Middle Orient

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.

TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday Iran would press ahead with its pursuit of nuclear energy, indicating it will not heed a UN demand it stop enriching uranium or face possible sanctions.