Region

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered the deployment of up to 450 more US troops and establishment of a new training base in Iraq's Anbar province  to help rebuild Iraqi forces in preparation for a battle to retake territory lost to the Daesh terror group.

The plan to expand the 3,100-strong US contingent of trainers and advisers in Iraq marks an adjustment in strategy for Obama, who has faced mounting pressure to do more to blunt the momentum of Daesh insurgents.

Obama decided on the new troop deployment in response to a request from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, the White House said. The two leaders met on the margins of the G-7 summit in Germany earlier this week.

But with Obama sticking to his refusal to send troops into combat or even close to the front lines, it is unlikely to silence critics who say the limited US military role in the conflict is not enough to turn the tide of battle.

US officials hope that a strengthened American presence on the ground in Anbar would help Iraqi forces devise a counter-attack to retake the provincial capital Ramadi, which insurgents seized last month in an onslaught that further exposed the shortcomings of  the Iraqi army.

“To improve the capabilities and effectiveness of partners on the ground, the president authorised the deployment of up to 450 additional US military personnel to train, advise, and assist Iraqi Security Forces at Taqaddum military base in eastern Anbar province,” the White House said in a  statement.

Obama also ordered “the expedited delivery of essential equipment and materiel” to Iraqi forces, including Kurdish Peshmerga troops and Sunni tribal fighters operating under Iraqi command, the White House said.

It made the announcement two days after Obama said the United States did not yet have a complete strategy for training Iraqi security forces to regain land lost to Daesh fighters, who have seized a third of Iraq over the past year in a campaign marked by mass killings and beheadings.

The fall of Ramadi last month drew harsh US criticism of the weak Iraqi military performance and Washington has begun to speed up supplies of weapons to the government forces and examine ways to improve the training programme.

US forces have already conducted training at Al Asad military base in western Anbar but the new training facility would be at Taqaddum, which is closer to Ramadi in the eastern part of the province

US officials had said earlier that planning was under way for a new installation

A new site would allow US trainers to provide greater support for Sunni tribal fighters, who have yet to receive all of the backing and arms promised by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

TEHRAN — Iran on Wednesday offered condolences to the families of four Saudis who died from an apparent accidental chemical poisoning during a pilgrimage in Iran, after Riyadh summoned Tehran's ambassador over the incident.

Thirty-six Saudis on a pilgrimage to the Shiite holy city of Mashhad were hospitalised Sunday morning, suffering from nausea and dizziness, Abdullah Bahrami, the director of the Imam Reza hospital, was quoted as saying by official news agency IRNA.

Four, three children and a teenager, died in the hospital after inhaling toxic gas at the hotel in Mashhad, Iranian media reported.

Saudi officials on Tuesday called for Iranian authorities to "quickly carry out investigation procedures" into the incident.

"Iranians are well-known for their hospitality and we hope this issue is resolved," said Marzieh Afkham, Iran's foreign ministry spokeswoman, expressing sympathy and condolences.

A senior Iranian official Wednesday said the incident had no "political or international" links.

"All the investigations reject a deliberate intention behind the incident and the hotel manager has accepted responsiblity for this negligence," IRNA quoted interior ministry official Hossein Zolfaghari as saying.

He said the poisonings had been the result of illegal pesticide use leaking through ventilation into the area of the hotel where the Saudis were staying.

The hotel manager and four others were taken in for questioning.

Nine pilgrims were still in hospital on Tuesday.

Home to the shrine of Imam Reza, Mashhad draws millions of Shiite Muslim pilgrims each year from Iran and abroad.

The incident came with tensions high between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and its Shiite regional rival Iran.

Saudi Arabia leads an Arab-dominated coalition which for more than two months has been bombing Iran-backed Shiite rebels in Yemen.

The kingdom's Shiite minority has also been grieving over the murder of 25 people blown up in two separate suicide bombings at mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia last month.

Both attacks were claimed by Daesh terror group, a Sunni extremist organisation that considers Shiites to be heretics.

BAGHDAD — The Daesh terror group gave only three options for the soldiers and police officers guarding Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, when they neared it a year ago: Repent, run or die.

