Region

DJERBA, Tunisia — It’s another sun-drenched day but the deckchairs of a four-star hotel on the island of Djerba stand empty, in a sign of the “catastrophic” summer on the horizon for Tunisian tourism.

“It’s dead. It’s all over for this year,” was the blunt verdict from Adel Tarres, manager of the hotel on the holiday island off the south coast of Tunisia that has in past years been a magnet for tourists from Italy across the Mediterranean.

He had been counting on a “perfect” season and recruited an extra 25 staff to cater to tourists he hoped would be lured by the island’s sandy beaches and whitewashed traditional houses.

But that was before jihadist gunmen attacked the Bardo National Museum in Tunis on March 18 and mowed down 21 foreign tourists and a policeman.

Immediately, the Italian tour operator who had block-booked the 170-room hotel from May 1 right through to the end of October cancelled the reservation — a loss estimated at 1.4 million euros ($1.6 million).

The tourism sector, which accounts for seven per cent of Tunisia’s GDP and almost 400,000 direct and indirect jobs, had already been rattled by political instability and rising Islamist violence since the 2011 revolution.

‘Rough four years’

In Djerba alone, around 30 establishments have closed down over the past four years, Farhat Ben Tanfous, secretary general of the region’s hotels federation, told AFP.

“The last four years have been very rough. We’ve had a lot of different tourism ministers and a lot of different governments, so a lot of political instability. We haven’t been able to work on long-term plans,” he said.

After the Bardo museum massacre, the outlook for the summer season, which represents 60 to 70 per cent of annual revenues, looks “bad”, said Jalel Henchiri, who is president of the federation.

“Let’s hope it’s not catastrophic,” Henchiri added.

For Ben Tanfous, the best scenario would be a five-per cent decline in revenues compared with 2014, which was also worse than expected.

“That would at least give us some hope for [following] years. I don’t think we should talk about this year or 2016 but rather look at a strategy to turn the corner,” he said.

Even before the Bardo attack, tourism figures made grim reading, with revenues 6.8 per cent lower in the first quarter, compared with the first three months of 2014, and overnight stays down 10.7 per cent.

Ben Tarfous said efforts had been made to deal with the problem of rubbish left piling up on Djerba’s streets last year because of the lack of a treatment plant.

And security has also been stepped up for the summer season as government officials repeatedly insist that Tunisia is safe for visitors.

Worse each year

But traders in Djerba’s souks say the prospects are still bleak.

“The few tourists in Djerba are scared after what happened at the Bardo and prefer not to leave their hotels,” sighed Yassine Ben Othmane, a leather artisan.

“Ever since 2011, each year has been worse than the one before, but this year is the worst.”

Australian tourist Renata Payer said she wasn’t exactly scared but had taken precautions such as not renting a car or going out alone.

Tunisian authorities have launched a campaign, especially on social media, to convince tourists not to miss out on the historic and cultural riches that the country has to offer.

But insiders say they are fighting against the tide, this year at least.

“If it goes on like this, I’ll be forced to change profession. You can’t make a living in tourism any more,” said Ibrahim Zagdid, who sells traditional North African costumes.

QARABULI, Libya — With the engines throbbing, young Libyans battle it out among the sand dunes, not with Humvee-style fighting vehicles but brightly coloured and sporty four-wheel drives.

In a weekly escape from the violence gripping their country, they converge every Friday — the Muslim weekend — for races in Qarabuli on the Mediterranean coast, 60 kilometres  east of Tripoli.

The type of powerful all-terrain vehicles they race up to the top of the dunes were reserved only for the military and regime elite in the days of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

“After the events of 2011, the market was opened to everybody,” said one of the organisers, Ahmed Abdelkader Atiga, referring to the revolt which swept away Qadhafi’s regime and since when Libya has been mired in chaos.

“Young people started buying four-by-fours,” said Atiga, a radio talk show host.

“This place has become a meeting place for young Libyans who come from several towns every Friday. It’s a good image which gives hope of resolving differences and saving lives.”

Hundreds of motorsport enthusiasts also gather at Qarabuli as spectators, away from the stress and daily uncertainty of life in post-Qadhafi Libya, where rival militias and political administrations are locked in a deadly struggle for dominance.

Jihadists from the Daesh group have also gained a foothold in the oil-rich North African country, feeding on the political breakdown and lawlessness.

