BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — U.S. and Iraqi troops moved into a Sunni neighborhood in southern Baghdad on Thursday, while insurgents struck back with car bombs that killed seven people. In southern Iraq, British troops sealed off the border with Iran to prevent weapons smuggling.

Police arrested 73 members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday, in what appeared to be a pre-emptive strike against the country’s largest Islamic group ahead of elections and a key parliamentary debate, officials said.

British troops have assisted an operation to surround the Iraqi city of Basra and close the border with Iran.

GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his Hamas-led cabinet will resign in the next two days to make way for a unity government with the rival Fatah faction, a government official said on Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon last week in an effort to clear mines and the Lebanese army opened fire while Israeli forces were still in their own territory, a U.N. investigation reported.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday that a deal with North Korea over its nuclear program should serve as a message to Iran that international diplomacy could achieve results.

Reuters) – Eleven people were killed in two bomb blasts near the Christian mountain town of Bikfaya, north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Tuesday, security sources said.

EU president Germany sharply condemned attacks on buses in Lebanon on Tuesday and called upon all sides in the country to take steps to avoid an escalation of violence.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group on Tuesday threatened to retaliate against the United States if it tried to capture its Damascus-based leader.

The Yemeni-Gulf Joint Committee (YGJC), attended by YemeniMinister of Planning and International Cooperation, the head of the delegation,Abdulkarim Al-Arhabi, and representatives from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Gulffunds, Arab Development Fund and Islamic Development Bank, started Tuesday its meetings in Riyadh.