It Just Keeps Getting Better Worse in Middle East

Firt we have that "forgotten" country of Afganistan.

Taliban forces have captured two towns in southern Afghanistan.

Taliban insurgents entered Naway-i-Barakzayi, a Helmand town north of Garmser, and clashed briefly with police before the security officials fled, an Afghan police official said.

The official said Taliban forces were now moving freely around the town and district.

In the Helmand town of Garmser, close to the Pakistan border, scores of Taliban insurgents overran Afghan policemen holed up in a compound on Sunday, driving the security forces and a handful of government officials to flee, another Afghan official said.

Major Scott Lundy, a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, said: "We are in contact with lots of people to build an accurate picture of the two districts in southern Helmand which are under control of the Taliban."

You remember the Taliban. That group we defeated already.

Then there's that thing in Iraq.

At least 54 people were killed and 90 wounded as a car bomb exploded in the centre of Iraq's Shiite shrine city of Kufa, killing a group of day labourers, a security source said.

Several witnesses said the car bomb blew up in the middle of the crowd across the street from the city's grand mosque.

This came a day after gunmen opened fire on a market, killing 48.

A deadly coordinated assault of car bombs, mortar rounds and a shooting rampage by masked gunmen on a market south of Baghdad has killed 48 people believed to be Shiites, including women and children.

Police also found 22 bodies across Iraq, 20 of them in Baghdad, of men tortured and shot dead in apparent sectarian attacks as the inter-confessional violence that has dogged Iraq for the past months showed no sign of abating.

The latest violence came a day after a suicide bombing in a coffee-shop in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu killed 28 people.

What about Lebanon?

At least 23 people have been killed in the latest air strikes by Israeli warplanes in Lebanon, raising the toll there to more than 220.

Israeli aircraft struck targets across Lebanon on Monday, hitting many areas north and east of Beirut that have so far been quiet.

Nine civilians, all from one family and including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike that destroyed a house in the south Lebanese village of Aitarun. Four others died in strikes elsewhere in the south.

Another strike at a Lebanese army barracks at Jumhur area, east of Beirut, killed 10 Lebanese soldiers and wounded 30.

Aljazeera television reported that Israeli forces had also attacked targets around Zahle, a mainly Christian town in central Lebanon, and attacked ambulances on nearby roads.

I'll comment on that last one. Israel destroyed a house killing children and attacked ambulances. That's by definition terrorist acts. That isn't defence.

And, in case you missed it, Mother Nature is doing her part in Indonesia.

Rescuers have desperately shifted through wreckage for survivors of a tsunami that killed more than 330 people and left dozens missing when it slammed into Indonesia's Java coast.

In a harrowing reminder of the 2004 disaster that left 220,000 dead across Asia, walls of water up to three metres (10 feet) high smashed ashore Monday, toppling buildings and sending thousands of terrified residents fleeing.

The tsunami was triggered by a 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake off the south coast of Java island, where no early warning system had yet been put in place and many residents had no inkling of the tragedy to come.

That's a lot of death and destruction in the Middle East. We don't need more in Syria and Iran.