Middle East News

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A familiar face is a rarity in Iraq's newly installed political leadership, but at least one participant in the recent constitutional debates was recognizable to television viewers throughout the country.

TAL AFAR, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi troops swept into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early Saturday, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a bid to flush out militants.

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt deployed the first of 750 border troops along its desert frontier with the Gaza Strip on Saturday, in line with Israel's withdrawal from the volatile Palestinian area.

CAIRO, Egypt - Turnout was miserably low, voting irregularities were prevalent, and the result — President Hosni Mubarak's re-election — was known from the start. Still, some in the opposition said Friday that Egypt's flawed vote created momentum toward greater democracy.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad International Airport — Iraq's only reliable and relatively safe link to the outside world — reopened early Saturday after being closed for a day in a payments dispute between the government and a British security firm.

WASHINGTON - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Friday that if Iraqis can control the country's main cities and roads, there would be no need for American forces to remain for more than two more years.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A new U.N. human rights report condemned continuing insurgent violence in Iraq while issuing a stinging indictment of alleged torture and summary executions by Interior Ministry forces.

As of Friday, Sept. 9, 2005, at least 1,896 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,470 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.

BETAR ILLIT, West Bank - Gravel-laden trucks rumbled up dirt roads and laborers plastered walls of apartments in this fast-growing Jewish settlement, one of several in the West Bank where Israel is building hundreds of homes in defiance of its obligation under a U.S.-backed peace plan to freeze expansion.

JERUSALEM - Powerful explosions ripped apart headquarters and sent water and communication towers crashing to the ground Friday as Israel destroyed the last of its military facilities in the Gaza Strip and prepared to hand over the territory to the Palestinians early next week.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Former American hostage Roy Hallums left Iraq for the United States on Friday, two days after he was rescued from an isolated farmhouse near Baghdad, the military said.

JERUSALEM - Newly revealed medical records have failed to solve the mystery of Yasser Arafat's death, although they do cast doubt on popular conspiracy theories about poisoning or rumors of AIDS. But the main question — what led to the massive stroke that killed the longtime Palestinian leader — may never be answered.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi troops will take control of security at Baghdad Airport, replacing a British company that stopped working Friday in a pay dispute, a top Iraqi official said.

CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait - A plane carrying 100 Louisiana National Guardsmen left this U.S. base in the desert late Thursday, most returning to damaged homes and families-turned-refugees by Hurricane Katrina.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Security forces clashed with Islamic militants in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing one and arresting three others in the country's latest move against a group accused of planning bomb attacks, the official news agency said. One security member was also wounded.

CAIRO, Egypt - Faced with Iraqi criticism, Arab foreign ministers said Thursday that their nations should send ambassadors to Baghdad, but several explained that continuing bloodshed in the country was preventing them.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The kidnapped son of slain ex-security chief Moussa Arafat was released early Friday, two days after he was seized by the attackers who killed his father.

Main points of a medical report's conclusion about Yasser Arafat, compiled by doctors who treated the Palestinian leader until his death Nov. 11 in a French hospital, with brief explanations in parentheses:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Security forces killed five of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted al-Qaida militants in a three-day battle in an eastern city earlier this week and arrested 11 other suspects, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.

AMMAN, Jordan - Saddam Hussein's lawyer denied Thursday that the former president has confessed to ordering the deaths of more than 180,000 Kurds in the late 1980s.

CAIRO, Egypt - President Hosni Mubarak won Egypt's first contested presidential race, according to a preliminary count Thursday, an expected victory in a vote that was crucial to his claims of democratic reform but was marred by allegations of irregularities.