Region

TRIPOLI — The Daesh terror group said on Thursday it had blown up two warplanes at an air base it seized near the central Libyan city of Sirte.

The group published pictures on social media that it said showed the two destroyed military aircraft parked in front of a hangar.

The Islamist rebel fighters seized Sirte's military and civilian airport two weeks ago, expanding the area it controls by exploiting a security vacuum in oil-producer Libya, where two governments are vying for power.

The militants had earlier this week seized a power plant in a western suburb of Sirte, completing a gradual takeover of the city that it began in February.

Forces loyal to a self-declared government that controls the capital Tripoli had pulled out of the plant and air base.

Since the start of the year militants in Libya loyal to Daesh have claimed responsibility for killing dozens of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians and attacking Tripoli's luxury Corinthia hotel, embassies and oilfields.

Libya's internationally recognised government has been working out of the east of the country since losing control of Tripoli and western Libya in August, part of turmoil gripping Libya four years after the ousting of Muammar Qadhafi.

CAIRO — After a violent campaign directed at security forces, Egyptian militants appear to be zooming in on President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi's most vulnerable point: the economy.

Attacks on two prime tourist sites in the space of eight days are deeply worrying for a government which has staked much of its credibility on reviving the economy after years of political turmoil.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on Wednesday near the ancient Karnak temple in Luxor, wounding four Egyptians. A week earlier, two police officers were killed in an attack near the Giza Pyramids, hundreds of kilometres to the north.

Security forces on Thursday dismantled a bomb found at the entrance of the supplies ministry in Cairo, state news agency MENA said.

While the attacks did not kill or harm any tourists, they raise concerns that Islamist insurgents have opened a new, economic front.

Egyptian officials from Sisi to the Luxor governor were at pains to say that all was well, that this week's foiled attack showed security forces were on alert and would protect tourists.

But providing reassurances that some of the world's most spectacular tourist attractions are safe may prove difficult.

"The perpetrators don't have to attack in a large way to spook people who are trying to visit the country. All they need to do is have a few incidents here and there to shape perceptions," said Kamran Bokhari, an expert on the geopolitics of the Middle East and South Asia.
Egypt's economy has been battered since 2011, when a popular uprising forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power. Sisi has announced several mega-projects, garnered billions of dollars in aid from Gulf allies and enforced painful subsidy cuts to try to jumpstart the economy and boost foreign investment.

But a direct attack on tourism, a top foreign currency earner, would inflict major damage and could undermine any confidence in Egypt that Sisi has generated.

On Thursday, Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar visited the Karnak temple, praised security forces and said the "malicious attempts won't undermine Egyptian security". He was quick to mention that tourists knew what happened was a "one-off incident".

A security source in the interior ministry told Reuters that Abdel Ghaffar had asked for a new plan to confront militants at ancient sites, where the level of readiness has been raised.

"This is secretive and we cannot divulge details," the source said. "All I can say is that there are explosive-detecting machines that are being used... and an increase in the number of police... There are also new cameras that have been set up."
A campaign by militants against tourism in the 1990s under Mubarak dealt a major blow to tourism. Fifty-eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed in an attack in Luxor in 1997.

Security sources said this week's attack was most likely carried out by three Egyptians, identified by identification cards left at the scene. One blew himself up and two others fought a gun battle with police.

"[The] attack got intercepted while it was still in motion and didn't lead to any tourist deaths, but the question is: how many such attacks are in the pipeline and will the police be able to interdict?" Bokhari said.

No one has claimed responsibility, but suspicions are likely to fall on groups like the Daesh-affiliated Sinai Province, which wants to topple the Cairo government and has been bedevilling security forces in the Sinai Peninsula. Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed there since Sisi, as army chief, overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after mass protests against his rule in 2013.

But the insurgency remains stubborn despite Apache helicopter strikes and raids on militant hideouts in the Sinai.

The state has responded by enforcing an unprecedented crackdown on members and supporters of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which it now brands a terrorist group, and on liberal activists.

After Wednesday's attack, that crackdown shows no sign of stopping. The risk is that this further fuels the insurgency and creates a vicious cycle that Egypt's economy can ill afford.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Thursday sentenced a policeman to 15 years in jail over the fatal shooting of a woman during a peaceful leftist rally, a court official said.