Since October alone, more than 3,000 lives have been lost in fighting, according to Libya Body Count, an independent group which collates data from different sources.

Libya has also been in the news for the African migrants seeking a new life in Europe and left at the mercy of people smugglers exploiting the chaos to ply their lucrative trade with unseaworthy boats leaving from its shores.

‘A Libya of coexistence’

But away from the fighting and the misery of the migrants, four-wheel drives have flooded the market and adrenaline-driven young Libyans hungry for excitement are leading the charge.

Shortly before sunset, spraying sand into the air and with tyres screeching, dozens of drivers in red, green and yellow vehicles, many of them open top, scramble to make it in a race to the top of a steep dune.

“King of the Roads”, “Youths of Libya” and “Fireball” read stickers on the cars, some flying the Libyan flag.

It’s a test of manoeuvring and driving skills to prevent the wheels being buried in the sand, rather than speed alone, that determines the winners.

Some are forced to give up, while others keep trying again and again, spurred on by wild cheers from the crowd.

“We stop down at the beach before coming over for the races to encourage these young people,” said Mohammed, a dentist who has been attending for the past two years.

“We want to help these youths to overcome the challenge. Every time I come, it’s like the first time for me,” he said, beaming.

The two-hour event is rounded off with a three-kilometre rally along the seafront for allcomers.

“These weekly meetings give a different image from what the television stations show of the situation in Libya,” said Atiga. “It’s one of a Libya free of tensions, one of coexistence and joy.”

The cars then drive in convoy for several kilometres offroad until they reach the highway, before separating and returning to the reality of militia checkpoints and risks of carjackings on their way home.

BEIRUT — Insurgents on Friday seized a hospital from Syrian government forces who had been besieged there since late April, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, another gain by rebels who have dealt a series of blows to President Bashar Assad.

Syrian state TV said soldiers holed up in the Jisr Al Shughour hospital in Idlib province had been freed, saying they had managed to “break the siege” in an operation coordinated with air strikes and artillery bombardment.

The Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, an insurgent group involved in the offensive, said government forces had fled. “The Mujahideen are pursuing them,” a Twitter feed affiliated to the group reported.

Assad has lost large parts of Idlib province to insurgents since late March, when the provincial capital fell to rebels who have organised themselves under the banner of the “Army of Fatah”, or the army of Islamic conquest.

Assad had himself publicly addressed the situation at Jisr Al Shughour hospital two weeks ago, saying the army would reinforce the besieged troops there and describing them as heroes.

The losses in the northwest have been compounded by dramatic advances by the Daesh terror group into government-held areas of central Syria. The group seized the ancient city of Palmyra, or Tadmur, on Wednesday.

It has also taken control the last government-held border crossing with Iraq, after Syrian security forces withdrew.

The observatory said dozens of Syrian troops had managed to escape from the hospital, where the insurgents were in complete control. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the observatory, described it as a blow to the morale of the regime, after it had sent reinforcements there including allied foreign militia.

Jisr Al Shughour is seen as strategically important because of its proximity to the Mediterranean coastal areas that form the heartland of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

The observatory reported heavy fighting overnight in the Jisr Al Shughour area in what appeared to be an effort by the Syrian military and allied militia to advance and break the siege. Syrian war planes mounted at least 22 air strikes in the area, with helicopters dropping barrel bombs, it said.

A photo posted on Al Nusra Front-affiliated Twitter feed showed dozens of people streaming out of a heavily damaged building said to be the hospital. A caption said they had been “humiliated and routed by the force of the siege”. 

LONDON — A trickle of aid, medicine and commercial food cargoes is reaching Yemen yet the process remains slow as more ships await clearance to discharge at ports and logistical chains buckle due to fuel shortages and war.

Before Saudi Arabia launched air strikes in Yemen in March, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country imported more than 90 per cent of its food — most of it by sea.

It faces increasing problems as many shipping companies have pulled out and those still willing to bring cargoes endure a long wait for clearance from Saudi-led warships trying to prevent arms supplies reaching Iran-allied Houthi fighters.

In recent days over 130,000 tonnes of wheat has reached Yemen in commercial ships as well as other supplies including sugar and fuel, partly helped by a five-day truce which expired last Sunday. But aid groups say it is not enough, warning of growing hunger and a worsening humanitarian crisis.

