American diplomats led a walkout at the UN General Assembly today as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a sweeping attack on the United States and major western European nations.

BRITAIN’S education department is to look at how it can check Islamic weekend schools after the BBC reported it had uncovered more than 40 of them teaching anti-Semitic views and extreme punishment for sodomy and theft.

Iran’s president taunted arch-enemy Israel from just across the tense border in Lebanon, rallying tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters as Israeli attack helicopters buzzed nearby.

The Balfour Declaration: The origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Gaza’s fragile ceasefire was broken today when an Israeli soldier was killed by a bomb.

The Israeli navy intercepted an Iranian ship loaded with medicine, food and clothing destined for Gaza and forced the vessel to head toward an Egyptian port, Iran’s state television reported today.

Shia worshippers in three Iraqi cities today suffered bombings and ambushes, killing at least 39 people, during the climax of ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shia calendar.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah lashed out at US President George Bush today, telling throngs of Shias in Lebanon, marking their holiest day, that Bush was seeking to spark a civil war in the country.

Israeli missiles struck Lebanon from north to south and in the Bekaa Valley near Syria, killing 35 people, including a family who had come from Canada to visit their home village.

A Palestinian was killed when an Israeli tank shell hit his truck early today, and Israeli aircraft struck targets in several parts of Gaza.

Mohammed Deif, the Palestinian militant who has been top of Israel’s wanted list for a decade, was wounded in an air strike on a house in Gaza City early today, the military said.

A Palestinian militant leader today said a captured Israeli soldier was being held in a “secure place,” and he claimed that his group also seized a Jewish settler in the West Bank.

Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip infiltrated Israel through a tunnel early today, attacking a military post and killing two Israelis before soldiers shot dead three gunmen, the army, militants and witnesses said.

MEMBERS of a radical Jewish sect have met with top Iranian officials in Tehran to show support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call for the destruction of Israel.

Alleged race hate preacher Abu Hamza today accused the Foreign Office and the media of being controlled by Jews.

ISRAEL called Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “very dangerous” yesterday after he expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested the Jewish state be moved to Europe.

Hamas leaders say they are not targeting the United States in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of their founder, but will hit back at Israel and target Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for death.

Anti-Israel demonstrations erupted across the Arab world today after Israel assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, with a missile attack outside a Gaza City mosque.

CALLING Hamas an "enemy of peace", US Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday said the Palestinian Authority must strip the group of its terror network and negotiating a truce as the Palestinian Prime Minister has been doing is not sufficient.

ISRAEL yesterday pledged a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas but an opinion poll showed a majority of Israelis oppose the stepped-up attacks on leaders of the militant Islamic group.

Israel tried to kill a senior Hamas leader in Gaza City today, hitting his car with several missiles in an attack that wounded him, killed two bystanders and threw the future of a US-backed peace plan into doubt.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded bus a busy Tel Aviv street at lunch-time today, killing at least five other people and wounding 49 in the second such attack in two days.