Middle Orient

The Observer – A British company has been closed down after being caught in an apparent attempt to sell black-market weapons-grade uranium to Iran and Sudan, The Observer can reveal.

NAIROBI — “We prefer hijacking ships to being on land because that way we can feed ourselves,” pirate Abdulahi Hasan Afdhub told AFP by satellite phone from a hijacked Taiwanese ship in Somali waters.

BAGHDAD — The rubble-filled streets of the southwestern Baghdad neighbourhood of Bayaa were filled with young men waving Shiite flags and dancing to the pulsating beat of a popular song.

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — Kuwait opposition MPs filed a request on Sunday to grill Oil Minister Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al Sabah over controversial press statements and allegations of financial and administrative violations.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) — Two senior European officials were on their way to Libya on Sunday to try to solve the case of six foreign medics sentenced to death for deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV, the children’s families said.

TEHRAN (AP)— Iran’s confirmation Sunday that it has detained a fourth Iranian-American — this one a peace activist from California — seems certain to further rile relations between the two countries, already tense over Iran’s nuclear programme.

NAHR BARED (AFP) — Lebanese soldiers and diehard Islamist gunmen entrenched in a refugee camp fought gunbattles on Sunday after at least 17 people were killed in an operation to storm rebel positions.

BAGHDAD (AP) — An apparent suicide car bomber took aim at a US convoy carrying demolition experts on Sunday, collapsing a major highway overpass south of Baghdad and trapping American soldiers in the rubble.

GAZA (Reuters) — Rival Palestinian factions battled in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, raising the weekend death toll to at least three and 39 injured in the fiercest internal fighting since a ceasefire was declared nearly a month ago.

A zionist occupant’s helicopter has fired missiles at Islamic Jihad offices in Gaza City, hours after the organisation claimed responsibility for a cross- border raid into the zionist occupying land of Palestine.