Middle Orient

BASRA (Reuters) — Gunmen clashed on Thursday in the port city of Basra, the hub of Iraq’s great southern oil field that is the source of most of the country’s wealth.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) — The Somali government said on Thursday that Al Qaeda had made a young Islamist commander its leader in Mogadishu as fighting raged for a second day in the coastal capital.

DUBAI — Stung by a mounting number of deaths on increasingly clogged and unsafe roads, the bustling Gulf emirate of Dubai has declared war on reckless drivers.

RAMADI — Crouched around the camera’s high-tech screen, the US Marines watch flames burn the camouflage netting around one of their lookout posts on a nearby roof, just hit by a burst of machinegun fire.

Explosives looted from Iraq munitions sites probably will continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region, a congressional report said Thursday. It said some sites were still not secure more than 3 1/2 years after the war started.

The Saudi-proposed Arab peace initiative could be used as a basis for negotiation between Israel and moderate force in the Arab world, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Thursday.

Iranians residing in Japan celebrated Norouz (New Year) here on Wednesday.

Iran’s representative to an international conference in Russia, Seyed Reza Hashemi, stressed on Thursday on the need to transfer Russia’s remarkable experiences to Iran in the scientific and technological fields.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has recently said that Iran’s ties with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf region was as important to Syria as its bilateral relations with Iran, it was reported here on Thursday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited unsupported children and young adults living in a social welfare complex in southern Tehran on thursday.