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  • Baghdad bomber kills 10

    A suicide bomber has killed at least 10 people and injured a dozen others outside a police recruitment centre in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The bomber walked up to a group of recruits outside the police academy and detonated a belt of explosives he was wearing, police said. The academy has come under attack several times before and the street it.. More

  • US charges over Haditha killings

    The US military is to announce charges against a group of marines accused of killing Iraqi civilians in Haditha. Twenty-four men, women and children died in the incident in November 2005. The US military initially said they were killed in a roadside blast and exchange of fire but subsequent reports alleged the US soldiers killed them. Lawyers.. More

  • Hard Iraq choices loom, says Bush

    US President George W Bush has said the conflict in Iraq will require "difficult choices and additional sacrifices" in the coming year. Mr Bush called for an increase in the size of the US military, but he said he had not yet decided whether to boost troop numbers in Iraq. He spoke as new US Defence Secretary Robert Gates began his first visit to.. More

  • Heavy fighting erupts in Somalia

    Heavy fighting has broken out close to the base of the weak Somali interim government in Baidoa. A deadline from Islamists for Ethiopia to withdraw troops from Somalia or face "major attacks" expired on Tuesday. Residents say pro-government forces and the Islamic militia exchanged mortar fire at Daynunay, 20km from Baidoa. Both sides promised.. More

  • Al-Qaeda attacks Palestinian poll

    Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in a new video to speak out against elections in the Palestinian territories. The deputy to Osama Bin Laden said in the video, aired on al-Jazeera television, that only jihad, or holy war, would "liberate Palestine". Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last weekend called for new elections... More

  • New ceasefire begins in Gaza

    Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ismail Haniyah, the prime minister, have agreed to a new ceasefire designed to end fighting between their followers in Gaza. Abbas said the new ceasefire would begin at 11pm (2100 GMT) on Tuesday night. "There will be a return to complete calm," he told journalists shortly before the truce began. Abbas.. More

  • Bush weighs more troops for Iraq

    George Bush has said he will seek to expand the size of the US military amid warnings that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have badly strained the armed forces. In an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday, the US president said: "I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the army, the marines." Bush said he had not yet.. More

  • Iran acts over Israeli nukes

    Iran has called for the UN Security Council to compel Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. The request, made on Tuesday in a letter to the Security Council, comes after Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, appeared to admit in a TV interview that Israel had nuclear weapons. Javad Zarif, Iran's UN ambassador, said that Olmert's comments had "removed.. More

  • Libya sentences medics to death

    A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for knowingly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. The medics have been in detention since 1999, during which time 52 of the 426 infected children have died of Aids. The nurses and doctor were sentenced to death in 2004, but the Supreme Court quashed.. More

  • Saddam trial shown gas attack video

    Prosecutors in Saddam Hussein's trial on genocide against ethnic Kurds have shown graphic video footage of dead civilians including infants, allegedly killed in chemical attacks on their villages. Munqith al-Faroon, the chief prosecutor, said on Tuesday the footage was shot in several areas that were bombed with mustard gas.Saddam and his six co-defendants.. More

  • Somalia troop exit deadline nears

    Somalia's Islamic Courts Union (ICU) say they are finalising plans to fight Ethiopian forces deployed in the country as a seven-day ultimatum for Addis Ababa to pull out its troops nears its deadline. As Islamic fighters and government troops backed by Ethiopian forces prepared for war, the ICU said they might not attack immediately. “The decision.. More

  • Iraq attacks reach record levels

    Attacks on US and Iraqi troops and civilians reached their highest level since Iraqi sovereignty was restored in June 2004, a Pentagon report has said. It says the number of attacks rose to almost 1,000 a week in recent months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents... More

  • Gaza clashes test ceasefire

    A gun battle has erupted between Palestinian police loyal to Hamas and Fatah fighters at the main hospital in Gaza, killing one person and wounding eleven. Witnesses and members of the rival factions said the fighting started at the entrance to the compound of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Rival Palestinians also clashed outside the headquarters.. More

  • Libyan court to rule on HIV case

    A Libyan court is to rule on the death penalty for six health workers accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with the HIV virus at a hospital in Libya. The court is expected to reach a decision on Tuesday. The EU, which Bulgaria is to join next year, has called for the release of the six. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister,.. More

  • Tamil Tigers abduct 24 schoolchildren

    Tamil Tiger rebels have kidnapped 24 schoolchildren in eastern Sri Lanka, a military spokesman has announced. Brig Prasad Samarasinghe told the BBC the children, mostly teenage girls, were taken away from a class in eastern Ampara area. The parents of the children have left for rebel-held territory to "talk to the rebels and persuade them to free.. More