Category: Mid-East

Suicide bombers kill 23 and wound dozens more in attacks on an army recruiting centre and a police convoy in Iraq on Sunday… In the deadliest blast, a man strapped with explosives blew himself up at a west Baghdad airfield now used as a military recruiting centre, Iraqi police said. Early casualty reports varied, with […]

A reporter visits an educational and social centre sanwiched between Israeli and Palestinian factions where the enemy is not terrorism but poverty… Maher abu Sneineh clocks the Israeli security services pursuing him and speeds up the car to evade capture. The Shin Bet has been on his tail since November 2004, suspecting him of having […]

Campaigning in the Kurdish-controlled zone of Iraq’s north got off to a slow start after weeks of uncertainty over their participation in Sunday’s election. In the streets of Arbil, the bustling regional capital of the territory declared a semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave by western allies after the 1991 Gulf War, election posters of Kurd political candidates […]

Kurdish pilgrims are coming back from Mecca on the first direct flights to Iraq’s Kurdish administrative capital to cast their ballots… After handing in their special travel documents on their return to Arbil in North Iraq, Kurdish pilgrims were given election pamphlets and posters by an election volunteer. Mullah Kamal Abdul Ahmed Rahim, a blind […]

As uncertainty grows in Iraq over the feasibility of holding elections, Kurds in the North of the country are facing their own concerns over representation… In the Kurdish capital, Arbil, traffic wardens issue parking tickets, foreign businessmen relax in newly built hotels and gunfire is seldom heard. But while security conditions are favourable here, Kurds […]

Uneven development by one of the Gulf’s most ambitious members has left a cultural vacuum and restrictions on press freedom… Journalists’ rights to report uncensored have been pushed aside during the brutally efficient transformation of this tribal society and Emirati nationals are learning that cultural and societal transformation cannot be as easily manufactured as the […]

Growing violence against Iraq’s estimated 700,000 Christians could mean the creation of "green zone" style enclaves to protect against attacks by Muslim extremists. Muslim extremists bombed five churches in Baghdad on 16 October in the second attack on the Christian community in the past three months. No casualties were reported in the pre-dawn blasts, which […]

An exceptional university’s remarkable 30th birthday set amidst "roadmap" deadlocks and violence is really something to celebrate, writes Michael Hirst. As Bethlehem University enters is 30th year the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades intifada is in its third. In the three years since the Palestinian uprising or intifada began, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen economies ruined, […]