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In a statement, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group based in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, asserted responsibility for the attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines jet, saying it was a response to U.S.-backed airstrikes against the group in Yemen. Meanwhile, Yemen's government confirmed that Abdulmutallab was in the country from early August to early December after obtaining a visa to study Arabic at a language institute, and said that he had previously studied at the school.

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — A NATO airstrike on Friday exploded two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban, setting off competing claims about how many among the scores of dead were civilians and raising questions about whether the strike violated tightened rules on the use of aerial bombardment.

The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, in comments to reporters traveling here with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, did not directly say that American planes and pilots might effectively have to serve as an Iraqi air force until the Iraqis were ready to defend their country’s airspace on their own. But he said that a United States Air Force team was expected soon in Iraq to assess what the United States could, and should, do.

I was raised in a Navy family, and as a young man I worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency; I deeply respect our service people and honor their sacrifices. But it is horrifying to me that Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s primary concern at this slaughter of dozens of innocent people is the political consequence to the military’s “credibility.”

The Afghan government concluded that about 140 civilians had been killed in the attacks. An earlier American military inquiry said last month that 20 to 30 civilians had been killed. That inquiry also concluded that 60 to 65 Taliban militants had been killed in the fight. American military officials say their two investigations show that Taliban fighters had deliberately fired on American forces and aircraft from compounds and other places where they knew Afghan civilians had sought shelter, in order to draw an American response that would kill civilians, including women and children.

FARAH, Afghanistan — The number of civilians killed by the American airstrikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan - As the Red Cross confirmed yesterday that dozens of civilians had been killed in US air strikes in an isolated district in western Afghanistan, provincial authorities suggested the toll could reach 100. Weeping villagers dug mass graves.

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions

In Lebanon, the leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, put his fighters on alert, expressing strong support for Hamas and saying that he believed Israel might try to wage a two-front war, as it did in 2006. He called for a mass demonstration in Beirut on Monday. And he, too, denounced Egypt’s leaders. “If you don’t open the borders, you are accomplices in the killing,” he said in a televised speech.

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.