Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AFP) — At least 14 more American troops were killed in Iraq over the weekend, the military said Sunday, as a former US commander warned victory in the intractable conflict was now beyond reach.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday brushed off a Hamas ceasefire feeler, pledging instead to press ahead with Israel’s campaign against Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip and stop their daily rocket fire.

NAHR BARED (AFP) — Lebanese troops pounded Islamists holed up in a refugee camp throughout Sunday as the deadly standoff entered its third week with both sides vowing to fight to the end.

Fighting has spread to a second Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon after an army checkpoint near Ain al-Hilweh in the south was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. The attack and ensuing gunfights wounded five people and came as troops continued their latest assault against Fatah al-Islam fighters at Nahr al-Bared in …

CIZRE, Turkey (AP) — The top commander of the Kurdish rebel group PKK said his forces would resist any Turkish military incursion aimed at destroying rebel bases in northern Iraq, a news agency reported Saturday.

NABLUS (Reuters) — Israeli undercover forces killed a Palestinian shopkeeper and wounded his brother on Saturday during an apparent attempt to shoot two gunmen in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security officials said.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Unidentified gunmen shot dead a local Al Qaeda leader in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Saturday, police said, as fighting between rival Sunni factions undermined the insurgency.

BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora repeated a warning on Saturday to Islamist gunmen holed up in a northern refugee camp that they must surrender or be crushed, as intense fighting continued to rage.

The Lebanese army has continued to shell the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as Fatah al-Islam fighters hiding inside vow to fight to the last man.  

In Israel, there is “no effective barrier – not legal and certainly not ethical – that stands in the way of using torture,” concluded a recent report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI).