BAGHDAD (AP) — The US military, acting on a tip, raided a farmhouse Wednesday and rescued an American held hostage for 10 months. In southern Iraq, a roadside bomb killed four American security guards, fuelling fears the bloody insurgency was taking deeper root outside Sunni-dominated territory. Roy Hallums, 57, was …

GAZA CITY (AFP) — The security chaos blighting the Gaza Strip Wednesday claimed its highest-profile victim when local strongman Moussa Arafat, an adviser to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, was assassinated by gunmen. Abbas led condemnation of the popular resistance committees’ killing of Arafat, a cousin of the late Yasser Arafat, …

NAIROBI — Hollywood wasn’t exaggerating when it portrayed Osman Ali Atto as the master survivor of Mogadishu’s ganglands. But the warlord with a wrestler’s build and hawk-like face immortalised in the film “Black Hawk Down” says his wheeling and dealing is aimed as much at strengthening Somalia as at making …