Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AP) — Voting begins today in hospitals, military camps and even prisons across Iraq, launching the process to choose a new parliament that the United States hopes can help quell the insurgency so US forces can begin heading home.

SADDAM HUSSEIN loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning Al Qaeda militants not to attack. In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar …

GAZA CITY — Three months since Israel left the Gaza Strip, ambitious plans to develop the impoverished Palestinian territory have been stalled by delays over shifting the rubble of former settlements, officials say. Israel withdrew from the territory on September 12 and handed the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian

BAGHDAD — He sits alone in a cell, writing poetry, reading and preparing for appearances before a court that could sentence him to hang. But Saddam Hussein is very much a player in Thursday’s national elections, even if he is not a candidate.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (REUTERS) — Palestinians who lost relatives in a 2002 Israeli air strike in Gaza have filed a US civil lawsuit against the former head of Israel’s internal Shin Bet security service, accusing him of committing war crimes.

BEIRUT — In Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, 11 photographs hang on a wooden wall, showing hundreds of thousands of anti-Syrian protesters thronging the city’s streets after the February assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — A suicide bomber killed 30 people and wounded at least 25 on a Baghdad bus Thursday, in a bloody escalation of Iraq’s insurgency a week before elections. The second major suicide bombing in the capital in three days, after a lull of several weeks, snapped attention back …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States on Monday said Russia’s plans to sell $1 billion in tactical missiles and other arms to Iran would not serve US or regional interests. Moscow announced the sale of tactical surface-to-air missiles and other hardware on Friday, after Washington urged the world to use …

CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt’s monthlong parliamentary elections are due to wind up Wednesday, amid fears of more violence in the final round as security forces continue to round up supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. With two phases of polling completed, the Islamist movement has already increased its seat tally five-fold …

BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanon vowed Tuesday to carry out a full-scale probe into the fate of 30 people whose skeletal remains were found in mass graves at the weekend, and has sought help from the Red Cross. “This is an extremely painful situation, and I have asked the International Committee …