Region

BEIRUT — A Syrian brigadier-general was killed in a blast that targeted his car in downtown Damascus on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The Britain-based group said “a brigadier general and approximately six people with him were killed in an explosion in the Adawi neighbourhood in the centre of the capital”.

The powerful Ahrar Al Sham rebel group posted a video online claiming to show the attack on Brigadier General Bassem Ali Muhanna’s car with an improvised explosive device, in the early hours of Sunday.

A security source said Muhanna was a member of the Republican Guards, an elite unit of the army.

Elsewhere, jihadists shot down a government helicopter in northern Syria’s Aleppo province, according to both the observatory and supporters of the Daesh group.

But state media said the helicopter had suffered technical problems.

The observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, said Daesh had brought down the helicopter after midnight near the Kweyris air base in the east of Aleppo province.

Its director, Rami Abdel Rahman, said at least one crew member had been killed but “the fate of the rest is unknown”.

Jihadist accounts on Twitter said Daesh had downed the helicopter using anti-aircraft missiles.

They posted the names of three crew members they said had been killed and pictures of a helicopter in flames.

State television said, however, that “a helicopter crashed after takeoff from Kweyris airport in Aleppo province because of technical faults and the crew were killed”.

Daesh fighters have surrounded the air base since March 2014 and have fought fierce clashes with its garrison.

Palmyra ‘massacre’ unconfirmed

The government has used helicopters to drop so-called barrel bombs on rebel-held areas of Aleppo province.

The crude weapons — made from oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks, packed with explosives and scrap metal — have killed hundreds of civilians, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.

President Bashar Assad has denied they are being used.

Elsewhere, the observatory said the toll in regime air raids on Saturday in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor rose to 16, including six children from one family.

Daesh jihadists control most of Deir Ezzor province, including more than half of the provincial capital, which sits strategically on several key highways.

The observatory also gave new details about the battle for a building in Jisr Al Shughur where regime forces were besieged by rebels until Friday.

The siege began when the town fell to rebels including Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front on April 25, but a group of regime forces got stuck inside the building.

Dozens of those trapped were able to flee on Friday as the opposition forces finally stormed the building.

But the observatory said at least 75 regime forces were killed in the fight for the building and the subsequent evacuation.

It said another 73 soldiers had been taken hostage and 91 regime forces and their families had escaped and reached government lines.

Syrian media said government air strikes which provided the cover for the escape had killed 300 Al Nusra fighters.

Also Sunday, state television reported what it called a “massacre” in the city of Palmyra, which was captured by Daesh on Thursday.

State media said 400 people had been killed, “mostly women, children and elderly people”.

But the observatory said there was no evidence of such mass killings.

“Several dozen people accused of ties to the regime have been executed, but the number does not exceed 35 since the town was captured,” Abdel Rahman said.

One woman and two children were among those killed but the rest were men, added the observatory director.

CAIRO — Ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi went on trial Saturday alongside several secular figures behind Egypt's 2011 uprising, underlining a crackdown on all forms of dissent.

The trial for "insulting the judiciary" is the fifth for Morsi, who was sentenced to death last week on charges connected with a mass prison break during the uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Bringing together all forms of opposition for the first time, Morsi and other Islamist opponents of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi were back in the dock along with several liberal and secular opposition leaders.

Twenty-five defendants — including even some Sisi supporters — stand accused of contempt of court in comments made in parliament, speeches, on social media or in interviews.

The judge struck off the name of a 26th defendant.

Morsi was brought to court in the blue prison uniform of a convict and was separated from the other defendants in the courtroom, standing alone in a metal cage.

"I refuse to be tried because this court has no jurisdiction to judge me," said Morsi, who has defiantly disputed the legitimacy of all the courts that have tried him so far.

"Since November 2013, my family and my lawyers have been prevented from visiting me."

The seven other defendants in custody — secular as well as Islamist activists — appeared in a separate metal cage.

"The crackdown against the opposition is only intensifying and the judiciary is very much at the forefront of this crackdown," said Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Brookings Centre for Middle East Policy.

"The trial will be kind of a test case of what the regime is thinking, not just of Islamists but also of the liberal and secular opposition as well."

Among the defendants is Alaa Abdel Fattah, a top secular activist behind the protests that led to the downfall of Mubarak.

