WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iraq’s southern city of Basra likely will face new threats of violence from Shi’ite militants who battled Iraqi security forces there during a March government crackdown, a British general said on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Every year hundreds of thousands of small arms go missing and many wind up in the hands of insurgents in countries like Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan, a new survey published on Monday said.

KABUL (Reuters) – A Taliban attack that killed nine U.S. soldiers, the biggest single American loss in Afghanistan since 2005, was a well-planned, complex assault which briefly breached the defenses of an outpost near the Pakistan border.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has approved a plan to hand control of hundreds of state-owned assets to a single Kremlin corporation despite resistance from inside his government.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia made no commitment at last week’s Group of Eight summit to back U.N. sanctions against Zimbabwe so it cannot be accused of a U-turn, a senior Russian diplomat said on Monday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Middle East envoy Tony Blair is preparing to travel to the Gaza Strip this week in what would be the highest-level visit by a Western official since Hamas took control a year ago, Palestinian and Western officials said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Eighty-six people were indicted on charges of plotting the violent overthrow of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which is accused by militant secularists of Islamist subversion.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday Pakistani agents were behind the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul last week, the first time he has directly accused Pakistan of involvement in the suicide attack that killed 58 people.

(Reuters) – Iraq raised for the first time this week the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces as part of negotiations over a new security deal with Washington. Following are answers to questions about the issue:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Of the hundreds of tragic tales of children killed during decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ahmed Khatib’s must rank among the most remarkable. Khatib was shot dead in 2005 by Israeli soldiers who mistook him for a gunman in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. Still grieving, …