Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki insisted on Monday that some of the fake bomb detectors Iraq bought are actually functional, despite overwhelming evidence that none of them work. "The best device in the world does not detect (explosives) more than 60 percent (of the time)... and results we obtained indicate that these devices detect from 20 to 50 percent" of the time, Maliki told a news conference.

A car bomb near a market in a Shiite-majority area of Baghdad killed 12 people and wounded at least 20 on Monday, a police officer and a medic said. The bombing in the Shaab area of north Baghdad brings the two-day death toll from violence in Iraq to 63. The car bombing came minutes after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to overhaul the country's security strategy. bur-wd/jds

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A gunman shot dead four people execution-style in a bank in Israel on Monday after being refused an overdraft and cash from its automatic teller machine. The assailant, identified by media reports as a former paramilitary border policeman, killed himself after police raided the Bank Hapoalim branch in the southern city of Beersheba to free his hostages.

Germany on Monday called for "visible" progress in implementing a landmark deal between Serbia and Kosovo before securing Berlin's backing for Belgrade's bid to join the European Union. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle hailed the April 19 EU-brokered agreement to normalise ties between Serbia and its former southern province as "historic" but said momentum needed to be continued. "Such historic circumstances do not occur every day, and when they occur they have to be grabbed," Westerwelle told reporters after meeting top Serbian officials in Belgrade.