Already in prison for participating in an "illegal protest" in November 2013, he has been charged over comments on Twitter on 2011 raids on the offices of foreign civil society groups.

Other defendants in court included Muslim Brotherhood leaders Mohamed Beltagy and Saad Al Qatatni.

Amr Hamzawy, a well-known political science professor and former MP, and human rights lawyer Amir Salem are also among the accused but were not in court.

Like Abdel Fattah, they had called for Morsi's ouster.

'Political revenge'

Defendant Essam Sultan, an Islamist, said at Saturday's hearing that prison authorities were "not giving us food, medicines or blankets".

"Farid Ismail died in the cell I am in because they did not give him medical treatment," he said, referring to a senior Brotherhood leader who died in custody earlier this month.

The trial was adjourned to July 27.

Morsi was toppled by then army chief Sisi in July 2013 after mass street protests against his turbulent year in power.

A sweeping crackdown overseen by Sisi has seen hundreds of Morsi supporters killed in clashes with security forces, thousands jailed and many more sentenced to death after speedy mass trials which the UN has said were "unprecedented in recent history".

Human rights groups accuse the authorities of using the judiciary as a tool to crush all kinds of opposition — Islamist as well as secular.

While Morsi and some leaders of his blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood have been sentenced to death in other trials, the judiciary has also sentenced several secular activists to long jail terms.

The latest trial is an example of "political revenge", said Abdel Fattah's defence lawyer Gamal Eid.

Defendant Mostafa Al Naggar, a former MP, is being tried for criticising a June 2012 court judgement sentencing Mubarak to life in prison over the deaths of 800 protesters during the 2011 revolt.

The judgement triggered angry protests demanding the death penalty for the veteran autocrat.

An appeals court overturned the ruling and ordered a retrial, which saw murder charges dropped against Mubarak.

"What I said in parliament was not an insult to the judiciary, but a call for judicial independence and reform," Naggar told AFP.

RIYADH — They are angry and grief-stricken, but Saudi Arabia's minority Shiites refused on Sunday to be provoked by a deadly mosque bombing that authorities called an attempt to promote sectarian strife.

King Salman vowed punishment for anyone linked to the "heinous crime”, which killed 21 people.

The interior ministry confirmed the identity of the suicide bomber who blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque in Eastern Province on Friday and said he had links with the Daesh jihadist group.

It was the deadliest assault in years on the Sunni-dominated kingdom, and marked the first time Daesh claimed an attack in Saudi Arabia.

"No, no, no... There is no action" in the form of retaliation, a Shiite resident who said he lost three friends in the Kudeih village blast told AFP.

"They just want justice."

Naseema Assada, a resident of Shiite-majority Qatif city near the stricken village, said she visited seven families affected by the attack.

"They are angry at Daesh and radical Sunnis," but not at Sunnis in general, she said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Residents said two children were among the dead, and plans were being made for a mass burial.

Demonstrators took to the streets of the eastern region on Saturday to denounce the attack.

In neighbouring Bahrain, Shiites marched in solidarity with the Saudi victims and clashed with riot police.

The mosque bombing occurred despite security checkpoints in Qatif, residents said.

"This is strange," Assada said. "The government should protect people and if it's not, this is the government's fault."

Such emotions are natural after a deadly incident but police have foiled many plots and have themselves become the most frequent targets of "terrorist" attacks, interior ministry spokesman General Mansour Al Turki told reporters on Sunday.

"We did not have any information or evidence that they were about to carry out a terrorist attack in any mosque anywhere in the kingdom," Turki said.

In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) late Saturday, the interior ministry identified the bomber as Salih Bin Abdulrahman Salih Al Ghishaami, a Saudi national.

"He was wanted by security services for belonging to a terrorist cell receiving directions from Daesh abroad," the ministry said.

The militant group had already claimed Friday's attack but identified the bomber as Abu Amer Al Najdi.

"The cell was discovered last month, and so far 26 of its members, all Saudi nationals, have been arrested," the interior ministry said, raising the number of wounded from 81 to 101.

Innocent civilians

Ministry officials alleged the cell leader is Abdel Malik, who recruited relatives and friends and taught them how to use weapons.

In a telegram to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, who is also the interior minister, King Salman pledged the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

"Anyone taking part, planning, supporting, cooperating or sympathising with this heinous crime will be held accountable," the king said in the message carried by SPA.

