Middle Orient

LONDON — The biggest obstacle to creating an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon is determining who will lead it, while questions remain over troops and transport, defence analysts said on Thursday. The two most likely and experienced candidates to lead the peacekeepers would be the European Union or France, with …

BEIRUT — Fadia Ballout can no longer nurse her son as he screams with hunger. Traumatised by her family’s escape from a southern Lebanese village close to Qana, where an Israeli air strike killed 60 people on Sunday, her breastmilk has stopped. As 18-month-old Hussein latched onto his mother’s breast, …

TYRE — A stinging odour hangs over the Palestinian refugee camp of Bass, at the entrance to the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, the chosen site for a mass grave for the dozens of victims of Israel’s blistering bombardment of the area. “Tyre has now become the morgue for the …

AARIDA, Lebanon — The topsy-turvy world of conflicts in the Middle East has also made its mark at the only remaining safe passage out of Lebanon, the remote Aarida post on the border with Syria. An Iraqi family passing through had had enough of their so-called holiday away from the …

TIKRIT, Iraq (AFP) — Four US soldiers accused of killing three Iraqi prisoners refused to give evidence on Thursday as a military hearing heard that one of the captives’ brains were blown out as he lay injured. The troops followed the lead of several of their superior officers, invoking their …

Hizbollah fighters fought fierce battles with Israeli troops across a broad front in Lebanon’s south Tuesday, hours after the government in Israel ordered its army to punch all the way to the Litani River and hold the ground until an international peacekeeping force comes ashore.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Not wanting to end its three-week blitz on Lebanon empty-handed, Israel scrambled to clear Hizbollah fighters from a large strip of the south Tuesday before a ceasefire is announced.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Bombings and shootings killed at least 70 people Tuesday — including a US and a British soldier — in a surge of violence as US troops prepare to take back Baghdad’s streets from the gunmen. The dead included 20 Iraqi troops killed in a bus attack in …

DUBAI — Pentagon auditors peering into US reconstruction programmes in Iraq found an accountant’s nightmare of mistakes, cloaked expenses and financial juggling that hid costs and delays, according to US reports released over the past week.

PARIS — France’s idea of involving Iran directly in talks to end the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah is a risky venture but may well prove inevitable, French analysts said Tuesday.