A wave of violence in the Pakistani port of Karachi has killed at least 31 people since Monday and prompted the country's interior minister to say the government will take "every possible action to restore peace."

Authorities say 11 people were shot dead in Karachi on Tuesday, while at least 20 were killed the day before. Karachi has a long history of ethnic, sectarian and political violence by armed gangs suspected of links to Pakistan's main political parties. Officials say the violence killed more than 200 people in the city last month.

Police in China's western Xinjiang region say they have fatally shot two men who participated in a killing spree that is being blamed on Pakistani-trained terrorists.

Police say the men were found hiding in a cornfield outside the city of Kashgar, where attackers killed six people and wounded 15 others on Sunday. With their deaths late Monday, police say they have killed or captured all those involved in the attack.

Pakistani intelligence officials say a U.S. drone strike has killed at least four suspected militants in the country's northwest, along the Afghan border.

The missiles fired from a pilotless aircraft hit a vehicle near Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal region. The area is a known stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaida-linked insurgents.

Monday's drone strike was the first reported in Pakistan's tribal region since July 12.

Witnesses say a member of Somalia's parliament has been shot and killed in the capital, Mogadishu.

Khalif Jire Warfaa was killed Sunday in Mogadishu's Hamar Weyne district.

Another member of parliament, who witnessed the shooting, tells VOA that two gunmen wearing masks opened fire on Warfaa as he came out of the Marwaas mosque.

The lawmaker who spoke with VOA asked not to be identified.

The Marwaas mosque is located in a government-controlled part of Mogadishu that has been peaceful in recent weeks.

Chinese authorities say two attacks in the country's remote region of Xinjiang have left at least 19 people dead, including five attackers, and injured more than 40 others.

Chinese officials say the two incidents, which occurred late Saturday evening and then again on Sunday afternoon in the city of Kashgar, were both terrorist attacks. Authorities also claim that at least one of the leaders of Sunday’s attack received terrorist training in Pakistan.

Bomb blasts

Nigeria's government says it to wants to negotiate with radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is blamed for dozens of killings in the country's northeast.

A government statement says President Goodluck Jonathan has named a seven-person panel to open talks with the group. It says the president appointed the panel after meetings with local leaders.

There was no immediate response to the statement from Boko Haram.

The decision to negotiate follows months of escalating violence centered in Nigeria's Borno state and the state capital, Maiduguri.

A United Nations-backed tribunal has released the names of four men wanted for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon identified the suspects Friday as Salim Jamil Ayyash, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra.

The four are members of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, which has denied involvement in the killing.

Pakistani Taliban militants say they are holding a Swiss couple kidnapped earlier this month as they traveled through the country's restive southwestern province of Baluchistan.

The deputy head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Wali-ur Rehman, told media outlets Friday that the couple was in good condition and that his group would release them in exchange for a Pakistani scientist jailed in the United States.

One of the biggest obstacles to providing aid to Somalia has been the heavy hand of the al-Qaida linked militant group al-Shabab, which has so far dictated which aid groups are allowed in and which are banned. But some analysts say the crisis has actually weakened the militant group.

On July 6, al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage announced to the world that the militant group would lift a ban on foreign aid to Somalia to help victims of the worst drought in a generation.