Middle Orient

TYRE — Hussein Ali Ayoub was washing his face one morning in his border village of Maroun Ras in southern Lebanon when the ceiling suddenly collapsed.

JANDIRES, Syria — Grief and shock swept through this small, impoverished village in northwestern Syria Saturday as it buried 23 of its people who were killed when Israeli missiles slammed into a refrigerated warehouse just across the border in Lebanon.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Hizbollah’s sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the group’s deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel’s most advanced tanks.

DIYARBAKIR (AFP) — Turkey began Saturday building a major dam on the Tigris River, overriding fierce criticism that the project will devastate a millenia-old historic site and displace thousands of Kurds.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Months of bombings and shootings had left US soldiers of every rank in the army’s 502nd Infantry Regiment emotionally ragged and strained. They had lost dozens of their colleagues — more than most units.

Secretary General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah Hassan Nasrollah has said that the Zionist regime has been caught off guard by Hezbullah resistance fighters on the battlefield, forcing the Zionist troopers to flee.

The US Central Intelligence Agency agents have visited Estonia within the framework of the November NATO summit due to take place in Riga, Latvia, daily SL Ohtuleht writes today. The CIA aircraft Boeing 737-300 with an identification number S0508 spent three days in the airport of Tallinn. 

Hizbollah fighters killed eight people in a rocket barrage on Israel and three Israeli soldiers in clashes in Lebanon on Thursday, the deadliest day of the war for Israel in 23 days of fighting. As world powers struggled to agree on a UN resolution to end the fighting, both sides …

LONDON — British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s stance on the Lebanon crisis has deepened divisions in his Labour Party, further weakening his authority and potentially hastening his departure from office. While working furiously to agree a United Nations resolution to resolve the conflict, Blair has refused from its outset to …

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Thousands of Shiites converged on Baghdad ahead of a major demonstration planned for Friday as British and US officials warned that Iraq’s bitter sectarian conflict could push the country into civil war. Shiite protesters were summoned to the capital by radical cleric Moqtada Sadr in order to …