Many ran. Those who resisted died, often gruesomely in mass killings filmed and uploaded to the Internet, only fueling fear of the extremists.

The collapse of Iraqi security forces, which received billions of dollars in aid and training from the US during its occupation, haunts this divided country today, a year after Daesh seized Mosul and a third of the country. Its sectarian divides grow deeper as millions remain displaced, military gains have seen militant counterattacks and a US-led campaign of air strikes appears not to have changed the stalemate.

What can change the situation is unclear, as lower oil prices sap the Iraqi economy, the US limits its involvement on the ground and the Iraqi people as a whole continue to suffer.

"There's no salary, no job, no life," said a 31-year-old former soldier named after the country's former leader Saddam Hussein, who saw his young son killed as his family fled Mosul for Erbil in Iraq's Kurdish region. "And if you have a child and he gets sick, you can't treat him."

On June 10, 2014, Daesh took full control of Mosul, part of its lightning sweep from its territory in war-ravaged Syria and Iraq's Anbar province. Videos quickly emerged of the extremists waving their trademark black flags in parades down Mosul's streets or driving Iraqi forces' US-made Humvees, as darker films of their massing killings followed.

Weeks later, Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi purportedly spoke at Mosul's main mosque and the group declared a "caliphate" over territory it controlled, demanding the loyalty of the world's Muslims. A US-led air campaign began in August targeting the group, the number of strikes now numbering around 1,900.

While Shiite militias advised by Iran and Iraqi forces have recaptured Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, the battle on the ground appears at the least locked in stalemate — or at the worst, not in Iraq's favour. Former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki, a Shiite who stepped down in August amid calls for his resignation, is widely blamed for the corruption and incompetence in Iraq's armed forces after he replaced top Sunni commanders with his own loyalists. Daesh’s advance merely exposed the rot, as entire units collapsed and soldiers stripped off their uniforms as they fled, leaving behind large caches of US-supplied weapons.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has vowed to empower Sunni tribesmen through the formation of a national guard, which would oversee security in the Sunni heartland — areas predominantly under Daesh control today. But the force has failed to get off the ground and many remain suspicious of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the US remains hesitant to become too involved in the war after US President Barack Obama withdrew all American ground forces at the end of 2011. There now are slightly fewer than 3,100 US troops in Iraq training and advising local forces, but they are not fighting on the front line. The White House said Wednesday the US will send up to 450 more troops to Iraq to boost the training of local forces.

"We have made significant progress in pushing back ISIL [Daesh]... but we've also seen areas like in Ramadi where they're displaced in one place and then they come back in another," Obama said Monday. "And they're nimble, and they're aggressive, and they're opportunistic."

Former US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told The Associated Press that any real solution in Iraq will require greater involvement from neighbouring countries.

"Without the involvement of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, working together, it will be difficult — if not impossible — to achieve any realistic solutions," Khalilzad said.

Economically, Iraq also finds itself unable to pay for the war it needs to fight. Plummeting oil prices — down 43 per cent from a year ago — have dealt a major shock to Iraq, which relies on oil for 90 per cent of its revenues. Unemployment stands at 25 per cent.

At least 40 per cent of the country's workforce — about 5 million people — is employed by the government, which is struggling to pay salaries. That includes civil servants in Daesh-held areas, who still receive salaries which are then taxed by the militants, according to residents in Mosul and Fallujah who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

"We have no choice," Ahmad Chalabi, a former deputy prime minister and chairman of parliament's finance committee, told the AP in February. "What will this say about the loyalty of the Iraqi government if we stop paying our citizens, regardless of where they live?"

Pressure is mounting on the Iraqi government to stabilise the country and preventing further discontent, particularly among Sunnis living in militant-held areas and Kurds living in semi-autonomous northern Iraq. Some fear the country could be split into three parts otherwise, including a Shiite-dominated south.

Meanwhile, nearly 3 million Iraqis like Hussein now live in refugee camps or squat in unofficial shelters. According to the United Nations, 8.2 million Iraqis — about a quarter of the country's population — will need humanitarian assistance this year.

