Middle Orient

BAALBEK — At a roundabout facing the Roman ruins of Baalbek, 10-year-old Hassan Ali, a member of Hizbollah’s Al Mahdi Scouts youth group, distributes sweets to drivers entering the town.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed to UN member states to provide desperately needed UN peacekeeping troops for Lebanon and assured them the UN force would not “wage war” on Israel, Lebanon, or Hizbollah fighters.

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Saturday that nations with military ties to Israel must not be part of the UN peacekeeping force that will police a truce along Lebanon-Israel border.

MARJAYOUN (AFP) — “God bless them, they are coming to protect us,” said south Lebanon resident Mohammed as government troops proudly waving national flags took up position in the Hizbollah stronghold in the first such operation in decades.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Car bombs killed 10 people in Baghdad on Thursday as violence persisted in the capital despite the US-led security crackdown. Two more American soldiers were killed in combat, the US command said.

HALOUSIYA — Stoic and unflinching, clutching a yellow and green Hizbollah flag, Yehya Mouanis stood by his brother and sister’s sides until the last smattering of soil filled their grave.

KHARDALI (Reuters) — Lebanese troops deployed in south Lebanon on Thursday, linking up with UN peacekeepers to take control of Hizbollah strongholds as Israeli forces pulled back after their 34-day war with the fighters.

Rafiq Qori Kamoluddin, the prominent ethnic Uzbek religious leader who was killed during a security raid in southern Kyrgyzstan on August 6, is not the first imam to have been targeted by law-enforcement agencies in the region. Several other Uzbek imams have been persecuted before. But he is the first …

August 17, 2006 — The Moscow city court has sentenced the former head of security at the bankrupt oil firm Yukos to 24 years in prison for a series of contract killings. Aleksei Pichugin is already serving a 20-year sentence on charges of organizing several murders,

A Sudanese court has sentenced Slovenian president’s special envoy Tomo Kriznar to two years in jail for spying and entering the country illegally, news agencies are reporting. He was involved in the peace process   between Sudan’s government and rebels in the troubled Darfur region.