Middle Orient

GAZA – Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip have barred supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction from holding an anniversary rally for the movement next week, Hamas officials said on Saturday.

DUBAI  – Ten Saudis returned home on Saturday from detention in the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay where al Qaeda militants are held, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

KARACHI – Three supporters of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto were shot dead on Saturday, one by masked gunmen and two others by security forces as a mob tried to force itself into an oilfield, police said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Al Qaeda-linked Pakistani militant Baitullah Mehsud was not involved in the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said on Saturday, and blamed the government for killing her.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iran’s Agriculture Minister Mohammad Reza Eskandari and Turkish Foreign Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen discussed issues of mutual interest in Ankara.

A parked car bomb in central Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded 66 on Friday, police said.

Israeli troops killed a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s security force near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, Palestinian security sources and the army said.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iraq said on Thursday it had not repudiated a 32-year-old border treaty with Iran, despite a declaration by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that the accord was now void.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) A Turkish parliamentary delegation headed by AKP MP and foreign relations committee chairman Murat Mercan met with a number of senior Iranian officials here in Tehran this week.

Hamas will not release a captured Israeli soldier unless Israel meets its demand to free nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, including 350 with life sentences, a leader of the Islamist group in Gaza said on Wednesday.