Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli wounded in a West Bank shooting overnight died Tuesday, and a Palestinian was shot by Israeli forces after he ran at them shouting Allahu Akbar in the latest violence to mar Ramadan.

In response to the Monday night incident, in which three more Israelis were hurt, authorities tightened restrictions on West Bank Palestinians wanting to pray at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque during the holy month. 

The Israelis’ car came under fire near the Shvut Rachel settlement, the army said, adding that it was unclear whether it was a drive-by shooting or a sniper attack.

The men, all men in their 20s, were taken to Israeli hospital, and one of them died Tuesday, his family said.

The shots were fired at a crossroads near the settlement in the northern West Bank. Despite the army setting up roadblocks, the perpetrator or perpetrators got away. 

West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law and Israelis have been attacked previously in and around them, as well as in occupied East Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces said a Palestinian was shot and wounded after running toward security guards shouting “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] at a main checkpoint between east Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

A statement said a guard fired a warning shot in the air then shot the man as he continued to advance. The man was taken to hospital in what police described as “moderate” condition.

Monday’s shootings were the latest in a string of attacks since the start of Ramadan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the West Bank Palestinian leadership speak out against the violence.

“The fact that till this very moment the Palestinian Authority has not condemned the attacks should disturb not only us but the entire international community,” he said ahead of a meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilloni.

“Whoever doesn’t take an unequivocal stance against terror, cannot claim innocence,” he said. 

There was no immediate response from the Palestinian Authority. Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules the Gaza Strip, saluted the attack, which has not been claimed by anyone.

COGAT, the defence ministry unit that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that in response to the latest attacks, access to Al Aqsa, Islam’s third-holiest site would be strictly limited.

“Men below the age of 50 and women between 16-30 will be allowed entry to Jerusalem... only on the basis of [prior] permits,” it said. 

GAZA — The Hamas-appointed attorney general in the Gaza Strip shut down the offices of the territory’s only mobile-phone provider on Tuesday, saying the company, Jawwal, had not paid its taxes.

Police were posted outside the firm’s headquarters and notices were put up on the walls outside reading: “Jawwal Company is closed upon the attorney general’s order.”

Police also ordered phone stores registered with Jawwal not to sell SIM cards for its devices or process payments for the company, one vendor told Reuters.

Jawwal is a subsidiary of the Palestine Telecommunications Co. (PalTel), the largest listed company in the Palestinian territories. It is the sole provider of mobile phone services in Gaza, with around 1.3 million clients.

While the offices were closed, Gazans were still able to use their mobile phones and access the Internet on Tuesday, although it was not clear how long that would continue.

Executives at PalTel rejected the attorney general’s accusations, saying all relevant taxes had been paid to the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the company is registered and based.

PalTel Chief Executive Ammar Aker said it was not possible to separate tax filings between the two territories.

To do so would fuel division and “may expose national economic institutions that work within an international system to questions and sanctions that may result in grave damage”, he said, referring to outside pressure on Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

While the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, is nominally in charge of Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007 and appoints some of its own officials, including the attorney general.

There is a separate attorney general in the West Bank.

PalTel, which also provides fixed-line and Internet access in Gaza, said it was closing its offices there in solidarity.

“It is impossible to provide services to citizens under threats to the security and safety of both subscribers and employees,” it said in a statement.

Political analysts suggested the attorney general’s move was a response to the financial crisis Gaza faces, with Hamas looking for ways to prop up dwindling revenue, including by targeting major companies based in the coastal territory.

While Jawwal is the sole mobile-phone service provider in Gaza, it competes with several other providers, including Israeli ones, in the West Bank.

The West Bank-based Palestinian government condemned Hamas for forcing companies to pay tax in Gaza and for closing the Jawwal offices, saying such measures were “illegal and deepen division and undermine reconciliation”.

VIENNA — Iran and US have not had diplomatic ties for more than three decades, yet over the past 20 months they have likely sat down together more often than any other nations on Earth.

The sustained pace and intensity of the nuclear negotiations between Iran — an Islamic clerical theocracy — and the United States, which prides itself on its constitutional freedoms, is all the more astonishing given the old enmities under the surface.

