MIDEAST: Veil Drops Over an Attack

Questions continue to hover over an attack that left four people dead in the Syrian capital Damascus ten days ago.

MIDEAST: Only the Impasse Gets Stronger

The summer session of Israel's parliament started this week with the opposition gleefully lambasting the ruling Likud party that had rejected its own Prime Minister's plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza strip and parts of the West Bank.

IRAQ: U.S. Troops Marching In Saddam’s Footsteps

Dozens of followers of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr sing songs of martyrdom as they carry the coffins of two of their slain comrades into the shrine of the revered Imam Ali in the Iraqi holy city, Najaf.

IRAQ: Victory Rises Above a Mass Grave

A team of local volunteers wearing surgical masks lifts the rotting body of a middle-aged woman from a shallow grave in the front yard of a house. The house owner says the body lay there three weeks.

MIDEAST: Fundamentalist Violence is Spreading

The violence that has thus far mainly hit Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians is spreading now to other countries in the Middle East.

IRAQ: Prisoners Are At Least Survivors

The treatment of Iraqi prisoners apparent from the CBS pictures is not the American way of doing things, U.S. President George W. Bush declared Friday. But the indications on the ground in Iraq are that such treatment may not be the exception.

IRAQ: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

As the U.S. military continues to clash with Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in the holy city Najaf, the mid-day call to prayer sounds in the poor, Shia neighbourhood Showle in Baghdad.

SOCIETY-MIDEAST: Some of the Killing is for ‘Honour’

In a village on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah, residents take good care of the cemetery in memory of their loved ones. They plant flowers and put up marble tombstones marked with names and dates.

IRAQ: Companies Negotiate Remote Profits

As violence rocked Iraq in Fallujah and Najaf, major international companies gathered in London this week to figure ways of doing business in Iraq without getting their hands burnt.

IRAQ: U.S. May be Fighting on Two Fronts Too Many

When U.S. troops backed by helicopter gunships attacked the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy Shia city of Najaf, it is not clear who they killed.

IRAQ: After the Headlines Comes the Tent City

New families seem to arrive every hour at the Iraqi Red Crescent refugee camp in West Baghdad. The camp, the first tent city erected as a result of the U.S. assault on Fallujah first drew about 50 families, a small fraction of the tens of thousands of civilians forced to flee their homes.

IRAQ: U.S. Facing Opponents it Trained

A U.S. military helicopter flies over the municipal building in the predominantly Shia Baghdad neighbourhood Kadamiya. A U.S.- trained Iraqi soldier stands guard.

MIDEAST: WMD Question Rises Again over Israel

A disparate group of demonstrators and international media representatives welcomed Israel's nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Wednesday upon his release from prison after completing his 18-year sentence.

IRAQ: Sadr Attacks U.S. with Democracy

Until recently, it was easy to find Sheikh Salim Mejid Jumar, one of Muqtada Sadr's top leaders in Baghdad.

ENVIRONMENT: No Earth Day Fete for Iraq

Three wars combined with decades of neglect and mismanagement have devastated the natural environment of Iraq, and international efforts to restore it are being constrained by the ongoing conflict.

IRAQ: Think of Those the U.S. Has Detained

Private First Class Matt Maupin assigned to the U.S. Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company based at Bartonville, Illinois, became the first prisoner taken by Iraqi insurgents since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

IRAQ: Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead

The story of Yusuf Fakri Amash is the story of so much of Fallujah. The 11-year-old boy just managed to escape from the town with his family. But not before the U.S. military killed his best friend.

MIDEAST: Hamas Killing Could Strengthen Arafat

Israel's killing of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in short succession seems aimed at nudging Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to re-establish control over the Gaza strip.

MIDEAST: Culture Rises Above Security Walls

Waiting in the queue to buy tickets for the opening ceremony of the European Film Festival in the West Bank city of Ramallah, one cannot help but listen to the stories people exchange about the Israeli incursion into the city just hours before the show.

MIDEAST: Diplomatic and Military Blows Shake Palestinians

Politics and violence got all tangled up once again in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this weekend.

RELIGION: ‘Islam Can be Democratic’

A global "Congress of Democrats from the Islamic World" has called for "regular multi-party elections" in Muslim countries.