DAMASCUS (AFP) — Syrian forces captured two “terrorists” and a security officer was killed Monday in a dawn clash with extremists who included former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein, official media said. The gunbattle on Mount Qassioun overlooking the Syrian capital was the second such firefight with extremists in recent days …

BEIRUT (Reuters) — Lebanon’s pro-Syrian president bowed to the will of the majority on Thursday and appointed an anti-Syria former minister to head the first government to take office without Syrian troops in the country for 30 years. Highlighting the challenges facing the next government, Israeli troops shot at Hizbollah …

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Sudanese Islamist opposition leader Hassan Turabi was freed from jail Thursday, 15 months after his arrest over an alleged coup plot, and immediately lashed out at the lack of freedom in his country.

MANAMA (AP) — Bahrain’s first independent rights body called on Thursday for the government to scrap a royal decree granting immunity to those involved in the unrest of the 1990s, and to reform the tiny Gulf kingdom’s constitution to give more political power to the people.

BOSTON — Iraq’s archaeological sites, despite protection efforts, are so ravaged by looters that the pillaging has landed the entire embattled nation on a list of the world’s 100 most endangered cultural sites. Two years after the US-led invasion of Iraq and a widely publicised break-in at the Baghdad Museum, …

ALGIERS (Reuters) — An Algerian court on Wednesday sentenced to 10 years in prison an Algerian described by Britain as a key conspirator in an Al Qaeda plot to launch attacks in London using ricin and other poisons, court officials said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations of some former American hostages who say they believe that Iran’s president-elect was one of their captors in the late 1970s. “I think the news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions …

Israel says no evidence soldiers kidnapped in West Bank Israeli forces on Thursday stormed a Gaza Strip settlers’ hotel where dozens of Jewish extremists holed up, preparing to disrupt this summer’s Israeli withdrawal, in a quick operation that could serve as a blueprint for the pullout itself.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — US President George W. Bush approved dozens of changes at US spy agencies on Wednesday to better combat weapons of mass destruction, including creating a new centre and moving FBI counterterrorism and intelligence operations into a new unit.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Baghdad’s mayor decried the capital’s crumbling infrastructure and its inability to supply enough water to its residents, threatening Thursday to resign if the government fails to provide the funds he needs to improve utilities. Alaa Mahmoud Timimi’s threat came as the US military claimed some success over …