"We were... pained by the intensity of this terrorist crime that contradicts the values of Islam and humanity" and which targeted innocent civilians, he added.

It is the second mass killing of Shiites in the kingdom since late last year.

In November, gunmen killed seven Shiites in the Eastern Province town of Al Dalwa. 

There was no violent Shiite backlash against that attack, which authorities said was linked to Daesh.

Daesh, which considers Shiites heretics, has declared a "caliphate" in parts of Iraq and Syria it controls. The group has claimed numerous atrocities including the beheading of foreign hostages.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Gulf neighbours last year joined a US-led military coalition bombing Daesh in Syria, raising concerns about possible retaliation in the kingdom.

Since late March, Saudi Arabia has also led a coalition bombing Iran-backed Shiite rebels who seized large parts of Yemen and have sent deadly shell fire into Saudi Arabia.

The interior ministry said the mosque attack against "honourable citizens was carried out by tools controlled by foreign forces that aim to divide the unity of society and pull it into sectarian strife".

BAGHDAD/BEIRUT — Iraqi forces recaptured territory from advancing Daesh militants near the recently-fallen city of Ramadi on Sunday, while in Syria the government said the Islamists had killed hundreds of people since capturing the town of Palmyra.

The fall of Ramadi and Palmyra, on opposite ends of the vast territory controlled by Daesh fighters, were the militant group's biggest successes since a US-led coalition launched an air war to stop them last year.

The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy, which involves bombing from the air but leaving fighting on the ground to local forces in both countries.

In a sharp criticism of Washington's ally, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter accused Iraq's army of abandoning Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad, to a much smaller enemy force.

"The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight," he told CNN's State of the Union programme. "They vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they withdrew from the site."

Iraq's government, along with Iran-backed Shiite militiamen and locally-recruited Sunni tribal fighters, launched a counter-offensive on Saturday, a week after losing Ramadi. A police major and a pro-government Sunni tribal fighter in the area said they had retaken the town of Husaiba Al Sharqiya, about 10km east of Ramadi.

"Today we regained control over Husaiba and are laying plans to make more advances to push back Daesh fighters further," said local tribal leader Amir Al Fahdawi, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known in English as ISIS or ISIL.

"The morale of the [pro-government] fighters is high after the arrival of reinforcements and loads of ammunition," Fahdawi said. "Today's advance will speed up the clock for a major advance to regain control of Ramadi."

Planes were bombing Daesh positions on the opposite bank of the Euphrates River, where the militants were launching mortars and sniper fire to prevent the pro-government forces advancing, Fahdawi and the police major said.

Mass executions

Days after taking Ramadi, Daesh also defeated forces of the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad to capture Palmyra, home to 50,000 people and site of some of the world's most extensive and best-preserved Roman ruins.

The fighters have killed at least 400 people, including women and children in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city four days ago, Syrian state media said on Sunday.

It was not immediately possible to verify that account, but it was consistent with reports by activists that the Islamist fighters had carried out executions, leaving hundreds of bodies in the streets.

The Sunni Muslim militants have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in both Syria and Iraq. They have a history of carrying out mass killings in towns and cities they capture, and of dynamiting and bulldozing ancient monuments, which they consider evidence of paganism.

"The terrorists have killed more than 400 people... and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders," Syria's state news agency said, citing residents inside the city.

Many of those killed were state employees, including the head of the nursing department at the hospital and all her family members, it said.

Daesh supporters have posted videos on the Internet they say show fighters going room to room in Palmyra's government buildings, searching for hiding troops and pulling down pictures of Assad and his father.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in the country with a network of sources on the ground, says beheadings have taken place in the town since it fell but has not given an estimate for the toll among civilians.

It says at least 300 soldiers were killed in the days of fighting before the city was captured.

"A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are," Rami Abdulrahman from the observatory told Reuters.

Setbacks

Washington supports the government of Iraq but is opposed to Assad's government in Syria, making it more difficult to build a unified coalition against Daesh, the most powerful force among Sunni Arabs in multi-sided civil wars in both countries.

In Iraq, government forces and Iran-backed Shiite militia advanced against the Sunni militants north of Baghdad in the Tigris river valley earlier this year, recapturing former dictator Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit.

