IRAQ: Shias Going Their Own Way

Amid failed moves for a peace deal between the government and insurgents through a national reconciliation plan, the Shia majority in Iraq are pushing ahead for creating a federal region for themselves in the southern part of Iraq.

MIDEAST: Children Begin to Unlearn Some Lessons

"Rockets landed on our house and destroyed it totally, so many people were injured," says nine-year-old Issara. Her two brothers, four-year-old Hussein and five-year-old Mahmoud, listen carefully. So does Ola Attaya, 31, a psychologist heading a pilot project to help traumatised children.

MIDEAST: A City Lives On With Its Ill-Fated Charm

The poster on the corniche near the American University campus in Beirut has become justly well known. It shows a Muslim woman in full black abaya walking next to a slender woman in a bikini. Together, they're the face of Beirut.

MIDEAST: War Easier to Start Than Stop

Israeli commandos snatching Hezbollah operatives deep inside Lebanon. Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah fighters in villages along the Lebanese-Israel border. Thousands of troops streaming into south Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets again raining down by the dozens on towns in northern Israel. Fighter planes renewing their bombardment of targets inside Lebanon.

MIDEAST: Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of War Crimes

In systematically failing to distinguish between Hezbollah fighters and civilian population in its three-and-a-half-week-old military campaign in Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have committed war crimes, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch Wednesday.

MIDEAST: Lebanese Red Cross Repeatedly Targeted

Israeli warplanes are attacking the Lebanese Red Cross repeatedly, members of the medical aid group say.

MIDEAST: ‘No Hezbollah Rockets Fired from Qana’

Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed at least 60 civilians, have told IPS that no Hezbollah rockets were launched from the city before the Israeli air strike.

MIDEAST: Israel Under Pressure for Ceasefire

Israel agreed to a 48-hour hiatus in aerial strikes in Lebanon Monday after its bombardment of a building in the south Lebanese village Qana killed 54 people, at least half of them children.

LIBYA: Who Else Would Ask for ‘Israel-istine’

In his trademark dark glasses and African robe, Muammar Qaddafi looks down from a huge painting onto a group of businessmen, a look on his face as if to say: I am still the ruler here.

MIDEAST: ‘If You Haven’t Left, You’re Hezbollah’

The Israeli attack on Qana has taken the biggest toll of the war, but it is only one of countless lethal attacks on civilians in Lebanon.

MIDEAST: Oil Spill Hits Lebanon

Israeli air strikes on an electricity plant have released oil that has now spread over much of Lebanon's coastline.

MIDEAST: No Early End to Conflict in Sight

With U.S. and European leaders unable to agree on the conditions for a ceasefire, the Israeli cabinet authorising the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, and Hezbollah still firing dozens of rockets into Israel every day, an end to hostilities did not look near as Israel's offensive against the Shia organisation in Lebanon entered its 16th day Friday.

MIDEAST: Israelis Accused of Using Illegal Weapons

The Israeli military is using illegal weapons against civilians in southern Lebanon, according to several reports.

MIDEAST: Death Toll Could Be Twice the Official Figure

Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are all reporting that the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual.

MIDEAST: Fractured Govt Leads Devastated Country

Amidst the rapidly worsening situation in Lebanon, the government finds itself too weak and divided to deal either with the Israel or with Hezbollah.

MIDEAST: Hezbollah Could Be Gaining Strength

The continuing Israeli bombing of south Lebanon and south Beirut might just have strengthened the Hezbollah.

MIDEAST: Crisis Brings Rice, Not Peace

U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has come and gone, but the conflict in Lebanon continues. Most Lebanese believe she had little to say for them through her talks with leaders of the region.

MIDEAST: Israel Has Its Refugees, Too

Avner Pomeranetz does not sound particularly concerned by the barrage of 26 Katyusha rockets that slammed into his home town of Kiryat Shmona on Israel's northern border over the weekend. Nor by the fact that he has to remain in town by order of the army, and cannot travel south out of range of the rockets, because as a pharmacist he is considered to be providing an essential service.

MIDEAST: Refugees Have Only Their Anger

Among hundreds of thousands of refugees scattered across city parks, schools and abandoned buildings in Beirut, new and chilling words have been doing the rounds.

MIDEAST: Bombings Hit Children Hardest

About 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years of age or less, hospital records show.

MIDEAST: Lebanese Devastated In All Sorts of Ways

Much of Beirut is a devastated city, infrastructure in many areas lies in a shambles after the Israeli bombing. But the Lebanese are also just feeling devastated.