Middle East, Shiite | featured news

BEIRUT — Gun battles broke out in Beirut early Monday, a day after emotional funeral ceremonies for Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the intelligence chief whose assassination has exposed long-running sectarian grudges and plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis in years.

Seven years after the fall of Saddam's regime, democracy is alive in Iraq. But there's still squabbling between Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds. ...

Iraq's electoral commission on Sunday affirmed the victory of a Sunni-backed bloc in the March election after a partial recount of votes in Baghdad failed to back up the Shiite prime minister's claims of fraud.

A coalition led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was winning in the all-important capital and a Shiite province in the south, according to a partial tally of election results released Saturday.

A car bomb killed four Iranian pilgrims near Iraq's holiest Shi'ite shrine on Saturday, a day before a parliamentary election that Sunni Islamist insurgents have vowed to wreck.

Twin car bombs killed at least 40 people and wounded 145 others on Friday in Iraq's holy city of Kerbala as hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims observed a major religious rite, health officials said.

A bomb planted on a parked motorcycle exploded Wednesday on the outskirts of the holy city of Karbala, killing at least 20 Shiite ...

Iraqi officials have released a Shi'ite militant leader, an Interior Ministry official said on Tuesday, raising hopes that the last of five British hostages captured in Baghdad more than 2-1/2 years ago would be returned.

A lone bomber in tribal dress infiltrates what was to have been a reconciliation meeting between Shiite and Sunni tribesmen. Five Guard commanders are killed. At least 28 people also are wounded.

A series of near simultaneous explosions shook five Shiite mosques around Baghdad today as Friday prayers were ending, killing at least 28 people and wounding dozens more.