BAGHDAD — A month before Iraq holds elections, Washington and the government it backs in Baghdad find themselves battling for credibility, rather than being able to tout progress towards democracy and human rights. With the discovery of a torture bunker at Iraq’s interior ministry in Baghdad, and the admission that …

ISRAELI FORCES KILLED two Palestinian fighters Thursday during a West Bank arrest raid, riddling their car with bullets when it tried to run a roadblock outside the town of Jenin, the army said. The shooting, part of a recent increase in Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, threatened to inflame tensions …

TUNIS (AP) — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday denied there are Al Qaeda cells operating in Gaza or the West Bank, countering claims made by Israel’s president earlier this week. “I don’t think that there are cells of Al Qaeda in Gaza,” he told Associated Press Television News in …