Region

CAIRO — Daesh insurgents threatened on Tuesday to turn the Gaza Strip into another of their Middle East fiefdoms, accusing Hamas, the organisation that rules the Palestinian territory, of being insufficiently stringent about religious enforcement.

The video statement, issued from a Daesh stronghold in Syria, was a rare public challenge to Hamas, which has been cracking down on jihadists in Gaza who oppose its truces with Israel and reconciliation with the US-backed rival Palestinian faction Fateh.

"We will uproot the state of the Jews [Israel] and you and Fateh, and all of the secularists are nothing and you will be over-run by our creeping multitudes," said a masked Daesh member in the message addressed to the "tyrants of Hamas".

"The rule of Sharia [Islamic law] will be implemented in Gaza, in spite of you. We swear that what is happening in the Levant today, and in particular the Yarmouk camp, will happen in Gaza," he said, referring to Daesh advances in Syria, including in a Damascus district founded by Palestinian refugees.

Daesh has also taken over swathes of Iraq and has claimed attacks in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen.

Hamas is an Islamist movement that shares the jihadists' hostility to Israel but not their quest for a global religious war, defining itself more within the framework of Palestinian nationalism.

Deemed a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, and viewed by neighbouring Arab power Egypt as a regional security threat, Hamas' struggle against Daesh-linked jihadists has not won sympathy abroad.

Israel's intelligence minister, Israel Katz, accused Hamas on Tuesday of partnering with Daesh affiliates in the Egyptian Sinai — a charge long denied by the Palestinian group.

"There is cooperation between them in the realm of weapons smuggling and terrorist attacks. The Egyptians know this, and the Saudis," Katz told a Tel Aviv conference organised by the Israel Defence journal.

"At the same time, within Gaza, ISIS [Daesh] has been flouting Hamas. But they have common cause against the Jews, in Israel or abroad."

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations on Wednesday declared its highest-level humanitarian emergency in conflict-torn Yemen, where over 80 percent of the population need assistance. UN officials have said the Arab world's most impoverished country is now a step away from famine.

Humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien convened a meeting of UN agencies early Wednesday and all agreed to declare a "Level 3" humanitarian emergency in Yemen for six months.

The United Nations now faces four top-level humanitarian emergencies. It is already trying to respond to "Level 3" emergencies in three other conflict-wracked countries: Iraq, Syria and South Sudan. The UN humanitarian office says the declaration of a top-level emergency mobilises UN-wide staffing and funding to scale up aid delivery.

Last week, the UN envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said the country is "one step" from famine. He urged all parties to the conflict to agree to a humanitarian pause during the current holy month of Ramadan to allow desperately needed aid to be delivered.

An attempt last month at UN-led talks among Yemeni parties in Geneva failed to reach an agreement.

The fighting in Yemen pits Houthi Shiite rebels and allied troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh against Sunni Islamic militants, southern separatists, local and tribal militias and loyalists of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The rebels seized the capital in September and swept south, forcing Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-led and US-backed coalition began launching air strikes against the rebels on March 26, and a near-blockade of Yemen's ports has made it very difficult to deliver humanitarian aid.

According to the World Health Organisation's latest figures, 3,083 people have died as a result of the current conflict and 14,324 people have been injured, Haq said.

Haq said over 21.1 million people in Yemen today need aid, nearly 13 million face "a food security crisis" and 9.4 million have little or no access to water, raising the risk of water-borne diseases including cholera.

He said 11.7 million people have been targeted for assistance under a revised UN humanitarian response plan.

BEIRUT — Daesh militants re-entered Syria’s Tal Abyad Tuesday, seizing a district from the Kurdish forces who captured the border town in a key victory two weeks ago, a monitor said.

“A cell of Islamic State [Daesh] fighters infiltrated Tal Abyad and took control of a district in the eastern outskirts of the town,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Kurdish fighters are trying to encircle the jihadists and prevent them from advancing further.”

