Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the blasts were part of a new security offensive against militants in the capital. A US military spokeswoman said she had no details on the blasts.

Iraq has announced an initial conference of world and regional powers will be held in Baghdad on March 10 to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq.

Visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised Thursday in Khartoum that his country would stand on the side of Sudan in the latter’s confrontation with what he called the “Western pressures”.

A roadside bomb exploded Thursday alongside the convoy of a prominent Shiite cleric whose high-level political ties have made him the target of past assassination attempts. The imam was not injured, but several bodyguards were wounded.

China hopes Iran would address the international community’s concern over its nuclear issue positively, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said yesterday.

Those who sign up will be shipped off to villages with names like Tikrit and Fallujah, where they’ll don dishdashas and head scarves and live in crowded huts surrounded by rumbling tanks and the crackle of machine guns. Their neighbors will be Shiites and Sunnis, soldiers and insurgents.

WASHINGTON – After starting the 110th Congress with a big antiwar mandate, Democrats are scrambling to find a way forward on an issue that is driving wedges deep into their new majority.

The Center for Democracy in the Middle East (formerly the Kurdish American Committee for Democracy in Syria) has had early success in its efforts to create alliances between political parties in order to advocate for democratic governance in Syria.

A car bomb ripped through a bustling shopping district in a religiously mixed neighborhood of western Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding about 20 as the U.S.-Iraqi security operation entered its third week.

Saudis crowded to camel races and sword-dancing this week at a desert cultural festival that has come to reflect growing anxiety over national unity and the loss of tribal Arab identity to Western culture.