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Suicide Attack at Baghdad Mosque Kills 28, Including MP

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque Sunday night, killing 28 people and wounding 37 others, an interior ministry official said.

Parliament lawmaker Khaled al-Fahdawi was among the dead in the attack, officials said.

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Erdogan Urges Syria to 'Silence Arms Immediately'

Turkey's prime minister called Sunday for an end to the bloody crackdown on protestors in Syria, warning the regime could face the same fate as recently ousted governments in the Arab world.

"A regime cannot survive by force, brutality, by shooting and killing unarmed people taking to the streets. The only solution is to silence arms immediately and listen to the demands of the people," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised address to the nation.

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Rebels Say Gadhafi Son Khamis Could Be Dead in Clash

Libyan rebels said Sunday that one of Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Khamis, whose death has been announced several times since the conflict erupted, may have been killed a day ago in a clash with rebels.

On Saturday, a brigade of rebel fighters in the city of Tarhuna, 80 kilometers southeast of the capital Tripoli "intercepted a military convoy which had several brand new Mercedes vehicles", rebel military spokesman Ahmed Omar Bani told reporters in Benghazi.

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Qaida Branch Says Responsible for Algeria Bombing

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb said Sunday it had carried out a twin suicide attack on an Algerian military academy that killed 18 people.

A brief statement emailed to Agence France Presse in Morocco said AQIM "claims responsibility for the two martyr operations" on Friday which "targeted the heart of Algeria's Cherchell military institution", about 100 kilometers from the Algerian capital.

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Palestinians See Progress in EU Stance on U.N. Bid

The Palestinian leadership sees "progress" in the European Union's position on its plan to seek U.N. membership next month, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"There is progress in the European stance and a willingness to coordinate with the Palestinian leadership over the type of resolution we are looking for," said PLO secretary general Yasser Abed Rabbo a day after president Mahmoud Abbas met in Ramallah with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

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Iran Warns NATO against Drowning in Syrian 'Swamp'

Iran on Sunday cautioned NATO against any military intervention in its main regional ally Syria, warning the transatlantic alliance that it “would drown in a swamp from which it would never be able to escape.”

“Syria is the spearhead of resistance in the Middle East and the NATO alliance cannot intimidate this country by waging an attack,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview with the official IRNA news agency.

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Fierce Fighting as Rebels Tighten Noose on Gadhafi Hometown

Libyan rebels closed in on Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte from both east and west Sunday, a senior military commander said, as the insurgents scrambled to restore essential services to Tripoli.

Fierce fighting was also raging in the west of the country as rebels trying to take full control of the region said they had fallen into an ambush in a town southwest of Zuwarah.

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Salehi Says Iran 'Discreetly' Aided Libyan Rebels

Iran "discreetly" provided humanitarian aid to Libyan rebels before the fall of Tripoli, Jam-e-Jam newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday as saying.

"We were in touch with many of the rebel groups in Libya before the fall of (Moammar) Gadhafi, and discreetly dispatched three or four food and medical consignments to Benghazi," Salehi told the daily.

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Netanyahu Says Israel to 'Consider' Any Request for More Sinai Troops

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that if Egypt asked to increase its troops in the Sinai peninsula, the request would be brought before the security cabinet, public radio said.

Netanyahu's remarks were made to ministers from his right-wing Likud party before the start of the weekly cabinet meeting -- the first since an attack on August 18 killed eight Israelis on a desert road near the Egyptian border by gunmen who infiltrated from the Sinai.

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Brother of Sadat's Assassin Returns to Egypt from Iranian Exile

The brother of the Islamist assassin of former president Anwar Sadat returned to Egypt from exile in Iran on Sunday and surrendered to the authorities, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Mohammed Shawki al-Islamboulli, who was sentenced to death in absentia for leading the Islamist network Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya in the mid-1990s, was whisked away by officials from the military prosecutor's office as he arrived in Cairo.

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