Reuters Middle East Highlights April 30

Reuters Middle East Highlights 1330 GMT April 30-BAGHDAD - The death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq reached a seven month high in April, with the reported deaths of three more soldiers bringing the monthly toll to 47, the highest since last September.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been engaged in intense fighting over the past month with Shi'ite militia fighters in Baghdad's tightly-packed Sadr City slum.

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CAIRO - Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo for talks with Egyptian security officials have agreed to an Egyptian proposal for a truce with Israel starting in the Gaza Strip, state news agency MENA said.

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JERUSALEM - Israeli troops were unable to identify Reuters News cameraman Fadel Shana as a journalist before they fired at him from a tank, the Israeli army said, citing the preliminary results of an investigation.

Shana died while filming on a road in central Gaza on April 16. Five other Palestinians also died in the attack.

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CAIRO - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, responding to unrest over low salaries and high food prices, proposed a salary increase of about 30 percent for public sector employees.

In a May Day speech to trade unionists, he told his government to find the extra revenue it will need to cover the cost, expected to be about 9 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.7 billion) above what it had planned in its draft 2008/9 budget.

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TEHRAN - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed as enemy propaganda criticism of the government for failing to rein in double-digit inflation and said it was tackling Iran's economic problems.

The Islamic Republic's highest authority also made clear Iran would not back down in a nuclear row with the West and said international sanctions had failed to harm the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.

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ANKARA - Turkey's parliament approved a long-awaited revision of a law criticised by the European Union for limiting free speech in the candidate country, but writers and activists say the reform does not go far enough.

The reform to article 301 of the penal code was approved with 250 votes for and 65 against amid fierce criticism from the nationalist opposition.

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ANKARA - Turkey's ruling AK Party said it will not seek more time to prepare its defence against a prosecutor's bid to close it for Islamist activities, in an apparent move to accelerate the court process.

The court case has triggered political instability and unsettled financial markets in Turkey and there had been speculation that the party would seek such an extension to the May 2 deadline to present its defence.

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NOUAKCHOTT - Mauritanian security forces captured eight suspected al Qaeda militants in an early morning sweep, including a hunted fugitive accused of killing four French tourists, officials said.

The Dec. 24 killing of the French tourists and a shooting attack against the Israeli embassy in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott in February raised fears of a rise in Islamic militant violence in the traditionally sleepy Saharan state.

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KHARTOUM - About 1,600 troops will join Darfur's U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in June as part of plans to deploy 80 percent of the force by the end of the year, the head of the mission said.

Reuters Middle East Highlights 1330 GMT April 30