Middle East, Deaths | featured news

Thirty-four people were killed and 100 wounded in a blast during Friday prayers at a mosque in Pakistan's Khyber Agency, a government official said. The mosque had about 300 people when the blast went off, officials said.

Israel's military spokesman said Thursday that several attacks have been carried out by assailants.

Insurgents shot down a helicopter in Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans, most of them belonging to the Navy SEALs unit that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said.

A NATO helicopter crashed during an operation against the Taliban near the Afghan capital late Friday night, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said 31 U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed.
A second coalition helicopter was forced to make a precautionary landing in another part of Afghanistan, local officials and a spokesman for the multinational forces said Saturday.

Two explosions struck outside a bank in Saddam Hussein’s hometown, as soldiers were lining up to cash paychecks.

Syrian forces shot dead at least 11 people during mass protests on Friday against President Bashar al-Assad, rights activists and witnesses said.

Suicide bombers detonated two explosives-laden vehicles early Tuesday near a government compound south of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi officials said. The attacks come as Iraq’s top political factions started to discuss in earnest whether to ask some of the U.S. troops to stay beyond the Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline because of the security situation.

Security forces fired on protesters in Hodeidah, Taiz and Sana, with doctors reporting at least a dozen deaths.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the high-octane diplomat who spearheaded the end of the Bosnian war and most recently served as the Obama administration's point man in the volatile Afghan-Pakistani war zone, has died, officials said.

Two explosions, one of them destroying a car, killed a man and injured two other people in a busy Stockholm district on Saturday, media reports said.