Kuwait's supreme court on Monday sentenced to death two police officers convicted of torturing a citizen to death, overturning terms of life imprisonment issued by lower courts. The court jailed four other officers for 15 years each and a fifth for two years, and also ordered their dismissal from the police force, according to a written verdict. Two other policemen were each fined 75 dinars ($260), while the remaining 11 defendants were acquitted, including two foreigners who worked at the police station.

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement on Monday urged Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from Syria, where they are battling for President Bashar al-Assad, and focus on fighting Israel instead. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was once an Assad ally but last year endorsed the revolt against him in a shift that at the time deprived the Syrian leader of an important Sunni Muslim supporter in the Arab world.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, will not permit no-fly zones to be imposed over Syria, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Monday. "I think we fundamentally will not allow this scenario," Lukashevich told a news briefing, adding that calls for a no-fly zone showed disrespect for international law.

A car bomb killed an undetermined number of soldiers and wounded at least 20 others late Sunday at an army checkpoint near a military airport in Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "There are at least 20 soldiers wounded, there are also some dead but we don't know how many," said the Observatory. The explosion, close to the Mazzeh military airport in the western suburbs of Damascus, was heard in several neighbourhoods in the capital and flames were visible from a distance, the Britain-based group said.