Middle Orient

Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the blasts were part of a new security offensive against militants in the capital. A US military spokeswoman said she had no details on the blasts.

Iraq has announced an initial conference of world and regional powers will be held in Baghdad on March 10 to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq.

Visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised Thursday in Khartoum that his country would stand on the side of Sudan in the latter’s confrontation with what he called the “Western pressures”.

A roadside bomb exploded Thursday alongside the convoy of a prominent Shiite cleric whose high-level political ties have made him the target of past assassination attempts. The imam was not injured, but several bodyguards were wounded.

China hopes Iran would address the international community’s concern over its nuclear issue positively, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said yesterday.

Those who sign up will be shipped off to villages with names like Tikrit and Fallujah, where they’ll don dishdashas and head scarves and live in crowded huts surrounded by rumbling tanks and the crackle of machine guns. Their neighbors will be Shiites and Sunnis, soldiers and insurgents.

WASHINGTON – After starting the 110th Congress with a big antiwar mandate, Democrats are scrambling to find a way forward on an issue that is driving wedges deep into their new majority.

A car bomb ripped through a bustling shopping district in a religiously mixed neighborhood of western Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding about 20 as the U.S.-Iraqi security operation entered its third week.

Israel has denied seeking permission from the United States to fly warplanes over Iraq as part of its preparations to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. In a statement to Israel Radio on Sunday, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh denied such arrangements existed and accused “international authorities who prefer to avoid dealing …

Israeli troops disguised as Palestinians killed an Islamic Jihad commander and two activists in Jenin on Wednesday in a new crackdown in the north of the occupied West Bank.