Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Underneath the blazing sun at Baghdad’s Allawi bus station hundreds of families from across Iraq’s sectarian divide await the arrival of the latest batch of freed prisoners in the hope of finding a long-missing relative.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Masked Shiite gunmen rampaged through a tense neighbourhood of west Baghdad on Sunday, dragging Sunnis from their cars, picking them out on the street and killing at least 41 in a dramatic escalation of sectarian violence.

The United States’ global energy-control strategy, it’s now clear to most, was the actual reason for the highly costly regime change in Iraq, euphemistically dubbed “democracy” by Washington. But while it is preoccupied with implanting democracy in the Middle East, the United States is quietly being outflanked in the rush …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Gunmen pulled the deputy electricity minister from his car in a busy Baghdad street on Tuesday, briefly kidnapping him and 19 bodyguards in an attack that underlined the vulnerability of Iraq’s new government.

BAGHDAD — No sooner had US authorities filed rape and murder charges against ex-soldier Steven D. Green than an account of the incident appeared on an Islamist website in the name of an insurgent group, the Mujahedeen Army. It promised “harsh punishment” for the alleged crime.

BEIRUT — This time there are no angry protests in Arab streets or recalls of diplomats — only a low-key bid to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians.

BANJUL (Reuters) — A two-day Africa summit opened in Gambia on Saturday with a call for urgent action to damp down conflicts in Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region, but diplomats said there was little chance of much progress on either issue

DUBAI (Reuters) —  A purported audiotape by Al Qaeda leader Osama Ben Laden warned Iraq’s Shiite majority on Saturday of retaliation over attacks on Sunni Arabs and that his group would fight the United States anywhere in the world.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A huge car bomb exploded Saturday at a bustling outdoor market in a Shiite district of Baghdad, killing at least 66 people and injuring about 100 in the deadliest attack since the new national unity government took office six weeks ago.

The United States invasion of Iraq in March-April 2003, and the occupation of the country since then, has cost more than three thou­sand American lives and many tens of billions of dollars, and has brought death to tens of thousands of Iraqis.