Middle Orient

BEIRUT (CNN) — Israel airstrikes disrupted television and phone service throughout north Lebanon Saturday, a Lebanese government official said.

LANARCA, Cyprus (CNN) — The U.S. ambassador to Cyprus expects nearly 4,000 Americans to be evacuated to the island nation from war-torn Lebanon on Saturday.

BAGHDAD (CNN) — Iraq’s prime minister, whose country is mired in Sunni-Shiite sectarian fighting and a relentless insurgent violence, wants to put another conflict on his busy agenda next week when he meets with the Bush administration and other officials — Lebanon.

BEIRUT (CNN) — The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. said on Saturday one of its employees was killed and another was wounded in the Israeli airstrikes on transmission towers. The LBC confirmed that Suleiman Shidiyaq was killed on the transmission tower in Fatqa and Charbel Aqiqi was injured in another air strike …

(CNN) — The Israel Defense Forces said about 70 rockets hit Israel on Saturday, projectiles fired by Hezbollah militants fighting the Jewish state.

As a carpenter labors in the sweltering noon heat to complete his melancholy task, his newly made coffins lie stacked up six high and stretch down the hospital courtyard.

Troops are already on the ground in the area and the operation is considered a widening of limited Israeli action in southern Lebanon, not a signal that a full-scale ground invasion has begun.

As families fled Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, the regional manager of the agency Christian Aid said “the situation on the ground is grim and getting worse.”

It would be astonishing if Hizbullah and Israel were not now both reflecting on the old adage that it is easier to start a war than to stop one.

The religious differences which underpin so much modern conflict – not least that currently prevailing in the troubled Middle East – are based on ancient texts upon which time has bestowed the epithet “scripture”. The implication of this is that such texts proffer those who believe in their allegedly divine …