Middle Orient News

TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran will make the United States “regret” its detention of five Iranians in Iraq since early this year, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The UN Security Council gave strong backing to the Lebanese government’s fight against gunmen holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp and reiterated its “deep concern” about mounting evidence that arms are being smuggled across the border from Syria.

ANKARA (AFP) — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday indicated he would resist calls from the influential military for an incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to pursue Turkish Kurd rebels taking refuge there.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Suspected Sunni insurgents bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday — the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries.

GAZA (Reuters) — Palestinians battled across Gaza on Tuesday in what looked ever more like civil war as the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas rounded on those of the Islamist prime minister and their unity government headed for collapse.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Red Cross pledged Tuesday to continue assistance in a battle-scarred Palestinian refugee camp despite the death of two volunteers as Lebanese troops, backed by heavy artillery barrages, chipped away at Islamists barricaded in dense neighbourhoods still housing thousands of civilians.

AMMAN (JT) — Jordan and Egypt on Tuesday urged Palestinian factions to end infighting and work on enhancing their unity.

Fatah says it is suspending participation in the three-month old unity government until street battles in Gaza end. The announcement on Tuesday night came at the end of one of the bloodiest days of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip. The toll in the past 24 hours reached 27, with …

Up to 11,000 British soldiers have deserted the Army fearing they could be deployed in violence-racked Iraq amid a steady rise in the number of soldiers going Absent Without Leave (AWOL) in the occupied country, British Ministry of Defense figures show.

Heavy fighting has continued throughout the day in Gaza after militants of the Palestinian group Hamas attacked posts held by their Fatah faction rivals.