A ROYAL NAVY helicopter that crashed in flames in Basra last year, killing all five on board, was shot down by a sophisticated surface-to-air missile supplied to Iraqi militants by Iran, according to US officials.

Iran played a “big role” in Hamas’s seizure of Gaza from Palestinian security forces earlier this month, Palestinian intelligence chief Tawfiq al-Tirawi charged on Sunday.

A 35-year-old Iraqi journalist was shot to death Sunday on her way home from work in Mosul, officials said, the second female journalist to be killed in the northern city this month.

A separatist Kurdish rebel and a civilian were killed in a botched suicide attack in eastern Turkey while fighting elsewhere left five rebels and a government militia member dead, local security sources and officials said Sunday.

Sudan must stop trying to “scale back” a hybrid international force for Darfur, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she flew to Paris for talks on the humanitarian crisis in the western Sudanese region.

Saddam Hussein’s cousin and two other former regime officials were convicted Sunday of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang for the brutal crackdown that killed up to 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas two decades ago.

Five UN peacekeepers were killed by a car bomb in southern Lebanon on Sunday, further rattling security as another 11 people died in fighting with Islamists in the north.

Israel agreed on Sunday to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ new government, a move Hamas dismissed as “bribery” to fuel tensions with Islamists controlling Gaza.

King Abdullah on Sunday called for a “clear timeline” for resuming Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, a Royal Court statement said.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Arab Islamic radicals who fled Afghanistan in the U.S.-led invasion are coming back, eager to support suicide bombers in their increasingly frequent and effective attacks on Western and Afghan forces.