Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Nineteen people have been killed and 116 wounded in clashes between security forces and militants in eastern Baghdad’s Sadr City district in the past 24 hours, the two hospitals in the Shi’ite slum said on Saturday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces have detained a man suspected of being the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq after a captured associate led them to him sleeping in a house in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said on Friday.

(Reuters) – Following are security developments in Iraq at 9:15 a.m. EDT on Friday. BAGHDAD – U.S. forces killed 14 militants in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City on Thursday, the military said. Hospitals in Sadr City said they had received four bodies and 51 wounded. Children were among those …

* Iraq govt agrees truce with Sadr bloc – Sadr spokesman * Eight militants killed in Baghdad – U.S. military BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s government has agreed a truce with the movement of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to end weeks of fighting in eastern Baghdad between Shi’ite militia and security …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s government has agreed a truce with the movement of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to end weeks of clashes in Baghdad between Shi’ite gunmen and security forces, a spokesman for the cleric said on Saturday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called on the international community to take up a fair approach towards Iran’s nuclear issue and create a more conducive climate for Iran to give reassurances on its nuclear program.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran blasted NATO on Wednesday for being “indifferent” towards Afghanistan’s growing drugs problem and called on European states to help Tehran fight smuggling of heroin and other narcotics from its eastern neighbor.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Tehran has protested to Baghdad over reports that Iraq had backed the United Arab Emirates’ baseless claims on Iran’s indispensible islands of the Greater Tunb, the Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s gasoline production capacity will rise 70,000 barrels a day following the launch of operation of Tabriz’s Shahriar refinery, an official said.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Prospects for another round of talks soon between Iranian and US officials proved to be dim after Iraq’s foreign minister said Wednesday that such a meeting is unlikely to go ahead due to increasing frictions between the two sides.