Israelis wary ahead of Ahmadinejad border tour

METULLA: Israelis were on Thursday warily watching their northern border for a rare opportunity to see up close the arch-enemy of the Jewish state — Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian president, who is on a two-day trip to Lebanon, was expected to make a controversial tour of the southern border region during the afternoon which has been slammed by the United States and Israel as “provocative”.

The border region, a stronghold of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, is often seen as the frontline in a proxy war between Israel and Iran.

While Israeli leaders slammed the visit as a provocation, for many ordinary people it presents a chance to glimpse the Iranian leader, a man deeply reviled in Israel for his questioning of the Nazi Holocaust and predictions of the Jewish state’s demise.

“It is a provocative and destabilising visit,” foreign

Iraq bomb kills five in Sadr City

BAGHDAD: A bomb inside a restaurant in the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City in north Baghdad killed five people on Wednesday, security officials said.

A woman was among the dead and 13 others were wounded in the blast, which occurred at around 9:30 am (0630 GMT), officials from the defence and interior ministries said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

US and Iraqi officials have warned of the dangers of an upsurge in violence as negotiations on forming a new governing coalition have dragged on, more than four months after parliamentary elections.

Top Shiite cleric of Lebanon dies

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shiite Islam’s main religious figures who had a strong following world over, died Sunday after a long illness.

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Top Shiite cleric of Lebanon dies

Baghdad bombs kill three, including Iraqi general

BAGHDAD: Bombers killed three people in Baghdad on Tuesday, one of them an Iraqi general, as insurgents sabotaged a key oil pipeline on the northern outskirts of the capital, security officials said.

The general, whom police identified only by his first name Khodr, was blown up by a magnetic bomb in Aden Square in the Shiite shrine district of Kadhimiya in the north of the city.

A second magnetic bomb killed one person and wounded two outside an army officers” club in Al-Hurriya in northwest Baghdad, police said. There was no immediate word on whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians.

A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded four in a car in the southern district of Dora, police said.

Saboteurs blew up the oil pipeline in Rashidiyeh district on the northeastern fringes of the capital, Baghdad operations command said.

A major pipeline links an oil refinery and power station in Dora with the northern town of Baiji, another refining and power generating hub that is a key junction point on the supply network from Iraq”s northern oil fields around Kirkuk.

Two Baghdad car bombs kill 26, wound 53

BAGHDAD: Twin car bombs in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Sunday killed 26 people and wounded 53, many of them women or traffic police, the interior ministry said.

The bombs exploded within minutes of each other at around 11:30 am (0830 GMT) in the Al-Yarmuk neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a security official said.

The vehicles were parked close to government offices where identity cards and passports are issued, and large queues of people had formed to seek renewals.

Traffic police offices and a branch of the Iraqi Commercial Bank also lie nearby in the same square which was thronged with people on the first day of the working week. “The bank branch was seriously damaged,” the security official said.

The bombings came hot on the heels of a string of attacks in the capital on Saturday evening.

Three roadside bombs planted in Hurriya, a Shiite neighbourhood in the north of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 16, a security official told a foreign news agency.

Fire from a Katyusha multiple rocket launcher killed three people and wounded four in Al-Obeidi, an anarchic Shiite slum district in the far east of the capital beyond the sprawling Shiite bastion of Sadr City, an official said.

And in the Zayouna neighbourhood of central Baghdad, police found the bodies of five women. A security official said they were believed to have been killed two or three weeks ago.

There has been a spate of attacks recently by hardline Islamists against women accused of breaking the mores of their ultra-strict brand of the Muslim religion.

Death toll from floods in China reaches 132: state media

BEIJING: The death toll from torrential downpours battering China for the past week has reached 132, state media reported Sunday, as more heavy rain was forecast.

Floods and landslides triggered by the summer deluge have left a further 86 people missing while more than 800,000 have been evacuated, state-run television said.

Earlier media reports said more than 1.4 million people living on riverbanks and in low-lying areas had been forced to flee their homes.

More heavy rain was expected as the cost of the disaster, which has hit great swathes of China”s south and affected more than 10 million people, reached 14.5 billion yuan (2.1 billion dollars), state television said.

