‘Week may decide fate of Iraq’ BAGHDAD, June 23, (Agencies): The fate of Iraq may be decided over the next week, the top US diplomat said Monday, and largely depends on whether its leaders keep their commitment to meet looming deadlines to seat a new government before a Sunni insurgency …

LONDON, June 23, (Agencies): British security forces will find it impossible to monitor all the estimated 500 jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq after they return home, a former top intelligence official said Monday. Richard Barrett, ex-head of counter-terrorism at the MI6 overseas security agency, told the BBC that authorities …

KABUL, June 25, 2013 (AFP) -Taliban militants targeted the presidential palace and national CIA office in central Kabul on Tuesday morning, with gunfire and explosions erupting at one of the gates of the complex in the Afghan capital. Blasts and gunshots shook the city for an hour after the first …

DUBAI, June 25 (Reuters) – Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the killing of four Shi’ite Egyptians near Cairo, saying such extremism violated the tenets of Islam, state television reported late on Monday. “The Islamic Republic of Iran denounces any act of extremism and violence which contradicts Islam and the tenets of …

Call to protect Gulf internal front amid jihadist blitz Gulf torn  DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, June 19, (AP): Saudi Arabia and other petro-powerhouses of the Gulf for years encouraged a flow of private cash to Sunni rebels in Syria. Now an al-Qaeda breakaway group that benefited from some of that …

COLOMBO, June 19, (AFP): Several hundred Muslim-owned businesses shut down in the Sri Lankan capital on Thursday to protest deadly riots by extremist Buddhists, defying President Mahinda Rajapakse’s plea to stay open. Shops and restaurants in central Colombo were shuttered following the riots in two mainly Muslim coastal resorts popular …

7 security forces and 10 rebels killed in clashes MANILA, Philippines, June 19, (AP): Philippine security forces battled Abu Sayyaf militants in the south on Thursday in fierce clashes that killed seven troops and 10 rebels in the latest confrontation in the insurgency-wracked region, military officials said. Government forces were …

AMMAN, June 19, (AFP): A Jordanian court Thursday reduced the sentence of a Pakistani man who killed his teenaged wife and her alleged lover last year “to cleanse his honour”, a judicial official said. “Amman criminal court today initially condemned the 28-year-old Pakistani to death by hanging but immediately reduced …

SAUDIS IN APPARENT WARNING TO IRAN BAGHDAD, June 18, (AP): Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country’s main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian borderWednesday, trying to blunt a weeklong offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized …

SANAA, June 18, (AFP): The United Nations children’s agency accused Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate of sexually exploiting children, pointing to incidents in the south in 2012 in a report published Tuesday. Al-Qaeda loyalists forced around 100 girls, some as young as 13, to marry its fighters in the southern province of …