Middle Orient

At least 80 civilians were killed in southern Afghanistan

At least 80 civilians were killed in Nato bombings in southern Afghanistan earlier this week, according to local government officials and witnesses. Nato admitted that it had received credible reports that several civilians were killed in Panjwai but insisted that 48 Taliban fighters had died during the heavy fighting.

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Israel accused of attacking German ship in Lebanon

Germany and Israel are at odds over an incident involving attack on a German naval vessel patrolling the Lebanon coast as part of an international peacekeeping force, reported Reuters. While German Defence Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe says that six Israeli F-16 jets had flown very low over the

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Israel kills 7 in Gaza raid

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in a raid on the Gaza Strip Monday during festivities marking the end of Ramadan, in an operation President Mahmoud Abbas slammed as a “massacre”.

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Hardliner set to join Olmert gov’t

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a bid for political survival, struck an alliance Monday with a tough-talking politician who has called for stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship, executing lawmakers for talking to Hamas and bombing Palestinian population centres.

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Maliki announces new crackdown

BAGHDAD (AP) — The prime minister on Monday announced a military crackdown to tame the country’s staggering armed violence, taking special aim at continuing lawlessness in the southern city of Amarah, where police have fled the streets as Mehdi Army fighters hunt them down in a brutal Shiite-on-Shiite settling of …

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Israeli policy splits Palestinian families

RAMALLAH — Last May Adel Samarra’s wife of 31 years left the West Bank to go to Jordan to renew her Israeli visa for the 126th time. On the 125 previous occasions the process had gone off without a hitch for the US passport holder, but five months ago Samarra’s …

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