A total of 68,000 houses have collapsed and more than 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of crops have been affected, it said.

Authorities have raised the level of their emergency response as rescue and flood-prevention work continues, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

State television broadcast images of submerged crops in the eastern province of Jiangxi while other images showed soldiers leading clean-up efforts in parts of Fujian province.

Images showed overturned cars and people sweeping water and mud out of their shops in Fujian after floodwaters had receded.

Photos on China News Service showed people wading through waist-high water as they tried to cross a flooded bridge in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

Others showed people being rescued by helicopter from flood-ravaged Guangxi in the south while others and farmers in Fujian province trying to salvage crops damaged in the deluge.

The official news agency also reported that in Fujian province alone, 12 people had died in a landslide while seven had been rescued.

Twin Baghdad car bombs kill 18, wound 42

BAGHDAD: Twin car bombs in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Sunday killed 18 people and wounded 42, many of them women or traffic police, the Baghdad operations command said.

The bombs exploded within minutes of each other at around 11:30 am (0830 GMT) in the Al-Yarmuk neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a security official said.

The vehicles were parked close to government offices where identity cards and passports are issued, and large queues of people had formed to seek renewals.

Traffic police offices and a branch of the Iraqi Commercial Bank also lie nearby in the same square which was thronged with people on the first day of the working week. “The bank branch was seriously damaged,” the security official said.

The bombings came hot on the heels of a string of attacks in the capital on Saturday evening.

Three roadside bombs planted in Hurriya, a Shiite neighbourhood in the north of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 16, a security official told media.

Fire from a Katyusha multiple rocket launcher killed three people and wounded four in Al-Obeidi, an anarchic Shiite slum district in the far east of the capital beyond the sprawling Shiite bastion of Sadr City, an official said.

And in the Zayouna neighbourhood of central Baghdad, police found the bodies of five women. A security official said they were believed to have been killed two or three weeks ago.

There has been a spate of attacks recently by hardline Islamists against women accused of breaking the mores of their ultra-strict brand of the Muslim religion.

Nasrallah threatens to target ships

TEHRAN: Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday the Shiite group would attack all military, civilian and commercial ships heading towards Israel”s Mediterranean ports in any future war.

“If you (Israel) put our coasts under siege in any future war, I say all military, civilian and commercial ships heading to Palestine”s coasts on the Mediterranean will be under the fire of the Islamic resistance fighters,” he said via a video-link.

Suicide car bomb kills 10 in north Iraq

BAGHDAD: A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb on Friday outside a sports stadium in a predominantly Shiite town in northern Iraq, killing at least 10 people and wounding another 120, police and hospital officials said.

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Suicide car bomb kills 10 in north Iraq

Death toll of Baghdad bombings mounts to 57

BAGHDAD: The death toll of a string of car bombs and roadside bomb explosions targeting Shiites in Baghdad has risen to 57, and 106 others were wounded, an interior ministry source told media.

The most serious attack occurred close to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr”s office in Sadr city, killing 39 and wounding 56, said the source on condition of anonymity, adding that actually there were two cars loaded with explosives and were detonated together.

In eastern Baghdad, another car bomb and a roadside bomb explosion attacked a Shiite mosque, leaving 8 killed and 23 injured, he said.

Earlier in the day, a booby-trapped car apparently targeting a Shiite mosque blasted in northern Baghdad, killing 5 and wounding 14 others.

A moment later, a market in Haifa street close to the Justice Ministry was also attacked by a car bomb explosion, wounding 7. Reporters could clearly see the heavy smoke rising from the blast site. Ambulances rushed to the site just a few minutes after the explosion.

In a separate blast in southern Baghdad, 6 people were injured, said the source.

Shiite commemorations have often been targeted by various armed groups in Iraq. A string of bomb blasts in the past week have already caused dozens of casualties.

Time now is very sensitive in Iraq since political blocs are battling each other for cabinet formation after the country”s just- hold parliamentary elections last month. During the past days, Iraqi forces killed three top al-Qaida leaders in operations, which was considered a big blow to the group”s elements in the country.

Some analysts say the attacks are aimed to show the current Shiite-dominated government is weak while others hold that those behind the attacks want to create a sectarian atmosphere.

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