Middle East News

A suspected Iranian bomber had his legs blown off as he hurled a grenade at Thai police Tuesday, officials said, with Israel accusing Tehran of being behind the third attack in world capitals this week.

The lawyer for an interned Palestinian who has been on hunger strike for 59 days said on Tuesday that he would ask Israel's supreme court to overturn a military order imprisoning his client without trial.

Cut off by a relentless barrage of government shelling, activists in the besieged Syrian city of Homs have reverted to the age-old practice of using carrier pigeons to communicate with each other.

A senior Jordanian government minister has told Sky News that the radical cleric Abu Qatada will receive a new, fair trial with full rights, if he is extradited to Jordan.

Bahraini police dispersed protesters who made several attempts Tuesday to mark the anniversary of last year's uprising by marching to the site of the protest that was brutally crushed, witnesses said.

Egypt has quashed death sentences against three men convicted of involvement in attacks in the Sinai Peninsula after their trials were deemed unfair, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Tuesday clarified how it would enforce recently passed Iran sanctions legislation, including how the United States would determine if another country has significantly reduced oil purchases from Iran. "We are working intensively to implement the (National Defense Authorization …

Syria flatly rejected UN charges of crimes against humanity on Tuesday, even as monitors said troops killed at least 18 civilians, six in the heaviest shelling of the protest city of Homs for days.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's determination to pursue trade with Iran despite Western sanctions could be undermined as wary exporters back away from fresh deals after a bomb attack in New Delhi blamed on Tehran, a trade association chief said on Tuesday. Up to now India has not gone along with new financial sanctions imposed …

A UN-backed court probing the assassination of Lebanon's ex-premier Saad Hariri will issue a new indictment in the case by the end of this month, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Tuesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Government forces and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad clashed in cities and countryside across Syria Tuesday and Arab officials confirmed that regional governments would be ready to arm the resistance if the bloodshed did not cease. The western city of Homs, heart of the uprising against Assad's …

Haurani fled Syria to escape a lethal crackdown in his country, joining some 3,000 compatriots who have taken shelter in Jordan. His brother, who stayed behind, was killed by Syrians forces at the weekend.

Gaza sole power plant ground to a halt on Tuesday after it ran out of diesel, an energy authority official said, calling on Egypt to intervene to resolve the crisis.

Ukrainian boxing star Vitali Klitschko warned Tuesday that a "bloody uprising like in Syria" could start in his home country, which he said is now run by a "totalitarian regime."

Iraq aims to more than double northern oil production from around 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) to about 1.3 million bpd by the end of 2014, executives from the Northern Oil Co told AFP.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to unveil several unspecified nuclear "achievements" on Wednesday, his government's website said.

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Weapons and Sunni Muslim insurgents are seeping from Iraq into Syria, Iraqi officials and arms dealers say, fuelling violence in a country that once sent guns and militants the other way. The revolt against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has struck a chord with Sunni tribes in Iraq's border provinces …

A Tunisian court cleared Libyan former prime minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi on Tuesday on a charge he had crossed illegally into Tunisia as he fled Libya last year, his lawyer said.

US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP.

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah named a new cabinet on Tuesday with 10 new faces, including the oil and defence ministers, and no women, despite objections from the opposition.

Iran has denied being behind a bomb attack on an Israeli diplomatic car in India, as police hunt a "very well-trained" assassin.

Israeli forces razed three temporary structures comprising a wildcat settler outpost near the West Bank city of Ramallah early on Tuesday, an Israeli spokesman told AFP.

Dubai-based real estate giant Emaar Properties announced Tuesday a 27 percent drop in 2011 net profit to $489 million.

A British minister headed to Jordan Tuesday to seek a deal that would allow London to extradite Abu Qatada, as the Islamist cleric once dubbed an aide to Osama bin Laden spent his first day out on bail.

A man was killed Tuesday when a bomb exploded as he was planting it in a polling booth in Yemen's southern city of Aden, a security official said, amid rising tension ahead of presidential elections next week.

Baghdad's version of a wax museum features figures who depict Iraq's past, rather than replicas of celebrities like Michael Jackson, offering a distinctly different experience from Madame Tussauds.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's top general said on Tuesday that he expects Iran's enemies to decide in the next few months how to deal with a nuclear programme that the United States and Israel have said they might attack. In remarks that come as Russia has been voicing its differences with the West on various issues in the …

Iran may reject Western influences, but Valentine's Day has become a growing phenomenon thanks to the romantically minded youth of the Islamic state's affluent classes.