Middle Orient

RAMALLAH — For most Palestinians, black-hooded gunmen have long been respected symbols of resistance against Israeli occupation.

BEIJING (Reuters) — China hit back at critics of its policy on Sudan on Thursday, saying forcing UN troops on Khartoum would complicate efforts to resolve the Darfur crisis and calling attempts to link its policies there with the Olympics “ridiculous”.

ANKARA (AP) — Turkey has declared several areas near the border with Iraq to be “temporary security zones” in a sign of increasing activity by the military in its campaign against Kurdish rebels.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — The “Quartet” of international Mideast mediators stepped into the void, signalling it would invite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for talks in Cairo, after a summit was called off at the last minute.

A BOMB WENT off near a Christian town north of Beirut on Thursday, in the latest string of explosions that have shaken Lebanon since fighting erupted between army troops and Islamists in a northern refugee camp three weeks ago.

The general picked by the US president to turn things around in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has admitted that he had misgivings about the so-called surge in Iraq and that results so far have been “mixed”.

In occupied Kashmir, the Chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has reiterated Kashmiris’ pledge to take their struggle to its logical end. 

On the leeward side of Ait al-Shaab, a village in south Lebanon, the war between Hizbullah and Israel caused many sacrifices. Months later, both tears and triumph are plentiful.

There was never any doubt that the young Iraqi Shiite with green eyes and close-cropped beard would pick up arms when called to fight by Moqtada al-Sadr.

BEKAA: The Lebanese Army confiscated a truckload of weapons belonging to Hizbullah in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, security sources said Wednesday. The truck, which was seized late Tuesday at a random army checkpoint at Douriss, near Baalbek, contained rockets, machine guns, assault rifles and ammunition for the weapons.