Middle Orient

Six foreign medics sentenced to death then life imprisonment in Libya in a controversial AIDS case were free in the Bulgarian capital Tuesday after the EU struck a multi-million-dollar financial and trade deal with Tripoli.

Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib and his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit are expected in Israel today for talks to activate an Arab peace initiative.

KING ABDULLAH on Tuesday discussed with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice international efforts to move forward peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Military activity in Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia significantly increased. According to official data, 24 kafir and munafiqs were eliminated and wounded in one day in Chechnya and Ingushetia.

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.