Maher Talaat and his two friends sat on the grassy mountainside, toasting bottles of beer and gazing at the pastoral scene — and at the girls.

Relief workers on Saturday accused the Lebanese army of using “excessive force” to disperse a protest in which dozens of displaced refugees in northern Lebanon were killed or wounded.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki condemned a US raid Saturday in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City slum — a politically sensitive district for him — in which American troops searching for Iranian-linked gunmen sparked a firefight that left 26 Iraqis dead.