Region

BAGHDAD — They were always seen as the key to defeating the jihadists in their bastions but the fall of Ramadi has deepened the distrust that Iraq's Sunni tribes feel towards the government.

Many tribal leaders in Anbar province, of which Ramadi is the capital, said they would continue to fight the Daesh group, not for the sake of a government they say never offered the adequate support, but because they have no other choice.

"The fall of Ramadi is a disaster," said Salah Hassan Al Nada, a tribal leader from Awja, near the northern city of Tikrit, who moved to Kurdistan when Daesh established its grip on Sunni areas last year.

"Ramadi truly was a model," he said, in reference to the force of tribal fighters called "Sahwat" (Awakening) that emerged a decade ago to battle previous incarnations of Daesh.

"They are the ones who fought them and kicked them out of Ramadi and brought normal life back to the city," he said.

The force spread to several parts of Iraq to reach a strength of around 50,000 men initially paid directly by the United States.

Responsibility was transferred to the government in 2008 and the outfit was eventually disbanded after relations soured over former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki's failure to deliver on promises to integrate the Sahwat in the army.

His successor Haider Al Abadi has only just begun to rekindle the Sahwat under a different and more controlled format, by incorporating them into the Shiite-dominated Hashed Al Shaabi organisation that serves as an umbrella for volunteers and militias.

In 2014, the remnants of the extremist groups the tribes had successfully fought returned as the most violent organisation in modern jihad, and this time with more ambitious goals than insurgency warfare.

As Daesh seized territory and proclaimed a "caliphate" that has drawn thousands of foreigners but also been seen by some Iraqis as a lesser evil than sectarian Shiite rule, the tribes that did oppose the jihadists felt they were not getting nearly enough backing.

"The tribes of Anbar did not fail facing Daesh, it's the government that failed because it fears that arming the tribes will turn against it," Anbar tribal sheikh Omar Al Alwani said, using an Arab acronym for Daesh.

He argued that the tribes could have defeated Daesh without the Hashed had they been provided heavier weaponry.

Political solution

Victoria Fontan, a professor at American University Duhok Kurdistan, said trust will be difficult to rebuild without a political solution.

"Morale is now very low among the Sunnis after what happened in Ramadi," she said.

The Shiite-dominated government is blaming Anbaris for not mobilising en masse against Daesh.

"However, it is difficult for Sunnis to actually support the government against Daesh, since the government has been dropping barrel bombs on them," Fontan said.

The previous government carried out air raids, mainly in the Fallujah area of Anbar, using barrel bombs — improvised, unguided devices packed with explosives and scrap metal known for causing indiscriminate damage.

"If Baghdad promises autonomy to Sunni regions in exchange for their support against Daesh, that will be a game changer. A political solution is the only way to actually derail Daesh for good in Iraq," she argued.

BEIRUT — Daesh fighters tightened their grip on the historic city of Palmyra in Syria, days after capturing a provincial capital in neighbouring Iraq, suggesting the growing momentum of the group which a monitor says now holds half of Syrian territory.

The twin successes pile pressure not just on Damascus and Baghdad, but also throw doubt on US strategy to rely almost exclusively on air strikes to defeat Daesh.

Extending its reach in the region, fighters loyal to the Sunni Muslim group have also consolidated their grip on the Libyan city of Sirte, hometown of former leader Muammar Qadhafi.

Daesh said in a statement posted by followers on Twitter on Thursday it was in full charge of Palmyra, including its military bases, marking the first time it had taken a city directly from the Syrian military and allied forces.

Around a third of the 200,000 people living in Palmyra may have fled in the past few days during fighting between government forces and Daesh militants, the UN human rights office said on Thursday.

Citing what she said were credible sources, UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani in Geneva also said there were reports of government forces preventing civilians leaving until they themselves fled and Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, took control of the city.

"ISIL has reportedly been carrying out door-to-door searches in the city, looking for people affiliated with the government. At least 14 civilians are reported to have been executed by ISIL in Palmyra this week," Shamdasani said in e-mailed comments.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Al Qaeda offshoot now controls more than half of Syrian territory following more than four years of conflict which grew out of an uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The ultra hardline group has destroyed antiquities and monuments in Iraq and there are fears it might now devastate Palmyra, home to renowned Roman-era ruins including well-preserved temples, colonnades and a theatre.

The UN cultural agency UNESCO describes the site as a historical crossroads between the Roman Empire, India, China and ancient Persia and a testament to the world's diverse heritage.

"We may have different beliefs... different views, but we have to protect such incredible vestiges of human history," UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova told Reuters Television.

The observatory's founder Rami Abdulrahman said Daesh fighters had entered the historical sites by early on Thursday but there were no immediate reports of destruction.

"This is the fall of a civilisation," Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters. "Human, civilised society has lost the battle against barbarism."

‘War crime’

Al Azhar, the centre of Islamic learning in Egypt, called on the world to protect Palmyra, saying the destruction or looting of cultural heritage was religiously forbidden.

Clashes in the Palmyra area since Wednesday killed at least 100 pro-government fighters, said Abdulrahman, who bases his information on a network of sources on the ground.

Syrian state media said pro-government National Defence Forces had evacuated civilians before withdrawing.

The assault on the city is part of a westward advance by Daesh that is adding to pressures on Syria's overstretched army and militia, which have also recently lost ground in the northwest and south.

Capturing the city marks a strategic military gain for Daesh, because it is home to modern army installations and situated on a desert highway linking government-held Damascus and Homs with Syria's mainly rebel-held east.

The European Union's foreign policy chief expressed fears that thousands of people in Palmyra were at risk as well as the cultural sites.

"Mass killings and deliberate destruction of archaeological and cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq amount to a war crime," Federica Mogherini said in a statement.

Although Daesh has seized large chunks of Syria, the areas it holds are mostly sparsely inhabited. Syria's main cities, including the capital Damascus, are located on its western flank along the border with Lebanon and the coastline.

In the northeast, Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes have been pressing an attack on Daesh in Hasaka province, which links land held by the group in Iraq. Scores of its members have been killed this week and state television also reported progress by the army in the area on Thursday.

Iraq offensive

Palmyra's fall came just five days after the Islamist group seized Ramadi, capital of Iraq's largest province, Anbar.

Iraqi forces said on Thursday that they had thwarted a third attempt by Daesh militants to break through their defensive lines east of Ramadi overnight.

President Barack Obama said the fall of Ramadi was a "tactical setback" but in an interview released on Thursday he added "I don't think we're losing" the fight against the group.

"There's no doubt that in the Sunni areas, we're going to have to ramp up not just training, but also commitment, and we better get Sunni tribes more activated than they currently have been," Obama said in the interview, conducted on Tuesday with The Atlantic.

"I think Prime Minister Abadi is sincere and committed to an inclusive Iraqi state, and I will continue to order our military to provide the Iraqi security forces all assistance that they need in order to secure their country, and I'll provide diplomatic and economic assistance that's necessary for them to stabilise," Obama told the magazine.

Police and pro-government Sunni fighters exchanged mortar and sniper fire with insurgents across the new frontline in Husaiba Al Sharqiya, about halfway between Ramadi and a base where a counter-offensive to retake the city is being prepared.

The loss of Ramadi handed the Iraqi government its most significant setback in a year and exposed the limitations of both the army and US-led air strikes designed to "degrade and destroy" Daesh.

The United States plans to deliver 1,000 anti-tank weapons to Iraq in June to combat suicide bombings like those that helped the Islamist group seize Ramadi, a senior US State Department official said on Thursday.

Iraq's government has ordered Shiite militia, some of which have close ties to Iran, to join the battle to retake Ramadi, raising fears of renewed sectarian strife in the country.

Washington wants the counter-offensive to include both Sunni and Shiite forces under the direct government command.

The militants in Ramadi are seeking to consolidate their gains in Anbar province by pushing east to the Habbaniya base where security forces and Shiite paramilitaries are massing.

"Daesh is desperately trying to breach our defences but this is impossible now," Police major Khalid Al Fahdawi said, referring to Daesh. "They tried overnight to breach our defences but they failed. Army helicopters were waiting for them."

Habbaniya is one of only a few remaining pockets of government-held territory in Anbar, and lies between Ramadi and the town of Fallujah, which has been controlled by Daesh for more than a year.