“12 million people out of the total population of 26 million need food assistance now and this number will continue to increase,” said Jonathan Cunliffe, Yemen-based country director with non-profit aid group International Medical Corps.

“There is no doubt food stocks have been run down. In Aden there is virtually nothing left. Wheat prices have quadrupled across the country. There is no purchasing power.”

It was not clear how much of Yemen’s strategic stocks of wheat and other commodities had been drawn down. The country needs over 100,000 tonnes of grain every month, as well as other basics such as vegetable oil, pulses and meat.

“The absolute bottom line is all the aid agencies in the world working at maximum capacity cannot replace completely the commercial sector inside Yemen. We cannot do it,” Cunliffe said.

Tawfiq Shaher, a public sector worker and Sanaa resident, said while there was more availability of flour and wheat in recent days, local prices had spiked.

“People can’t afford it and people displaced from their homes, don’t have any means to and are dependent on international aid, which is scarce,” Shaher said.

Disruptions

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies have carried out almost two months of air raids on Houthi fighters it says are armed by Shiite power Iran.

Tehran, which dismisses the allegation, has sent a ship to Yemen which is says is carrying thousands of tonnes of aid.

Commodities trade sources say the delays caused by coalition inspections were adding to challenges of importing goods into the conflict zone. “You don’t have any clarity on the situation and there are so many hiccups, which means more disruptions to come,” one trade said.

Eight ships were waiting in open waters outside the Yemeni Red Sea ports of Hodaida and Salif, including vessels carrying wheat, corn, sugar and fuel, Reuters ship tracking data showed on Friday.

Several ships had been able to discharge in recent days although for some had waited weeks.

The Lycavitos, carrying 31,000 tonnes of wheat, arrived outside Hodaida on May 2 and only berthed on May 18. It plans to sail from the port on May 23.

“The situation keeps changing on a daily basis. So, for ships trying to enter Yemeni ports, it is still hard to give any timescale over the whole process or procedure,” the ship owner’s agent Helikon Shipping Enterprises Ltd. said.

GAZA — With jobs scarce and time on their hands, some tech-savvy Gazans have found a new way to make money — hacking Internet-based phone lines and routing international calls for a fee.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) hacking has been a phenomenon for years. But now Gaza, sealed off by a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, is getting in on the act by using the strongest link it has to the outside world — the Internet.

There are various ways of hacking VoIP networks, but people familiar with the practice in Gaza say it involves using dedicated servers to scoop up as many telephone IP addresses as possible, especially from big corporations and businesses.

Then follows a time-consuming process of testing possible username and password combinations against the addresses. 

Since people often do not change their default credentials, it is only a matter of time before many of these accounts are compromised. At that point the line, and any credit attached to it, is under the hackers' control.

The hackers then sell the access to a third party — sometimes a legitimate business, sometimes another VoIP squatter — and get paid by electronic transfer.

For those doing it in Gaza, a strip of land 40km long and 10km wide, where 1.8 million people live, it's a chance to use their technical skills to earn cash at a time when jobs are few and unemployment hovers at 50 per cent.

"What can we do? Die or find a way to live?" one 25-year-old hacker, working out of a house in southern Gaza, told Reuters. He and others requested anonymity.

A successful hacker can do well. Some are said to earn up to $50,000 a month if they manage to get hold of good lines, although they can also go weeks without earning anything.

The 25-year-old said his aim was to make enough to be able to get married "like all other friends my age", and side-stepped questions about the legality of his activities.

"Maybe you can call this stealing, but those companies abroad have insurance," he said.

VoIP fraud is a big business. The Communications Fraud Control Association, a US-based industry body, listed it as one of the top five methods of fraud, with losses of $3.62 billion in 2013, the latest available data.

Gaza-based lawyer Mustafa Totah told Reuters it was hard to crack down on the activity because no specific complaints were being made, a point echoed by local police.

In fact, Gaza's isolation may be the hackers' best protection. In other cases, perpetrators have been arrested when they entered a country where their ill-gotten IP addresses were being sold on or used. But since few people can easily move in and out of Gaza, the chances of that happening are slim.

BERNE/DOHA — Qatar, host of football's 2022 World Cup, is doing little to improve conditions for its 1.5 million migrant workers despite promising reforms last year, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

Qatar's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs said several of the allegations in Amnesty's report were inaccurate and that "significant changes have been made over the last year to improve the rights and conditions of expatriate workers”.

