Middle Orient News

A bomb hidden in a box of birds killed 13 people and wounded 57 at a popular pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, police and witnesses said, describing the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in two months.

Iraq is facing a health “catastrophe” in the capital Baghdad, with reports of cholera rising sharply over the past weeks to more than 80 new cases, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

About 60 percent of the foreign militants fighting in Iraq have come from U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Libya, unidentified U.S. military officials said in a newspaper report on Thursday.

Some Western aid groups driven from Iraq in recent years are cautiously coming back, weighing the danger to their staff against the lives they may save among increasingly desperate Iraqis.

An Australian commando was killed in a clash with Taliban militia in Afghanistan on Friday, a day before Australians go to the polls in national elections in which the war in Iraq and Afghanistan will feature.

Al Qaeda fighters killed at least eight police in southern Baghdad on Thursday, raking them with machinegun fire from a stolen Iraqi army vehicle, police said.

Lebanon’s parliament is unlikely to elect a new head of state on Friday in the last few hours of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud’s term, because rival leaders have failed to clinch a deal despite French-led mediation.

 Israel plans to reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip beginning December 2, according to a document submitted Thursday to the Israeli supreme court, its latest move against the Hamas rulers of Gaza.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced Thursday they will meet late next week, shortly before Solana is due to report to the UN Security Council on Tehran’s willingness to freeze uranium enrichment.

With an ebb in the violence in Iraq, the country’s embassy in Damascus is starting to organise free trips for Iraqis who want to return home, an Iraqi diplomat said Wednesday.