Middle Orient

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ministry of Defence has agreed to pay nearly three million pounds ($6 million) in compensation to a group of Iraqi civilians beaten and tortured by British troops in southern Iraq in 2003.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Police detained four suspects and patrolled the high-walled perimeter of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Thursday after 3 policemen and 3 gunmen were killed in what a minister said was a suicide attack.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Kurdish rebels say they will not release three German tourists kidnapped in eastern Turkey until Germany renounces policies against their group, a news agency close to the guerrillas said on Thursday.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s president met with the former head of the armed forces on Thursday amid efforts to ease political tensions over an alleged military coup plot. Turkey was rocked last week by the arrests of two senior retired generals, leading businessmen and journalists — all critical of the …

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas arrested two militants who fired cross-border rockets into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, in the first such detentions since the Islamists and Israel agreed a truce last month, militants said.

GAZA (Reuters) – Three Palestinian students hoping to take up prestigious scholarships to study in the United States despite an Israeli travel ban met U.S. consular officials on Thursday at the Israel-Gaza border for visa interviews.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Kurdish guerrillas have kidnapped three German tourists on a climbing expedition in eastern Turkey, a local governor said on Wednesday. The three had established a camp on Mount Ararat in Agri province as part of a 13-member climbing team when they were seized by Kurdistan Workers Party …

UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s fledgling navy of battered patrol boats is bulking up for a greater role in protecting the country’s economic heart, its offshore oil terminals, officials said. Putting on muscle to protect the two terminals that account for 90 percent of Iraq’s revenues, the tiny navy …

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas leaders plan to hold talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo on the future of a ceasefire with Israel that has been marred by violations since it began nearly three weeks ago. In the latest challenge to the Egyptian-brokered truce, militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired …

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel closed all but one of its border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in response to a mortar attack 24 hours earlier, Israeli officials said. The Jewish state said one mortar shell was fired from Gaza on Monday and landed in southern Israel, causing no …