World Week Ahead: Royal Wedding; Libya Attack; Syria Crackdown

WORLD -- April 25, 2011 at 9:49 AM EDT

World Week Ahead: Royal Wedding; Libya Attack; Syria Crackdown

By: Larisa Epatko and Michael D. Mosettig

After months of non-stop crises and economic woes around the world, Britons -- and an expected millions of television viewers globally -- get a respite Friday with the happy event of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding.

Read: We've rounded up some resources for wedding enthusiasts ahead of our coverage on Friday.

Now back to the other news:

Rubble from NATO airstrike on Gadhafi compound in Tripoli (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)

LIBYA | NATO airplanes bombed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's compound early Monday, destroying a building during the stepped-up air campaign.

The whereabouts of Gadhafi at the time of the attack were unclear. We'll cover all developments on-air and online.

Read: Reuters has a map of the Libya conflict, plotting NATO strikes and showing who's in control of various cities.

Watch: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spoke to CNN from Cairo, Egypt, after he met with Libyan opposition members in Benghazi:

Editor's Note: James Foley, a freelance contributor to our partner news organization GlobalPost, called his mother in New Hampshire on Saturday, his first communication since his April 5 capture by forces loyal to Gadhafi.

He told her from a detention facility in Tripoli that he was being treated well and is not injured. His call came days after another journalist, Claire Morgana Gillis, who was picked up with Foley, called her parents. Gillis is being held in a women's detention center in Tripoli. Human Rights Watch reports that 15 foreign and Libyan journalists are being detained or are missing in Libya.

SYRIA | Syria's government crackdown on demonstrators continued Monday when troops and security forces in tanks and armored vehicles moved into the southern city of Daraa, reportedly killing at least five people. Clashes between government forces and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad have lasted five weeks.

Jordanian security officials said Syria has closed the border with Jordan near Daraa to prevent people from leaving the country.

Read: The Guardian is providing live updates on Syria, Libya and other activity in the Middle East.

WIKILEAKS | The web site WikiLeaks has released a cache of classified military documents that provides more information on the detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, Cuba, and the movements of al-Qaida after September 11th.

After 9/11, key members of al-Qaida, centralized in Karachi, Pakistan, returned to Afghanistan to prepare for war, according to reports. The Pentagon described the decision to release the documents as "unfortunate" and said the assessments of the detainees were incomplete.

Click: A New York Times interactive sorts the documents connected to 779 people who have been held at Guantanamo since 2002.

Watch: We took a tour of the prison at Guantanamo in 2010 and reported on how the inmates live.

View all of our international news on World and follow us on Twitter.

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