Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AP) — A spokesman for the biggest Shiite party Thursday predicted a breakthrough on the constitution within the next two days, as negotiators scrambled to finish the draft by next week’s deadline. A roadside bomb killed four more US soldiers in a city north of Baghdad. Four days before …

BEIRUT (AP) — First came the blast, followed by heavy black smoke and cars on fire. Bloodied casualties lay on the ground and ambulances rushed to the scene. It all looked too familiar, but it wasn’t real. A security drill by army troops and police on handling car bombs and …

DAKAR — When it comes to fighting militants in Africa, choosing allies is a risky business. Soldiers who overthrew Mauritania’s president this month may have ended 21 years of authoritarian rule and triggered dancing in the streets, but they also deprived the United States of a key ally in its …

RABAT (Reuters) — Morocco prepared to welcome home on Thursday the last 404 prisoners of war (PoW) who were held by Western Sahara’s exiled Polisario Front independence movement, many of them for almost two decades. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the release in Tindouf, Algeria, followed …

VIENNA — Despite suspending sensitive nuclear activities due to Western fears it is seeking to make atomic bombs, Iran has still managed to make progress on its programme but analysts differ on just how far along it has got. The question is critical, as Iran this month resumed work on …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraq’s presidency has signed death sentences for three men convicted of murder, paving the way for the first state-endorsed executions since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The men will be hanged. President Jalal Talabani, who opposes capital punishment, did not sign the document, but his deputy signed …

RIYADH (AFP) — Saudi security forces shot dead one of the country’s top Al Qaeda leaders in the holy city of Medina Thursday, the latest of the group’s chiefs in the Kingdom to be gunned down in a shoot-out. The clash that killed Saleh Al Ufi coincided with another operation …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraq’s parliament, pushed to the brink of a midnight deadline, gave negotiators an extra week on Monday to complete a draft constitution after weeks of intensive talks failed to bridge sectarian and ethnic rifts. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders now have seven more days to agree the …

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Powerful Somali warlord Hussein Mohammed Aidid said Monday he hoped to mediate an end to a bitter dispute in the lawless nation’s transitional government that has sparked fears of deepening anarchy. Aidid, the deputy prime minister in the government, travelled to Mogadishu on Sunday after a four-year …

THE DECISION BY Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to pull Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank has shaken Israel’s Orthodox Jewish community to its foundations. Never before has an Israeli government relinquished what the religious population universally regards as holy land, promised to …