Middle Orient

GENEVA – The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday demanded Israel lift its week-long blockade of Gaza, rebuking the Jewish state for violations in the Palestinian territories for the third time since it was set up in 2006.

BAGHDAD – The death toll from a blast in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday had risen to 36 from 20, with another 169 people wounded, police said on Thursday.

CAIRO – The Islamist movement Hamas blew a hole in the Egyptian government’s policy on the border with the Gaza Strip when it knocked down the border wall and let tens of thousands of Palestinians pour into Egypt.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – A police officer and two militants were killed in fighting during raids on suspected radical Islamist cells in southeast Turkey, police sources said on Thursday.

JERUSALEM – Hamas has exposed Israel’s inability to rein in the Gaza Strip, proving it holds the power to blow open the border and turn a crippling Israeli blockade into a public relations nightmare for the Jewish state.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip – Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after militants blew up a border wall, and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply because of an Israeli blockade.

BAGHDAD – The police chief of Mosul was seriously wounded in an explosion on Thursday as he toured the scene of a huge blast a day earlier which had killed at least 20 people in the northern Iraqi city, police said.

TEHRAN (FNA) Russia dispatched the sixth batch of nuclear fuel on Thursday to Iran’s first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr, leaving just two more to complete the total consignment.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s incoming Ambassador to Armenia Seyed Ali Saghaiyan submitted his credentials to Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian in a meeting in Yerevan on Wednesday.

TEHRAN (FNA) An Iranian governmental delegation started a visit to Bolivia on Wednesday to analyze the development of bilateral agreements in the energy sector.