BAGHDAD – Iraqi security forces have begun a “decisive” final offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq to push the Sunni Islamist militants out of their last major stronghold in the north, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday.

BEIRUT – A car bomb killed a police intelligence officer involved in the investigation of assassinations in Lebanon, in an attack in a Christian suburb of Beirut on Friday.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Iran’s permanent envoy to the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization condemned Israel’s crimes in Gaza, and urged the UN body to take urgent measures to rescue lives of innocent Palestinian citizens, specially teenage patients under treatment in Gaza hospitals.