GAZA CITY (AFP) — Efforts to free an Israeli soldier captured by fighters in the Gaza Strip appeared to gain speed Sunday with reports that Israel might release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the man.

ERBIL (AFP) — The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region launched a scathing attack on Iraqi Arab leaders Sunday over their opposition to his order banning the national flag from public buildings.

QANA — Qana residents whose village was targeted in a devastating air strike in July suspect the true aims of the strengthened UN force being assembled in south Lebanon are to protect Israel and further US goals in the Middle East.

ANKARA — Some Turks see participating in the Lebanon peacekeeping force as a chance to reassert Turkish influence in the region, decades after their Ottoman Empire ruled across southeastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

CAIRO (AP) — Rebels in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur said Sunday that government forces backed by bomber aircraft are pursuing a week-old offensive.

“A considerable part of the report covered Iran’s extensive cooperation with the Agency and its inspectors,” Asefi said according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Bureau.

Addressing a fervent congregation of the people in the northwestern city of khoy on the second day of his three-day tour of the northwestern West Azarbaijan province on Friday

Relief and rescue teams said that only 18 of the 147 passengers on board the crashed plane survived the incident.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stressed that the west’s opposition to the peaceful nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic on the pretext of diversion to military purposes is a big lie.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel stressed that the United States’ pressures on Iran which are exerted on the pretext of the nuclear issue are in fact in revenge for the vigilance of the world of Islam.