BAGHDAD, Iraq – Violence raked the capital Monday as the general who will lead Iraqi forces in the coming security crackdown in Baghdad took charge and a senior U.S. military official said the much-vaunted joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed would start “very soon thereafter.”

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Police and soldiers ringed a university Monday as students returned for the first time since a political spat in the cafeteria mushroomed into street riots that killed four people and inflamed Sunni-Shiite tensions.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two people were killed in the capital early Monday when a mortar round slammed into a central Baghdad neighborhood and a bomb hidden in trash exploded on the city’s east side, police reported.