Thousands fled their homes in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on May 11 after at least 35 people were killed over the weekend, while masked Islamist fighters were seen heading toward the city. People fled in taxis and pickup trucks stacked with suitcases, mattresses, furniture and other belongings. The local Elman Human Rights Organization said 17,200 people had fled the capital since Saturday May 9. (AP, May 11)

Sri Lankan government forces are accused of shelling a hospital, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 50 others. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and medical sources said the makeshift hospital in Mullivaikal was hit by artillery fire early on May 12. Civilians who had been injured in attacks over the weekend were among the dead. The claims are impossible to verify as reporters and aid groups are banned from the area of fighting.

Among the tens of thousands who have fled their homes in Swat Valley and the adjacent Buner district of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are about 2,000 Sikhs who have taken refuge in a Sikh shrine in Hasanabdal, a town about 50 kilometers from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. According to Gulbeer Singh, head priest at the Sri Punja Sahib shrine, about 207 families from Buner District and 96 from Swat had taken refuge there. The number of Sikh internally displaced persons (IDPs), he said, is roughly 2,000.

US Nuremberg trials prosecutor Henry King Jr. died May 9 from cancer at the age of 89. King, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, was one of the last three surviving Nuremberg prosecutors, and at 29 was the youngest US prosecutor at Nuremberg at the time of the trials. King was later instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the new international tribunal that now prosecutes suspected war criminals.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said May 12 that President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will discuss a possible peace treaty between the two nations at a G8 summit in Italy in July. Putin spoke at a news conference following talks with Japanese officials during his visit to Japan.

US journalist Roxana Saberi was released from prison May 11 after an Iranian appeals court reduced her eight-year term for espionage to two years and then suspended the sentence. According to statements from Saberi's lawyer, the court determined that the espionage charge was not valid since the US is not an enemy government, but could not ignore that the nature of Saberi's actions had posed a threat to Iranian national security. Saberi had appealed her conviction for espionage in late April, and she had been on a hunger strike in protest of her imprisonment. (Jurist, May 11)

The US announced May 11 the replacement of its commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Lt.-Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former chief of Pentagon special operations forces. "Our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates. (AlJazeera, May 11)

An official for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs May 7 confirmed the government's intention to appeal a Federal Court ruling directing Ottawa to firmly push for the repatriation of Canadian Guantánamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr. In a brief statement obtained by the Toronto Star, the official emphasized Prime Minister Stephen Harper's belief that the severity of the crimes allegedly committed by Khadr call for a judicial rather than a political process.