Middle Orient News

Lebanese troops advanced towards fortified positions of Islamist militants at a Palestinian refugee camp on Wednesday in what political sources said was the start of a final assault to root out the gunmen.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who faced the death penalty in Libya until last week, were pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov on Tuesday (July 24th), less than an hour after they landed in Sofia.

Six foreign medics sentenced to death then life imprisonment in Libya in a controversial AIDS case were free in the Bulgarian capital Tuesday after the EU struck a multi-million-dollar financial and trade deal with Tripoli.

Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib and his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit are expected in Israel today for talks to activate an Arab peace initiative.

KING ABDULLAH on Tuesday discussed with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice international efforts to move forward peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Military activity in Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia significantly increased. According to official data, 24 kafir and munafiqs were eliminated and wounded in one day in Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV were freed on Tuesday after a partnership deal between Tripoli and the European Union ended their eight-year ordeal.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, making his first public comments as the international community’s Mideast peace envoy, urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders Tuesday to take advantage of a new “sense of possibility” in the region.

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber has killed at least 26 people and wounded about 70 others in the southern town of Hillah.

Hidden away in a concrete loading bay around the side of a major Cairo postal office, about 100 workers in their 20s and 30s gather among a forest of placards.