At least 32 people were killed and 71 wounded in twin blasts which rocked Baghdad, security officials said on Friday, more than tripling a previously-announced death toll.
A defense ministry official put the toll from Thursday night's twin roadside bomb attacks in Baghdad's Urr neighborhood at 32 dead and 71 wounded while an interior ministry official said 36 died and 78 were wounded.

A Tunisian Islamist party emerged victorious Thursday in the Arab Spring's first elections, taking 90 of 217 seats on a new assembly nine months after the ouster of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
Violent protests broke out in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, where the uprising started last December, after the tally was announced, witnesses and the interior ministry said.

Saudi Arabia's powerful interior minister, 78-year-old Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, was named the new heir to the throne in a royal decree read out on state television Thursday.
Nayef -- who has been interior minister for nearly four decades and led a crackdown on al-Qaida in the kingdom -- succeeds prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who died last week in New York and was buried Tuesday in Riyadh.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Thursday to end the mandate for international military action in Libya, closing another chapter in the war against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, as the country’s new rulers said they would prosecute the ousted strongman’s killers following a global outcry over his death’s circumstances.
The 15-member council ordered an end to authorization for a no-fly zone and action to protect civilians from 11:59 pm Libyan time on October 31. The mandate was approved in March after Gadhafi launched a deadly assault on opposition protests.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday held talks with China's special envoy for the Middle East who reaffirmed his country's opposition to foreign interference in Syria, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.
Muallem and envoy Wu Sike met in Damascus for talks during which they spoke of "the relations of solid friendship" between their countries.

South African mercenaries who allegedly took part in Moammar Gadhafi’s failed escape bid are still taking care of his son Seif al-Islam, the Beeld newspaper said Thursday.
The South Africans were hired by a company with close ties to Gadhafi, training his presidential guard and handling some of his offshore financial dealings, the Afrikaans-language paper said.

Syrian security forces and snipers Thursday killed three people, including a teenager, in the central region of Homs and the southern province of Daraa, two hotbeds of dissent, activists said.
"A 15-year-old minor was killed and three people were wounded by security forces during raids," in the town of Dael, near the southern city of Daraa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

A U.S.-Israeli citizen accused of spying in Egypt arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Israeli media said, freed under a prisoner exchange deal that saw Israel release 25 Egyptian detainees.
Israeli television and radio reported that Ilan Grapel had touched down at Israel's Ben Gurion airport at around 1630 GMT, arriving on a private plane from Cairo, accompanied by Israeli officials.

Turkey's defense minister said Thursday a major operation launched against Kurdish rebels in retaliation for an attack that killed 24 soldiers had ended, Anatolia news agency reported.
"Other than our normal routine struggle against terror, the operation in Kazan valley that was started after the Cukurca attack is over. But our normal struggle against terror is ongoing," Anatolia quoted Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz as saying.

Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, has confirmed an Interpol request concerning a suspect wanted over U.S. allegations of an assassination plot, but suggested the name was too common to pinpoint the individual, Iranian reports said Thursday.
"There are 150 Gholam Shakuris (in Iran). Interpol sent us a question about this name, and our investigation showed a certain Gholam Shakuri who lives in the United States and is a member of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization," Salehi was quoted in Iranian media as saying in Saudi Arabia.
