Deutsche Welle English Service News August 26th, 2001, 16:00 UTC Israeli warplanes have attacked and destroyed Palestinian security headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for the killings of three Israeli soldiers and two Jewish settlers on Saturday. Buildings were left in ruins and at least three Palestinians were hurt in the latest strikes. Israel said it held the Palestinian leadership responsible for the violence over the weekend, which took the death toll over 700 since the Palestinians began a revolt against Israeli occupation. Palestinian security officials, in the meantime, called Israel's air raids an "ugly aggression" which made the situation even more dangerous. On the diplomatic front both sides are trying to arrange talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat under German auspices. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said its officials were given access to eight foreign aid workers held by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban on charges of spreading Christianity. But the head of the ICRC delegation who saw the detainees told reporters he could not reveal the condition of the six women and two men who were given medical examinations. The visit was the detainees' first contact with anyone outside the Taliban since their arrest in early August. Meanwhile, the Taliban has said they were nearing the end of their investigation into the alleged charges against the eight members of the Shelter Now International (SNI) organization and would allow visits by the relatives and representatives of the prisoners' governments. Diplomats from Australia, the U.S. and Germany were expected to arrive in Kabul on Tuesday. A motel in northern Macedonia blew up earlier on Sunday in an area dominated by ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Eye witnesses said two people were killed in the blast. The motel explosion was the second in five days blamed on "Albanian terrorists." The latest unrest comes one day before NATO troops are to begin their mission of disarming ethnic Albanian rebels. Meanwhile there is still dispute about the size of the rebels' arsenal. Macedonia's prime minister said that if NATO's estimate of guerrilla arms was around 3000 as widely reported, the disarmement mission would be a ludicrous failure and war would resume after alliance troops left the region. The Macedonian government estimates that the rebels are holding some 70,000 pieces weaponry. Doctors in the Ivory Coast said broth contaminated with rat poison was responsible for the mass poisoning and deaths of at least 26 people, including a 17-month-old girl, in the village of Labokro. Village officials said the broth-seller was a local woman who is now being held in protective custody. Paramilitary police said the case was still being treated as an accident. Sources said they believed the woman, who for years has prepared the broth for sale in the local market, had mistaken the rat poison for sugar in the dark early morning hours. The first cases appeared last Thursday when people who had drunk the broth began to vomit violently and suffer severe diarrhoea. It was only after the death of a two-year-old girl on Thursday evening that the cause was traced back to the broth. Two of the three people killed in Saturday's marketplace explosion in rebel Chechnya were carrying a bomb which exploded before they had time to plant it, according to a local Interior Ministry official. The third fatality was a 10-year-old boy. His mother was among the 11 people injured in the blast in the central marketplace in Gudermes, Chechnya's second town. News sources quoted the Chechnya prosecutor's office as saying four of those injured were in a serious condition. Russia is more than 22 months into its second campaign in a decade to subdue the rebel province, but despite having nominal control over most of the mountainous territory, its troops still die almost daily in mine attacks and rebel ambushes. Taiwan has received the go-ahead from a high-powered government advisory body to aggressively pursue commercial links with rival China in a bid to boost the crumbling Taiwanese economy. A 120-member panel of academics, businessmen and politicians recommended abandoning the former government's policy of caution and encouraged easing a ban on direct trade and transport links with China. Officials said a favourable response from China was crucial for the recommendations to work. China has long urged Taiwan to scrap the bans on direct trade and transport links, but has insisted the island first acknowledge Beijing's "one-China" policy before progress can be made on other initiatives. U.S. singer and actress Aaliyah has been killed along with seven other people when a small Cessna passenger plane crashed and burst into flames shortly after taking off from an island in the Bahamas bound for Miami. The singer, whose full name was Aaliyah Haughton, was returning to the United States after completing filming of a music video in the Abaco islands. R&B sensation Aaliyah sold a million copies of her debut album "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number" in 1994 and more recently "Try Again" earned her a Grammy nomination for best female R&B vocalist. One of her latest projects was to have been an appearance in a sequel to the cult movie "The Matrix." 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