But the insurgents responded by going on the offensive west of Baghdad in the valley of Iraq's other great river, the Euphrates, among the most hotly fought areas during the 2003-2011 US occupation.

Washington worries that Baghdad's response of sending Shiite militia into the area for a counter-offensive could increase sectarian anger and play into Daesh's claim to defend Sunnis from a Shiite dominated government in Baghdad.

In Syria, where a four-year civil war has killed 250,000 people and made 8 million homeless, Assad's government has been losing territory in recent months, both to Daesh and to other Sunni groups, some of which are supported by the West.

SANAA — Yemeni government spokesman Rageh Badi said Saturday that embattled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi will not attend upcoming peace talks in Geneva as Saudi-led air strikes continued to hit multiple provinces in Yemen.

The announcement is a blow to the planned talks, which are aimed ending weeks of air strikes against an Iran-supported rebel group amid a growing humanitarian crisis that has left millions short of food and fuel.

Badi says Hadi will not attend due to the security situation and because Shiite Houthi rebels have not satisfied a government pre-condition to pull out of towns and cities they occupy — including the capital, Sanaa.

The leader of the Houthi rebels, Abdul-Malek Al Houthi, has called the talks the "only solution" for the conflict

Meanwhile security officials said Saudi-led coalition air strikes continued, hitting Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeida and the Houthi stronghold of Saada early in the day. At dawn, planes hit targets belonging to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family in the village of Sanhan, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to reporters.

Also on Saturday, authorities in Djibouti turned away an Iranian plane carrying aid for Yemeni refugees there, Iranian state television reported.

The report said the plane returned safely Saturday to Iran and that authorities hoped to make arrangements to allow the plane to land in the small African nation now hosting thousands of Yemenis who fled fighting in their country.

The television report claimed Saudi Arabia pressured Djibouti into not allowing the plane to land. The report did not elaborate and Saudi state media made no mention of the plane. Authorities in Djibouti could not be immediately reached for comment.

Saudi Arabia and the West accuse Iran of supporting the Houthis militarily, something Tehran and the rebels both deny.

A delegation of Shiite Houthi rebels has travelled to neighbouring Oman at the invitation of the Sultanate to discuss the current situation in Yemen, Houthi officials said.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia's top Sunni cleric on Saturday branded a deadly attack on Shiite Muslims a bid to sow chaos, after villagers targeted in the bombing vented their anger at what they saw as the Sunni-dominated government's indifference to their safety.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Al Qadeeh town on Friday evening, hours after a suicide bomber killed 21 worshippers in a packed Shiite mosque, the first attack in the conservative kingdom to be claimed by Daesh militants.

Demonstrators mourning the victims said security forces had left their communities unprotected, arguing that the official Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam inspires Sunni militants and encourages intolerance of the kingdom's Shiite minority.

It was one of the deadliest assaults in recent years in the largest Gulf Arab country, where sectarian tensions have been aggravated by nearly two months of Saudi-led air strikes on Shiite Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

The kingdom's top Sunni cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Sheikh told state Al Ekhbariya TV on Saturday: "This totally criminal plot aims to split our ranks and sow chaos in our country but, God be praised, it will not find a way. The nation and society are united and under a wise leadership."

Sheikh Mohammed Obeidan, a top local Shiite cleric, urged followers not to give into their anger and maintain the peace.

"We'll stand before anyone who thinks that our creed is a cause for fear or worry... mass prayer — in a calm, orderly way with self restraint — is the right way to respond to this corrupt force and hateful darkness," he told worshippers.

Regional rival

But resentment in Al Qadeeh were running high.

A video posted online by local activists showed a policeman standing over the limbs of the bomber inside the stricken mosque and apparently saying "God rest his soul", only to get screamed at by residents whose white robes were smeared with blood. Reuters was unable immediately to verify its authenticity.

"Our streets are patrolled by armoured vehicles — this makes people think their forces are against us," said a local activist reached by telephone. "After the attack yesterday they deployed eight — why send these damn things? we're peaceful people."

"From grade one, the state curriculum tells us Shiites aren't real Muslims. I'm a Saudi citizen, why do you force me to study this?" he said.

Most Saudis adhere to the rigid Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam that deems Shiism heretical, and some members of the majority fear Shiites' first loyalty is to regional rival Iran.

The community denies this and demands an end to what Shiites see as neglect. Most Shiites live in Eastern Province, where Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, pumps the bulk of its petroleum.

Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Turki told state television the kingdom was seeking to root out Daesh's presence, especially after a gun attack on a Shiite mosque that killed five people in nearby Ahsa village in November.

The ministry said last month that it had arrested 93 suspected members of the group.

BAGHDAD/BEIRUT — Shiite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi army forces launched a counter-offensive against Daesh insurgents near Ramadi on Saturday, a militia spokesman said, aiming to reverse potentially devastating gains by the jihadi militants.

The fall of Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, to Daesh on May 17 could be a shattering blow to Baghdad's weak central government. The Sunni Muslim jihadis now control most of Anbar and could threaten the western approaches to Baghdad, or even surge south into Iraq's Shiite heartland.

Anbar provincial council member Azzal Obaid said hundreds of Shiite fighters, who had assembled last week at the Habbaniya air base, moved into Khalidiya on Saturday and were nearing Siddiqiya and Madiq, towns in contested territory near Ramadi.

Two police officers later told Reuters the pro-government forces, which they said included locally allied Sunni tribesmen, had advanced past those towns to within one kilometre of Husaiba Al Sharqiya, an Daesh-run town 7 kilometres east of the Ramadi city limits.

One officer said the Shiite-led forces exchanged fire with Daesh but there was no immediate word on casualties.

Jaffar Husseini, spokesman for Shiite paramilitary group Kataib Hizbollah, said more than 2,000 reinforcements had joined the pro-government advance and they had managed to secure Khalidiya and the road linking it to Habbaniya.

"Today will witness the launch of some tactical operations that pave the way to the eventual liberation of Ramadi," he told Reuters by telephone.

At the same time, Daesh units have been pushing towards Fallujah to try to absorb more territory between it and Ramadi that would bring them closer to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, around 80km to the east.

Daesh has controlled Fallujah for more than a year.

Ramadi's loss is the most serious setback for Iraqi forces in almost a year and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the US strategy of air strikes to help Baghdad roll back Daesh, which now holds a third each of Iraq and adjacent Syria.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, a Shiite, sent Shiite paramilitary groups out to Anbar to try to retake Ramadi despite the risk of inflaming tensions with the province's aggrieved, predominantly Sunni population.

But he had little choice given the poor morale and cohesion within government security forces.

A UN spokesman said on Friday that some 55,000 people have fled Ramadi since it was stormed by Daesh earlier this month, with most taking refuge in other parts of Anbar, a vast desert province that borders on Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Daesh flag at Palmyra citadel

In Syria, Daesh fighters raised their flag over an ancient citadel in the historic city of Palmyra, pictures posted online overnight by the group's supporters showed.

The militants seized Palmyra, known as Tadmur in Arabic and strategically significant with nearby natural gas fields and roads leading southwest to Damascus, on Wednesday after days of heavy fighting with the Syrian army.

"Tadmur citadel under the control of the caliphate," read a caption on one picture posted on social media sites. In another, a smiling fighter is shown carrying the group's black flag and standing on one of the citadel's walls.

It was not possible to verify the images' authenticity.

US-led coalition forces have conducted a further 22 air strikes on Daesh positions in Iraq and Syria since Friday, including near Ramadi and Palmyra, the US military said.

Palmyra is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Syria's antiquities chief has said the insurgents would destroy its 2,000-year-old ruins, including well-preserved Roman temples, colonnades and a theatre, if they took control of them. While hundreds of statues have been taken to safe locations, there are fears for larger monuments that cannot be moved.

Daesh destroyed ancient monuments and antiquities they see as idolatrous in areas of Iraq they captured last year.

Supporters have also posted videos they say show the group's fighters going room to room in government buildings in Palmyra searching for government troops and pulling down pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his father.

Some activists have said more than 200 Syrian soldiers died in the battle for the city in the centre of Syria.

BEIRUT — Every few weeks for the past year, Lebanon's parliament has met, exchanged pleasantries, and made the same announcement: that it has again been unable to elect a president.

Pluralistic but divided Lebanon has now been without a head of state for 12 months, the longest time the post has been vacant since the devastating civil war ended in 1990.

But analysts say that regional conflicts, particularly the raging war in neighbouring Syria, make a presidential election in Lebanon unlikely in the near future.

"As long as the region is in constant turmoil, as we are experiencing now... Lebanon will have a difficult time agreeing on a president," said Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.

Sahar Atrash, analyst at the International Crisis Group, told AFP that Lebanon, which is influenced heavily by regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia, "is not a priority" for now.

"Today, the regional sponsors are waging direct wars and proxy wars, and the regional issues are much bigger than meeting to elect a president for Lebanon," she said.

Since Michel Sleiman's term in office ended on May 25, 2014, parliament — which is responsible for electing the president — has failed 23 times to meet the two-thirds quorum required to hold an electoral session.

Since independence, Lebanon's leadership posts have been distributed among its largest religious sects: Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and Christians, for whom the presidency is reserved.

With the onset of the Syrian regime's tutelage over Lebanon in 1990, the head of state — whose powers had largely been weakened — was elected with specific orders from Damascus.

Constant bickering

Today, the country's political class is split into two coalitions: March 8, which includes the powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah and supports the Syrian regime, and March 14, led by Sunni former premier Saad Hariri and bolstered by the West and Saudi Arabia.

The Christians — who make up 35 per cent of Lebanon's population — are divided evenly among the two groupings.

Since the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005, Lebanon's fractious political parties have been unable to organise regular and independent presidential elections.

In 2008, a seven-month presidential vacancy ended only after Qatar's intervention, which led the bickering parties to belatedly agree on Sleiman as head of state.

Analysts say increasing regional tensions make a similar arrangement unlikely today, however.

"Having a regional struggle that is sectarian-oriented does not help Lebanon reach a consensus among its three sectarian groups," Salamey said.

As conflicts between political rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran play themselves out in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, Lebanon's political class sits and waits, Atrash said.

Syria's war is the most divisive for Lebanon, which hosts more than 1 million Syrian refugees and regularly faces spillover violence from across the border.

That conflict has deepened sectarian faultlines between Lebanon's Sunnis and Shiites, "strengthening ties between sectarian groups and their sponsor states — the Sunnis with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the Shiites with Iran," Salamey said.

'What's the point?'

He believes that the only way to overcome the presidential impasse is "as part of a regional solution, particularly in Syria".

Lebanon's own politicians admit that their domestic politics are inextricably tied to foreign powers.

"We are ashamed to say that we haven't reached adulthood yet," said Dory Chamoun, an MP from March 14. "We still need foreign intervention for us to realise our duties."

Ayyub Hmayed, from the rival March 8 camp, told AFP: "Sadly, we have got used to having foreign powers with influence over us. It seems we are still waiting for this, while the foreign powers are busy elsewhere."

The deep political rifts that have prevented the election of a president have also hindered other state institutions.

In the absence of a head of state, presidential powers are constitutionally transferred to the Cabinet, but this is itself divided and struggling to operate.

Parliament is also so rife with discord that it has been unable to hold legislative sessions since Sleiman's term ended — except for a single vote to extend its own mandate.

"There are agreements with outside powers for over $1 billion that Lebanon is at risk of losing if parliament does not approve the funds," said parliamentary media official Mohammad Ballout.

But as the small country enters its second year without a head of state, the political paralysis that has left so many people disillusioned seems to have become accepted as normal.

"A president? What's the point? Nothing has changed in a year," Ala, a young student, told AFP wryly.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Saturday acquitted 17 people of violating a strict protest law earlier this year at a march commemorating a 2011 uprising, judicial sources said, a rare decision since Egypt introduced the statute in late 2013.

The demonstration in January caught the world's attention after the death of 32-year-old protester Shaimaa Al Sabbagh was caught on video.

The public prosecutor has separately charged a police officer who allegedly fired birdshot to try to disperse the protest in connection with Sabbagh's death.

Defence lawyer Sayed Abu Al Ila, who was photographed with Sabbagh dying in his arms, told Reuters this was the first acquittal since the protest law came into force in 2013.

The statute curtailed demonstrations, a regular feature of the turbulent years since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and has landed many leaders of that initial uprising behind bars.

"I am not pleased by an acquittal at the expense of Shaimaa's blood," Abu Al Ila told reporters. "Shaimaa sacrificed her life to oppose an unjust law, and the law is still in place."