Shaima Al Sabbagh, a 34-year-old mother of a five-year-old, was struck by birdshot in January as police dispersed a small march on the fourth anniversary of the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

Her death triggered outrage in Egypt and abroad, and anger also spread after the officer was not charged with murder or manslaughter but with "battery that led to death" and "deliberately" wounding other protesters.

The trial, however, was the first time a policeman has been referred to trial in connection with the violent death of a protester since then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Part of the shooting that lead to Sabbagh's death was captured on film, prompting Sisi to publicly demand that the perpetrator be brought to justice.

The policeman, who was not named, can appeal the verdict.

Sabbagh suffered the fatal wounds when the officer fired birdshot to disperse the peaceful protest that had been organised by her Socialist Popular Alliance, a small leftist party.

Marchers had been carrying a wreath to a monument in Cairo's Tahrir Square to commemorate the deaths of protesters during the 2011 revolt that toppled Mubarak.

Tahrir Square was the epicentre of the uprising and the scene of violent confrontations between police and protesters.

Dozens of policemen were tried for protester deaths after the revolt against Mubarak, which had been partly fuelled by police abuses.

DUBAI — Eighty per cent of Yemen's population, or more than 20 million people, need some form of humanitarian assistance as Arab air strikes and civil war ravage the impoverished country, aid agency UNICEF said on Thursday.

The figure is up by almost 5 million people since the organisation's latest report last week.

For over 11 weeks, an Arab military coalition has been bombing the Houthi militia, the dominant group in Yemen at the moment, in a bid to restore the country's exiled president to power and support local fighters resisting the Houthi advance in battlefields nationwide.

The alliance's de facto blockade of Yemen's airspace and ports has cut off supplies of food and fuel to the parched country, where gas-powered pumps providing water for drinking and sanitation now lie mostly inoperable.

"20.4 million people are now estimated to be in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, of whom 9.3 million are children," Jeremy Hopkins, Deputy Representative of UNICEF, said from the capital Sanaa.

"The de facto blockade on Yemen's ports, though there is some easing, means fuel is not coming into the country, and since pumps are mechanised that means over 20 million people don't have access to safe water," he added.

Other urgent humanitarian needs, he said, include malnutrition, shortages of medical supplies, mounting civilian casualties in air strikes, recruitment of child soldiers and damage to schools by the warring sides.

Even before the conflict, UNICEF said around 10 million people in Yemen needed humanitarian assistance, a product of decades of underdevelopment in the mountainous and barely governed Arabian Peninsula state.

Mohammed Shabeek fled his house with his wife and three children due to gun battles and worsening sanitation in his home district of Crater in the southern city of Aden.

"The scene around my house is catastrophic. There's no water, electricity or food. Trash piles up in the street and we're afraid of disease. Aid agencies need to get to these areas by any means necessary," he said while seeking refuge in a relative's house in the city.

A local medical official in the city said dozens of people have died in the city in recent weeks due to a sudden uptick in dengue fever and malaria brought on by the shortage of water and lack of rubbish collection as temperatures soar.

ALGIERS — Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's Cabinet director and loyal backer Ahmed Ouyahia was elected as the new leader of one of the two ruling parties on Wednesday, confirming his status of potential presidential successor.

Speculation over Bouteflika's health since he suffered a stroke two years ago, and whether he will be able to end his fourth term in 2019, is fuelling debate over who might replace the independence veteran who has been in office since 1999.

The North African OPEC state is at a delicate juncture after a collapse of oil prices cut into energy revenues that make up 95 percent of its exports and more than half the state budget.

Political sources and analysts said that with more than 20 years inside Algeria's political establishment, including several terms as prime minister, Ouyahia is on the short list of potential successors to Bouteflika.

Ouyahia's RND Party is part of a ruling coalition with the Front de Liberation Nationale or FLN, the nationalist movement that has dominated Algerian politics since it was born out of the 1962 independence from France.

"Ouyahia is a statesman; he could become Algeria's next president," political analyst Farid Ferrahi told Reuters. "But the list is open for other candidates."

