PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen opened fire on a passenger bus in the northern Pakistani district of Kohistan in an apparent sectarian attack on Tuesday, killing 18 people, police officials said.

Baghdad supports the aspirations of the Syrian people and will not back the Damascus regime "at any cost," a Saudi newspaper on Monday quoted a high-ranking Iraqi official as saying.

Al-Azhar, the top Sunni Muslim authority, on Monday denounced as "barbaric" the burning of the Koran on a US base in Afghanistan and called for US troops to leave the country immediately.

Iraqi Kurdistan said on Monday it has granted refugee status to 30 Kurdish Syrian troops who defected to the region in the first such instance in the revolt against Bashar al-Assad's regime.

CAIRO/GAZA, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - It started a few months ago with neighbors' suspicious looks, then came the threats. Their car was smashed and their front door was painted over with sectarian slurs.

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces bombarded opposition Sunni Muslim districts in the city of Homs for the 20th day on Thursday, activists said, despite international outrage over the reported killing of more than 80 people on Wednesday.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Fighting erupted in Homs on Friday, a day after townspeople said Alawite militiamen killed 14 members of a Sunni Muslim family in one of Syria's worst sectarian attacks since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad flared in March.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria's religious and ethnic minorities need to work together with liberal Sunni Muslims to counter the influence of Islamists in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, a prominent Sunni Muslim opposition figure said.

Security forces detained a Sunni Arab politician in central Iraq on Friday while a second escaped in the latest round of detentions to hit the minority group amid a political row.

A blast hit a Shiite Muslim religious procession killing 16 people and wounding 20 others in central Pakistan on Sunday, police said, amid conflicting reasons for the explosion.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi security forces killed a young protester and wounded three others late on Thursday in the oil-producing Eastern Province, home to a large Shi'ite minority, websites and activists said, while one was injured by bullets in a peaceful march on Friday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A wave of bombings killed at least 72 people in Baghdad Thursday, the first attacks since Iraq's Shi'ite-led government was engulfed in a crisis that risks fracturing the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A wave of bombings killed at least 63 people in Baghdad on Thursday, the first attacks since Iraq's Shi'ite-led government was engulfed in a crisis that risks fracturing the country along sectarian and ethnic faultlines.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When the last American soldiers left Iraq this week almost nine years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials were keen to portray it as a stable, democratic, if still troubled nation.

Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president denied terror charges against him and vowed to defend himself in a defiant news conference as rival leaders called for urgent talks to resolve a worsening crisis and the US expressed concern.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on lawmakers on Sunday to withdraw confidence from one of his deputies, as the country's political crisis deepened as US forces completed their withdrawal.

The Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Gulf fear that Shiites on the Arabian peninsula will rise up against their rule, inspired by the Arab Spring, community leaders in the region say.

Attacks in Iraq's confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killed 18 people on Thursday, 10 of them in a market bombing in the town of Khalis, medical and security officials said.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Two people were killed and three wounded in an exchange of fire between Saudi security forces in the oil-producing Eastern Province and what the interior ministry on Thursday called gunmen serving a foreign power.