He said fighting was continuing in the town, which lies on the border with Turkey. Tal Abyad was a crucial Daesh supply hub and stronghold for around a year before Kurdish forces expelled the group.

A spokesman for the Kurdish Protection Units (YPG), Redur Khalil, said that “several dozen” Daesh fighters had infiltrated an area under Kurdish control and that fighting was ongoing.

He had no immediate toll from the clashes.

“Daesh uses this method of infiltration to enter areas it was previously expelled from,” Khalil said.

The YPG, backed by Syrian rebel allies, seized Tal Abyad on June 16, just days after beginning an advance against the town.

The ground forces were backed by air strikes from the US-led coalition fighting Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

The battle for Tal Abyad prompted tens of thousands of refugees to flee across the border into Turkey, with the influx at times causing chaos.

But after YPG and rebel forces secured the town, many residents began to return from Turkey.

Kurdish forces have battled Daesh in several areas in the northern Syrian region along the border with Turkey.

In January, they secured the Kurdish border town of Kobani, which Daesh forces had been trying to capture for about four months.

Afterwards, the Kurds and their Arab allies began chipping away at Daesh territory in their stronghold province of Raqqa, where the jihadist group’s de facto Syrian capital is located.

But shortly after taking Tal Abyad from Daesh, the Kurds came under attack again in Kobani.

A group of Daesh fighters infiltrated the town after carrying out several car bomb attacks, and slaughtered more than 200 people inside over the course of two days before finally being pushed back out.

KUWAIT — Kuwait’s interior minister said on Tuesday the Gulf Arab country was at war with Islamist militants and would strike out at cells believed to be on its soil.

The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Friday on a Shiite Muslim mosque in Kuwait City which killed 27 worshippers, the worst attack of its kind in the major oil-exporting state.

Kuwaiti authorities have detained 60 people in connection with the bombing and closed a charity for alleged militant ties in raising funds for Syrians, local newspapers said on Tuesday.

“We are in a state of war. It’s a war that had been decided with this cell. But there are other cells, and we will not wait for them to try their luck with us,” Interior Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al Khaled Al Sabah told parliament.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Qabas reported on Tuesday that five people arrested for suspected involvement in the attack had been referred to the public prosecutor. The five, it said, had confessed to receiving financial transfers from abroad to carry out attacks targeting houses of worship.

The cell had considered two other possible targets before deciding on the Imam Sadiq Mosque, Sabah said.

Kuwait has stepped up security after the bomber, a Saudi citizen named Fahad Suleiman Abdulmuhsen Al Qabbaa, flew in from the kingdom hours before detonating himself.

In a posthumous audio message stamped with Daesh’s logo and posted online, Qabbaa called Shiites “enemies of God everywhere, especially in Kuwait”.

Kuwaiti officials said the attack was aimed at stirring up sectarian strife in the majority Sunni Muslim state.

Relations have traditionally been good between the 70 per cent of Kuwait’s 1.4 million citizens who are Sunni and the Shiites who comprise 30 per cent, but regional rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran has opened some fissures.

Region on edge

The bombing has sharply heightened regional security concerns because Daesh appeared to be making good on its threat to step up attacks in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

On the same day as the mosque bombing, an Islamist gunman killed 39 people, mostly British tourists, in Tunisia.

Since the suicide bombing, plaincloth officers have carried out arrest raids on the homes of five people for possession of illegal weapons, the state news agency KUNA said.

Al Qabas newspaper quoted security sources as saying that 60 people, including Kuwaiti citizens and nationals of other Gulf states, in all were being held for investigation.

Some had been found to have been in contact with Sunni Islamist militants while others were suspected of belonging to “extremist” groups, Al Qabas reported, without elaborating.

The newspaper did not name them but Kuwait’s interior ministry has said it had detained the driver of the vehicle that took Qabbaa to the mosque, the owner of the car and the owner of the house where the driver went to hide after the attack.

Kuwaiti authorities were not immediately available for comment on the Al Qabas report.

Al Rai, another Arabic-language newspaper, said the ministry of labour and social affairs permanently closed down the Fahd Al Ahmed charity on Sunday due to “repeated violations despite the warnings” that funds for Syrians be collected through official channels. Charity representatives were not immediately available for comment.

US Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen has described Kuwait as “the epicenter of fund-raising for terrorist groups in Syria”.

SANAA — An attack on Houthi rebel leaders in Yemen’s capital claimed by the Daesh terror group has killed at least 28 people, medics said Tuesday, in the latest anti-Shiite assault by the extremists.

Yemen was previously the preserve of Daesh’s rival Al Qaeda, which controls swathes of the south and east, but since March the group has claimed a string of high-profile attacks.

The car bomb late Monday targeted two brothers, both rebel chiefs, during a gathering to mourn the death of a relative, a security source said.

Eight women were among the dead.

Daesh said online it had organised the attack on a “Shiite nest”.

The group considers Shiites heretics and has repeatedly targeted them, not only in Yemen but across the region.

Just Friday, a Saudi Daesh suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded 227 in a Shiite mosque in Kuwait.

In Yemen, Daesh claimed a car bombing that killed two people outside a Shiite mosque in Sanaa on June 20 and a series of attacks in the capital four days earlier that killed 31.

Daesh, which Monday marked the first anniversary of its declaration of a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, launched its Yemen campaign in March with a series of bombings of Shiite mosques that killed 142 people.

The attacks have overshadowed the operations of rival Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which overran Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province in southeast Yemen, in March.

Washington still regards AQAP as the network’s most dangerous branch and has kept up a drone war against its leaders inside Yemen.

But analysts say Daesh is now clearly in the ascendant.

Daesh is “in the process of supplanting AQAP, which is becoming just one of a number of forces in the Sunni tribal camp in southern Yemen”, said Mathieu Guidere, Islamic studies professor at France’s University of Toulouse.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have seized vast swathes of Yemen since launching an offensive last July, forcing President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.

‘New surprises’ 

Neither peace talks in Geneva nor a Saudi-led air campaign begun in March have driven them from power, and they remain locked in battle with pro-government fighters, Sunni tribesmen and southern separatists.

Yemen’s official Saba news agency, controlled by the Houthis, reported early Tuesday that the rebels had fired a Scud missile at Al Salil military base in Riyadh province, deep inside Saudi Arabia.

“This is another message to the forces of oppression,” a military spokesman was quoted as saying, promising “new surprises in the coming days”.

Saudi Arabia denied a Scud had hit its territory.

“We’re not aware of anything. Not a square metre was damaged in Saudi Arabia,” an official in Riyadh told AFP, adding there had been no radar contact and no missile intercepted.

A Saudi civil defence spokesman, however, said two civilians were lightly wounded Tuesday when a projectile fired from inside Yemen hit their house near the border.

Bombardments and skirmishes along the border have killed at least 45 Saudi troops and civilians, including a soldier hit by rebel fire on Monday.

In the southern port of Aden, Yemen’s second city, fighting raged Tuesday between the rebels and their opponents.

A pregnant woman and two children were among 13 people killed over the past 48 hours, medics said. Another 216 people were wounded.

Oil tanks at the city’s refinery were still ablaze after being hit by rebel fire Saturday.

Saudi-led aircraft carried out 20 strikes in support of loyalists, a local official said.

Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday air strikes on the rebel stronghold of Saada in Yemen have destroyed houses, markets and a school, killing dozens of people in what could amount to war crimes.

And on Monday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an investigation after Saudi-led air strikes hit the UN Development Programme compound in the city, wounding a guard and causing serious damage.

A local official accused the rebels of firing on a Qatari aid ship preventing it from docking in the city, which is in desperate need of relief supplies.

VIENNA — Iran and world powers gave themselves an extra week to reach a nuclear accord, extending a deadline due to expire on Tuesday, while US President Barack Obama said there would be no deal if all pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon were not cut off.

With talks in the final stretch, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani also spoke out, saying his country would resume suspended atomic work if the West breaks its promises.

Iran and six world powers are working towards an accord that would see Tehran halt sensitive nuclear work for at least a decade in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, potentially the biggest breakthrough in decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran.

“Ultimately this is going to be up to the Iranians” to meet the requirements set out by the international community, Obama said during a news conference in Washington.

Obama’s remarks were likely to be seen as a response to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who last week seemed to place a hurdle in front of the talks by ruling out either a long freeze of sensitive nuclear work or opening military sites to inspectors.

President Rouhani, a pragmatist elected two years ago on promises to reduce Iran’s international isolation, said on Tuesday Tehran would resume halted nuclear work immediately if the powers failed to keep their promises under any accord.

“If we reach a deal, both sides should be committed to it,” Rouhani said in Tehran, the state news agency IRNA reported. “If the other side breaches the deal, we will go back to the old path, stronger than what they can imagine.”

Rouhani has been a strong supporter of negotiations but has less power in Iran than the more hardline Khamenei.

IAEA to report Iran complying

In a positive sign for the talks, Western diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was expected to report next month that Iran had complied with a preliminary deal to reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile.

An IAEA report in May said the stockpile had increased above the required level, but Tehran met a June 30 deadline to reduce it, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

Tuesday was the official deadline to reach a long-term deal that would build on the preliminary agreement. But with the prize tantalisingly close and the atmosphere seemingly positive, the week-long extension came as no great surprise.

US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the sides had agreed to extend the preliminary agreement “until July 7 to allow more time for negotiations to reach a long-term solution”.

A successful negotiation could help ease decades of hostility between Iran and the United States. But many US allies in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, are sceptical, as are hardliners in both Washington and Tehran.

The powers negotiating with Iran are the five UN Security Council permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.

Washington, as the superpower most at odds with Tehran, has played a central role. The preliminary deal arose out of initially secret talks between the two countries that have not had normal diplomatic ties since Iranian revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Western countries suspect Iran of seeking the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Tehran says its programme is peaceful.

Under the November 2013 preliminary agreement, Iran agreed to take some steps to constrain its nuclear programme in exchange for limited relief from sanctions.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, on crutches with a broken leg, resumed negotiations on Tuesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who returned in the morning from consultations in Tehran.

Zarif flew in with Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, who is still recovering from major surgery in May. The two immediately went into almost two hours of private talks with Kerry.

“I am here to get a final deal, and I think we can,” Zarif told reporters.

Late-night work

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in an interview with Iranian state news agency IRNA, said there were difficult issues to work out but outlined the benefits Iran could enjoy if a long-term agreement is reached in Vienna.

“We have offered to suspend all economic and financial sanctions in the first phase,” he was quoted as saying. “Experts estimate that lifting the sanctions will lead to economic growth of 5 to 7 per cent.”

Iranian media said it was the first interview Iranian state media had with a German government minister since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

For more than a week, the sides have been working into the night trying to break an impasse in talks they feel have never been closer to success.

Diplomats have said the real deadline is not June 30 but July 9, the latest the deal can be presented to the US Congress to limit to 30 days a mandatory review period before Obama can begin suspending sanctions. After that, the review would last 60 days, with growing risks a deal could unravel.

The main differences are on the pace and timing of sanctions relief for Iran and on the nature of monitoring mechanisms.

“There are real and tough issues that remain which have to be resolved in order to get the comprehensive agreement, and we still do not know yet whether we will be able to get there,” a senior US administration official told reporters on Monday.

A big sticking point is Western demands that UN inspectors have access to Iranian military sites and nuclear scientists.

Western diplomats say they are nearing a resolution, although Iranian officials maintain that access to military sites is a red line set by Khamenei.

The US official said the six powers had come up with a system to ensure that the IAEA would have the necessary access, though there was no suggestion the Iranians had agreed.

CAIRO — A visibly angry Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi pledged tougher laws against militants and suggested fast track executions at the funeral on Tuesday of the state prosecutor assassinated in a car bombing.

Hisham Barakat died in hospital after a car bomb tore through his convoy in Cairo on Monday morning, the most senior official killed by Islamist insurgents who have bedevilled the country.

The attack, as Barakat was en route to his office, was a blow to former army chief Sisi, who won elections after ousting Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3, 2013.

Barakat’s funeral coincided with the second anniversary of mass protests that preceded Morsi’s overthrow.

“The arm of justice is chained by the law. We’re not going to wait for this. We’re going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible,” Sisi said in a televised speech surrounded by Barakat’s mourning relatives.

“Do courts in these circumstances work? Do these laws work? They work with normal people,” said Sisi, shaking a clenched fist for emphasis.

Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed since Morsi’s ouster by militants based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula. The Daesh group’s affiliate there has claimed responsibility for the deadliest attacks.

At least 1,400 people, most of them Morsi supporters, have been killed in a police crackdown on protests.

Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly Islamists but also including secular dissidents, have been jailed and hundreds sentenced to death. Morsi himself has been sentenced to death.

Seven have been executed. Most of those sentenced to death are appealing the verdicts, a lengthy and convoluted process, but Sisi suggested it would be fast tracked.

“If there is a death sentence, a death sentence will be implemented,” Sisi said. “The law! The law!

“We’re not going to wait five or 10 years to try the people killing us,” Sisi said.

Outside the mosque where the funeral was held, a crowd of 50 protesters chanted: “The people demand the execution of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

‘Ball in judges court’ 

Inside, Justice Minister Ahmed Al Zind, a recently appointed hardliner, told judges to avenge Barakat’s killing.

“The ball is now in the judges’ court. Take your revenge using the law. Effective, swift law that doesn’t take five years.”

Politicians and pro-Sisi media — virtually all the channels and newspapers in Egypt — have called for an even harsher crackdown on Morsi’s Brotherhood and militants.

Rights groups and liberal politicians have warned of a further erosion of human rights.

A newspaper editor and former parliamentarian close to Sisi said he expected a raft of toughened laws to be presented at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

“What human rights, what balance?” Mostafa Bakri told AFP.

“Should we wait for years for terrorists to remain on trial until the issue is resolved? We are in an exceptional period. You protect human rights by fighting terrorism,” he said.

Television host Ahmed Mussa, who is close to the security services, attacked human rights advocates in an angry monologue after Barakat’s assassination.

“I just want to know what measures we will take. What laws we’re going to draw up. How am I to allow to people to protest again? How am I to allow people to talk about human rights?” he shouted, demanding more executions.

Khaled Dawud, of the Liberal Dustour Party, urged respect for human rights.

“Respect for the constitution and the law and basic human rights is actually a key requirement to win the war against terrorism,” he told AFP.

“You only create new extremists by this kind of haphazard measure that is only a kind of angry reaction rather than a serious consideration of the problems involved.”

BEIRUT — The Daesh terror group has beheaded two women in eastern Syria accused of "witchcraft and sorcery", a monitor said Tuesday, in the jihadists' first decapitations of female civilians.

The extremist group has become infamous for gruesome executions and mass killings, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the two women were the first female civilians to be beheaded by Daesh.

"The Islamic State [Daesh] group executed two women by beheading them in Deir Ezzor province, and this is the first time the observatory has documented women being killed by the group in this manner," observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The Britain-based monitor said the executions took place on Monday and Sunday and involved two couples.

In both cases, the women were executed with their husbands, with each pair accused of "witchcraft and sorcery".

The observatory said Daesh has previously decapitated the corpses of Kurdish female fighters during battles, and the jihadist group is reported to have stoned civilian women to death on allegations of adultery.

The monitor said the women and their husbands were killed in the city of Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which is mostly under the control of Daesh.

A video obtained by the observatory, which the group has not distributed, reportedly shows a masked executioner in a tunic saying a prayer before beheading one man and his wife, who is wearing a full face veil.

Abdel Rahman said the two couples appear to have been accused after the jihadist group found them in possession of charms.

Eight hung from crosses 

The use of amulets, charms and other folk religious practices is common in parts of Syria, particularly in the countryside, according to activists.

The charms are often written on a piece of paper sewn into fabric and are intended to protect the recipient against bad luck or jealousy, or solve and prevent other problems.

But the practice is considered heretical and a form of "witchcraft" by Daesh, which imposes its harsh interpretation of Islam on the areas under its control.

The group is known for its brutality, often filming acts including beheading and throwing people from buildings.

It punishes people for "crimes" including homosexuality, adultery, smoking cigarettes and spying.

According to the observatory, Daesh has executed more than 3,000 people in Syria in the year since it declared its Islamic "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq.

Nearly 1,800 of them were civilians, including 74 children.

It has executed more than 100 of its own members, mostly on allegations of spying, and often as they were seeking to escape the group, according to the observatory.

The monitor also said Tuesday that Daesh has hung at least eight people from makeshift crosses in recent days as punishment for allegedly failing to fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

The eight were all strung up alive on crucifixes with placards attached to them accusing them of breaking the Ramadan fast "with no religious justification".

Among the eight were two minors, the observatory said, adding that while it had documented eight cases, there might be others that have not been reported.

Observatory chief Abdel Rahman said the eight were hung from the crucifixes for a day and taken down afterwards still alive.

The jihadist group emerged in Syria in 2013 and initially sought to merge with Al Qaeda's local affiliate Al Nusra Front. But after Al Nusra rejected the merger, the group went its own way.

DUBAI  — Al Qaeda's leadership of Islamist militancy in Yemen is being challenged amid the chaos of civil war by its rival Daesh, which could become a bigger threat to the group than the US drones that periodically kill its commanders.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains the country's top militant network and its several thousand fighters and bomb makers, who have repeatedly tried to bring down Western aircraft, are still seen as a serious threat by Washington.

But followers of Daesh in Yemen have sought to steal Al Qaeda's thunder by launching a string of attacks against the Zaydi Shiite Muslim Houthi group, which is fighting a messy war against a Saudi-led coalition of Arab counties.

Daesh evolved from the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda and now controls swathes of Iraq and Syria. It broke from the Sunni Muslim group founded by Osama Bin Laden and has declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims.

Aimen Dean, a former Al Qaeda insider who now runs a Gulf-based security consultancy, said Daesh began setting up a presence in Yemen a year ago, with about 80 people, and now had about 300 militants.

Copious funding from Daesh’s coffers, Al Qaeda's inability to stage regular spectacular attacks on Houthis, and losses of Al Qaeda leaders in drone attacks had discouraged its habitual supporters and led to a series of defections.

"They are supplanting Al Qaeda and presenting themselves as the credible alternative," he said of Daesh.

A decision by AQAP to embed some of its fighters among Sunni tribal units fighting the Houthis had allowed Saudi intelligence to learn the location of its leaders, resulting in successful US drones strikes over the last few months, he said.

One of the AQAP commanders lost to drones was the group's leader Nasser Al Wuhayshi, also Al Qaeda's global number two, killed in the southern port city of Al Mukulla in early June.

While most analysts agree that AQAP remains resilient, some argue that US methods, including drone strikes, help create a climate conducive for the nascent Daesh to attract new followers.

"This is a pattern that we had seen in Iraq and Syria," said Ibrahim Sharqieh Frehat, conflict resolution analyst with the Brookings Doha Centre. "The problem with the Americans is that they deal with the problems with the same tools — bombings. Weakening AQAP will only give way to Daesh to be born," he said, referring to Daesh by its Arabic acronym.

Katherine Zimmerman, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said Daesh’s expansion has so far not affected AQAP's dominance.