Analysts say that short list includes Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, who has just joined the FLN to encourage support for his candidacy. He is close to Bouteflika as he served as his election campaign leader three times.

Another potential candidate could be United Nations veteran Lakhdar Brahimi. A former UN negotiator and envoy, Brahimi has been received several times by Bouteflika at the presidency in the past two years, fuelling more political speculation.

Algeria, a key US ally against Islamist militancy in the region, and a major energy supplier for Europe, escaped most of the upheaval that hit the Middle East and North Africa during the 2011 "Arab Spring" revolts.

Many Algerians say their country already passed through those times when the FLN ended one-party rule in the 1980s and opened up the system to opposition parties. Algeria was racked by civil war in the 1990s after elections were cancelled when an Islamist party appeared set to win at the ballot box.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel has barred a Palestinian photographer allegedly shot in the eye by an Israeli soldier from entering East Jerusalem for specialist treatment, he told AFP on Wednesday.

Nidal Shtayyeh, who works for Chinese news agency Xinhua, was wounded while covering a small demonstration at Huwarra checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Nablus on May 16.

As he was covering the rally, Shtayyeh was hit in the face by a rubber bullet which entered his eye, causing serious damage, he told AFP.

"The march was peaceful and no stones were thrown, no photographers were taking any pictures," he said, accusing soldiers of firing sound bombs at the photographers without any provocation.

"I raised my camera to my right eye to take a picture, but a soldier shot me in my left eye with his rifle, and the rubber bullet went through my gas mask's glass eye cover and into my eye."

An Italian camerawoman was also injured during the same demonstration which came as Palestinians marked "Nakba", or the catastrophe that befell them when Israel was created in 1948.

At the time, the army said at least 100 Palestinians had been throwing stones and petrol bombs, and that troops had responded with "riot dispersal means".

Shtayyeh was rushed to Rafidiya hospital in Nablus for initial treatment but was prescribed specialist help at St John's eye hospital in annexed East Jerusalem.

As a Palestinian living in the West Bank, Shtayyeh had to apply for an Israeli permit to enter Jerusalem.

But Israeli authorities turned down his request.

He tried again two more times — once through the Red Cross and once through a private Israeli lawyer. But both requests were rejected.

Contacted by AFP, a spokeswoman for COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, confirmed his request had been rejected by the Shin Bet internal security agency, without saying why.

A doctor who examined Shtayyeh on behalf of COGAT determined that his case was not urgent, she said, suggesting he resubmit the request a week in advance of his desired entry date.

But his lawyer, Itai Matt, told AFP that the Israeli security services "regularly bar entry to anyone wounded by the army".

"They even bar entry to wounded children seeking treatment in Jerusalem, because they are worried that anyone wounded will try and take revenge after their treatment," he said.

Xinhua did not respond to AFP's requests for a comment on the incident.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama's admission that he has an incomplete strategy to combat the Daesh terror group is politically toxic, but history shows many of his predecessors also decided that "muddling through" a crisis was the least-worst option.

They were seven small words that did not help the 44th president one little bit after a G-7 meeting in the clean air of the Bavarian Alps: "We don't yet have a complete strategy."

He may have been referring specifically to a spluttering US "train and equip" mission, but it has been 10 months since Obama started bombing the radical Islamist group and nine months since he first admitted to having no coherent strategy to fight them.

In the interim, the group has beheaded and subjugated its way through Iraq, Syria and Libya, destabilising the entire Middle East in the process.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State has also attracted support from alienated European and American youths, who are already returning home and bringing a radical ideology with them.

In light of this national security threat, Obama's critics asked, how does he still not know what he is doing?

Veteran Republican Senator John McCain accused Obama of doing nothing to stop a Christian genocide.

"It is a failure of leadership," said Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate keen to display his foreign policy chops after a 2012 campaign in which he was painted as a neophyte to global affairs.

"If I were commander-in-chief, it would not take nine months to work with our military leaders to develop a complete strategy to destroy ISIS [Daesh] and protect American security interests and values," he said.

Not so, according to Michael Bohn, who may be in a good position to know.

No simple solutions 

During Republican president Ronald Reagan's second term, Bohn was director of the White House Situation Room, the secure basement complex where the most sensitive national security meetings take place.

A former naval intelligence officer, since then he has studied in detail 17 instances of presidential decision making — spanning the Truman and Obama administrations — and wrote up his findings in a book called "Presidents in Crisis".

Bohn says that every commander-in-chief walks into the White House wanting to take bold, decisive steps, but sooner or later learns the necessity of working in increments.

"Presidents when they are faced with just really tough situations, they rarely find simple easy solutions," he told AFP.

"Until you sit at the president's table in the Sit Room, you cannot know that there are never any win-win options in a crisis, only least bad alternatives."

He cites John F. Kennedy's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis as one instance where incrementalism may have averted calamity.

After discovering Soviet nuclear missile sites were being built in Cuba and days of private deliberation, rather than launching strikes, Kennedy decided on a naval blockade to stop further supplies arriving.

Eventually, Kennedy reached a deal with Nikita Khrushchev, the sites would be dismantled in return for an American promise not to invade Cuba.

In a secret deal Kennedy also agreed to remove US nuclear missiles from Turkey, a far cry from his inaugural promise to battle "iron tyranny".

"It's really just keeping your powder dry until a better option comes off, or it's not making the 'big error'," said Bohn.

"Take a little step, see if it works, because if you take the wrong first step you've got yourself a problem."

From Iraq to Ukraine to Syria, most of Obama's critics advocate a scaling up of existing programmes to arm and train allies rather than putting tens of thousands of boots on the ground.

That is something the Obama administration itself is considering, according to defence officials weighing the possibility of sending hundreds more troops to Iraq for training.

"It's very incremental," one official said.

That approach may be fodder to opponents and anathematic to Americans who like to see an imperial president who deals in certitudes, but history shows it may also prove be the prudent course of action.

ADEN — At least 43 people were killed in heavy fighting in Yemen overnight and on Wednesday between supporters of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the country’s dominant Houthi group, residents, tribal and medical sources said.

The clashes erupted ahead of UN-sponsored talks in Geneva next week aimed at ending a conflict that has drawn in Saudi Arabia and some of its allies on one side and the Iranian-backed Houthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh on the other.

Residents and fighters said fighters opposed to the Houthis advanced from a district of Aden known as “workers’ island” towards the port city’s Houthi-held international airport. They said five local fighters and 11 Houthis had died in clashes.

Eight fighters from an anti-Houthi force called the Southern Resistance were also wounded in the clashes, they said.

Residents said warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition flew sorties overnight against Houthi outposts in the Bir Ahmed area north of Aden, killing 12 members of the Zaydi Shiite Muslim group.

Saudi-led air strikes on Houthi fighters in the oil-producing Marib province also killed 10 Houthis, tribal sources told Reuters. Separately, in the central city of Taiz, medical sources said five civilians had been killed when they were caught in the middle of fighting between the Houthis and local resistance fighters aligned with Hadi.

Representatives of Hadi’s government are scheduled to begin talks in Geneva with representatives of the Houthi group and Saleh’s General People’s Congress Party on Sunday, amid reports of disagreements about the agenda.

Mohammed Abdel-Salam, spokesman for the Houthi group, said late on Tuesday that their representation at the conference was still under discussion and had yet to be finalised.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting in Yemen, which escalated sharply after Saudi-led Arab forces waded into the conflict in March to try to shore up Hadi and stop the Houthis advancing on areas held by his supporters.

Sizzling temperatures

Iran and the Houthis deny having any military or economic links. The Houthis say their seizure of the capital Sanaa in September and their advance south is part of a “revolution” against a corrupt government.

Humanitarian conditions have deteriorated sharply, with shortages of fresh produce, poultry, flour, fuel and other basic needs. Residents also complain that uncollected garbage, rotting under sizzling temperatures of nearly 50OC in Aden, has caused the spread of disease such as dengue fever.

Some report dozens of deaths among the Houthis, who come from a highland region of Yemen and are unaccustomed to high temperatures, but the reports could not be immediately be verified by medical experts.

AKCAKALE, Turkey/ISTANBUL — Thousands of people fled from Syria into Turkey on Wednesday as moderate rebels and Kurdish forces fought Daesh insurgents holding the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad.

A Reuters photographer at the scene said the refugees had entered Turkey through a makeshift border crossing overseen by Turkish gendarmerie officers, and that many of them were women and children.

A Turkish official said 2,000 refugees were being registered on Wednesday after more than 6,800 were admitted in the area last week.

He said they were fleeing advances by Kurdish YPG forces as well as aerial bombardment by the United States and Arab allies trying to help the Kurds push back Daesh.

The northeastern corner of Syria is important to the radical Islamist group because it links areas under Daesh control in Syria and Iraq.

The group last week launched an offensive on the provincial capital, the city of Hasaka, which is divided into zones run separately by the government of President Bashar Al Assad and a Kurdish administration.

But Syria's Kurds have also sought to take advantage of Syria's complex war to expand their control over a region, stretching from Kobani to Qamishli, that they see as part of a future Kurdish state.

Turkey, for its part, fears that this will encourage separatism in its own, adjacent Kurdish region.

The Turkish official said it appeared that all the refugees were Syrian or Iraqi Arabs, rather than Kurds.

"A significant demographic change is taking place in the area. Arabs are being pushed away as Kurds flow in," he said. "Moving forward, the native population of the region might not have a place to go back to."

CAIRO — A suicide bomber blew himself up near the ancient Egyptian Karnak Temple in the southern city of Luxor on Wednesday, security sources said, a possible sign that Islamists are shifting focus to try to derail Egypt’s economic recovery.

Although officials said no tourists were wounded, the attack was the second in just over a week on a major attraction in Egypt, where tourism is a vital source of income and foreign currency.

Since the military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, Islamists  have killed hundreds in a campaign targeting mostly police and soldiers.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who as army chief ousted Morsi after mass protests against his rule, has promised Egyptians he will revive an economy battered by turmoil ever since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which revived memories of 1997, when Islamists killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians at a temple in the nearby Luxor complex.

Sisi promptly ordered security to be tightened at key locations including ancient sites, the state news agency MENA reported. “The president affirmed that such heinous attacks will not deter the commitment of the Egyptian people or state to combat terrorism in all its forms,” MENA said.

Earlier insurgency

It took Mubarak years to stamp out an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s that targeted mostly tourists, members of the security forces and senior government officials.

Fears that Egyptian jihadists, who have pledged allegiance to Daesh terror group, may shift their focus towards tourism targets rose just over a week ago when gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead two members of the tourism and antiquities police near the pyramids at Giza.

Four Egyptians were wounded in the attack, according to the health ministry.

Security sources told Reuters that security had already been stepped up after the Giza shooting.

“Our investigations confirmed to us that those who are behind the terrorists want to target police and hit the Egyptian economy at the same time,” one of the sources said.

He said the militants had timed their attack to coincide with a pan-African trade conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh that Sisi and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim were attending — part of a drive to win back foreign investors scared off, like many tourists, by four years of political turmoil and violence.

Kim travelled to Luxor later on Wednesday on a previously scheduled visit.

Three attackers

The interior ministry said three “terrorist elements” had been stopped at the security cordon around Karnak.

One blew himself up, another was killed and a third was shot in the head but still alive, the ministry said.

The minister told MENA later that the assailants had been carrying five explosive devices, guns and ammunition.

Shop owners and two policemen were among the four people wounded, security sources said.

Images from the scene showed what appeared to be body parts on the ground in front of a tourist shop and atop a public restroom. Uniformed and plainclothes police gathered nearby and ambulances were parked beside tourist buses.

Nico Wuertz, from Germany, said he had been sightseeing in the temple when he heard an explosion and then shooting.

“Police asked us to seek shelter. We were afraid, but nothing happened,” he said.

“We will continue our vacation. Egypt is a great place, many things to see and sunshine all the time. But there is also some fear now.”

One tourism worker near the temple told Reuters: “Tourism was already weak. This attack will kill it.”

Separately, security sources said two small roadside bombs had been discovered by security forces in the Cairo area, and a soldier had been shot dead in the North Sinai town of Rafah, bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip.