WAR DEVELOPMENTS

IRAQ

> Romania’s defense minister said the country’s 501 peacekeepers in Iraq will all leave by the end of the year.

> A series of bomb blasts across Baghdad killed six people and injured more than 20 others Thursday, in the fourth consecutive day of heightened violence there.

AFGHANISTAN

> Afghan officials reported more civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes, and Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for U.S. forces, said, “we hope that it’s not from our fire, but we suspect it may well have been.” In a telephone interview, Julian accused Taliban forces of “immersing themselves” among civilians to deter American forces from using airstrikes.

> Gen. David Petraeus, the new chief of the U.S. Central Command, said Afghanistan’s government is looking at ways to engage tribes in the fight against insurgents, a similar tactic to the one that helped reduce violence in Iraq. Petraeus also said a series of cross-border U.S. missile strikes in neighboring Pakistan’s tribal areas in recent months killed three of the top 20 extremist leaders there. He did not identify the slain extremists.

PAKISTAN

> A suicide bomber attacked a gathering of anti-militant Pakistani tribesmen Thursday in the Batmalai area of the Bajur tribal zone, killing 17 in a northwestern region where the military has clashed with insurgents for months. Late Thursday, another suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint manned by security forces near a police compound in the Swat Valley, killing at least two paramilitary troopers and wounding at least 20 other people.