"The challenge is one that may come in the future: should ISIS [Daesh] come to dominate the fight against the Houthis in Yemen, AQAP may be marginalised and placed in a position where it has to respond," Zimmerman said. To show its power, Al Qaeda might be pressed to attack Western targets or provide more support for anti-Houthi militias.

Small but deadly

Yemen is a traditional stronghold for Al Qaeda's most active branch, which was founded in 2009 by the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi wings of the network founded by Bin Laden.

Its plots against Western targets included an attempt to bomb a US-bound airliner on December 25, 2009, and it inspired militants elsewhere with astute English language propaganda.

It also claimed responsibility for an attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that killed 12 in January, although some analysts suspect its role was more inspirational than direct.

But its hold on its local followers seems to be slipping.

In February, the US-based SITE monitoring centre reported that a group of purported AQAP supporters had announced their defection to Daesh in a message on Twitter.

"We announce breaking the pledge of allegiance to the sheikh, the holy warrior and scholar Sheikh Ayman Al Zawahiri... We pledge to the caliph of the believers Ibrahim Bin Awad Al Baghdadi to listen and obey," they wrote, according to SITE.

Zawahiri is Bin Laden's successor as Al Qaeda leader. Baghdadi is the leader of Daesh.

Daesh began operations in Yemen in March with a pair of big suicide bombings against two mosques where Shiites worship in the capital Sanaa that killed a total of 137 people and wounded at least 357.

Earlier this month, the group's "Sanaa governorate" killed two people and wounded 60 in coordinated car bombs targeting mosques and the headquarters of the Iranian-allied Houthi group.

The Sanaa province branch of Daesh was officially launched in April with a nine minute recording on Twitter showing 20 armed men parading somewhere in the desert.

Deploying its signature sectarian rhetoric to promote its cause, the recording deplored Sunni Muslims to "mobilise to where the soldiers of the Caliphate to work together to bring down the rejectionists" — a reference to Shiites.

Yemeni news website www.almasdaronline.com reported on Sunday, quoting tribal and military sources, that a senior AQAP leader, Jalal Baleidi, had switched allegiance to Daesh and set up a training camp for its militants in a remote area of the Hadramout province close to the border with Saudi Arabia.

Baleidi made news headlines last year when he led a group of AQAP militants in capturing a group of Yemeni government troops travelling from Hadramout to Sanaa on home leave and killed them with knives using Daesh-style techniques.

Like AQAP, Daesh draws on austere Sunni Muslim teachings of scholars like Imam Ibn Hanbal and Mohammed Ibn Abdulwahhab, the father of Saudi Arabia's school of Islam, which sees shrines as blasphemy and regards Shiites as infidels.

However, Daesh believes killing Shiite civilians is a religious duty, a position that even Al Qaeda has criticised as recklessly violent.

"There is increasing evidence that the Islamic State, or those who subscribe to its ideology, are already operating in Yemen," said Barbara Bodine, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown's Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C.

"Like their Iraqi counterparts going back to post-2003 Iraq, they target Zaydi religious and historic sites, not just government forces as AQAP largely has," said Bodine, a former US ambassador to Yemen.

Challenge

AQAP still participates in almost daily battles with the Houthis alongside tribal fighters, Southern Resistance forces and supporters of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Al Hadi.

But analysts say competition with Daesh is likely to increase.

AQAP and Daesh followers have already been trading barbs on social media, especially over the death of Wuhayshi, where both sides have accused each other of being penetrated by local or international intelligence agencies.

Dean said he estimated the two groups were three to six months from any armed conflict erupting between them.

Ludovico Carlino, an expert on Yemeni jihadists, recently wrote that both Daesh and AQAP were expected to try to exploit Yemen's security vacuum to increase their capabilities and plot attacks against Yemeni forces, Houthis and any vestigial Western presence to show their relevance.

"The Islamic State's [Daesh’s] growing influence is likely to lead to greater competition among jihadists in Yemen," he wrote in IHS Jane's Defence weekly in March. 

