Car bombs hit several mostly Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad and a town south of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens, officials said, the latest bout of violence ahead of the country’s first parliament elections since the 2011 US troop withdrawal.

Bashar Al Assad’s Lebanese ally Hizbollah said his Western foes must now accept he will go on ruling Syria after fighting rebels to a standstill — a “reality” to which his foreign enemies seem increasingly resigned.

Two car bombs exploded Wednesday in a government-held district of Syria’s battleground city of Homs, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100, state media said.

Iran will never slow down its nuclear research programme, its supreme leader said on Wednesday as negotiators from Tehran and six world powers struggled to narrow “significant gaps” that the United States warned might be insurmountable.