Middle Orient

The first suicide car bomb exploded at 9 a.m., ripping open a packed open-air market in the Sadr City section of eastern Baghdad, Baghdad police said; 32 were killed and 65 were wounded.

A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blasts and warned of more as NATO prepares to take control of the volatile southern Afghan region.

TANKS, BULLDOZERS AND armoured personnel carriers knocked down a fence and barrelled over the border Saturday as Israeli forces stepped up a small-scale ground offensive into southern Lebanon to try to attack the Hizbollah group.

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush’s uncompromising support for Israel in its battle with Hizbollah, a stance now backed by Congress, is threatening to isolate the United States even further from the international community.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraqi leaders met in a show of sectarian and ethnic solidarity on Saturday before a White House visit by the prime minister

BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of “black days” of civil war ahead.

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has only narrow room for diplomatic manoeuvre on her Middle East crisis tour if she wants to avoid destabilising the moderate Arab states

TYRE — “They’re coming — again,” said Yussuf Ismael, a teacher who grabbed his family and fled his Lebanese border village, fearing an imminent full-scale invasion like that of 1982 when Israeli troops marched on Beirut.

LOS ANGELES — Peace reigns at least at the Miss Universe 2006 contest, where beauties Miss Lebanon and Miss Israel are the “best of friends” despite the bloody fighting between the two countries back home, their companions said.

BAGHDAD — A disreputable crew of unshaven men wearing police uniforms pounces on a businessman before the horrified eyes of his wife as he leaves his home in an upscale Baghdad neighbourhood.