Middle Orient

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (June 20th) heard the final appeal of death sentences handed down against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for allegedly infecting children at a Benghazi hospital with HIV.

Egypt’s foreign minister accused Iran of having encouraged Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to seize neighbouring Gaza and said it posed a threat to the Arab world, in remarks published on Wednesday.

In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.

More than a dozen gunmen attacked two police bases in Mogadishu early Wednesday with rocket-propelled grenades, sparking firefights that killed at least two people, witnesses and police said.

The images are shocking even by Iraqi standards: Two dozen skeletal children, some tied to beds, others writhing in their own waste and some appearing, at first glance, to be dead.

TRIPOLI (AFP) — Six foreign medics on death row for infecting Libyan children with the AIDS virus launched a final appeal on Wednesday after more than eight years behind bars for a crime they say they did not commit.

NAHR BARED (AFP) — Lebanese troops bombarded Islamists inside a besieged refugee camp on Wednesday after seizing key outposts in part of the camp a month after the showdown erupted.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States insisted Wednesday it felt a “moral obligation” to resettle vulnerable Iraqis in the face of anger that far too few refugees from the war have been allowed onto US shores.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — US and Iraqi troops stepped up a massive offensive against suspected Al Qaeda strongholds northeast of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 30 alleged insurgents, the US military said.

RAMALLAH (AP) — Addressing the Palestinian people for the first time since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, President Mahmoud Abbas angrily lashed out at the Islamic fighters Wednesday, accusing them of trying to build an “empire of darkness” in Gaza and pledging he would not talk to “murderous terrorists”.