By Friday afternoon it had started to calm down in Beirut. Only sporadic gunfire was heard after a day of fighting claimed the lives of eleven persons and left many wounded. Without much resistance from the pro-government forces, the superior military machine of Hizbollah confirmed its grip on the Western part of Beirut. With Hizbollah's military action, the political crisis that has been looming in the country for the past 18 months has reached a climax.
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Rebel troops of separatist Tamil Tiger attacked government soldiers in two violent battles in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday. Air force jets attacked military base, 14 rebels were killed.
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A team of researchers led by Doug Owsley, forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has determined the identity of a pre-Civil War era individual buried in a cast iron coffin that was discovered in Washington, D.C., in 2005 by a utility crew.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is warning that factional infighting has put Palestinians on the verge of civil war. VOA's Jim Teeple reports from Jerusalem, the comments were made as the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah fought a three-hour gunbattle near the main commercial crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
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"What is happening in Niger Delta is not being taken seriously and is very sad. It may actually end up being bigger little by little. If we are not careful, chances are that the 140 million Nigerians may end up like a Liberia or a Sierra Leone or a Somalia," Ribadu warned.
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The secretary-general of the Islamic world's largest grouping, Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), says pulling out U.S. troops from Iraq under the present "catastrophic position" would be a mistake and only lead to more violence.
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A new U.S. intelligence report presented to President George W. Bush says that "key elements" of the violence in Iraq can be described as a "civil war."
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today accused unnamed outsiders of provoking factional tension in the Palestinian territories, threatening to cause civil war, and hampering the peace process with Israel.
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The United Nations is urging Nepal's government and the Maoist rebel movement to punish those guilty of violating human rights during the country's decade-long civil war.
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Rival Palestinian factions have clashed again in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. At least one person was killed and six wounded. As Robert Berger reports from VOA's Jerusalem bureau, a breakdown of law and order in the Palestinian territories has exacerbated a political deadlock over early elections.
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Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi has said he remains optimistic about his country's future, despite the spiraling wave of violence, which some already consider a civil war.
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U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says the worsening conflict in Iraq has increased the chances of an an all-out civil war in the country or even a regional conflict.
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