Middle East, Wars | featured news

The U.S. military is spending billions of dollars on construction projects to ensure Afghanistan's infrastructure can support American and coalition personnel in 2010 and years beyond.

At least nine people were killed and at least 30 were wounded Friday in a suicide attack targeting Sunni Muslim worshipers at a mosque in northern Iraq, an Interior Ministry said.

As the Obama administration debates whether to shift its aims in Afghanistan, officials at the Pentagon and National Security Council have begun developing "middle path" strategies that would require fewer troops than their ground commander is seeking.

Pakistani jets pounded militant hide-outs along the Afghan border overnight as hundreds of thousands of civilians fled South Waziristan ahead of an expected government offensive, officials said Wednesday.

Iraq's Cabinet has signed off on a $67 billion draft budget for 2010 that is well below what officials have said is needed, raising concerns that the shortfall will derail the progress of Iraqi security forces just they are taking over from withdrawing American troops.

As Obama's team works on its plans, McChrystal and other advisors are asked to keep the process more private. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that President Obama's advisors should keep their guidance private, in effect admonishing the top commander in Afghanistan for publicly advocating an approach requiring more troops even as the White House reassesses its strategy.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas faced growing outrage at home Sunday over his decision to withdraw support for a U.N. report that alleged Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in last winter's Gaza war.

On July 13, 2008, nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 27 were wounded in one of the war's bloodiest attacks, driving a strategic reassessment.

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by the Washington Post.

The commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has finished his review of the war and that it is now being sent up the chain of command to the Pentagon and NATO headquarters, NATO says.