Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown flew into Baghdad on Saturday and said he wanted to reduce British troop levels in Iraq, although he refused to set a timetable for their departure.

EIN AL-HILWEH, Lebanon (Reuters) – Two people were killed on Saturday in a gunbattle between members of the Fatah faction and Sunni Islamist militants at a Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, camp officials said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc rejoined the Shi’ite-led government on Saturday in a breakthrough for national reconciliation after parliament approved its candidates for several vacant ministerial posts.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A U.S.-based investment group laid the foundation stone for a $100 million luxury hotel in Baghdad on Saturday, a move Iraqi officials said showed the country was open for business with violence at a four-year low.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Ten members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed in clashes with Turkish military forces in southeastern Turkey late on Friday, security sources said on Saturday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will visit Germany and Italy next week to encourage European investment in Iraq, the government’s spokesman said on Thursday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a rare public appearance, welcomed five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel on Wednesday after his guerrilla group returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers.

(Reuters) – A U.S. soldier was killed by an explosive charge rigged to a house while conducting operations in Diyala province, north of Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. A U.S. Marine died on Sunday as a result of non-combat related incident in Anbar province, the U.S. …

(Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Wednesday the last of five extra combat brigades deployed to Iraq last year would complete its departure next week. That will leave 140,000 troops in Iraq. Following are facts about the so-called surge: