Region

CAIRO — Egypt on Thursday pressed its campaign to crush an escalating insurgency in Sinai, vowing to wipe out "dens of terror" on the peninsula after a spectacular attack by militants killed dozens.

The violence poses a major test for President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the former army chief who has pledged to eliminate the militants.

The military deployed F-16 warplanes on Wednesday to bomb Daesh militants who battled security forces on the streets of the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid after launching a surprise dawn blitz on army checkpoints.

It said 17 soldiers and 100 militants had been killed, but medical and security officials said the death toll was at least 70 people, mostly soldiers, as well as dozens of jihadists.

On Thursday the military carried out search operations around Sheikh Zuweid, security officials said.

The military says it is “leading a vicious war against terrorism”.

“We have the will and determination to root out this black terrorism,” it said on Wednesday, adding: “We will not stop until Sinai is cleansed of all the dens of terror.”

On Thursday, telephone and Internet services were cut in Sheikh Zuweid along with electricity supplies, an AFP correspondent reported.

The White House condemned the unprecedented wave of attacks, which came two days after state prosecutor Hisham Barakat was assassinated in a Cairo car bombing, the most senior government official killed in the jihadist insurgency.

The US National Security Council said it “will continue to assist Egypt in addressing these threats to its security”.

Arab League chief Nabil Al Arabi urged the international community to “support the Egyptian government’s efforts in fighting terrorist groups”.

State-owned newspapers rallied around Egypt’s army.

“Victory or martyrdom,” said a front-page headline in Al Ghomuriya. “Revenge”, said a headline in Al Akhbar.

The military spokesman posted photographs on Facebook of militants killed in the fighting.

On Thursday gunmen on a motorbike shot dead a policeman in the town of Fayoum, south of Cairo, police said.

‘Terrorists moved freely’

The Sinai attacks were the most brazen in their scope since jihadists launched an insurgency in 2013 after the army, under Sisi’s command, overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Militants took over rooftops and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in Sheikh Zuweid after mining its exits to block reinforcements, a police colonel said.

“For hours the terrorists moved freely in the streets which they had mined,” Ayman Mohsen, a resident from Sheikh Zweid who witnessed Wednesday’s clashes, told AFP.

“They fired rockets and bullets at the army camp in Zuhour and the Sheikh Zuweid police station.”

“This is war,” a senior military officer told AFP. “It’s unprecedented, in the number of terrorists involved and the type of weapons they are using.”

The Daesh terror group said its jihadists surrounded the police station after launching attacks on 15 checkpoints and security installations using several suicide car bombers and rockets.

‘Army lacks expertise’

Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where jihadists have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi’s overthrow.

Wednesday’s attack was similar to a series of ambushes on April 2 in which dozens of militants attacked checkpoints, killing 15 soldiers.

In January, a rocket and car bomb attack on a military base, police headquarters and residential complex for troops and police killed at least 24 people, most of them soldiers.

The attacks have come despite stringent security measures in the Sinai, including a night-time curfew and the creation of a buffer zone along the Gaza border.

Analysts said the army lacked expertise in fighting the insurgents.

“It’s not putting in the right units. The groups need to be chased by special forces and what the army is doing is that it is deploying regiments. Sending F-16s does not work,” said Professor Mathieu Guidere, a specialist on jihadist groups at France’s University of Toulouse.

Egypt responded to the growing insurgency on Wednesday by passing a controversial anti-terror law and requesting the appeals process be shortened, in measures it said would “achieve swift justice and revenge for our martyrs”.

Sisi has vowed to toughen laws and suggested fast-track executions following the state prosecutor’s assassination.

DAMASCUS —With the Syrian army's ranks depleted by casualties and rampant draft-dodging, a new campaign in the war-torn country is urging citizens to enlist.

In recent weeks, billboards have sprung up across Damascus reading "Join the army”, "We are all the army”, and "With our army, we'll win our country”.

The campaign is the work of a pro-government organisation known as the "Syrian Women's Group for Good Deeds", which includes mothers and daughters of Syrian soldiers.

One billboard shows two soldiers in fatigues, a man saluting and a woman pointing, under the phrases: "Our army means us" and "Join the army".

Another shows a soldier in uniform next to a smiling girl with her hand raised in a victory sign.

More than 80,000 soldiers and other pro-regime fighters have been killed in the four-year conflict, out of a total of roughly 230,000 dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

And many Syrians, even those who support the regime, have been reluctant to show up for mandatory two-year military service, with up to 70,000 failing to enlist, according to the observatory.

The combination of casualties, defections, and draft-dodging has seen the country's 300,000-strong military halved in size since the conflict began in March 2011, according to experts.

'They don't come back' 

Last week, as part of efforts to convince people to serve, Prime Minister Wael Halaqi announced that, from July, soldiers at the front would receive monthly bonuses of 10,000 Syrian pounds ($33.50/30.18 euros) as well as an extra hot meal each day.

A security source said the measures, said to have been ordered by President Bashar Assad himself, "fall under the framework of support and motivation" for the army.

Last year, the law was amended to guarantee that public sector employees who left to do their military service would still have their jobs when they returned.

A key contributor to draft-dodging has been the reluctance of people to serve far from home, as the law has generally stipulated, but authorities appear to be showing leniency on that.

A security official in Homs told local Sham FM radio Thursday that new recruits would not have to serve outside the central province.

He urged "all those who have delayed their military service or failed to enlist... to regularise their status so they can carry out their military service exclusively inside Homs province."

In Sweida province too, residents told AFP authorities were allowing residents of the majority Druze region to join local pro-regime militias instead of the army.

But for some, those incentives have not been enough, and there have been regular reports of raids to sweep up draft-dodgers.

Witnesses told AFP that, in recent days, armed security personnel had raided several districts in Damascus in search of military-aged men.

Some men have paid smugglers to help them leave the country in order to avoid conscription.

"I can't go to military service," said Sam, 29, an engineer from Homs living in Damascus.

"These days, those who go the army don't come back."

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia on Thursday officially opens a billion-dollar aviation gateway aimed at Muslim pilgrims, in the kingdom's first airport privatisation.

Local media said King Salman would inaugurate the Prince Mohammad Bin Abdul Aziz International Airport in the holy city of Medina.

About two million pilgrims annually visit the western cities of Mecca and Medina for the hajj, which this year takes place in September.

Medina's domestic airport was upgraded to international status because of "the importance and the role of the air transport sector in the service of pilgrims and visitors to the Prophet's mosque", the website of the airport operator says.

TIBAH Airports Development Co. won the bid and in October 2011 signed a build, transfer and operate agreement with the kingdom's aviation regulator, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).

The consortium includes Turkey's TAV airports along with local firms Al Rajhi and Saudi Oger.

TIBAH said the project "represents the first partnership between the public and private sectors in airports" in Saudi Arabia.

Medina airport's annual passenger capacity will rise from last year's 5.7 million to eight million, before doubling to 16 million by the end of the 25-year agreement for operating the facility, TAV said.

The project "represents a new direction" because it was privately built and will be run by the joint venture, said GACA, which operates 27 airports in the kingdom.

Some of those are also targeted for privatisation.

Aeroports de Paris is among seven candidates invited to bid for a concession at the country's busiest airport in Jeddah, south of Medina, GACA president Suleiman Al Hamdan told AFP last month on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show.

A new terminal under construction in Riyadh will also be operated by an international company, said GACA.

Saudi Arabia is the Arab world's largest economy and is spending billions of dollars on building and upgrading its air terminals.

National carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines announced at the Paris Air Show an order for 50 Airbus passenger planes worth about $8 billion.

Carriers based in neighbouring Gulf states — Emirates, Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi's Etihad — have won a large chunk of global air travel, turning their airports into major transcontinental hubs.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in East Jerusalem Thursday to commemorate the first anniversary of a teenager being burned to death in an Israeli revenge attack in the run-up to the Gaza war.

Mohammed Abu Khder, 16, was abducted and killed on July 2, 2014, weeks after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Those incidents were part of a spiral of violence that led to a 50-day war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas that killed more than 2,200 people, making 2014 the bloodiest year of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the UN.

Protesters in the streets of Abu Khder's Shuafat neighbourhood waved Palestinian flags and held up posters and images of the boy in a beige baseball cap, an AFP correspondent said.

"Mohammed Abu Khder, July 2, 2014: They kidnapped, tortured and burned you. Be a witness to their crimes," banners read.

Israeli forces were deployed in force in Shuafat, the scene of riots following the murder.

Abu Khder was kidnapped from Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, and his burned body was found hours later in a forest in the western part of the city.

Three Israelis were eventually charged with the killing, saying it was in revenge for the abduction and murder of three Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

They are currently on trial in Jerusalem.

The boy's father, Hussein Abu Khder, told AFP Thursday he wanted to see them put away for life.

"We've been through a really hard time. They burned him alive, and we burn inside now," he said.

"His mother cries just at the mention of his name. I'm trying to be strong in front of my children, who've been traumatised by the death of their brother," he said.

"The most important thing is that justice is pursued for my son. I want his killers to spend the rest of their lives behind bars, with no pardon."

The June 2014 abduction of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach from a hitchhiking stop near Hebron sparked a vast Israeli search operation in which hundreds of Palestinians were arrested and at least five killed.

Israel immediately blamed the kidnappings on fighters of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, rounding up hundreds of suspected members in the West Bank.

The brutal revenge killing of Abu Khder was followed by an uptick in rocket fire from Gaza, and the launch on July 8 of a full-scale Israeli military operation against the Mediterranean enclave.

BENGHAZI, Libya — The old courthouse in central Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and the birthplace of the uprising against Muammar Qadhafi, is a shelled-out ruin — a testimony to the destruction and chaos that permeate this North African country four years after the civil war that ousted the longtime dictator.

The building is steeped in symbolism. It was here that the rallying cry first came against Qadhafi's 42-year rule. It was here that pro-democracy protesters and rebels first raised the tri-coloured Libyan flag, replacing Qadhafi's green banner.

Now, the courthouse is ruin and rubble, like much of the rest of Benghazi.

Today, Libya is bitterly divided between an elected parliament and government that are cornered in the country's east, with little power on the ground, and an Islamist militia-backed government in the west. Hundreds of militias are aligned with either side or on their own, battling for power and turf.

The UN-backed talks between rival factions have not yet managed to strike a power-sharing deal. Meanwhile, Libya's Daesh affiliate is fighting on different fronts, losing ground in its eastern stronghold of Darna while expanding along the country's central northern coastline.

For Benghazi, the past year was the worst. Near-daily street fighting has pitted militias made up of a myriad of Al Qarda-linked militants, Daesh extremists and former anti-Qadhafi rebels against soldiers loyal to the internationally recognised government and their militia allies.

Once known for its mix of architectural styles left behind by Arab, Ottoman and Italian rule, this city — shaped like a crescent moon, hugging the Mediterranean Sea on one side and sheltered by the Green Mountain on the other — has lost the flair of times past.

Many landmarks have been destroyed, including much of the Old City, with its Moorish arches and Italian facades. The Benghazi University, its archives and department buildings have been hollowed-out, occupied in turn by militiamen who put snipers on rooftops and turned the campus into a warzone.

The last destruction — albeit not on this scale — that city elders remember was during World War II, when Benghazi was captured by the British. But the city was quickly rebuilt after the war, in part thanks to the country's new-found oil wealth.

Now charred and wrecked cars, piles of twisted metal and debris act as front-line demarcations between warring factions. In many neighbourhoods, Libyan soldiers have blown up entire buildings to clear snipers' nests or in search of underground tunnels used for smuggling weapons.

Schools have closed, few hospitals remain open, and wheat and fuel shortages force residents to line up for hours every day outside bakeries and gas stations. Many neighbourhoods have been emptied out by fleeing residents, only to be looted and torched by marauding militias.

More than a fifth of Benghazi's 630,000-strong population has been forced out of their homes. Those with money fled abroad. The rest sought refuge in other Libyan towns and cities, or crowded into Benghazi's makeshift camps and schools turned into shelters.

The overall number of displaced within Libya has almost doubled from an estimated 230,000 last September to more than 434,000 amid escalating fighting this year, according to the latest UN report.

Benghazi resident Hamid Al Idrissi says he and his family fled their war-torn Gawarsha neighbourhood under heavy shelling. His extended family had a total of 45 houses there, built on a vast swath of land owned by his late grandfather, he said.

"Houses were first looted, then burned down. We lost everything," Idrissi told The Associated Press as he and his relatives huddled inside a school turned into a shelter.

Civilians still in the city live against the backdrop of gunshots and ambulance sirens that fill the night. In May, more than 27 civilians were killed, including 12 members of one family who were preparing for a wedding party when a rocket hit their house. The groom and five children were among the dead.

The city's residents also fear abductions at the hands of militiamen from the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, an umbrella group of hardline militias that includes Ansar Al Shariah, which the US blames for the September 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Benghazi's descent into all-out war started in May 2014, when Libyan renegade Gen. Khalifa Haftar, once Qadhafi's army chief who later joined the opposition, launched an offensive against the militias blamed for a series of assassinations of the city's army officers, policemen, judges and journalists. He soon formally joined ranks with Libya's elected government and since then, Haftar's forces have taken back parts of Benghazi.

The fighting has split many Benghazi families, with relatives, even brothers, often joining opposite camps.

TUNIS — Disillusioned with the outcome of the revolution they spearheaded, young Tunisians have become easy prey for jihadist recruiters in the birthplace of the Arab Spring, where thousands have been radicalised, experts say.

The impoverished North African nation, reeling from last week's beachside militant massacre that left 38 foreign tourists dead, has been praised for holding democratic elections and for its vibrant civil society.

But it has also become a major source of jihadists in Syria, Iraq and Libya — an estimated 3,000 Tunisians have gone to fight for the Daesh terror group and other militant movements.

To political scientist Olfa Lamloum, this comes as little surprise.

After Tunisia's 2011 uprising brought down longtime strongman Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, many young people "believed a better world was possible", she said.

"But they faced total disillusionment. For the vast majority of them, nothing has changed at all."

Those living in marginalised neighbourhoods still face soaring unemployment, have no social security, and are frequent victims of police violence, she said.

Four years after the uprising, the security services that were known for their repressive methods under Ben Ali have yet to undergo any significant reform.

Youths living in marginalised neighbourhoods like Ettadhamon and Douar Hicher on the edges of Tunis "naturally develop a rejection towards the state that gives them nothing but the security state," said Lamloum, who heads the Tunisian section of the NGO International Alert.

That is where radical groups come in.

"In some poor areas of Tunisia, the Salafist option... [and for a smaller number, the jihadist option] appears to be the only political possibility on offer," she said.

'Common enemy' 

Even having a degree does not guarantee a future in Tunisia, with youth unemployment among graduates at 30 per cent, official statistics show.

Worse still, "the more education a young person has, the fewer the chances he will find a job," Lamloum said.

Pro-democracy activist Alaa Talbi, director of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, said anger among the disaffected was pushing them into the arms of radicals.

"The main common enemy between Salafists and jihadists on one side, and young people who aren't necessarily fundamentalists, is the police," he said.

Many new recruits are shipped off to Syria, Libya and Iraq, only then to "return here to continue their jihad, with a view to establishing an Islamic state across the Arab world."

The perpetrator of the beach attack near Sousse, the worst jihadist massacre in Tunisia's history, identified as 23-year-old student Seifeddine Rezgui, worked occasionally in a café and once enjoyed breakdancing.

The authorities say he was likely radicalised online and that he received weapons training from jihadists in Libya.

Monica Marks, a visiting fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations, said some sidelined young people see jihadist groups as "a shortcut to meaning".

"They can define themselves as heroes or freedom fighters."

Chaos in Libya is having a direct impact on its smaller neighbour, said Marks, as people like Rezgui and the two young men who killed 21 tourists and a policeman at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis in March travelled eastwards to train with jihadists "and plan homegrown attacks back in Tunisia".

'Europe or Daesh’ 

On the street, there is a sense of all-round condemnation of the Daesh-claimed attack, but also a grave feeling of concern for the fledgling democracy's future.

Poverty alone cannot explain the radicalisation drive, as middle-class young people are also joining Daesh.

Attending a protest in central Tunis to denounce Friday's attack, an employee of national carrier Tunisair in his late 40s, who asked to be identified only as Kamil, said he feared for his unemployed 23-year-old son.

"It's not about poverty — it's about having a place in society... Daesh gives them money and a role to play," said the man.

In Ettadhamen, Walid, an unemployed man in his late 20s, said jihadist recruiters are busy at work in the neighbourhood.

"You just need to go to the mosque a few times, and along comes a guy who starts brainwashing you," he said.

In the aftermath of the beach massacre, the government announced it would close 80 mosques operating illegally.

But Walid said recruiters work quietly, and "in many, many mosques", adding: "They offer hope to the hopeless."

His 28-year-old friend Jamaleddine cursed his generation's fate.

"More than anything, I want to live a good life. I want my rights," he said, with anger and desperation in his voice.

But some young men feel they only have two options, he said.

"Either they travel to Europe [illegally], or they go to Iraq or Syria and join Daesh."

CAIRO  — Despite a two-year campaign, Egypt is facing an increasingly powerful and sophisticated insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and the jihadist hotbed is emerging as President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi's biggest challenge.

The arid and rugged peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip has long been a breeding ground for militancy, especially from bedouin tribes who have complained of being marginalised by Cairo.

But attacks have multiplied since Sisi's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and this week has seen some of the deadliest yet.

Fighters from the Daesh terror group’s Egyptian affiliate launched an unprecedented wave of brazen attacks on Wednesday, in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid.

Police and soldiers fought fierce battles with the militants and the army sent F-16 warplanes to bomb Daesh positions.

After hours of fighting at least 70 people, mostly soldiers, were dead, according to medics and security officials. The military said in a statement that 17 soldiers and 100 militants were killed.

"Wednesday's attacks are unique... in their intensity, number, quality and force," said Mathieu Guidere, a professor of Arab geopolitics at France's University of Toulouse.

Sisi, then chief of the army, came to power in 2013 vowing to restore security after a year of divisive rule by Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president.

His police crackdown targeting Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood has left hundreds dead, thousands imprisoned and hundreds more sentenced to death.

Jihadists have launched a series of attacks across the country in response, including bombings in Cairo and attempted assaults on tourist sites.

On Monday Egypt's top prosecutor Hisham Barakat, a key figure in the judicial crackdown on Islamists, was assassinated in a Cairo car bombing.

'Strategic and operational failure' 

But it is in Sinai that the insurgency has been most deadly.

Scores of police and soldiers have been killed, undermining the military's ability to stamp out the insurgency.

A deadly attack in October prompted the military to impose a state of emergency and curfew in parts of North Sinai, and it razed hundreds of homes to create a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip to prevent infiltration of militants.

Sisi even shook up the army command in the peninsula after another attack in February that left dozens of soldiers dead.

Analysts say Wednesday's violence shows these efforts are having little effect.

"The attacks in Sinai clearly demonstrate the strategic and operational failure of the security forces in countering insurgency," said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt expert with the New York-based The Century Foundation think tank.

If anything, experts said, the jihadists in Sinai are growing stronger, thanks in large part to their alliance with Daesh.

Led by shadowy cleric Abu Osama Al Masry, the militants in Sinai have long taken advantage of the peninsula's tough mountainous terrain and won some support from local Bedouins.

"The political alienation of Sinai from mainland Egypt has been a key factor for the insurgency to grow," Hanna said.

In November, the main jihadist group in Sinai, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, pledged allegiance to Daesh, becoming one of the first jihadist groups outside Syria and Iraq to do so.

Boost from joining Daesh 

In the months since, the so-called "Sinai Province" of Daesh has become one of the group's most powerful branches.

