Middle Orient

At least 20 illegal migrants died when a boat carrying about 70 people sank off the Turkish Aegean coast on Saturday, authorities said on Monday.

Seven inmates in an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail were killed in a mortar attack in central Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi security official said.

A rocket attack sparked a big fire at a domestic oil refinery in southern Baghdad on Monday but the plant was still operating, Iraqi police and officials said.

U.S. President George W. Bush, seeking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians before he leaves office, will visit the Middle East in early January, the White House said. 

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s government is considering a new law to encourage members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to leave the separatist guerrilla group, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Sunday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s presidential election was postponed again on Friday, despite rival leaders’ agreement in principle to give the post to army chief Michel Suleiman in a step that would ease the country’s deep political crisis.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s ruling AK Party, which has Islamist roots, signaled on Friday it plans to ease a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities under a new draft constitution.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A female suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people and a suicide car bomb killed 10 in two attacks in Iraq’s most restive province northeast of Baghdad on Friday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A Shi’ite lawmaker and the head of Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc shouted accusations at each other in parliament on Thursday, underscoring deep sectarian divisions just days after Sunnis ended a brief boycott of the legislature.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The air still smelled unmistakably of blood and the street was still strewn with shredded store mannequins and clothes.