TUNIS — The gunman who killed 38 tourists in Tunisia received weapons training from jihadists in Libya, a top official said Tuesday, as the president admitted security services were unprepared for the attack.

On Friday, a student identified as 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from inside a beach umbrella and went on a bloody rampage at the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel in Port El Kantaoui near Sousse.

Secretary of State for Security Rafik Chelli told AFP Rezgui had been in Libya at the same time as the two authors of a March attack at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis that killed 21 tourists and a policeman.

Both attacks were claimed by the Daesh terror group, which controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

"It is confirmed that he [Rezgui] went to Libya illegally. He was trained in Sabratha [west of Tripoli]," Chelli said.

"They were away at the same time... In Sabratha, there is only one camp that trains young Tunisians," he said, although he could not confirm whether they had trained together.

The camp was run by the jihadist Ansar Al Sharia group, Chelly added.

His statement came after French radio broadcast an interview with President Beji Caid Essebsi, who said security had been boosted after the museum attack in other areas for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But authorities had not expected Tunisia's beaches to be targeted, he said.

"It is true that we were surprised by this incident. Arrangements were made for the month of Ramadan, but they never thought [measures] had to be taken on the beaches," Essebsi told Europe 1.

Thousands of tourists flee 

After the Bardo attack, jihadists threatened further violence, with Daesh sympathisers tweeting under the hashtag #IWillComeToTunisiaThisSummer.

"It's not a perfect system," Essebsi said, vowing disciplinary action "if there were failings".

Tunisia is expected to deploy 1,000 armed officers on Wednesday to reinforce tourism police — who will also be armed — at beaches and attractions.

There were no signs yet of increased security at the scene of Friday's shootings, with no police visible at the hotel or in the surrounding area, an AFP journalist said.

Police and vehicles deployed on Monday during a visit by the interior ministers of Britain, France and Germany were gone by Tuesday morning.

Several witnesses said the attack lasted more than 30 minutes before the gunman was shot dead, but officials say they were on the scene within minutes.

Thousands of frightened tourists have fled the country since Friday, including at least 4,000 who flew home to Britain, the country hardest hit.

Tunisian health authorities have now identified 33 of the victims, 25 of them Britons, with British officials warning the number is expected to rise to at least 30.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's spokeswoman told reporters that the first bodies of British victims were expected to be repatriated on Wednesday.

It was Britain's worst loss of life in a jihadist attack since the July 2005 London bombings.

Tunisia's crucial tourism industry was already suffering from the upheaval that followed the 2011 overthrow of ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and other jihadist attacks.

Warning on the economy 

But officials said Friday's massacre may do the most damage yet.

"We can count, at least, with regards to the impact on gross domestic product (GDP), on a loss of earnings of a billion dinars ($515 million/460 million euros)," Tourism Minister Selma Elloumi Rekik told reporters late Monday.

"I think that's just the minimum, but it's still an estimate."

Tourism accounts for 7 per cent of Tunisia's GDP and employs around 400,000 people.

"If tourism collapses... the economy falls apart," the minister warned, announcing government plans to provide exceptional loans to help tourism businesses.

France's travel agency union said Monday that 80 per cent of package holidays booked for July had been cancelled, with customers rushing to other destinations.

Some, however, have not changed their plans.

"I think we need to help our Tunisian friends," said Christiane, a French tourist arriving at Monastir Airport near Port El Kantaoui.

In a separate development, the trial of 24 people accused of links to the February 2013 assassination of prominent Tunisian opposition figure Chokri Belaid began and was adjourned to October 30.

Belaid, gunned down outside his home, was a staunch leftwing critic of the then-ruling Ennahda party, a moderate Islamist movement.

Jihadists claimed the killing and the authorities announced in February 2014 that Belaid's assassin had been killed in a police raid on "terrorist" suspects.

But Belaid's family has repeatedly demanded to know the full truth behind the murder.