And as the war grinds on, authorities acknowledge many refugees may never return — with towns destroyed in the fighting and infrastructure severely damaged.

"We will be lucky if we get half of them back to their original homes," said Mowaffak Al Rubaie, Iraq's former national security adviser.

All the while, anger simmers.

"We thought it wouldn't take longer than one week or one month," said Ayad Mohammed, 35, who fled Mosul last year. "But the military leaders with their big salaries and bank accounts abroad and their nice cars and who took their families outside, they never cared about us. And the politicians we voted for, I wish I chopped of my finger and not voted for them because they are responsible for me and my children being here, along with all these people."

BENGHAZI, Libya — Al Qaeda-linked militants in eastern Libya declared holy war — or jihad — on the local Daesh affiliate after one of their senior leaders was killed Wednesday by masked gunmen, which set off clashes between the rival groups that left 11 people dead on both sides, including a top militant commander.

The hours-long fighting in the eastern coastal city of Darna erupted after gunmen opened fire on Nasser Akr, an Al Qaeda-inspired militant once held in the United Kingdom on terrorism charges. The 55-year-old veteran jihadi, who fought in Afghanistan, was killed along with his aide.

Akr's group — known as Shura Council of Darna's Jihadis — announced his death in a statement Wednesday, blaming it on Daesh militants. It accused Daesh fighters of "tyranny and criminality", and vowed to wage "holy war against them until none of them are left". It also called on residents to rise up against the extremist group.

The ensuing clashes killed at least nine Daesh militants and two from the Shura Council, including Salem Derbi, the commander of the so-called Abu Salem Brigade, which has history of enmity with the Daesh affiliate.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, the UN envoy to Libya urged the North African country's rival political groups to agree quickly to a power-sharing deal for their fractured nation, saying that time is running out for Libya.

"The time has come to make an agreement," said Bernardino Leon, the UN envoy leading talks aimed at stemming Libya's collapse into a failed state.

Libya is split between an Islamist-led government backed by militias that seized the capital of Tripoli last August and its elected parliament, which is forced to convene in the country's far east. Amid the crisis, militants — including the extremist Daesh group and Al Qaeda-linked militants — have gained a foothold, benefiting from the chaos.

Daesh in Libya is a mixture of homegrown militants, former Al Qaeda affiliates and foreign nationals who were trained in Syria and sent to join Daesh in Libya.  The clashes in Darna mirrored regional rivalry between the two groups, which are also fighting against one another in Syria.

A member of the Abu Salem Brigade, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, told The Associated Press that among Daesh members killed in Wednesday's exchange was the group's top ideologue Hossam Abu Rashed.

"Now we are searching for the Wali," the Brigade member added. He was referring to a Yemeni militant sent from Syria to fight for Libya's Daesh affiliate and known by his nom de guerre Abu Al Baraa El Azdia.

The member added that many of those killed are foreign nationals.

The slain Abu Salem Brigade commander, Derbi, belonged to a generation of Islamic militants who turned Darna into a jihadist stronghold in the 1980s and 1990s during an insurgency against longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. In a 2012 interview with the AP, Derbi said that under Qadhafi, he hid in the mountains of Darna for over 10 years while a heavy crackdown on Islamists was under way.

Darna was also the main source of Libyan jihadis and suicide bombers who joined the insurgency in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Entire brigades of Darna natives have also been fighting in Syria's civil war.

A Daesh affiliate seized control of Darna last year after veteran militants returning from Iraq and Syria united the city's fractured extremist factions and killed off rivals, including members of Derbi's militia.

Libya's turmoil accelerated last year when militias allied with Islamist factions seized Tripoli and the second largest city of Benghazi, forcing the elected parliament and government to relocate and reconvene in the country's far est.

Daesh fighters have also taken the central coastal city of Sirte and are marching toward the third largest city of Misrata in western Libya and toward the oil terminals in the east.

In Darna, Daesh has set up its own religious courts and police to inforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Hamad Al Bondoqi, a Darna lawmaker in the country's elected parliament, said that Al Qaeda-linked groups and the Daesh affiliate have clashed repeatedly in the past months in Darna, mostly over power and resources. He cited battles over imposing taxes on merchants, fighting for control of a local factory, and over who has the right to set up checkpoint at the southern entrance to the city.

Later in the day, Bondoqi said that an air strike by government forces targeted the courthouse in Darna where Daesh has based their religious police, but missed and hit a nearby house, killing at least five members of the same family.

GENEVA/BERLIN — A computer virus was used to hack into venues linked to international talks on Iran's nuclear programme, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal said the virus was widely believed to be used by Israeli spies and Kaspersky had linked it to "three luxury European hotels" used in the negotiations involving Iran and six world powers.

Other victims of Duqu had been found in Western countries, the Middle East and Asia, it said in an emailed statement.

"Most notably, some of the new 2014-2015 infections are linked to the P5+1 events and venues related to the negotiations with Iran about a nuclear deal," the statement said.

"P5+1" refers to the six world powers negotiating with Iran on curbs to its disputed nuclear programme — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The talks have been held in Geneva, Lausanne, Montreux, Munich and Vienna.

In February, the United States accused Israel of using selective leaks from the talks to distort the US position.

Israel has denounced the diplomatic opening to Iran, saying it doubts any agreement arising from the talks will sufficiently restrain the nuclear programme of its arch-enemy.

The West suspects Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapons capability from its enrichment of uranium. Iran says it wants nuclear energy only for electricity and medical isotopes.

During various rounds of the talks, Israeli officials said they knew what was being discussed from various sources including intelligence gathering and information relayed by allies.

The officials did not elaborate on the latter, but asserted that Israel never spied on the United States, its closest ally.

Another Duqu 2.0 attack, Kaspersky said, was carried out "in relation to" the commemoration of the 70th anniversary in January this year of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

That ceremony was attended by the heads of state of Germany, France, Britain and other nations.

Duqu similar to Stuxnet ‘worm’

Kaspersky said Duqu 2.0 had evolved from an earlier family of malware called Duqu uncovered in 2011 that had been deployed against unidentified targets for years before it was discovered.

Symantec, a US software and cybercurity firm, has said that earlier versions of Duqu bore similarities to Stuxnet, a computer "worm" that partially sabotaged Iran's nuclear programme in 2009-2010 by destroying a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium. Kaspersky said it does not have enough data to draw a link between Stuxnet and Duqu.

"Kaspersky Lab believes this is a nation state-sponsored campaign," it said, adding that as a security researcher it focuses on uncovering the technical details of malware but seeks to steer clear of drawing political conclusions.

The Moscow-based company, a supplier of anti-virus software and other security tools, said it discovered the advanced malware earlier in the spring as a result of attacks it had seen on a number of organisations, including Kaspersky itself. It said it is confident its products are secure against the attack.

At a news conference in London held to discuss its findings, Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive of the company that bears his name, said malicious software designed by cyberspies often finds its way into the hands of cybercriminals, and thereby poses a far wider threat in a world that now relies on the Internet.

"Cybercriminals are copying the technologies from the state-sponsored attacks. They educate the bad guys," Kaspersky said.

His company found that Duqu 2.0 was designed to spy on its technology, research and internal processes. As a top research firm that shares its findings with the rest of the security industry, knowing what Kaspersky knew would allow cyberspies to craft fresh attacks to evade detection for new campaigns.

The security research firm said Duqu 2.0 was spread via Microsoft Software Installer files, which are commonly used by technical administrators to install and update software on Windows computers within an organisation. The attack had some unique and never before seen features and left almost no traces.

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

BEIRUT — An alliance of Syrian rebel forces seized a key army base in the south of the country on Tuesday in a new setback for the regime's embattled troops.

The Southern Front alliance took full control of the 52nd Brigade base in Daraa province after 24 hours of fierce clashes, a spokesman for the group told AFP.

"The 52nd Brigade base was fully liberated from the regime army," Major Essam Al Rayes said, adding at least 2,000 rebel fighters had taken part in the "short and quick" assault.

The base lies near a major highway running from Damascus to Syria's southern border with Jordan and is also near the frontier with neighbouring Suweida province, which is largely regime-controlled.

"This base was one of the main lines of defence for the regime forces. It was a nightmare, because they used it to shell all the areas to the east of the province," Rayes said.

The Southern Front was combing through the site for material left by regime troops, he said, adding the alliance would likely launch additional attacks from there in the near future.

Diaa Al Hariri, spokesman for Faylaq Al Awwal, one of the groups in the alliance, said the base was being used as a launching pad for the army's infantry.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed opposition groups had taken the base after clashes and intense shelling that left 15 rebel fighters and 20 government forces dead.

Latest regime setback 

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said rebel forces also seized two villages, including the Christian town of Al Rakham, as regime troops withdrew to the nearby village of Al Dara.

Rebels control a majority of Daraa province and its capital, Abdel Rahman said.

Syria's official news agency SANA did not report the capture of the base.

But earlier, citing a military source, it said the air force had struck the area, killing at least 40 "terrorists", who it accused neighbouring Jordan of backing.

The fall of the base is the latest in a string of defeats for the regime, which has lost territory to both rebel alliances in Syria's northwest and Daesh terror group in the country's centre.

The loss of Brigade 52 also follows defeats in Daraa, including in April the Nasib border post, its last crossing with Jordan.

Nonetheless, efforts towards a political solution to the crisis have faltered.

In Cairo, figures from the country’s exiled opposition, as well as “tolerated” anti-regime figures from within Syria, met for the second consecutive day Tuesday to form an “alternative” body to the anti-regime National Coalition.

Prominent government opponents including Haytham Manna and members of the National Coalition attending in a personal capacity discussed solutions for Syria’s ongoing war.

230,000 dead 

Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

But after a regime crackdown, it spiralled into a civil war that has now killed more than 230,000 people, the observatory said as it issued the new toll Tuesday.

The Britain-based group said nearly 70,000 civilians have been killed in the war, nearly 11,500 of them children.

More than 85,500 government forces — soldiers and militiamen — have been killed, along with over 41,000 rebels, Syrian jihadists and Kurdish fighters.

The monitor also documented the deaths of 31,247 foreign jihadists, and said another 3,191 people killed in the conflict have yet to be identified.

Many of the civilians deaths have come in government aerial attacks, particularly involving the use of crude “barrel bombs”.

The weapon, criticised by rights groups as indiscriminate, has been used to devastating effect in Aleppo, where the Observatory said four members of one family were killed in a barrel bomb attack on Tuesday.

Syria’s conflict has evolved into a complex, multi-front war that has drawn in jihadists including Daesh, which now rules a self-proclaimed “caliphate” in territory across Syria and Iraq.

The group on Tuesday claimed an attack against a government headquarters in Amriyat Al Fallujah, west of the capital Baghdad.

At least two people were killed in the assault by militants armed with assault rifles, pistols and suicide belts.

The attack came a year to the day since Daesh launched a sweeping offensive that overran much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland and seized Iraq’s second city Mosul.

A US-led coalition striking the jihadists in both Syria and Iraq said it destroyed Daesh buildings, tactical units, and fighting positions near Mosul on Monday.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A United Nations proposal to form a unity government for Libya, which has rival administrations fighting for territory and oil resources, was rejected by one of the sides on Tuesday, a senior lawmaker said, after months of negotiations.

The elected parliament, based in eastern Libya, rejected the proposal and withdrew from the talks aimed at ending the crippling power struggle. Libya's official government has been based in the east since a rival faction seized Tripoli in August, setting up a rival administration.

The decision was a blow to efforts by UN Special Envoy Bernardino Leon, who presented the draft proposal on Monday after hosting months of talks between the rival sides.

Four years after a NATO-backed uprising that ousted Muammar Qadhafi, the conflict has battered Libya's oil industry and allowed Daesh militants to exploit the security vacuum and expand.

The eastern parliament has banned its delegates from travelling to Germany for a meeting with European and North African leaders to discuss Leon's proposal, lawmaker Tareq Al Jouroushi told Reuters.

"A majority of deputies voted to reject the proposal," he said by telephone from Tobruk, an eastern city where the House of Representatives is based. 

The house’s spokesman Farraj Hashem could not immediately be reached for comment.

Leon submitted his fourth proposal for a unity government on Monday and delegates from both factions had been expected to head to Germany before returning for consultations and then travelling to Morocco for more talks.

The UN proposal calls for a year-long government of national accord, where a council of ministers headed by a prime minister with two deputies will have executive authority.

Jouroushi said lawmakers objected to including the Tripoli parliament in the UN proposal. “The proposal does not reflect the legitimacy of the elected parliament,” he said.

The House of Representatives will be the only legislative body, the deal states. The accord also calls for a 120-member State Council consultative body, consisting of members of the Tripoli parliament.

Both sides in the conflict are under pressure from hardliners who favour a military solution.

Jouroushi is the son of the eastern government’s air force commander, whose force has been battling Islamists in Benghazi.

In the central city of Sirte, Daesh seized a power plant on the western outskirts, killing three members of a force sent from Tripoli to protect the plant, a military source said.

The militants had already seized the city and its airport to the south.

LONDON — Iraq has re-taken control of some grain silos previously seized by Daesh, but most of the grain held cannot be used as militants aim to destroy sites when retreating, a senior grain official said on Tuesday.

Daesh, the breakaway Al Qaeda group, which declared an “Islamic caliphate” across parts of Syria and Iraq last summer, has seized fertile areas and controls territory that normally produces significant quantities of Iraq's wheat crop.

Saad Al Hamdinee, general manager, Grain Board of Iraq, told Reuters the Iraqi government had taken control of grain facilities in areas including the town of Al Alam, which produced 60,000 tonnes, and a site in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra, which produced around 120,000 tonnes of grain.

“When the terrorists leave any area they try to destroy the infrastructure there,” he said on the sidelines of a grains conference in London.

“All the wheat in the silos — we could not make any use of it because they are destroyed,” he said via a translator.

Hamdinee said Iraqi authorities aimed to salvage facilities whenever it was possible.

“For example a silo in Tikrit has been destroyed in a way we can’t rebuild it again,” he said.

Al Alam is close to Tikrit, which was the home city of executed former president Saddam Hussein.

Hamdinee had no data on the total amount of grain Daesh had under its control.

“We have several provinces that are beyond the control of the government under the control of a terrorist organisation. We shall take over them,” he said.

Wheat production

He said Iraq expects to produce 3.5 million tonnes of wheat this year as the country attempts to boost output.

“This year in particular our expectation of local production of wheat is 3.5 million tonnes,” Hamdinee told the International Grains Council (IGC) conference.

He said this was “in accordance to our plans put in place over the last two years”.

Hamdinee said Iraq still expected to import 1 million tonnes of wheat this year, in line with the previous year, which will be blended with domestic production.

“We need to import because the bread they use to bake in Iraq needs high gluten. Our wheat is low gluten,” he said.

The IGC has forecast Iraq’s wheat imports in the 2015-16 season at 3.4 million tonnes, versus 2.7 million in 2014-15. The IGC forecast wheat production at 2 million tonnes in 2015/16 versus 3 million in 2014-15.

The US Department of Agriculture put consumption at 6.3 million tonnes in 2015/16, down slightly from 6.5 million in 2014/15.

Hamdinee said its production numbers did not “represent all provinces of Iraq” due to the control of areas by Daesh.

“When we re-control these areas, the figures will be up,” he said.

Hamdinee said Iraq’s grain board normally imported wheat from the United States, Australia, Canada, Russia and Romania, while it imported rice from South America, the United States, India, Pakistan and Thailand.

SANAA — The party of Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key ally of Shiite Houthi rebels, on Tuesday welcomed UN-brokered peace talks due to open in Switzerland at the weekend.

The General People's Congress (GPC) said it had not yet received a formal invitation from the United Nations but the UN envoy met with party representatives in the rebel-held capital in late May as part of his efforts to convene the Geneva talks.

Saleh himself is under UN sanctions for his support for the rebels and did not take part in the meetings, party sources said.

The GPC "welcomes holding the Geneva conference for consultations between Yemeni political components without any preconditions from any group, with goodwill and under the patronage of the United Nations", its almotamar.net website said.

Saleh, who ruled for 33 years before being forced from power in 2012 after a bloody year-long uprising, threw the support of his loyalists in the army behind the Houthis in their offensive that forced his successor into exile in March.

He himself proposed Geneva as the venue for the talks as a compromise between rebel-held Sanaa and the Saudi capital Riyadh, where exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has taken refuge.

His loyalists have been repeatedly targeted alongside the rebels in a Saudi-led air war launched in support of Hadi on March 26.

On Tuesday, coalition air strikes hit pro-Saleh troops and rebels across the capital before dawn, witnesses said.

Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the defence ministry which they jointly control.

Residents also reported air strikes in third city Taez and the eastern oil province of Marib — both key battlegrounds — and in the rebel heartland in Yemen's far north. 

In the south, fierce clashes continued on the northern and western outskirts of Aden, Yemen's second largest city under rebels' attack since late March.

Seven people were killed and at least 67 others, mostly civilians, wounded since Monday, health chief Al Khader Laswar said, as several Aden neighbourhoods were subjected to rebel shelling with rockets and mortars.

Coalition warplanes struck positions of rebels who have been attempting to storm the Bir Ahmed district, a military source said.

In Daleh, three southern fighters were killed when coalition warplanes mistakenly hit a military post overrun by the pro-government fighters, according to a source in the Popular Resistance group.

The peace talks are due to open in Geneva on Sunday afternoon.

They had initially been scheduled for May 28 but were postponed after Hadi demanded the rebels first withdraw from seized territory.

They will last two to three days and be held mostly behind closed doors, according to UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who will attend the opening, has urged all sides to join the talks without preconditions in a bid to end a conflict which has killed more than 2,000 people since March.

WASHINGTON — A US commando raid in Syria last month that killed a senior figure from the Daesh terror group produced a wealth of information about the militants’ finances and leadership, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing US officials.

Material seized in the May 16 raid against Abu Sayyaf, believed to be the group's top financier, already helped US forces track down and bomb another Daesh leader in eastern Syria on May 31, unnamed officials told the Times.

US government officials believe an influential lieutenant, Abu Hamid, was killed in that air strike, the Times reported, but Daesh has not yet confirmed his death.

An estimated four to seven terabytes of data was extracted from laptops, cell phones and other items recovered in the operation, the newspaper said. The information included insights into how the group's leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, seeks to avoid being monitored by US-led coalition forces.

When the Daesh chief meets regional leaders at his headquarters in Raqqa, each militant has to hand over their mobile phone to a driver to avoid revealing their location to Western spy services, the paper wrote.

"I'll just say from that raid we're learning quite a bit that we did not know before," a senior State Department official told reporters in a teleconference last week.

US intelligence agencies declined to comment on the report.

At least one informer "deep inside" Daesh played a pivotal role in tracking Abu Sayyaf before the raid, a military official told the Times.

US officials believe Abu Sayyaf was involved in kidnapping activities and oversaw oil smuggling and financing for the group.

Material found in the raid showed that about half of Daesh’s oil profits is allocated to a "general operating budget" while the remainder is divided between maintaining oil production facilities and paying workers, officials told the Times.

The workers are fully paid employees for Daesh and not conscripted locals as previously believed, officials said.

The US presidential envoy to the coalition fighting Daesh, retired US general John Allen, said in Qatar last week that the raid uncovered "substantial information on Daesh financial operations.”

The new information gathered indicated that one figure, Fadel Al Hayali, also known as Abu Mutaz, may wield more power in Daesh than previously suspected, according to the paper.

US Army Delta commandos detained Sayyaf's wife in the raid but were not able to capture Abu Sayyaf alive as planned.