Middle Orient

Five UN peacekeepers were killed by a car bomb in southern Lebanon on Sunday, further rattling security as another 11 people died in fighting with Islamists in the north.

Israel agreed on Sunday to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ new government, a move Hamas dismissed as “bribery” to fuel tensions with Islamists controlling Gaza.

King Abdullah on Sunday called for a “clear timeline” for resuming Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, a Royal Court statement said.

31 de români din Fâşia Gaza, alungaÅ£i de conflictul armat de acolo, s-au întors în Å£ară în această dimineaţă. Este vorba de 11 femei, 19 copii ÅŸi un bărbat. După un drum de 18 ore, cetăţenii români evacuaÅ£i din Făşia Gaza au ajuns pe Aeroportul InternaÅ£ional Henri Coandă cu o …

The bloody takeover of Gaza by Hamas was a “coup against legitimacy”, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Saturday, two days before he hosts a regional summit seen as an attempt to isolate the Islamist group.

Iraqi officials say a US-backed draft oil law will soon be returned to the Cabinet for approval after Kurds agreed to a compromise revenue-sharing measure. But they said many key sticking points remain unresolved — and not even addressed — in the watered-down legislation.

A dispute over compensation is holding up a deal in the case of six foreign medics sentenced to death in Libya for infecting children with the AIDS virus, the children’s families said Friday.

The Iraqi high tribunal is set to give its verdict on Sunday on six former aides of Saddam Hussein accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurdish villagers during a 1988 military campaign in northern Iraq.

Roadside bombs killed seven American troops in Iraq on Saturday, including four in a single strike outside Baghdad, the military said, as US and Iraqi troops captured two senior Al Qaeda gunmen in northern Iraq.

The failure of the latest Arab League mission to get Lebanon’s Western-backed government and the Iran- and Syria-supported opposition to talk together shows that outsiders control the country’s destiny, analysts said on Saturday.