Middle Orient

TEL AVIV (AFP) — Veteran statesman Shimon Peres was elected president of Israel on Wednesday, finally winning his first vote for top office and crowning a record-breaking career spanning more than half a century.

MALAKAL, Sudan — The pair of white river launches marked with United Nations insignia leapt forward as the sailors opened the throttles, cutting deep trenches into the dark waters of southern Sudan’s Blue Nile.

IN A BOLD BLOW to Iraqi hopes for peace, suspected Al Qaeda bombers toppled the towering minarets of Samarra’s revered Shiite shrine on Wednesday, adding new provocation to old wounds a year after the mosque’s golden dome was destroyed.

A POWERFUL CAR bomb killed anti-Syrian Lebanese politician Walid Eido and nine other people on Wednesday in an attack his colleagues blamed on Damascus, Reuters reported.

In occupied Kashmir, the Srinagar based Human Rights group, Coalition of Civil Society has demanded formation of an International Tribunal for War Crimes to investigate into the gross human rights violations by the Indian armed forces.

A bomb ripped through a vocal anti-Syrian lawmaker’s car near the popular waterfront in the Lebanese capital Wednesday, killing him and nine other people in the latest assassination of a Lebanese opponent of Damascus.

The two minarets of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, have been destroyed by two explosions.

GAZA CITY (CNN) — Rival factions killed more than two dozen people Tuesday in bitter fighting that has left Gaza sliding into chaos, Palestinian officials said.

RAFAH, Egypt, June 13 (Reuters) – About 40 Palestinian security men affiliated to Fatah fled to Egypt on Wednesday to escape violence in the Gaza Strip while dozens of Palestinians massed at the closed border, Egyptian officials said.

GAZA, June 13 (Xinhua) — Egyptian security mediators started a meeting with Hamas officials in Gaza city on Wednesday afternoon as the movement continued battles against rival Fatah.