Eurasia Press & News

BAGHDAD – Reconciliation between Iraq’s divided communities is gaining momentum at a national level, especially in parliament where lawmakers are working “intensively”, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan – Nine police and two civilians were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, a provincial doctor said on Thursday, but the coalition said Taliban fighters had been killed.

ALLENBY BRIDGE, West Bank – The first battalion of Palestinian security forces crossed into Jordan on Thursday to begin training under a U.S. program after nearly a year-long delay.

ANKARA – Turkey’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party and a key opposition party agreed on Thursday to cooperate to lift a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities, a move sure to anger the secular elite.

GENEVA – The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday demanded Israel lift its week-long blockade of Gaza, rebuking the Jewish state for violations in the Palestinian territories for the third time since it was set up in 2006.

MOSCOW – Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s biggest opposition party, may decide not to run in the March 2 presidential election, Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying on Thursday.

BAGHDAD – The death toll from a blast in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday had risen to 36 from 20, with another 169 people wounded, police said on Thursday.

CAIRO – The Islamist movement Hamas blew a hole in the Egyptian government’s policy on the border with the Gaza Strip when it knocked down the border wall and let tens of thousands of Palestinians pour into Egypt.

KABUL – Afghanistan launched its first prison for women in the capital Kabul on Thursday as part of a plan to build 15 such facilities, officials said.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – A police officer and two militants were killed in fighting during raids on suspected radical Islamist cells in southeast Turkey, police sources said on Thursday.