Only last week shouts of “Death to America” rang out in the Iranian parliament, while Washington issued yet another indictment of Tehran’s failure to improve human rights, after also reaffirming its conviction that Iran is the top state sponsor of global terror attacks.

Driven on the one side by a desire to eradicate the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, and on the other by the need to lift crippling economic sanctions, the two sides despite the odds have stayed at the negotiating table.

A senior US official acknowledged the talks were “staggeringly consequential” and would have a huge impact not just for America’s security, but also for the Middle East region and the world. 

“Everybody who’s involved in this negotiation understands and quite frankly feels the burden of the responsibility of what we’re doing,” the official said, asking not to be named.

Growing rapport 

But the lengthy negotiations have also provided each country with valuable insights into the personalities, thinking and ideologies guiding the other side after more than 30 years of almost no contact.

Indeed for all diplomatic and consular business inside Iran, the Americans are still dependent on the Swiss embassy, which acts as a go-between for the two nations.

Yet over the many months of talks, huddled in hotel rooms around the world, the teams have got to know each other well, building a surprising intimacy. 

They have marked birthdays and offered condolences at the loss of family members. They have broken bread on many occasions, shared greetings for festivities such as Ramadan and commiserated over broken limbs and hospital stays.

Little wonder, that wary US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia fear the rapport Washington is building with Iran may embolden the Shiite Islamic leadership already seeking to impose its influence in a turbulent Middle East.

Ties between the two nations were snapped in the wake of the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, when radical Iranian students held 52 American diplomats and citizens for 444 days in the US embassy in the Tehran. 

The events left deep scars on the American psyche and blighted the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Despite a historic 2013 phone call between US President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, analysts remain sceptical the talks will lead to a broader rapprochement.

US Secretary of State John Kerry “naturally wants to leave a major foreign policy legacy of reconciliation, whereas Iran’s supreme leader... he’s always prided himself on a legacy of resistance, especially vis-à-vis the United States,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Overcoming critics 

Both Iranian and US teams have also met sharp criticism at home for daring to walk into the lion’s den with their long-time foe. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has come under attack from hardliners, while Kerry and the Obama administration has had to fend off antsy Republicans waiting to slap new sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Tuesday gave his blessing to Zarif and his team, tweeting a picture of them with the English message “I recognise our negotiators as trustworthy, committed, brave and faithful.”

Both countries have also been at pains to stress their talks are solely confined to the nuclear dossier — although American officials have acknowledged raising both American prisoners held in Iran and conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen on the sidelines.

“Negotiations with the United States are on the nuclear issue and nothing else,” Khamenei said in April.

But he added “if the other side abandons its twisted approach, we can perhaps try this experience again for other issues.” 

“We have between the United States and Iran decades of enmity and mistrust,” a senior US administration official said Monday.

“That’s very tough, and making this decision to actually do the joint comprehensive plan of action is a very, very, very big decision for everybody.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel deported Tunisian ex-president Moncef Marzouki and European parliament member Ana Miranda on Tuesday after they took part in a flotilla seeking to defy its Gaza blockade, an official said.

“The [former] president of Tunisia and the Spanish lawmaker flew this morning. There are another 14 who have begun the expulsion process,” a spokeswoman for Israel’s immigration authority told AFP.

Israel had on Monday commandeered the Swedish-flagged Marianne of Gothenburg, part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla III, and accompanied it to the Port of Ashdod.

Sixteen foreign nationals were on board along with two Israelis, Arab lawmaker Basel Ghattas and a television reporter. The two Israelis have been released, though Ghattas could face a parliamentary hearing on whether he should face sanctions.

The Marianne was part of a four-boat flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists who had been seeking to reach the Gaza Strip to highlight the Israeli blockade of the territory that they called “inhumane and illegal”.

The three other boats had turned back before the Marianne was boarded by the Israeli navy in an operation that took place without the deadly force that marred a raid to stop a similar bid in 2010.

