JERUSALEM — Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza on Tuesday night after its troops clashed with Hamas gunmen along the border in the first such confrontation since a cease-fire took effect in June. Five militants were killed, Palestinian officials ...
Karim Kadim/Associated Press Medics carried a man into a hospital on Tuesday after a car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad. BAGHDAD — Fifteen people were killed and dozens wounded by bombings in Baghdad on Tuesday, according to the police and hospital officials, part ...
Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Members of Parliament listened on Tuesday as the interior minister, Ali Kordan, made his case. They voted 188 to 45 to dismiss him over faked academic degrees. TEHRAN — The Iranian Parliament voted Tuesday to dismiss a ...
Hamas fired dozens of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinian militants in an eruption of violence that disrupted a four-month-old truce. The rocket attacks, which included salvos that landed in the coastal Israeli city ...
TEHRAN — Iran’s military said Wednesday that American helicopters were spotted near its border with Iraq, and it warned that Iran would respond to any violation of its airspace, the news agency IRNA reported. It followed a raid by helicopter-borne ...
BAGHDAD — The vast, new American Embassy in Baghdad, which cost well over half a billion dollars, has not yet officially opened. But the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, welcomed about 250 Iraqi officials, diplomats and dignitaries for a preliminary glimpse on Wednesday morning in what was ...
DAMASCUS, Syria (Reuters) — Syria said Thursday that an Islamist militant group active in Lebanon was behind a suicide car bombing that killed 17 people in Damascus in September. State television showed what it said were 12 members of the group, ...
BAGHDAD — Three people were killed in Baghdad on Thursday as violence continued for a fourth day. Two improvised explosive devices went off simultaneously in a central Sunni and Shiite area during the morning rush, killing two people and wounding five. ...
TEL AVIV — Winding up a year of intensive peace efforts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here Thursday with a somewhat diminished vision of trying to keep Israeli-Palestinian negotiations alive. Pool photo by Pavel ...
TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent an unusual letter congratulating President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday for his victory in the American presidential race, even though the two nations have had no diplomatic ties for nearly 30 years. ...
Joao Silva An American soldier in Baghdad on Thursday. Some Iraqi politicians say an American-Iraqi security pact may soon be ready. BAGHDAD — Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the ...
Seven rockets and mortar rounds fired from the Gaza Strip struck inside Israel on Friday, causing no damage or casualties, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. The militant group Islamic Jihad said its gunmen had launched 14 rockets against Israel during the day in response to Israeli ...
BAGHDAD — As Iraqi political blocs considered Washington’s latest counteroffer in the long-fought security pact between the United States and Iraq, some Shiite politicians have seemed to soften their opposition. But one influential Shiite group, the Sadrists, remained solidly in the "No" column. ...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq. ...
JENIN, West Bank — In the first visit by an American secretary of state to the city of Jenin, a once-infamous hub of Palestinian militancy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to strike a positive chord at the close of what will probably be her ...
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s Executive Council ratified on Saturday a much-debated bill that gives Iraqi religious minorities fewer guaranteed seats on provincial councils than the United Nations mission in Iraq had recommended. The Executive Council — President Jalal Talabani and the two ...
UNITED NATIONS — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, reviewing the various conflicts smoldering in his neighborhood, said Thursday that NATO forces paid insufficient attention to humanitarian problems in Afghanistan, that Iraqi forces should be given more responsibility for security and that he was "unhappy" with the situation in Georgia. ...
Hebrew University Archaeologists excavating the remains of a city near Jerusalem, in the valley where the Bible says David defeated Goliath. KHIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archaeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old ...
BAGHDAD — At least 12 Iraqis were killed Sunday in a spate of attacks, many of them in provinces where much-lauded Iraqi-led security operations had taken place recently. Associated Press The ...
SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt — Leaders of the quartet of Middle East peace mediators reaffirmed their backing on Sunday for the continuation of Israeli-Palestinian efforts toward a two-state solution, yet they shed no light on whether there had been any political progress after a year of ...
Talks to reunify Cyprus resumed Monday as Turkish and Greek leaders met in Nicosia for the sixth time in a month, where they continued to focus on issues of power-sharing in a possible federation, Anatolian, the semiofficial Turkish news agency, reported. There were ...
BRUSSELS (Bloomberg) — European finance ministers on Monday ruled out a joint stimulus package to revive the region’s economy and vowed instead to coordinate national policies as they try to limit the fallout from a recession on consumers and companies. "We ...
PRAGUE — It ought to be a seminal moment: As a new president takes office in Washington, the Czech Republic assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union, the first former Soviet bloc country to lead the group of 470 million Europeans, and during one of ...
Joseph Sywenkyj A sign last week in Kiev, Ukraine, showing that one United States dollar could be exchanged for 5.90 Ukrainian hryvnia. The hryvnia hit a low point that week. KIEV, Ukraine — Four years ago this month, hundreds of thousands of ...
A tour bus caught fire on a highway near the northern German city of Hannover on Tuesday night, killing 20 people, possibly after a passenger secretly smoked a cigarette, the police said. Survivors told the authorities that the fire broke out in the ...
In an attempt to improve relations with the Islamic world, the Vatican opened a three-day Catholic-Muslim seminar on Tuesday. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who is presiding over the meeting, said it marked "a new chapter" in Vatican-Muslim ...
MADRID — One of Osama bin Laden’s sons, who made headlines last year when he married a British woman, is seeking asylum in Spain, the government said Tuesday. Amro Maraghni/A.F.P. Getty Images ...
Domenico Leccisi, a right-wing Italian politician who became known as "the Body Snatcher" in 1946 when he and two followers stole the corpse of the fascist dictator Mussolini from a pauper’s grave, died Sunday at a retirement home in Milan. He was 88. ...
A London jury found an Iranian-born British Army reservist guilty on Monday of spying for Iran while he was working as an interpreter for the British general commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan. The reservist, Cpl. Daniel James, 45, came to Britain as a teenager. He ...
Spain’s Interior Ministry Wednesday rejected an asylum request from a son of Osama bin Laden. A ministry official, who was not identified, as government policy dictates, said the government determined that the son, Omar Osama bin Laden, 27, did not "meet the conditions ...