Hezbollah

It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war. Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she welcomed a new power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon even though it increased the power of Hezbollah militants at the expense of U.S.-backed moderates. "Obviously in any compromise there are compromises," Rice said during a surprise visit to Beirut to meet Lebanon's new president, former army chief Michel Suleiman. Lebanese politics operates on ambiguity and consensus, and to get Suleiman elected, that meant giving veto power to Hezbollah, a militia and political force that the United States lists as a terrorist group.

, -- At least six people were killed Friday in heavy clashes between sectarian factions in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli, medical sources said. An additional 50 people were wounded as gunmen from the Sunni Bab Tibbaneh district and the Alawite Jabal Mohsen area of Tripoli fought. Residents fled as the fighters exchanged machine-gun and grenade fire. At least 19 people in the mostly Sunni city have died in the last two months in sectarian violence linked to Lebanon's political troubles.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Saturday that his guerrilla organization had the remains of Israeli soldiers left on southern Lebanon's battlefields during a 34-day war that started after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. "Oh Zionists, your army is lying to you. . . . Your army has left the body parts of your soldiers in our villages and fields," Nasrallah said in a rare public appearance. "I am not talking about regular body parts.

An official panel of inquiry found Wednesday that Israel's failure to win the 2006 war in Lebanon stemmed from "flawed conduct" and "serious failings" by its political and military leadership, but concluded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acted in what he thought was the country's best interest. The final report on the panel's 16-month investigation casts no personal blame on any leader. Critics of the embattled prime minister said that made it less likely he would soon be forced to resign.

In a rare internal critique of Israel's use of cluster bombs, a government-appointed commission has found a lack of "operational discipline, control and oversight" in the army's deployment of the weapons in civilian areas. The panel's statement, buried in an exhaustive report on Israel's conduct of the 2006 Lebanon war, did not directly challenge the army's assertion that its use of cluster bombs in that conflict fell within the bounds of international humanitarian law.

For more than two decades, Imad Mughniyah was among the most wanted terrorists on Earth, a top Hezbollah commander with close ties to Iranian intelligence, pursued by the United States, Israel and other nations for attacks that killed hundreds of their civilians and soldiers. Known as the Fox, Mughniyah was a frustratingly elusive figure to his pursuers -- accused of many acts of terrorism, convicted of none.

The leader of Hezbollah told thousands of mourners Thursday that his Shiite Muslim militant organization would strike Israel to avenge the assassination of one of its most elusive top commanders. Israel has denied orchestrating the car bomb attack that killed Imad Mughniyah on Tuesday in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

A U.S. decision to dispatch a warship toward the Lebanese coast was denounced Friday by the Iranian- and Syrian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Bush administration officials said that positioning the destroyer Cole from the island of Malta farther east toward Lebanon was an attempt to bolster security in the Levant, which was the site of a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. "The purpose of the U.S.

The smell of freshly baked bread calms the room filled with women in frayed cloaks and worn slippers. Grateful for the assistance, they walk out of a Muslim Brotherhood social service center into the trash-strewn alley, clutching plastic bags packed with flat bread loaves. For five years, the Jordanian government has clamped down on the Islamist group's electoral ambitions and its charity programs, suspicious it was using good deeds to win political support.