Middle Orient

AL FASHER — Awatef Ahmed Isaac is something of a celebrity in this dusty Darfur town where the handwritten dispatches she pins to the same tree each week are the main source of independent news.

GORUMLU (Reuters) — Turkey sent more tanks to its border with Iraq on Wednesday in a military buildup that is fuelling US concern about a possible incursion into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels.

BEIRUT (AP) — Supporters of slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri cheered and wept — and some even danced in the streets — late Wednesday to celebrate the UN Security Council approval of the international tribunal to prosecute suspects in his killing.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of Iraqi and US troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum Wednesday and conducted raids in an apparent effort to find five British citizens who Iraqi officials believed were abducted by the Shiite Mehdi Army.

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Two Hamas fighters were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday as the government vowed to keep up attacks on activists to try to stamp out persistent rocket fire.

BEIRUT — “Gone fishing” says the notice on the door of a club in a usually bustling Beirut bar district which has been deserted since bomb attacks last week.

WASHINGTON — Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President George W. Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — President George W. Bush imposed new US sanctions on Sudan on Tuesday and sought support for an international arms embargo out of frustration at Sudan’s refusal to end what he called a genocide in Darfur.

RAMALLAH — Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters battled it out for over 45 minutes in Ramallah yesterday evening, when a large contingent of Israeli soldiers entered the West Bank city in what the Israeli army said was an “arrest operation”.

BEIRUT (AP) — Heavy clashes between the army and Al Qaeda-linked gunmen broke a weeklong truce Tuesday as Lebanon’s government stressed its determination to defeat the group but said it was willing to give mediation a chance to end the fighting at a Palestinian refugee camp.