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has come under pressure over what critics perceive as heavy-handed security tactics since the army overthrew president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013 following protests.

A crackdown that began with the deaths of hundreds of Brotherhood supporters and the imprisonment of thousands more has expanded to include other activists.

Morsi on trial again

A separate court on Saturday began a trial of Mursi and 25 others on charges of insulting the judiciary. The defendants include Brotherhood leaders as well as television host Tawfiq Okasha and liberals Alaa Abdel Fattah and Amr Hamzawy.

Mursi was sentenced to 20 years in prison last month on charges arising from the killing of protesters and faces the death penalty in connection with a mass jail break in 2011.

He has denounced the legal proceedings against him.

Separately, the public prosecutor referred 61 alleged Brotherhood members from the Delta province of Damietta to a military prosecutor on suspicion of violence-related offences.

Egypt expanded the jurisdiction of military courts last year to permit them to try civilians accused of acts ranging from attacking state facilities to blocking roads, part of a broad crackdown on opponents.

The government has banned the Brotherhood and labelled it a terrorist organisation, accusing it of killing hundreds of police and soldiers in the past two years.

The Brotherhood denies any link to violence.

RIYADH — A suicide bomber targeted a mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia as worshippers were commemorating the 7th century birth of a revered Shiite figure on Friday, the Interior Ministry and residents said.

Habib Mahmoud, managing editor for the state-linked Al Sharq newspaper in Qatif, said that the local Red Crescent authorities confirmed to him that 19 people had been killed and 28 wounded.

There was no immediate word from the interior ministry on casualties. The area is heavily populated by members of Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority.

Saudi Arabia's interior ministry initially reported that an explosion struck a mosque in the eastern province of Qatif after Friday prayers, without providing further details. It later confirmed that a suicide bomber who hid the explosives under his clothes was behind the attack.

It is the second deadly attack against Shiites in the kingdom in six months. In November, the extremist Daesh group was accused of being behind the shooting and killing of eight worshippers in the eastern Saudi Arabian village of Al Ahsa.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki said in a statement that Friday's attack struck the Imam Ali mosque in a village called Al Qudeeh.

A local activist, Naseema Al Sada, told The Associated Press by telephone from Qatif that the suicide bomber attacked worshippers as they were commemorating the birth of Imam Hussain, a revered figure among Shiites. She said the local hospital has called on residents to donate blood.

Lebanon's Al Manar television channel, run by the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group, carried still, blurry pictures of pools of blood inside what appeared to be the mosque where the attack took place. It also showed still photos of at least three bodies stretched out on red carpets, covered with sheets. One person dressed in a white robe was being carried away on a stretcher.

Mahmoud, the newspaper editor, said the attacker stood with the worshippers during prayer and then detonated his suicide vest as worshippers were leaving the mosque.

Shiite residents in eastern Saudi Arabia have long complained of discrimination. They say that despite the region being home to most of the kingdom's oil reserves, their streets, buildings and infrastructure are in poor condition. They also say unemployment runs high among Shiite youth in the area.

In 2011, Shiites in the east inspired by the Arab Spring in neighbouring Bahrain took to the streets to demand greater rights. Police arrested hundreds of people and a counter-terrorism court sentenced an outspoken cleric, Nimr Al Nimr, to death.

Qatif's residents say that Saudi Arabia's air strikes against Shiite rebels in Yemen have further inflamed sectarian tensions. Since the Saudi-led war began in late March, many leading Sunni clerics in the kingdom have used Friday sermons to denounce the Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers, but also to criticise their practices of praying at tombs and shrines.

After the bombing, a few hundred people marched in mourning through the village, Mahmoud said.

"They are bewildered by this and hold those who are inflaming sectarian rhetoric, from those on social media and in the mosques, responsible," he said. "They mix what is Iranian and what is Shiite, and blame Shiites for Iranian actions in the region."

Many ultraconservative Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, also known as Wahhabis, view the Shiite practice of praying at the tombs of religious figures as akin to polytheism.

The country's top cleric, Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al Sheikh, told Saudi state television that the attack in Qatif aims at "driving wedge among the sons of the nation" and described it as "a crime, shame and great sin”.

"I hold the government responsible," Al Sada said. "The government should protect us, not encourage sermons and schoolbooks to incite against us as non-believers."

"We want them to prevent this from happening in the first place," she said.