Amnesty researcher Mustafa Qadri told reporters: "Without prompt action, the pledges Qatar made last year are at serious risk of being dismissed as a mere public relations stunt to ensure the Gulf state can cling on to the 2022 World Cup.”

"In practice, there have been no significant advances."

Qatar unveiled reform plans a year ago including proposals to change laws which bind workers to their employers and force them to seek permission to change jobs or leave the country, and to improve living and working conditions.

The ministry said Qatar had launched a wage protection system, an electronic payment system to ensure wages are paid on time and increased the number of labour inspectors. It said more accommodation was being built for more than 250,000 migrant workers, many attracted by the pre-tournament construction boom.

But Amnesty said the proposed electronic payment system was still being implemented and many migrants interviewed "complained of late or non-payment of wages”.

The human rights group said Qatar had also failed to meet its target of having 300 labour inspectors in place by the end of last year.

"There has been only limited progress on measures to improve safety on construction sites, regulate exploitative recruitment agencies and improve access to justice for victims of labour exploitation," said the report.

Amnesty said football's governing body FIFA had a "clear responsibility" to put pressure on Qatar to do more.

"[FIFA] has yet to demonstrate any real commitment to ensuring Qatar 2022 is not built on a foundation of exploitation and abuse," Qadri said.

FIFA said it had "repeatedly urged" Qatar to ensure fair working conditions for all workers, and said: "It is clear that the FIFA World Cup is serving as a catalyst for significant change. The FIFA World Cup stadium sites, where none of the incidents mentioned in the report took place, are subject to international standards required of the construction companies responsible and their supply chains".

It's statement added: "Amnesty's report acknowledges that there has been some progress and it also makes clear much more needs to be done."

A statement from Qatar's Supreme Committee (SC) for Delivery & Legacy, in charge of organising the 2022 games, said its staff had helped raise money for Nepali workers to return home after the April 25 earthquake killed thousands of people.

"The SC will continue to move forward... to deliver a FIFA World Cup that preserves the rights and dignity of all individuals who will work to make the tournament a success," it said.

DUBAI — A legal battle between an activist group and Britain over a decades-old diplomatic cable on Bahrain has exposed a thorny link between the UK's colonial past and its new military ambitions in a region it once dominated.

The Foreign Office has told a court in London that a censored assessment by a colonial officer of the Gulf Arab island's ruling Al Khalifa family may harm the UK's relationship with Bahrain as it seeks to build a naval base there.

The installation will be Britain's first permanent military presence in the Middle East since it withdrew from Bahrain and the rest of the Gulf region in 1971.

The court ruled at the end of April that more of the document, which is based partly on secret evidence by a top British diplomat, should be exposed, and the Foreign Office has 30 days to appeal.

The two-page report is a 1977 record of a talk between a British official and Ian Henderson, a senior British security chief who advised Bahrain for decades after its independence.

"What surprised me in our conversation was the gloomy view he took of the ability of Al Khalifa to survive," the official wrote. The rest of the typewritten paragraph is heavily blacked out.

Marc Owen Jones, a PhD student who brought the case on behalf of UK-based activist group Bahrain Watch, told Reuters he believes the censored parts disparage a living member of the ruling family.

The passages were classified "on the grounds that international relations could be damaged were it to be released. Those grounds still exist," Edward Oakden, the Foreign Office's Middle East director, argued in the case.

Bahraini authorities did not response to a request for comment.

Oakden noted an accord in December to put a long standing UK naval presence in Bahrain on a permanent footing at the Gulf state's expense, and said disclosing more of the paper could also harm British efforts to reform Bahrain's security forces.

Bulwark

The move is part of a modest expansion of British military readiness in the region. In 2013 the Royal Air Force established an air transport and refuelling hub in the United Arab Emirates.

Home to the United States' Fifth Fleet, Bahrain is a strategic bulwark for Western interest in the energy-rich Gulf.

"Western countries seek good relations with Gulf States for defence reasons and also economic reasons," said Jane Kinninmont, a Middle East expert at London's Chatham House think tank. She cited rapidly increasing defence budgets in the Gulf that are partly earmarked to buy Western arms.

"The case shows how alive the history the British colonial rule still is in the Gulf today," she added.

BEIRUT  — Lebanon's Hizbollah says the Middle East is at risk of partition and sees no end to the war in Syria, where it is fighting alongside President Bashar Assad against insurgents supported by his regional enemies.

Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Iranian-backed group, said the insurgents would be unable to topple the Assad government despite their recent gains in battle, including this week's capture of Palmyra by the Daesh jihadist group.

In an interview with Reuters, Qassem said Assad's allies — Iran, Russia and Hizbollah — would back him "however long it takes". There could be no solution to the war without Assad, and it was time for "Arabs and the world" to realise that, added the white-turbaned cleric, speaking at Hizbollah offices in Beirut.

Hizbollah has been a crucial ally to Assad in the four-year-long war, sending its fighters to help him hold on to territory and power.

The Lebanese group, a Shiite Islamist party with a powerful armed wing, describes its role as part of a struggle against jihadists who are a growing threat to the region.

The regional instability has been fuelled by rivalry between the Shiite Islamist government of Iran and the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the main sponsors of the insurgency against Assad.

Qassem said Saudi policy was to blame for regional conflicts including the most recent one in Yemen. He accused Riyadh of "double standards", backing radical Sunni Islamists, or "takfiris", across the Middle East, while seeking to suppress them at home.

He also blamed Washington, saying it was waiting to see how things turned out instead of adopting clear policies.

Saudi Arabia has denied accusations of backing radical Islamists. It says Iran's efforts to expand its influence are the main source of instability in the Middle East.

"The region is today on fire, tense, without any proposed solutions. It seems this will continue for a number of years and there is also the risk of partition in some of its countries," said Qassem.

Iraq holds key

"The biggest danger in the plan to partition the region is for Iraq, because America is promoting this, and it seems there are some elements in Iraq that want this, but it has not matured yet," he said. Washington says it supports a united Iraq.

Destruction would continue in Syria because it would not submit, Qassem said. "Solutions for Syria are suspended. There is no political solution in the foreseeable period, and it is left to attrition, to the battlefield, and to wait for other developments in the region, particularly Iraq," he said.

With the United States leading an air campaign against Daesh militants in northern and eastern Syria, Assad had appeared increasingly confident at the turn of the year.

But since late March, he has faced significant setbacks.

Wide areas of territory in the northwestern province of Idlib have been lost to an alliance of mainly Islamist insurgent groups believed to be backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which all want to see Assad gone from power.

Other insurgents have made gains in south at the border with Jordan, while Daesh — the most hardline and powerful insurgent group in Syria — has been attacking government-held areas, putting the over stretched army under even more pressure.

Qassem said Daesh’s capture of the ancient city of Palmyra from the army this week was part of the ebb and flow of the war in which ground lost in one area is made up in another.

"It is normal to lose in some areas and win in others," he said. "What is happening is attack and retreat which does not change the equation neither geographically or politically."

Assad's losses in Idlib have been at the hands of an alliance of Islamists including the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front and the hardline Ahrar Al Sham. They have come together under the banner of the "Fath Army", or army of Islamic conquest.

Qassem said Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were training, arming and funding these groups to try and shift the military balance by bringing together "takfiri terrorist forces" with US supervision.

"This shift in balance is temporary and not fundamental and does not change the equation in Syria," he said.

Qatar and Turkey deny backing radical jihadist groups such as Daesh, while not hiding their support for the insurgency against Assad.

Hizbollah says its offensive with the Syrian army against insurgents including the Nusra Front in the mountains between Lebanon and Syria was ongoing and partly to protect Lebanon, targeted by suicide attacks since Syria's war began in 2011.

"Syria's allies are continuing in supporting Assad's Syria until the end, regardless of how long it takes," Qassem said.

CAIRO/DUBAI — Saudi shells hit an international aid office in Yemen on Thursday killing five Ethiopian refugees, a local official said, while efforts continued to mount peace talks between exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's government and Houthi rebels.

The official said that 10 other refugees were wounded when artillery fire and air strikes hit the town of Maydee along Yemen's border with Saudi Arabia in Hajja province, a stronghold of the Iran-allied Houthi group that a Saudi-led Arab alliance has been bombing for eight weeks.

Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri said there was no coalition activity in the area. "If the report is correct, it would be the responsibility of the Houthis, who have a big presence in the area," Asseri told Reuters by telephone.

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday announced peace talks for Geneva on May 28 to try to find a way out of the crisis that triggered outside intervention by an Arab coalition on March 26.

Rajeh Badi, spokesman for Hadi's government, said consultations were held by the government in the Saudi capital Riyadh over timing, agenda and preparations for the conference.

Badi cast doubt on Houthi intentions to join the talks, saying the leader of the group Abdel Malek Al Houthi, had effectively scuttled the plan by calling in a speech on Wednesday for a holy war and stepping up conscription.

Front lIine

The Saudi-Yemen frontier has in some cases become a frontline between the two sides, and the Houthis' Al Masira TV channel broadcast footage on Wednesday it said showed its fighters entering a Saudi border post after being fired on by Saudi tanks and helicopters.

"[Saudi] military hardware was deployed, but after a few moments they vanished, fleeing the Yemeni advance," the channel said.

Houthi media said the group had seized a border position and killed over two dozen Saudi troops, reports flatly denied by Riyadh.

Asseri said the Houthis regularly target Saudi positions along the border and that Saudi forces respond, but he said there were no exceptional clashes on Thursday.

Residents and local fighters opposing the Houthis said air strikes hit a southern air base controlled by the militia and their positions outside the southern city of Aden on Thursday.

Tribal and militia fighters in Yemen's south support the Arab campaign and back president Hadi, who lives in exile with his government in Saudi Arabia.

Arab air strikes and heavy ground fighting seized the central city of Taiz, another focal point of the internal war, and tribal sources said they made gains against the Houthis in the far northern province of Al Jawf, where the Houthis said Saudi-led air strikes killed 15 people.

Aid ship bound for DjIibouti

An Iranian aid ship bound for the Houthi-controlled Red Sea Port of Hodaida in Yemen appeared to be headed to Djibouti for inspection on Thursday, ship-tracking data showed.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said the ship would submit to UN inspections in the Horn of Africa country, avoiding a potential regional showdown between Riyadh and Tehran.

The Iran Shahed had been escorted by Iranian warships, and Saudi-led forces have enforced inspections on vessels entering Yemeni ports to prevent arms supplies from reaching the Houthis.

Asseri said the coalition had given the ship a choice to either unload its cargo in Djibouti for the United Nations to deliver to Yemen or submit to an inspection by the coalition if it wanted to continue on to Hodaida Port.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A total of 19 Libyan soldiers were killed over the past 24 hours in the eastern city of Benghazi, during a new Libyan army push to retake the city from Islamic militants, officials said on Thursday. Elsewhere in Libya, a local Daesh affiliate claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide bombings.

In Benghazi, army chief Gen. Khalifa Hifter is seeking to break months of stalemate and fully retake Libya's second largest city. His offensive has primarily targeted the militant stronghold district of Al Laithi and government jets bombed multiple positions overnight and early Thursday morning, a military official said.

In the western city of Misrata — whose militias compose the most powerful militias in control of the capital, Tripoli — a suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint 60 kilometres east of the city killing one soldier and injuring three, a witness said. In a short statement posted on social networking sites, a Daesh affiliate in Libya claimed responsibility for the attack. A day earlier, Daesh also claimed responsibility for a second suicide bombing near the central city of Sirte — one of the group's strongholds — in which a bomber detonated his device at a checkpoint near the town of Hawara, killing one soldier.

Nearly four years after the ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi, Libya is consumed by chaos. The country split is between an elected parliament and weak government, which were forced to relocate from Tripoli to the far eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda, and a rival government and parliament in Tripoli set up by the Islamist-linked militias that control the capital.

The turmoil has enabled the rise of an active Daesh branch, which now controls at least two cities along the country's coastline.

The nationwide instability has also heavily affected Libya's vital petroleum industry. Oil output is now estimated at 430,000 barrels a day, down from 1.6 million in 2010.

During a meeting Wednesday night, the militia-backed Tripoli parliament announced it would eliminate all subsides on fuel and foodstuffs, instead replacing them with a cash stipend of 50 dinars (about $20) per citizen per month.

The end of government subsides is designed to save the government billions. A 2014 report by a government auditing agency stated that spending on subsides consumed around $9.3 billion per year, more than a third of the national budget.

It's not yet clear how the Tripoli-based authorities will enforce the new policy in the large sections of the country outside of their control.

Hatem Al Aribi, a spokesman for the internationally recognised parliament in Tobruk, described the decision as another "stunt" by the rival parliament to "rally more support”.