Speaking after being released from brief police custody Monday night, Ghattas condemned Israel’s “illegal” commandeering of the ship, which took place in international waters. 

“In the end, we see the Freedom Flotilla III achieved its main goal — to draw local and global attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is a result of Israel’s siege of the Strip,” he said.

Ghattas said he believed the attempt and Israeli operation to stop it would spur “activists from around the world to bring flotilla after flotilla, until the blockade on Gaza is removed”.

The activists’ campaign came as Israel faced heavy international pressure over its actions in Gaza, with a UN report last week saying both Israel and Palestinian fighters may have committed war crimes during a 50-day conflict in the besieged coastal enclave last summer.

Israel says the blockade is necessary to stop weapons from arriving in the Gaza Strip by sea.

The reconstruction of thousands of homes destroyed during the fighting between Israel and Hamas, Gaza’s Islamist de facto rulers, is yet to begin, and both Israel’s blockade and a lack of support from international donors have been blamed.

In 2010, 10 Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed in an Israeli raid on a six-ship flotilla.

WASHINGTON — The United States has no "solid evidence" that Jordan and Turkey are considering seeking a buffer zone in Syria, the State Department said on Monday.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said there were "serious logistical challenges" in creating such buffer zones but he had not seen any concrete evidence either Jordan or Turkey, which both share borders with war-torn Syria, were considering such a zone.

ANKARA — Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey was prepared for all necessary measures to tackle security threats along its borders, highlighting Ankara's growing anxiety about conflict near its southern frontier in Syria.

The National Security Council, chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressed concern about a threat of "terrorism" from the Syrian border as local media reported Ankara was considering military steps to counter security risks from Syria.

A statement from the council following its meeting also said Turkey was worried about demographic changes in the region, in an apparent reference to the displacement of Arab and Turkmen Syrians following fighting in recent weeks.

Syrian Kurdish forces continued to make military advances against Daesh militants with Ankara fearing the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state in Syrian territory that would further embolden Turkey's own 14 million Kurds.

Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey would never allow the formation of a Kurdish state along its southern border.

Syrian Kurdish forces secured the town of Kobani next to the border over the weekend, beating back Daesh militants.

“If any harm is to come to Turkey’s border security, if Turkey reaches the conclusion that this garden of peace is being threatened, it is prepared for any eventuality,” Davutoglu said in comments broadcast late on Sunday.

“We will take the necessary measures to reduce the risks related to cross-border security.”

The pro-government Star newspaper said a possible cross-border operation would be considered at the national security council meeting, citing unnamed sources.

One option that could be considered was the creation of a 110km “secure zone” within Syria, the newspaper said.

Rules of engagement

Saban Disli, an adviser to Davutoglu, told Reuters the meeting was likely to bring a change in the military’s rules of engagement, describing advances of both Kurdish forces and Daesh militants as “dangerous”.

He did not say how the rules could be changed. However, the pro-government Sabah newspaper said policy could be altered to allow Turkish forces to attack Daesh fighters near the border. Currently, Turkish forces retaliate in kind against any attack from Syrian territory.

“Turkey will not take any unilateral step on the Syrian side independent of the international coalition,” a senior government official told Reuters. “But we have our sensitivity on border gates not coming under the control of ISIL [Daesh] or the PYD [Kurdish forces].”

The National Security Council statement gave no detail about what was discussed or what, if any, decisions were taken.

Military action could anger Turkey’s Kurdish minority at a time when the peace process between Ankara and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has stalled.

A senior PKK commander, Murat Karayilan, told a Kurdish news website the group would retaliate if the military intervened in Kurdish areas of Syria. The PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the European Union and the United States.

Brokerage Finansbank said in a note to clients that given Turkey’s current political uncertainty — Davutoglu’s AK Party still needs to find a junior partner to form a government following its election setback this month — any intervention would likely be limited.

“We remain doubtful that a ‘lame duck’ government could undertake anything more than a ‘targeted’ operation that would be limited in both scale and scope,” it said.

