Middle Orient

Six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV were freed on Tuesday after a partnership deal between Tripoli and the European Union ended their eight-year ordeal.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, making his first public comments as the international community’s Mideast peace envoy, urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders Tuesday to take advantage of a new “sense of possibility” in the region.

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber has killed at least 26 people and wounded about 70 others in the southern town of Hillah.

Hidden away in a concrete loading bay around the side of a major Cairo postal office, about 100 workers in their 20s and 30s gather among a forest of placards.

Darfur refugee Adam Abdel Karim, 31, became the latest casualty from the rising tide of those seeking to enter Israel illegally after being shot by increasingly vigilant Egyptian border guards.

Former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz had medical tests after collapsing at a US prison camp but was given a clean bill of health and has been returned to custody, the US military said Saturday.

Turkey warned Saturday that it could send troops into northern Iraq after Sunday’s general elections if talks with Iraqi and US officials fail to produce effective measures against Kurdish rebels based there.

The Lebanese army intensified its shelling Saturday of Islamists fiercely defending their last patch of a Palestinian refugee camp as the death toll on both sides mounts.

The leaders of two important Darfur rebel factions have set difficult conditions for attending a UN-African Union meeting in August in Tanzania to plan for future peace talks.

The US military could take a hint from the advertising world when it comes to building a better image in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study for the Pentagon released this week.