, Syria – A Hamas official has confirmed that the Damascus-based leader of the militant Palestinian group has promised to deliver to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit a letter from his father.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the West on Saturday of acting provocatively in and around the Black Sea, where the United States is using warships to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – An earthquake measuring 5.6 hit Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region on Saturday, but caused no casualties, a provincial official said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, swept to victory in a presidential election on Saturday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A car-bomb went off by a police post in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Saturday killing at least six people and wounding about 40, police and hospital staff said.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The conflict between Georgia and Russia requires a rethink of a planned pipeline which will pump Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a German newspaper on Saturday.