Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AP) — US attack helicopters chattered overhead Wednesday as American and Iraqi troops fought a ferocious daylong battle with fighters who fired heavy weapons from concrete high-rises in a stronghold just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee dismissed President George W. Bush’s plans to increase troops strength in Iraq on Wednesday as “not in the national interest”, an unusual wartime repudiation of the commander in chief.

BEIRUT (AP) — Opposition protesters burned tyres and cars in the streets and clashed with government supporters, paralysing Beirut and areas across Lebanon on Tuesday in the worst violence yet in the pro-Iranian Hizbollah’s campaign to topple US-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

RAMALLAH — Fateh and Hamas met again in Gaza last night to discuss forming a unity government while a number of incidents across the occupied Palestinian territory provided ample evidence of the state of lawlessness Palestinians are struggling with.

US President George W. Bush prepared to urge opponents in Congress on Tuesday to back sending thousands more troops to Iraq, as the UN envoy in the country said it was “sliding into the abyss of sectarianism”. A day after bombers killed 88 people in Baghdad’s bloodiest attack this year, …

DUBAI (AFP) — Osama Ben Laden’s right-hand man Ayman Zawahiri on Tuesday mocked US President George W. Bush’s plan to send extra troops to Iraq, saying he should send his entire army to be annihilated.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s power struggle has resurrected an old rivalry between Christian leaders whose followers clashed on Tuesday during some of the worst unrest since a 1975-1990 civil war.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mualem strongly rejected the alleged secret talks between Damascus and Tel Aviv, stressing that his country will never attend behind-the-scene negotiations with any other state.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber crashed his car into a busy central Baghdad market Monday just seconds after another car bomb tore through the stalls where vendors were hawking DVDs and used clothing, leaving behind a scene of torment, pools of blood and at least 100 people dead.

RAMALLAH — Talks on a Palestinian unity government will continue today in Gaza, after the Damascus meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal ended inconclusively but on a positive note.