Last night, Dubai police were searching for another six people alleged to have been involved in the sensational assassination of top Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhoub last month. The new search has brought the number of people, widely suspected to have been working for Israel's security agency Mossad, involved in the killing to 17. Six of the 11 suspects already identified by police were carrying fake British passports, a disclosure which has sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

British government sources dismiss as “nonsense” any advance foreknowledge about a Mossad plan to assassinate a top official of Hamas in Dubai last month. A member of the Israeli intelligence service claimed earlier that MI6 and the British Foreign Office were tipped off that Mossad agents were going to carry out an ‘overseas operation’ using fake British passports.

Five men were being questioned by Russian authorities last night after a nightclub fire that killed at least 112 people. Investigators believe the blaze was caused by fireworks lighting up a music stage at the Lame Horse venue in Perm, an industrial city 900 miles from Moscow in the Ural Mountains. Sparks from a "pyrotechnic fountain" ignited a ceiling plastered with willow twigs, decorations meant to create a rustic feel inside the venue.

Egyptian security agents foiled a would-be hijacker who threatened the crew with the plastic knife provided for his in-flight meal. The Sudanese man, who the police identified as Mohammed Hamad Nourain, 26, was reportedly high on cocaine when we unsuccessfully attempted to commandeer the EgyptAir flight from Istanbul to Cairo.