Middle Orient

The foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt postponed until July 25 their first visit to Israel on behalf of the Arab League to revive a long-stalled Arab peace initiative, officials said on Tuesday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Tuesday for an international force in the Gaza Strip, which is now controlled by the rival Hamas movement.

Pakistani troops have cleared the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque compound in Islamabad of fighters after two days of fighting that left more than 60 people dead, the military said. Many questions were unanswered on Wednesday, including the final death toll and whether any women or children had been killed.

Occupation mass media reported that 3 kafirs from “Russian Interior Ministry troops” were killed and another five were wounded in the gun battle in the Vedeno district of CRI.

A suicide car bomb has killed at least eight people and wounded 30 near an Algerian military barracks southeast of the capital. The attack occurred on Wednesday in the town of Lakhdaria, about 120km southeast of Algiers in the region of Kabylie, local media and witnesses reported.

Having secured the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston on July 4th, Hamas officials are now moving discreetly to negotiate freedom for another Gaza hostage — Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Iraq says Turkey has 140,000 soldiers along its border, prompting fears of an incursion against Kurdish guerrillas.

Egyptian officials rule out any possibility for Fatah and Hamas to resume talks soon, the state-owned news agency said Tuesday as Egyptian security forces deployed reinforcements along the border with the Gaza Strip.

Cairo vehemently opposes the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip, Egypt’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told a delegation of MKs from the left-wing Meretz party in Cairo Sunday.

The head of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has told the BBC that fighting the insurgency is a “long term endeavour” which could take decades.