MORE than a billion Muslims around the world began observing the holy month of Ramadan yesterday, with the dawn-to-dusk fast posing a particular challenge for the devout in the sweltering Middle East.

Hamas claimed today one of its veteran fighters was killed by Israeli agents in Dubai last week.

A three-year-old Iraqi girl who was blinded and disfigured in a 2006 Baghdad car bombing has returned home with a new set of prosthetic eyes after a trip to London for medical treatment.

A Sudanese jet veered off a runway tonight and exploded into flames, killing about 100 people, Sudan’s state television reported.

IRAQ and China are close to re-signing a $1.2 billion (€0.78 million) oil deal that was called off after the 2003 US invasion, an Iraqi Oil Ministry official said yesterday.

AN IRAQI journalist said yesterday that gunmen went on a killing spree in his Baghdad home, murdering seven children and four adult relatives, but Iraq’s interior ministry denied the attack took place.

The death toll from yesterday’s al-Qaida-claimed suicide bombings in Algeria today rose to 33, the government said.

The Iraqi Cabinet has approved a draft law to manage the country’s vast oil industry and distribute its wealth among the population.

Iraq refuses to be a launching pad for threats against any of its neighbours and at the same time countries surrounding Iraq should not threaten the security of this Arab state, former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said today amid rising tension between the United States and Iran.

President George Bush will meet his defence experts today to thrash out the nuts and bolts of his yet-to-be-revealed Iraq strategy plan.

Iraq’s president rejected suggestions that an international conference be held to address the violence wracking his country, echoing sentiments expressed by other leading politicians.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said today that he believed Iraqi forces would be ready by next June to take full control of security in Iraq, an issue on which he pressed US President George Bush during their Amman, Jordan, summit.

Fierce fighting between coalition forces and insurgents shut down the city of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, today and gunfire crackled across the capital, as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki travelled to Jordan for a summit with US President George Bush aimed at halting the country’s escalating sectarian violence and paving the way for a reduction of American troops.

US President George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will discuss a speedier hand-over of security control to Iraqi forces as a prelude to the start of a US withdrawal when they meet in Amman, Jordan, later this week, top Iraqi government officials said today.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that Iraq is close to civil war as the Bush administration stepped up diplomatic efforts to stabilise the violent country.

October 20, 1966: Born Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalayleh in Jordan, part of Bani Hassan Bedouin tribe.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked militant who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings in Iraq, has been killed in a US air raid north of Baghdad.

A prosecution witness in a trial in Amman, Jordan, today said an Iraqi woman lied when she said she did not plan to blow herself up in Amman’s triple hotel blasts.

A powerful earthquake shook Greece yesterday and was felt across many parts of the Mediterranean, but caused only slight damage and three minor injuries, authorities said.

Large demonstrations broke out across Iraq today to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters called rigged in favour of the main religious Shiite coalition.

A lawyer for Saddam Hussein has said he saw evidence his client had been beaten this week and when the two first met.

Liechtenstein today handed over to the Iraqi government a private plane said to have been used by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to transport money and senior officials.

Iraqi police arrested eight Sunni Arabs for allegedly plotting to kill the judge who prepared the indictment of Saddam Hussein, the day before the ousted leader’s trial for crimes against humanity resumes.

The courtroom will be the same but uncertainty surrounds nearly everything else as the trial of Saddam Hussein resumes today after a five-week recess.

Three brothers of a failed Iraqi suicide bomber had been killed by US forces, it was reported today.

SUNNI Arab leaders demanded yesterday that US and Iraqi troops suspend military operations in heavily Sunni areas, accusing the Shiite-led government of trying to divide the nation ahead of next month's legislative elections.

Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the highest-ranking figure from Saddam Hussein’s regime still at large, died today, according to unconfirmed reports.

Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born producer of the Halloween horror films, died today from injuries sustained in the triple hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan.

Saddam Hussein’s lawyer blamed US-led “occupation forces” today for the killing of a second colleague in the trial and urged Arab leaders to “shoulder their responsibility” to combat disorder here that threatens the proceeding.

Iraq’s president said Saddam Hussein had confessed to killings and other “crimes” committed during his regime, including the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s, and should be executed many times over.

Saddam Hussein’s lawyers are refusing to take part in any further legal proceedings until the Iraqi tribunal acknowledges an attack against the former dictator and guarantees the safety of all defendants and attorneys, one of his lawyers said today.

The staid conference room in Brussels could not have seemed further from the bloodstained streets of Baghdad.

A car bomb exploded outside a police academy in northern Iraq today, and when police set up a checkpoint to close off the area, a second car bomb exploded nearby, authorities said.

Only about 16% of eligible Iraqi voters living outside their country have registered for next weekend’s elections and the largest turnout so far has been in Iran, organisers said.

The US-led post-war government in Iraq awarded business to two multinational banks fined for violating US sanctions against Iraq during the regime of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, records show.

Senior Palestinian leaders including Ahmed Qureia and Mahmoud Abbas arrived in France tonight in a bid to check on the medical status of Yasser Arafat.

A director of an international charity in Iraq was kidnapped as she was being driven to work in Baghdad today.

A Paris newspaper editor said there had been positive movement in the effort to free two captive French journalists in Iraq, while a separate militant group said it had killed three Turkish captives.

who claim to represent Saddam Hussein cried out in protest as they watched television pictures of the Iraqi dictator appearing before a judge today, saying they should have been by his side.

A Jordanian lawyer who claims to represent Saddam urged the US-led coalition to release the ousted dictator, and said that handing him over to the newly empowered interim Iraqi government would violate international law.

Saddam Hussein’s lawyers are concerned about their client’s welfare after seeing the way some prisoners were being treated by their US military guards at the Abu Ghraib prison, one of the lawyers said in Amman, Jordan.

The international Red Cross said today it had repeatedly asked US authorities to take action over prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison before recent revelations about the way detainees were treated.

BLACK-GARBED captors with guns, knives and swords threatened to burn alive three blindfolded Japanese hostages unless Tokyo removed its troops from Iraq, according to a videotape seen on Arab TV.

Two staff members of the international Red Cross have visited former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in US custody in Iraq, a spokeswoman said today.