Middle Orient News

Syria has expressed readiness to help curb Middle East instability in exchange for peace with Israel but will not easily give up its alliance with Iran as demanded by the Jewish state.

A roadside bomb explosion in the Somali capital on Tuesday killed five women and a man and wounded nine other people, witnesses said.

Iraqi commandos raided the home of a Sunni Cabinet member Tuesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest, prompting outrage from Sunni politicians and dealing another blow to US-backed reconciliation efforts within the Shiite-led government.

An Israeli official on Tuesday promised “dramatic” action to improve life in the West Bank, and Palestinians expressed optimism that a high profile summit in Egypt a day earlier could lead to a resumption of long stalled peace talks.

Ishmael Haniya, premier of the PA caretaker government, on Tuesday affirmed that the Israeli policy of Premier Ehud Olmert aimed at driving a wedge in Palestinian national lines.

At least 10 people have died and thousands have fled their homes as a powerful tropical cyclone brought torrential rains and high winds to Pakistan’s Arabian sea coast.

Egypt has decided to resume its efforts to release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, a senior Egyptian government official here told The Jerusalem Post Monday.

Al Qaeda’s number two urged all Muslims in a tape posted on Monday to support the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in its battles with President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel, which he said was planning to invade Gaza.

Lebanon linked a bomb attack that killed six UN peacekeepers in the south of the country to a deadly standoff between Al Qaeda-inspired gunmen and the army in the north where two more soldiers were shot dead on Monday.

A suicide bomber killed six Iraqi tribal leaders opposed to Al Qaeda when he blew himself up at a busy Baghdad hotel, in one of four attacks on Monday that killed 50 people in all, police said.