Middle Orient

UN warns of Lebanese ‘security vacuum’ as Israel kills 3 Islamic Jihad fighters, charges Dweik with ‘belonging to terrorist organisation’ Agencies Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday said Israel has no plans to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon until an international peacekeeping force takes up positions along …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Violence in Baghdad has declined in the past two weeks and all but ended in some formerly deadly neighbourhoods, the US military said in a cautiously upbeat report on Tuesday on a major security clampdown in the city.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Breaking down in tears, a Kurdish woman testified Tuesday in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein, describing how foul smoke billowed across her village, blinding residents, in a 1987 poison gas attack and how her male relatives disappeared at a prison camp.

TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran handed over its formal response on Tuesday to a nuclear incentives offer from major powers and said it contained ideas that would allow serious talks about its standoff with the West to start immediately.

BEIRUT (AFP) — Food, bedding and other emergency supplies are pouring into war-battered Lebanon since a ceasefire took effect more than a week ago, United Nations relief officials say.

SRIFA — When not fighting under the Hizbollah banner, Abu Hadi is a farmer whose faith in the movement appears unshaken by the destruction of his village and the deaths of his relatives.

GENEVA (AFP) —Lebanon’s 15-year economic and social recovery from civil war was wiped out in the recent Israeli offensive against Hizbollah, the UN development agency said Tuesday.

BEIRUT (AFP) — Cleanup of a massive oil spill caused by Israeli air strikes on a fuel depot could take up to one year, the environmental group Greenpeace Mediterranean said Tuesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) — Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Monday his country was ready to lead a UN force in south Lebanon, where shooting by Israeli troops at Hizbollah fighters showed the fragility of a week-old truce.

BEIRUT — Hizbollah may have declared victory against Israel and lives to fight another day, but with Lebanon in ruins and thousands of families homeless it may not risk provoking such a war again any time soon.