The Washington Times

Iranian authorities announced Saturday that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won re-election by a commanding majority of nearly two-thirds of votes cast, but young Iranians protested in the streets of the capital and the president's chief rival charged fraud.

An official tally presented on television by Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, an Ahmadinejad appointee, said the president got 24 million votes to about 13 million for Mr-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who advocated economic and social reforms and better relations with the West.

Iran's cliffhanger presidential election ended Friday with both major candidates claiming victory, raising the prospect of deepening divisions in an already polarized society.

Despite record turnout that many analysts said would favor the challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won re-election.

Muslim leaders in Greece are warning authorities of violent protests in the mainly Christian Orthodox nation after an incident in which a policeman reportedly defaced a Koran.

"How can you control enraged 20-year-old Afghans who will hit the streets seeking to die in the name of Allah?" asked Naim al-Ghandour, president of the Muslim Union of Greece.

Mr. al-Ghandour's warning followed demonstrations by Muslims to protest the Koran incident and the attempted arson by suspected far-right activists of a Muslim prayer room.

KABUL, Afghanistan | Video footage of a bombing raid by U.S. forces earlier this month on a village in western Afghanistan "very clearly" shows that Taliban militants were targeted and it accounts for most of those killed, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East and South Asia said Friday.

"What the video will prove is that the targets of these different strikes were the Taliban," Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of Central Command, told National Public Radio.

KABUL, Afghanistan | Video footage of a bombing raid by U.S. forces earlier this month on a village in western Afghanistan "very clearly" shows that Taliban militants were targeted and it accounts for most of those killed, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East and South Asia said Friday.

"What the video will prove is that the targets of these different strikes were the Taliban," Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of Central Command, told National Public Radio.

A dispute over a one-acre island in Lake Victoria that has fueled talk of war between Kenya and Uganda is but one instance of increasing conflict over shrinking water resources throughout Africa.

Such conflicts pit ethnic groups, races and nations against one another and are likely to get worse, fueled by a toxic mix of climate change, environmental ruin, mounting droughts and famine.

ATHENS -- Anarchy made a spectacular return to Greece this month as explosions struck banks and private businesses and a riot rocked downtown Athens.

Widespread urban guerrilla violence, growing racism toward Greeces 1 million immigrant population and unprecedented disillusionment toward the political class characterize Greek society five months after it experienced its gravest rioting since World War II.

Greece faces a proliferation of new anarchist and anti-establishment terrorist groups, which pose a growing threat to stability, Greek and foreign analysts say.

The morning after the deadly U.S. air strike in western Afghanistan earlier this month, Homayoun Farahi received a phone call from his father. Two of his uncles were killed.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The civilian death toll from the U.S. bombardment in western Afghanistan is about a third less than the Afghan government claims, the country's leading human rights organization said Sunday, adding that no evidence of white phosphorus was found.

A weeklong investigation by a team from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has concluded that between 90 and 100 people died as a result of the May 4-5 military operation in Farah province, director Ahmad Nader Nadery told The Washington Times.

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, the once formidable insurgency that pioneered guerrilla suicide attacks, claimed Sunday they had given up their 25-year battle for an ethnic homeland on the tropical island nation.

Surrounded in a small coconut grove with Sri Lankan forces closing in, several leaders reportedly committed suicide instead of surrendering.

HERAT, Afghanistan- Afghans who lost family members in a U.S. bombardment last week say Taliban militants fled hours before the U.S. attack -- an account that contrasts with Pentagon claims about an incident that has come to encapsulate an uphill battle for Afghan hearts and minds.

Haji Sayed Barakat, who lost two children and his wife of 35 years in the May 4 attack, said Taliban militants were present in the area but had moved on two hours before the U.S. air strikes.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Hundreds more civilians have died in fighting in Sri Lanka's north, where 50,000 noncombatants remain trapped in the crossfire between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels as a quarter-century-old struggle enters its endgame.

A government doctor, V. Shanmugarajah, told the Associated Press on Sunday that artillery fire killed at least 378 civilians and wounded more than 1,100. He called it the bloodiest day he had seen and said many more civilians probably were killed but were buried where they fell.