World - McClatchy Newspapers

SDEROT, Israel — A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists.

BAGHDAD — The U.S. flag was raised Monday over the mammoth new American Embassy in Iraq, symbolizing a new era of restored Iraqi sovereignty and reduced U.S. power, despite the fact that it's the biggest American mission on Earth.

JERUSALEM — Israel's military push to cripple Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip claimed more civilian lives Monday as European leaders renewed a push to bring the 10-day-old conflict to a swift end.

ON THE ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER — Israeli tanks and ground troops moved swiftly Sunday to seize large sections of Gaza, encircling its largest city and cutting the narrow strip of land in two in what military officials called a "real war" on the militant Islamic group Hamas.

BAGHDAD — A woman wearing an explosive belt blew herself up near an important Shiite shrine in northern Baghdad on Sunday, killing as many as 40 people — many of them pilgrims — and wounding about 76, police said.

NINEVAH PROVINCE, Iraq — The violence of his past deployments in Iraq still haunts Daniel Clemons, a 32-year-old National Guard staff sergeant who's back for his third tour.

JERUSALEM - Israeli tanks and soldiers punched into the Hamas-led Gaza Strip on Saturday night as the nation's eight-day-old military campaign to destabilize the hard-line Islamist rulers moved into a more volatile phase.

BAGHDAD — Iraq officially began to govern its skies this week, but it has enough trained air traffic controllers only to manage the highest heights above the country.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Emad Falah can feel his world slowly closing in around him.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says that it's taking extraordinary steps to minimize civilian deaths in its weeklong campaign of airstrikes meant to undermine Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip.

CAIRO, Egypt — Demonstrators gathered across the Muslim world Friday in fresh protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, while Egyptian authorities again used force to silence protesters in Cairo.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters increasingly are deploying precision marksmen to fire on U.S. troops at greater distances throughout opium-producing southern Afghanistan, according to the top two commanders for the southern region.

BAGHDAD — A man wearing a suicide vest attacked an informal reconciliation meeting hosted by a Sunni tribal leader south of Baghdad Friday, killing up to 30 people and injuring as many as 110, police said.

ASHKELON, Israel - Israeli soldiers were poised Thursday to launch a Gaza Strip ground offensive as their political leadership appeared divided over how to bring the devastating six-day-old military campaign against Hamas to an end.

MOSCOW — Russia's state-run gas monopoly halted natural gas delivery for Ukraine Thursday, delivering a New Year's blow that further heightened tensions between Russia and the former Soviet republic.

BAGHDAD_ With the arrival of 2009, Iraq has achieved, at least on paper, something it hasn't enjoyed since American troops entered the country almost six years ago and toppled the long ruling Baath party regime of Saddam Hussein: the declaration that it is a sovereign nation, free of a United Nations mandate that allowed the U.S. to run Iraqi affairs.

WASHINGTON — The Gaza Strip wasn't supposed to be like this.

CAMP ASHRAF, Iraq — Elham Zanjani is pretty at 29. Her long eyelashes curl up perfectly and her tan skin is a creamy brown. Nine years ago she was studying at York University, engaged to another Iranian Canadian and living in her hometown of Toronto.

SDEROT, Israel — Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's convoy had just pulled into Sderot Wednesday afternoon when the warning of incoming rocket fire from Gaza crackled from the town's loudspeakers.

MOSCOW_ The subway crowd brushed past Alla Semyonova, tromping through the now-gray slush of a December snowfall.

NAIROBI, Kenya — How bad was it for Africa in 2008? The highlight of the year for most of the continent just might've been the election of a half-Kenyan to lead a nation thousands of miles away.

ALONG THE ISRAEL-GAZA STRIP BORDER — In a muddy field overlooking the smoke-blackened Gaza Strip skyline on Tuesday, young soldiers from an Israeli tank unit linked arms with euphoric civilians and joined them in the hora, a circular dance, in anticipation of a possible ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military extended its air campaign in the Gaza Strip on Monday, and the nation's defense minister warned that the country is in "an all-out war" with its Hamas adversaries, who control the Palestinian territory.

JERUSALEM — As Israel clamps down on the Gaza Strip and prepares for the possibility of sending thousands of soldiers into the Palestinian area controlled by the militant Islamic group Hamas, its leaders are facing a diplomatic conundrum: They have clear military goals but no political vision for how to end the confrontation.

BAGHDAD — A car bomb ripped through a historic Shiite Muslim district of Baghdad Saturday, killing at least 24 people and wounding at least 46, Iraqi police said. The U.S. military put the death toll at 18.

WASHINGTON — In Afghanistan a few weeks ago, a U.S. fighter pilot asked visiting Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Rives which of the Washington dignitaries was Sen. Lindsey Graham.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is moving some troops away from its border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said on Friday, sparking renewed fears that last month's terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, could trigger a fourth war between the two countries, both of which are now armed with nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close it. The international community has condemned it.