(Reuters) -Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted to search for the bodies of deceased hostages beyond the "yellow line" demarcating the Israeli military's pullback in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Sunday.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Aidan Lewis)

Israel insisted on Sunday that it will maintain control of security inside Gaza despite signing up to a US-brokered ceasefire that foresees the deployment of an international security force.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers Israel would decide for itself where and when to strike its foes and which countries would be allowed to send troops to police the truce.

(Reuters) -Austria's Chancellor Christian Stocker has firmly rejected any suggestion of banning Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest as his country prepares to host the next edition of the competition in 2026.

"I would consider it a fatal mistake to exclude Israel," Stocker was quoted as saying in an interview with German news agency dpa published on Sunday, Austria's National Day.

"Based on our history alone, I would never be in favour of that," he added, in reference to Austria's shared responsibility for crimes committed during the Holocaust in World War Two.

With no shoes to protect their tiny dust-covered feet, Hiam Muqdad's grandchildren toddled unfazed through the bombed-out ruins of their Gaza City neighbourhood in search of clean water.

Clutching large black buckets and their grandmother's hand, the infant trio seemed not to notice the scars left by two years of war, barely registering the enormous piles of rubble, warped metal and toppled buildings lining their path.

Muqdad, 62, told AFP she went out every morning with the children to search for water, sometimes finding enough for a few days and sometimes not at all.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that as a sovereign state, Israel would determine its security policy and which foreign forces to work with.

"We control our own security and we have made clear to international forces that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us — and that is how we act and will continue to act," Netanyahu said at the outset of a cabinet meeting.

"This is, of course, accepted by the United States, as its most senior representatives expressed in recent days."

BASRA,Iraq (Reuters) -At least two workers were killed in an oil pipeline fire in Iraq's Zubair oilfield on Sunday, oilfield officials said.

There was no impact on oil flows, they said, with throughput currently at 400,000 barrels per day.

The blaze, which also seriously wounded five workers, erupted while a group of workers were conducting welding operations near the pipeline, the officials said.

Firefighters were working to extinguish the fire, which broke out on a section of the pipeline that transports crude oil from the Zubair field to nearby storage tanks.

(Reuters) -The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group said on Sunday it was withdrawing from Turkey as part of a disarmament process it is coordinating with the government, and pressed Ankara for concrete measures to move the process along.

The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, decided in May to disarm and disband after a call to end its armed struggle from its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan. The fighting has killed more than 40,000 people.

The Kurdish militant PKK began withdrawing all of its forces from Turkish soil to northern Iraq on Sunday, while urging Ankara to release its jailed leader to ensure the success of the peace process.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) formally renounced its armed struggle against Turkey in May, drawing a line under four decades of violence that had claimed some 50,000 lives.

With no majority in parliament and surrounded by allies outraged by his acceptance of a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have set his sights on Israel's next elections.

A political phoenix, Netanyahu is the country's longest-serving prime minister, has been its dominant political figure for decades and heads one of the most right-wing coalitions in Israel's history.

KUALA LUMPUR Reuters) -Asia's youngest nation East Timor became the 11th member of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN at its summit on Sunday after being signed in by leaders of member states.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff and Danial Azhar; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by John Mair)