Summary: A spate of bombings in Iraq raises concern that militants are regrouping after suffering sharp setbacks in fighting during the previous two years, 2007-2008.

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Summary: About 150 militants armed with rockets and automatic weapons attacked a transport terminal in northwestern Pakistan along a key supply route used by U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

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Summary: Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to fight terrorism elsewhere has reached $685.7 billion since 2001, according to a U.S. government watchdog agency. The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, said the Iraq war accounted for $533.5 billion in Defense Department spending obligations through December 2008, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines totaled $124.1 billion. The remaining $28.1 billion was for operations to defend the U.S. mainland, the GAO said in a letter to Congress dated March 30, 2009.

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Summary: Calling the situation in the region “increasingly perilous,” President Barack Obama ordered 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” the terrorist al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

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Summary: A roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed four NATO troops, while bombings and clashes elsewhere in the country killed 14 more people. … A suicide bomber in a police uniform detonated inside a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan, killing 11 people and wounding 29. … Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said any U.S. withdrawals “must be done with our approval” and in coordination with the Iraqi government. … The U.S. military confirmed that U.S. forces shot down an unmanned Iranian aircraft in Iraqi airspace. … At least 4,259 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war.

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Summary: Four U.S. soldiers and an Afghan civilian working for them were killed in southern Afghanistan when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb. … In the fourth such incident in the Mosul area in just over a year, two Iraqi policemen opened fire on U.S. soldiers visiting a police station, killing an American soldier and an Iraqi interpreter, wounding three Americans, and raising concerns about insurgent infiltration among the ranks of Iraqi police.

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Summary: The number of Afghan civilians killed in armed conflict surged to a record 2,118 in 2008 as the Afghanistan war turned increasingly bloody, the UN said in a new report. Insurgents were responsible for 55 percent of the deaths, but U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces killed 39 percent, the report said. Of those 829 deaths by the forces, 552 were blamed on airstrikes.

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Summary: In Afghanistan, Taliban militants killed 20 people in a coordinated attack on three government buildings in Kabul, launching the assault after sending text messages to the leader of their terrorism cell in Pakistan. … In Iraq, 16 people were killed and 45 wounded when twin car bombs exploded at a bus terminal and market area in southwestern Baghdad.

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Summary: Support for the Kabul government and the United States and European troops trying to bolster it against insurgents is plummeting among the Afghan people, a new poll reports.

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Summary: With the reduction of violence in Iraq following a U.S. troop “surge” and other measures, foreign militants are now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops, according to Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.

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