Middle Orient

TEHRAN (FNA) – Iran will hold an exhibition of its products in Pakistan in May with an aim to provide opportunity to its businessmen to introduce their products in the Pakistani market, an Iranian diplomat said on Friday.

GAZA – Hamas called on the European Union on Friday to step up pressure on Israel to lift its economic and military blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Islamist group.

BEIRUT – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Friday to avenge the assassination of his senior commander Imad Moughniyah and threatened to deal Israel a crushing blow if it attacked Lebanon again.

LONDON – Lawyers for five Iraqis have accused British soldiers of mass executions and torture and called for a police investigation into an “atrocious episode” in British army history.

FALLUJA, Iraq – A suicide bomber killed six policemen and wounded nine on Friday when he detonated a vest packed with explosives outside a mosque in Falluja, a mainly Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad, police said.

 A U.S. Marine was killed in a battle with gunmen in western Iraq’s Anbar province, on Thursday, the U.S. military said on Friday.

BAGHDAD – Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr extended his Mehdi Army militia ceasefire by around six months on Friday, according to a statement read out on his behalf in a mosque in Baghdad.

TEHRAN (FNA) – IAEA chief and his deputies have entered a session to make a final decision about an impending report on Iran’s nuclear activities, informed diplomatic sources in the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Western media launched a vast campaign to magnify the very few negative points in an almost entirely positive report by the IAEA chief on Iran to divert world attention from the outcome of the UN’s four-year-long probe which revealed the peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear drive.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Western media ignored a decisive report issued in Vienna on Friday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei on Iran’s nuclear activities, which ended a four-year-long probe into the Islamic Republic’s nuclear drive and activities.