Militant Group

Sheik Sabah Janabi wears a painful-looking metal brace on his left hand, its rods pressing into the puffy flesh like the spring on a mousetrap. He fumbles a Marlboro from a pack with his good hand, sucks in the smoke and frowns. In this farming town that was a center of extremism when Iraq fell into its nihilistic civil war, Janabi sits in a darkened room, his white shirt half tucked in and his blue tie slightly askew. He talks about how gunmen tried to kill him three months ago and describes himself as a leader under siege.

Insurgents in army uniforms stormed a hotel in the Somali capital Tuesday, killing at least 31 people, including six lawmakers, in an hourlong blaze of gunfire, explosions and smoke. The Shabab movement, an Islamic militant group fighting the frail internationally backed government of Somalia for years, claimed responsibility for the attack. Statements from the group cited by news organizations indicated that the assault was part of a "massive war" it declared Monday against the Somali government and the United Nations-backed peacekeeping force propping it up. Perpetually in crisis, the violent Horn of Africa country of Somalia has been a source of instability since the early 1990s.

The chief of Lebanon's domestic security forces had a warning for the Hezbollah commander: "You've been infiltrated." With that, Achraf Rifi, head of the U.S.-backed Internal Security Forces, handed over evidence showing that two trusted, mid-ranking Hezbollah commanders were working as informants for Israeli military intelligence, said a high-ranking Lebanese security official with knowledge of the April 2009 meeting. Wafiq Safa, the security chief for the powerful Shiite Muslim militia and political organization, was silent.

The Yemen summer has seethed with pitched battles and bloodshed, raising fears that the country will tumble into further disarray even as Washington has more than doubled its military and security aid. Gun fights and explosions break out in spasms across a nation at the dangerous intersection of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. In the south, an Al Qaeda-linked network has carried out strategic attacks on security targets, while in the north, a rebel group has renewed fighting against rival tribes and government forces.

Insurgents briefly raised the black flag of Al Qaeda in Iraq over a mostly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday during a brazen assault that killed 16 people and laid bare Iraq's fragility as the withdrawal of U.S. troops accelerates and the country's political crisis deepens. Ten of the dead were from the security forces, four were members of the U.S.-allied Sunni militia Awakening, and two were civilians, according to the Ministry of Interior. In addition, at least 14 people were injured, and police said the casualty toll could rise as sporadic clashes between security forces and gunmen continued into the night.

An Islamic militant group whose leader was recently executed by Iranian authorities claimed responsibility Friday for a devastating pair of bomb blasts the previous night that killed at least 27 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guard, and injured 270 others at a mosque in southeastern Iran. Jundallah, a Sunni organization that draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority and inspiration from Osama bin Laden's extremist ideology, said it dispatched two suicide bombers to the mosque in the city of Zahedan during an evening prayer ceremony.

An Islamic militant group whose leader was recently executed by Iranian authorities claimed responsibility for a pair of late Thursday bomb blasts that killed at least 27 people, including members of the Revolutionary Guard, at a mosque in southeastern Iran. Jundollah, a militant group that draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, said it dispatched two suicide bombers to the mosque during an evening prayer ceremony in the city of Zahedan in order to kill members of the Revolutionary Guard and avenge the arrest and hanging last month of their leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

The streets of Mogadishu echo with the footsteps of Shabab fighters, the rattle of their rifles and their recitations of a medieval version of Islamic law that espouses public beheadings and the stoning of adulterers. The militant group has loomed as a dangerous and fanatical curiosity contained from the outside world by war and the cruel designs of a failed state. But Shabab expanded its battlefield by hundreds of miles Sunday when it reached across porous borders and claimed responsibility for twin bombings that killed 76 people in Uganda.

Explosions at a mosque in the southeastern Iranian provincial capital of Zahedan on Thursday killed at least 15 people and injured more, Iranian news agencies reported. The semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted Interior Ministry official Ali Abdollahi as saying the attack was carried out by one or more suicide bombers and that at least 22 people were injured in addition to those killed. Hossein-Ali Shahriari, a member of parliament from Zahedan, told the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency that "around 20 people were martyred and 73 injured" in the attack, which took place after an evening religious ceremony at the city's Jameh Mosque.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq warned Tuesday that Iranian-supported militants might try to attack U.S. soldiers as they leave the country this summer. Army Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters at a news briefing that U.S. forces had boosted security around their bases in response to the danger posed by an Iranian-backed group that he said had received special training in Iran and had returned to Iraq with Iranian advisors. "There has been some intelligence of some Iranian surrogates attempting to attack U.S. bases, which we're watching very carefully," Odierno said.