ANKARA, Turkey Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey on Tuesday, in new air strikes responding to an attack that killed 17 soldiers at a military outpost four days ago.

BAGHDAD The U.S. and Iraq are close to a deal to keep U.S. troops in this country next year but it will take "bold political decisions" to overcome the final hurdles, Iraq's foreign minister said Tuesday.

As of Monday, Oct. 6, 2008, at least 4,178 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The Eid al Fitr has come for all Muslims, Sunni and Shiite, in Iraq. The holiday, when Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting when Muslims believe the holy book of the Quran was revealed to the prophet Mohammed, was once again marked with revelry and tragedy.

BAGHDAD The 38-year-old teacher wanted to participate in Iraq's first provincial elections in four years - until she realized that a new law would require the ballot to list her name, not just her party.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. A military judge has refused to dismiss charges against a soldier from New York who is accused of killing two Army officers by detonating a bomb in Iraq.

ANKARA, Turkey Turkish warplanes bombed a Kurdish rebel hideout in northern Iraq on Monday - the third air strike in retaliation for an attack that killed 15 soldiers three days ago.

BAGHDAD An Iraqi parliamentary official says the plane carrying Iraq's Sunni parliamentary speaker has been refused entry into Iran.

BAGHDAD The U.S. military said Saturday it killed a senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader suspected of masterminding one of the deadliest bombings in Baghdad as well as recent attacks and the 2006 videotaped execution of a kidnapped Russian official.

BAGHDAD As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world's most strategic regions.

SAN DIEGO The attorneys for two Marines charged in the killing of unarmed Iraqi detainees accused prosecutors Friday of intimidation by delaying the court-martial of one to try forcing testimony from the other, who faces similar charges.

SAVANNAH, Ga. A soldier has been charged with murder in the September shootings of a superior and a fellow team leader at their Army patrol base in central Iraq, the military said Friday.

BAGHDAD Iraq's presidency council has agreed to approve a long-delayed law that will allow most of the country to hold provincial elections early next year, officials said Friday.

As of Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008, at least 4,176 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

BAGHDAD Suicide bombers targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 20 people and injured dozens more at Baghdad mosques Thursday morning, officials said.

BAGHDAD Suicide bombers struck two Shiite mosques in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens during celebrations marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

DETROIT The U.S. government has been sending fewer Iraqis to Michigan because of its struggling economy, though some expect the refugees will make their way here anyway, costing the cash-strapped state more in the long run.

VILSECK, Germany A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of accessory to murder and was sentenced to eight months in prison for his role in the killing of four Iraqi prisoners who were bound, blindfolded, shot and dumped in a canal.

BAGHDAD A spate of marketplace bombings directed against Iraqi Muslims celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan raised the civilian death toll to 360 in September, 58 more than in August, according to statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.

BALAD, Iraq The U.S. military's main combat hospital in Iraq has increasingly switched to helping Iraqis. As the numbers of wounded American soldiers have fallen, the hospital is now saving the lives of a remarkable 93 percent of Iraqis who come with devastating injuries.

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

BAGHDAD Iraq's Shiite-led government took command Wednesday of thousands of U.S-backed mostly Sunni fighters who turned against al-Qaida, pledging to integrate them into public life in recognition of their help in quelling violence.

A look at the U.S. military's premier trauma center in Iraq, the Air Force Theater Hospital on Balad Air Base:

BAGHDAD For Raad Abdulsada, every day starts the same way. He wakes up at sunrise, heads to a busy, dusty corner in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood and waits for work.

As of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, at least 4,176 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

BAGHDAD The scars left by the violence that ravaged the Fadl district of central Baghdad are everywhere in this former Sunni Muslim insurgent bastion. The balconies are collapsed, and the building columns, decimated by gunfire, look like chewed apple cores. Garbage is strewn throughout the streets, and there's little or no electricity.

WASHINGTON Six Army brigades, a National Guard unit and three military headquarters have been ordered to Iraq next summer in a move that would allow the U.S. to keep the number of troops largely steady there through much of next year.

BAGHDAD The number of Iraqi security forces killed in September rose by nearly a third to 159 compared with the same period last year, Associated Press figures showed Tuesday. U.S. troop deaths for the same period fell by nearly 40 percent to 25.

Internal refugees in Iraq are showing little interest in taking part in the country's delayed provincial elections despite extensive campaigns to increase voter registration.

BAGHDAD Ahmed Qassim spent Monday mopping up blood and sweeping broken glass from his clothing shop in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood. It wasn't how he'd hoped to mark the close of Ramadan, Islam's holy month.

BAGHDAD Iraq will allow doctors to carry guns to protect themselves after hundreds have been targeted and killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the government said Monday.

BAGHDAD Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday that the government is ready to compromise to reach a security accord with the United States because Iraq still needs American troops despite the drop in violence.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland Iraq has lost its last chance to get back into qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

BAGDHAD Iraq has bought 12 new U.S.-built reconnaissance planes, the Defense Ministry said Monday, a small and early step in the country's attempt to reassert itself in air space now controlled by U.S.-led forces.

UNITED NATIONS Iraq's foreign minister says "there is a new world now" because of the global financial crisis and he hopes it won't lead to an immediate withdrawal of the 146,000 American troops in his country.

BAGHDAD The U.S. military says it has arrested five Iranian-backed Shiite extremists accused in recent rocket attacks on Iraqi and American forces.

HAGERSTOWN, Md. Defense contractor CACI (KA'-kee) claims it should be immune from lawsuits alleging torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying it was doing the U.S. government's work as a supplier of interrogators.

HOUSTON Two former Texas A&M University researchers allege colleagues threw animal feces and urine on their prayer rug and routinely mocked and mistreated them because they are Muslims from Iraq, according to a federal lawsuit.

BAGHDAD Iraq's Health Ministry is reporting a total of 327 confirmed cholera cases in central and southern Iraq since an outbreak of the disease last month.

WASHINGTON A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

BAGHDAD Iraqi police on Thursday raised the death toll in an ambush against Iraqi forces raiding a Sunni village northeast of Baghdad to 35, most of them commandos sent to the area as part of a U.S.-backed military crackdown.

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq Turkish warplanes bombarded Kurdish rebel territory in northern Iraq, damaging a school and wounding three people, a rebel spokesman said Friday.

BAGHDAD The U.S. military says a roadside bomb has killed an American soldier south of Baghdad.

ANKARA, Turkey Turkish warplanes successfully attacked 16 Kurdish rebel targets in a cross-border raid in northern Iraq, a military spokesman said Friday.

BAGHDAD The quarrel didn't last long.

BRUSSELS, Belgium European Union countries responding to appeals from the United Nations are ready to take up to 10,000 more Iraqi refugees and will send a mission to the Middle East to identify the most vulnerable people, EU ministers said Thursday.

WASHINGTON The Iraqi prisoner had valuable intelligence, U.S. special forces believed, and they desperately wanted it. They demanded that expert American military trainers teach them the same types of abusive interrogation techniques that North Korea and Vietnamese forces once used against U.S. prisoners of war.

BAGHDAD - After months of infighting, Iraq's parliament unanimously passed a crucial law Wednesday governing provincial elections.

BAGHDAD Iraq's parliament overwhelmingly approved a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of deadlock and giving a boost to U.S.-backed national reconciliation efforts.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A federal judge has ordered the Army to grant conscientious objector status and an honorable discharge to a soldier who says he experienced a religious awakening in Iraq.