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Palestinian girl, 3, killed in camp

JERUSALEM - A 3-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead near her home in the Rafah refugee camp on Saturday, medical officials said, pushing the Palestinian death toll during a 5-day-old Israeli military offensive above 40.

The Israeli army said it was investigating the incident, which came amid the biggest strike into the Gaza Strip in 44 months of conflict.

An army spokeswoman said she knew of no exchange of fire in the area at the time the child was shot, but a United Nations delegation nearby reported hearing a burst of shots that seemed to come from the direction of several Israeli military vehicles.

Occasional gunfire echoed through the streets for much of the day. Some camp residents who ventured out to shop after being confined to their homes for days waved white cloths, and scurried for cover when they heard shooting.

Although Israeli forces pulled back from two neighborhoods of the Rafah camp on Friday, troops backed by tanks continued hunting for wanted Palestinian militants and tunnels. One tunnel was found Saturday, the army said - the first found since the offensive began Tuesday.

The child who was killed Saturday was identified by hospital officials as Radwan Abu Zeid. Her family said the girl was tagging along with a group of older children on their way to the store to buy candy at midmorning when she was shot in the head and neck.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II said Saturday said the Catholic Church needs to do more to help encourage lasting marriages, saying the secular world has lost sight of the religious aspects of matrimony.

"Many today have a clear understanding of the secular nature of marriage, which includes the rights and responsibilities modern societies hold as determining factors for a marital contract," John Paul said during an audience with U.S. bishops from Texas and Oklahoma. But, he said, there are "some who appear to lack a proper understanding of the intrinsically religious dimension of this covenant."

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. brigadier general will review the military's secretive prisons in Afghanistan, the Army said Saturday, as officials said they were looking into the deaths of two more Afghans.

Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the U.S. military's main base at Bagram, north of Kabul, will carry out the "top to bottom" review and deliver a report by mid June, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said.

The overall commander of the 20,000 U.S.-led forces pursuing Taliban and al-Qaida militants in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, ordered the review this month.

The military, which holds about 350 prisoners in Afghanistan, recently announced two new criminal investigations into allegations of abuse by former prisoners in Afghanistan, including an account by a former Afghan police colonel who said he was beaten and sexually abused last summer before being released without charge.

DAYTON, Ohio - The last Vietnam prisoner of war flying in the Air Force will mark his final military flight by traveling to Hanoi to retrieve the remains of fallen comrades.

Edward Mechenbier, 61, an Air Force Reserve major general, will fly a C-141 transport plane, known as the "Hanoi taxi" - the same model that carried him from North Vietnam in 1973. The flight is scheduled to land in Hanoi on Thursday.

Mechenbier was a major flying an F-4C Phantom fighter jet when he was shot down over North Vietnam on his 80th mission in June 1967. He was held prisoner for nearly six years.

MOSCOW - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned Saturday as leader of his Social Democratic Party in a dispute over the direction it was going, according to Russian news reports.

The Social Democratic Party's chairman, Konstantin Titov, had insisted on a political deal with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, while Gorbachev opposed the move, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.