"IS [Daesh] has about 2,500 fighters in Sinai... The group is growing fast. Last year it had about 1,000 fighters. Many of them are also Egyptians returning from Syria and Iraq," Guidere said.

"It's clear that Egyptian fighters [in Daesh] are back from the Syrian and Iraqi fronts and are helping others benefit from their combat experience," he said.

Some are also bringing weapons, adding to the insurgents' armoury bought on the black market or seized from Egyptian forces.

Wednesday's fighting saw the militants using sophisticated tactics, for example taking over rooftops and firing rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in Sheikh Zuweid after mining its exits to block reinforcements.

"The Egyptian army is not prepared to face an Islamist guerrilla that is highly organised and well-trained," Guidere said.

"The groups need to be chased by special forces and what the army is doing is that it is deploying regiments. It's crazy. What is required are special forces who operate just like the guerrillas. Sending F-16s does not work."

Egypt has promised an even harder crackdown on jihadists and on Wednesday adopted a new law toughening punishments for "belonging to a terrorist group".

This week's attacks "will reinforce populist support for more repressive measures," Hanna said.

But in Sinai such measures are not likely to have much of an effect, said Zack Gold of the American Security Project think tank.

"Unfortunately, policies such as curfews, sieges, and the Gaza buffer zone have a more negative impact on the civilian population of Sinai than they do on the militants," he said.

BEIRUT — A Syrian Kurdish militia said it had recovered full control of the border town of Tel Abyad on Wednesday after Daesh militants raided its outskirts the day before in preparation for a larger assault.

Backed by US-led air strikes, the Kurdish YPG militia and smaller Syrian rebel groups captured Tel Abyad from Daesh on June 15, severing an important supply route for the militants between the Turkish border and its de facto capital of Raqqa city to the south.

YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said Daesh militants were repelled overnight after they briefly wrested control of an area on Tel Abyad’s eastern periphery.

“The situation in Tel Abyad is over and under control,” he told Reuters. Three Daesh militants had been killed in the fighting, and a fourth had blown himself up with an explosive belt.

Daesh went back on the offensive in Syria last week, raiding Kurdish-controlled Kobani — also known as Ayn Al Arab — while simultaneously launching an attack on government-held areas of the northeastern city of Hasaka.

Daesh raid on Kobani killed more than 220 civilians — one of its worst mass killings to date. The YPG said it reestablished full control over Kobani on Saturday, killing more than 60 Daesh militants who had raided the town.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the YPG had re-established control over the Tel Abyad district raided on Tuesday. But with such a low death toll among Daesh militants, it questioned where the remaining militants had gone.

YPG’s success against Daesh is one of the few bright spots for the US strategy aimed at rolling back the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria.

YPG is to date the only significant partner for a US-led air campaign in Syria. Washington has shunned the idea of cooperating with Damascus.

The Syrian military has also been partly able to regain areas of the northeastern city of Hasaka lost to Daesh in its attack last week.

The city is divided into zones run separately by YPG and the Syrian government, and is one of President Bashar Al Assad’s last footholds in the northeastern corner of Syria at the border with Iraq and Turkey.

The observatory reported renewed fighting between Daesh and the army and militia fighting alongside it in southwestern Hasaka on Wednesday. Syrian army air strikes were also reported on Daesh positions.

A Syrian military source said: “Islamic State [Daesh] has practically retreated from most of the areas it entered, but there remain some pockets, and the battles are ongoing.” 

TUNIS — Thirty Britons and eight other foreigners were killed last Friday when a gunman opened fire on holiday-makers at a Tunisian hotel, Tunisia's health ministry said on Wednesday, completing the last formal identification.

The bloody massacre at the Sousse resort, claimed by Daesh militants, was the worst such attack in Tunisia's modern history, delivering a blow to the vital tourist industry just as the North African state consolidates its new democracy.

Four years after a popular uprising toppled autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia is facing a growing threat from militants who the British government has warned may try to carry out more attacks.

