Middle Orient

A huge US offensive codenamed “Operation Arrowhead Ripper” is underway in the Iraqi city of Baqubah, as part of extensive American operations aimed at suppressing freedom fighters and Mujahideen groups in Baghdad and areas to the north and south of the capital.

Top Bush administration and Pentagon officials have held intensive consultations with Pakistan’s embattled military regime during the past two weeks with the aim of bolstering the autocratic rule of General Pervez Musharraf and securing increased Pakistani military support in staunching the insurgency against Afghanistan’s US-installed government.

A senior American officer involved in training Iraq’s new security forces is warning against putting too much responsibility on those forces too quickly, as pressure grows in the United States for the start of a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

A video has been released showing kidnapped British Gaza-based journalist Alan Johnston in an apparent suicide bomber explosives belt and warning it will be detonated if an attempt is made to free him by force.

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.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he plans to release 250 jailed members of the Fatah movement led by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Middle East leaders will meet in Egypt on Monday seeking to bolster Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and his new Western-backed cabinet after the bloody seizure of the Gaza Strip by Hamas.

Israel’s prime minister on Monday announced plans to release 250 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and promised to improve life in the West Bank in an attempt to boost Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after the militant group Hamas’ takeover in Gaza.

DUBAI: A man described as a leader of al-Qaeda’s wing in Egypt called for attacks on Israeli and Western targets in the Arab world’s most populous country in support of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

A nuclear engineer at Egypt’s state-run Atomic Energy Agency was convicted by an Egyptian court of spying for Israel on Monday and sentenced to life in prison.