CAIRO — Egypt's top public prosecutor died of wounds sustained in a car bomb attack on his convoy as it was leaving his home on Monday, the most senior state official killed in militant violence since the toppling of an Islamist president two years ago.

Judges and other senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radical Islamists opposed to President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and angered by hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Last month, the Daesh terror group's Egypt affiliate urged followers to attack judges, opening a new front in an Islamist insurgency in Egypt..

Chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat was the highest-ranking state official to die in a militant attack since Sisi, a former army chief, ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in mid-2013 after mass protests against his rule.

Morsi, a Brotherhood leader who was freely elected as Egypt's president in 2012, was sentenced this month to death over a mass jailbreak in 2011. The Brotherhood has denied any link to recent militant bloodshed, reiterating what it calls a long commitment to non-violence.

Monday's attack stirred fears of yet more turmoil in Egypt, which has been struggling since the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak to regain full-fledged stability and revive the economy of the Arab world's most populous country.

The bombing also showed the risk of militant Islam threatening the Egyptian state leadership as it did in the 1980s and 1990s.

State media confirmed the death of Barakat, 64, at a hospital in the residential district of Heliopolis where he had undergone surgery hours earlier, and said he would receive a military funeral.

Judges determined

Health Minister Adel Adawi told reporters outside Al Nozha hospital where Barakat was admitted that the cause of death was “ruptures in the lung and stomach, and internal bleeding”.

There was no confirmed claim of responsibility for the attack, in which security sources said a bomb in a parked car was remotely detonated as Barakat’s motorcade left his home. They initially said a car bomber had rammed into the convoy.

The state news agency MENA said the bomb blast also wounded at least nine other people including police and civilians.

Hours after the explosion, which sent a large plume of black smoke aloft in front of a row of apartment buildings near the military academy, six burnt cars clogged up a street strewn with broken glass and fragments of metal. Windows were shattered in surrounding buildings up to nine stories high.

“It felt like the apartment was lifted up and dropped right back on the ground. When I felt it I said to my family, this is it, death has come for us,” said 17-year-old Khaled Youssef.

Sisi’s office mourned Barakat’s death and cancelled celebrations prepared for Tuesday to mark the anniversary of mass unrest that led to Morsi’s fall, and said the perpetrators would draw “the most severe punishment”.

The government, however, declared June 30 a national holiday in commemoration of the 2013 protests, state media said.

“These kinds of vicious attacks will not deter the state from continuing its path of development, the adoption of rights, and realising the hopes and aspirations of the Egyptian people,” it said in a statement.

The Egyptian judiciary says it is independent of the government and military. But some of Egypt’s judges have drawn accusations of blatant bias by handing down lengthy jail terms and mass death sentences against Islamists.

“Terrorism killed the top man of our prosecution but despite this we will not be scared and we will continue our work,” said Judge Ashraf Abdelhady as he left the hospital.

A presidential spokesman told MENA that the interior ministry would increase security measures ahead of the June 30 anniversary, including heightening the alert level and reinforcing security at vital installations.

Barakat’s place of work was also targeted earlier this year when a bomb exploded near the high court in central Cairo, killing two people.

Egypt is grappling with a Sinai-based insurgency that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi’s fall. The most active group is Sinai Province, which has pledged allegiance to Daesh, the ultra-hardline jihadist group that has seized control of significant areas of Iraq and Syria.

At least two people were killed and 12 wounded in a blast later on Monday likely caused by a roadside bomb near Sheikh Zuweid in North Sinai, security sources said.

Last month, suspected Islamist gunmen killed three judges in the Sinai city of El Arish.

ASHDOD, Israel — Israel's navy on Monday halted a flotilla seeking to defy its blockade of Gaza without the deadly force that marred a similar attempt in 2010 and was escorting one of the vessels to shore.

Among the passengers on the commandeered ship were Tunisia's former president Moncef Marzouki and Arab-Israeli lawmaker Basel Ghattas.

A flotilla of four boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists had been seeking to reach Gaza to highlight the Israeli blockade of the territory that they called "inhumane and illegal".

Three of the boats were said to have turned back while a fourth, the Marianne of Gothenburg, was boarded by the Israeli navy and was being escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

The activists' campaign came as Israel faced heavy international pressure over its actions in Gaza, with a UN report last week saying both Israel and Palestinian fighters may have committed war crimes during a 50-day conflict in the besieged coastal enclave last summer.

The reconstruction of thousands of homes in Gaza destroyed during the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the territory’s Islamist de facto rulers, is yet to begin, and both Israel’s blockade and a lack of support from international donors have been blamed.

After the overnight operation to stop the flotilla, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded the navy’s actions and insisted his government was right to take action against Hamas.

“In accordance with international law, the Israeli navy advised the vessel several times to change course,” the military said in a statement. 

“Following their refusal, the navy visited and searched the vessel in international waters in order to prevent their intended breach of the maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

“The forces have reported that use of force was unnecessary, and that the process was uneventful,” it added. “The vessel is currently being escorted to Ashdod port and is expected to arrive within 12-24 hours.”

A military spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that the vessel was the Swedish-flagged Marianne of Gothenburg, part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla III. 

Organisers of the flotilla said the vessel was a fishing trawler carrying medical equipment and solar panels with 18 people from nine countries on board.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition questioned Israel’s version of the operation and said on its website that it had “no reason to believe that Marianne’s capture was ‘uneventful’.”

‘Crime of the blockade’ 

Hamas, in a statement as well as in comments on Twitter, condemned the “kidnapping” of the activists, adding that “this ship succeeded in showing the crime of the blockade”.

The other three ships had changed their course and were “heading back to their ports of origin”, according to a statement by “Canadian Boat to Gaza” issued by the activists before the Israeli navy commandeered the Marianne.

Netanyahu dismissed the organisers’ goals.

“This flotilla is nothing but a demonstration of hypocrisy and lies that is only assisting the Hamas terrorist organisation and ignores all of the horrors in our region,” he said in a statement.

Netanyahu said the blockade was necessary to stop weapons from arriving in the Gaza Strip by sea and that the operation “was done in accordance with international law”.

A spokeswoman for Israel’s immigration authority told AFP the foreign activists would be granted a hearing before being deported, as was the case with Gaza-bound boats intercepted by Israel in 2012.

Ghattas was expected to face a hearing in a parliamentary committee on whether he should face sanctions.

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2006 after Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, and tightened it a year later when the Islamist movement consolidated its rule.

Israel controls the waters around Gaza and residents are not allowed to travel six nautical miles from the coast. Land crossings are also strictly controlled by Israel apart from the Rafah checkpoint with Egypt.

A number of flotillas had reached Gaza prior to May 2010, when 10 Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed in an Israeli raid on a six-ship flotilla.

Since then, several ships manned by pro-Palestinian activists have tried to reach the shores of Gaza, but they have all been repelled by the Israeli navy.

Critics of the blockade have called for it to be fully lifted to allow reconstruction, warning that without it an ongoing humanitarian crisis could fuel further conflict.

Some “1.8 million Palestinians [are] living in disgraceful, prison-like conditions as a result of Israel’s military siege of both sea and land”, lawmaker Ghattas said in a letter to Netanyahu before the flotilla set sail.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Saudi man who blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque in Kuwait managed to slip out of his home country without raising any red flags and board a commercial flight transiting nearby Bahrain less than 24 hours before the deadly attack.

The details of the bomber's final hours, released by regional authorities, highlight the growing involvement of undetected Daesh sympathisers on the Arabian Peninsula and the threat they pose to countries closer to home than the battlefields of Iraq and Syria.

Friday's blast in one of Kuwait City's most prominent Shiite mosques killed 27 worshippers and injured more than 200. It followed two suicide bombings in neighbouring Saudi Arabia just weeks earlier, raising fears of more attacks to come in the Gulf.

Kuwaiti officials have identified the bomber as Fahad Suleiman Abdulmohsen Al Qabbaa, a Saudi man in his early twenties who landed in the country just hours before the attack.

The bombing — which struck on the same day as deadly attacks in Tunisia and France — has rattled Kuwait. Violence is rare in the small and stable OPEC nation, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy and has a sizeable Shiite minority. Kuwait also regularly hosts American soldiers and other Western troops.

It is unclear how much help Qabbaa had inside Kuwait and when and how he obtained his explosives. Kuwaiti police have arrested at least two people in connection with the attack.

One is a man who authorities allege drove Qabbaa to the mosque. Another, according the Kuwaiti interior ministry, is a known follower of “fundamentalist and deviant ideology” who housed the driver.

Gulf citizens can travel easily among the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council bloc, making it simple for Qabbaa to exploit the region’s extensive transportation links.

Bahrain’s interior ministry said Monday that Qabbaa arrived in that island nation on a Gulf Air flight from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, at 10:40pm Thursday. He remained in transit for two and a half hours before boarding a connecting flight to Kuwait.

Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry said the bomber had no record with security forces or any background indicating terrorist activities. It confirmed he left the kingdom Thursday bound for Bahrain.

An audio message accompanied by two still photos that was posted online and promoted by Twitter accounts affiliated with the Daesh terror group purports to be a final message from Qabbaa.

A caption below the clip calls the bomber a “soldier of the caliphate” and identifies him by the nom de guerre of Abu Suleiman Al Muwahhed.

In the message, the speaker vows to pursue jihad against his enemies, particularly Shiites in Kuwait, saying “we are on the lookout for you.”

He also addresses Daesh’s group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, telling him to “be patient and swear to God that we are with you”.

Daesh militants consider Shiites to be heretics and are fighting Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. The group last month pledged to expel all Shiites from the Arabian Peninsula.

The group’s Najd Province offshoot, which said it was behind the Kuwait mosque attack, has claimed two attacks on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia in late May. The branch’s name refers to the central region of Saudi Arabia.

In an apparent response to the threat, Bahraini officials this week met with senior Sunni and Shiite religious leaders to discuss efforts to secure places of worship, including closing mosques after each prayer session to make it easier for caretakers to monitor them.

The move follows unsubstantiated threats circulated on social media claiming that Bahrain will be Daesh’s next target on Friday.

The threats were attributed to Daesh operative Turki Al Binali, a Bahraini preacher who has emerged as one of the extremist group’s leading ideologues. Bahraini authorities stripped the preacher’s citizenship along with that of 71 others in January.

DUBAI — A United Arab Emirates court on Monday sentenced a UAE woman to death for the Islamist-inspired killing of an American kindergarten teacher in December, the state news agency WAM said.

The teacher, identified as Romanian-born Ibolya Ryan, a mother of 11-year-old twins, was stabbed to death in a toilet at an Abu Dhabi shopping mall.

The Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi convicted the woman, Ala’a Badr Abdullah Al Hashemi, 30, of the killing and imposed the death penalty, WAM said.

The court said the crime amounted to “a direct threat to the security and stability of society” and that the case was dealt with an anti-terrorism law passed last year by the UAE, a US-allied Gulf state strongly opposed to militant Islam.

The court’s ruling was final and not subject to appeal. However, executions are extremely rare in the UAE and it was not immediately clear when Hashemi might be put to death.

Hours after killing Ryan, Hashemi placed a makeshift bomb outside the front door of an apartment of an Egyptian-American doctor living in the UAE, but the device was safely dismantled, according to evidence submitted at the trial.

Pan-Arab Al Arabiya television said the court proceeded with the trial after medical examination confirmed the defendant had been aware of her actions and was not suffering from any mental illness.

Police said she had become radicalised over the Internet and had not been targeting an American in particular, but was looking for a foreigner to kill at random.

Attacks on Westerners are rare in the UAE, a wealthy oil exporter and tourism hub, but concern has been rising after a spate of Islamist militant attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Supporters of the ultra-hardline Daesh group in Iraq and Syria have urged Muslims to target Western expatriates in retaliation for US-led air strikes on its fighters. The UAE has participated in the air campaign and is a strong opponent of a variety of Islamist groups.