Holidaymakers were still on the beaches in Sousse on Wednesday but in much fewer numbers since thousands left Tunisia. Authorities began deploying more armed tourism police to beef up security at resorts and tourist sites.

The health ministry said all 38 victims had been formally identified. They included 30 Britons, three Irish citizens, two Germans, one Belgian, one Portuguese and one Russian national.

Bodies of some of the British victims were flown home from Tunisia in a Royal Air Force plane.

British, German and French ministers visited the Imperial Marhaba hotel site of the attack last week in a show of solidarity and to offer Tunisia support in frontier and airport security and intelligence sharing.

“There is still a lot of work to be done to identify all the circumstances of this appalling attack and the support that the gunman received,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament on Wednesday.

“We need to co-ordinate between ourselves how best to support that country on its road to democracy.”

Police on the beaches

Dressed like a tourist himself, the gunman, Saif Rezgui, targeted only foreigners in his rampage at the Imperial Marhaba before he was shot dead by police. Tunisian authorities say the attacker was trained in Libya at a jihadist camp last year.

Authorities say he was in Libya at the same time as the two gunmen who carried out the March attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis, where 21 people were killed including Japanese, Spanish and Italian tourists.

Three other suspects have been arrested for helping to plan the attack on the Imperial Marhaba hotel, which is in Tunisia’s tourism heartland along with Hammamet and the island of Djerba.

Thousands of tourists have already left Tunisia’s beaches since Friday’s attack and the government has warned of losses totalling $500 million as tour companies cancelled booked trips.

Tunisia deployed 1,000 more armed tourism police on Wednesday and plans to call up army reserves to help after acknowledging that it was caught by surprise despite the earlier Bardo attack.

Tourism police in shorts and carrying rifles walked among the scattered tourists on Sousse beach on Wednesday. Others rode beach buggies or moved on horseback among the all-inclusive hotels.

Despite Tunisia’s political progress, more than 3,000 Tunisians have also left to fight for militant Islamist groups in Syria, Iraq and now Libya. Some have threatened to return to carry out attacks in their homeland.

Libya, which is caught up in a battle between two rival factions, has become a haven for Islamist militants and people smugglers taking advantage of the chaos four years after a rebellion toppled strongman Muammar Qadhafi. 

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel said Wednesday it was revoking permits for hundreds of Palestinians living in the West Bank to visit relatives in the Gaza Strip, after a series of attacks, some fatal.

The announcement by COGAT, the agency that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, was the latest reversal to measures easing movement for Palestinians during the fasting month of Ramadan.

It came as 26-year-old Malachi Rosenfeld, shot dead in the West Bank on his way back from a basketball game Monday, was buried in the Kochav Hashachar settlement where he lived.

Education minister and religious-nationalist Jewish Home party leader, Naftali Bennett, speaking in a graveyard eulogy, said "our enemy is not a partner for peace; their way is that of terror and will be treated as such." 

Over the past 10 days, there have been a number of violent incidents in which Palestinians have knifed or shot at Israeli security personnel, as well as shot dead an Israeli hiker, in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday "there was no doubt that one of the significant factors behind the attacks was incitement, specifically of the Palestinian Authority."

The army has not said if it believes whether Monday’s shootings were carried out by a lone attacker, a small group or a larger network.

On Wednesday, the Shin Bet internal security agency announced it had arrested 40 members of the Islamist group Hamas in and around the northern West Bank city Nablus.

They were part of an attempt to set up a network that would enable attacks on Israeli targets, Shin Bet said, and included contact with Hossam Badran, a Qatar-based spokesman for the group, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Those detentions led to the arrest of two Hamas operatives in nearby city Jenin who were preparing an attack, Shin Bet said.

There was no immediate link between the arrests and the wave of attacks, which led COGAT Tuesday to tighten access of West Bank Palestinians for prayer at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque. Men under 50 and women between 16-30 would only be admitted if they held individual permits.

Israel had eased some restrictions on Palestinian movement from the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem for Ramadan.

But in response to the June 21 stabbing of a policeman, it revoked entry permits to residents of the attacker’s village and cancelled permission for 500 West Bank Palestinians to fly from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.