Falluja, once the heart of Iraq’s bloody insurgency, is hoping to trade mortar bombs for bricks and mortar as it seeks to heal its wounds and return to normality.

NATO air-strikes killed 12 civilian road workers in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on Wednesday, an incident bound to fuel Afghan resentment against the presence of international forces.

Serbs and Kosovo Albanians were unable to agree on Wednesday on the future of the breakaway province of Kosovo, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger said.