Middle East Update

The U.S. and its allies want the U.N. Security Council to ban the sale of missile and atomic technology to Iran and end most U.N. help for its nuclear programs — moves diplomats said, are narrowly focused in hopes of winning Russian and Chinese backing for sanctions.

An al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings was killed in April in Pakistan, American officials have confirmed.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 — The top American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he may call for more troops to be sent to Baghdad, possibly by increasing the overall U.S. presence in Iraq, as rising bloodshed pushes Iraqi and American deaths to some of their highest levels of the war.

Gunmen in Baquba ambushed two busloads of Iraqi police recruits on October 22, killing at least 13 and kidnapping dozens of others, security officials said.

A senior State Department diplomat apologized on October 22 for having told the Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera on Saturday that there is a strong possibility history will show the United States displayed “arrogance” and “stupidity” in its handling of the Iraq war.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a bid for political survival, struck an alliance on October 23, with a hard-liner who has called for stripping Israeli Arabs of citizenship, executing lawmakers for talking to Hamas and bombing Palestinian population centers.

One in five Americans believes the United States is winning the war in Iraq, according to a poll. The number has dropped by half since December.

Police and members of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia fought in another southern Iraq town on October 21, leaving nine people dead.

Police and members of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia fought in another southern Iraq town on October 21, leaving nine people dead.

17 Iraqis were killed on October 21 in a town south of Baghdad, when mortar bombs and 5 suicide bombers were exploded I n crowded areas.