SANAA — The Saudi-led coalition bombed Shiite rebels in at least five northern Yemeni provinces on Wednesday as the United Nations set the date for peace talks on the country's crisis for next week in Geneva.

It was not immediately clear if any of the warring factions would attend the talks. The internationally recognised government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, now in exile in Saudi Arabia, has demanded that the rebels, known as Houthis, first pull out of towns and cities, including the capital, Sanaa, which they captured in a power grab that started last year.

In a statement from the UN in New York, the world body said it would host the talks in Switzerland, starting on May 28. UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged all parties to engage in the talks "without pre-conditions”, stressing the only way to resolve Yemen's conflict is an "inclusive, negotiated political settlement”.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Yemen's UN Ambassador Khaled Alyemany said both Hadi's side and the Houthis will attend, adding that the government will be represented at a high level in Geneva, perhaps by the vice president.

Aleymany said Ban would also attend the talks, though the UN has not officially said that.

But a top Hadi aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, said the government would not give up its condition for the talks.

The UN announcement came after UN envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed held meetings with rival political players in Yemen earlier this month. The Iranian-backed Houthis at the time expressed readiness to resume peace talks, insisting they take place in "neutral" country.

Alyemany told reporters that Houthis appear to have reached the moment of "wanting to talk" though they showed no signs of wanting to "give up what they consider their expansions on the ground”.

Western countries accuse Shiite power Iran of backing the Houthis, something the Islamic Republic and the rebels deny. Alyemany said Iran was not invited to the Geneva talks, and that none of the Houthi figures and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who are on a UN sanctions list would attend.

The rebels and their allies, Saleh loyalists, captured Sanaa in September and are in control of much of the northern provinces. They boycotted a gathering held in Saudi capital, Riyadh, this week that was billed as a peace conference on Yemen.

Hadi and his Saudi allies have insisted before — and a Security Council resolution has demanded the Houthis withdraw prior to any formal talks. The UN Security Council recently imposed an arms embargo on Houthi leaders and on Saleh, who had stepped down in early 2012 as part of the UN-guided transition after months-long uprising.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition continued to pound the Houthis and their allies Wednesday in at least five northern provinces under rebel control, including Sanaa. In the western city of Ibb, warplanes struck a police commando camp run by Saleh's loyalists, killing at least 12 and wounding 17, officials said.

In the war-torn strategic port city of Aden, the rebels and their allies randomly shelled residential areas, killing one woman and wounding three.

The Houthis also continued to retaliate for the Saudi-led attacks by engaging in clashes in the border area of Jizan on Wednesday and killing one Saudi soldier, according to Saudi news site Sabq.

The Yemeni conflict has killed 1,820 people and wounded 7,330 since March 19, according to UN estimates. The estimates also show that nearly a half million people at least have been displaced in the period since the beginning of the fighting until May 7.

Also Wednesday, international aid groups urged warring parties to agree to a ceasefire so that badly-needed humanitarian aid can be delivered. A five-day truce that was breached several times and expired this week was not enough, said Oxfam.

"The amount of aid allowed in barely scratched the surface of the humanitarian catastrophe," said Grace Ommer, Oxfam's director for Yemen.

An Iranian cargo ship carrying humanitarian aid is due to arrive in Yemen on Thursday. Iran's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, told reporters in Tehran that the ship was sailing toward Yemen in coordination with the UN, the Red Cross and others.

She warned against any interception of the ship by the Saudi-led coalition.

"If they show any behavior in opposition to this coordinated process, not only will we react, but also the relevant international organisations will show reaction to that," she said.

Last week, Ban's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, denied any UN knowledge of such coordination. "The UN is not aware of a request from Iran to facilitate the docking in Yemen for humanitarian supplies," he said at the time.

Yemen's conflict has also stranded thousands of Yemenis abroad, after the Saudi-led coalition imposed an air and sea blockade.

On Wednesday, 352 Yemenis aboard two planes, from Egypt and India, landed in Sanaa, according to airport officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

WASHINGTON — Osama Bin Laden was fixated on attacking US targets and pressured Al Qaeda groups to heal local rivalries and focus on that cause, according to documents the United States says were seized in Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan and released on Wednesday.

A July 2010 letter, which was among the materials released by US intelligence, showed that Bin Laden pressed Al Qaeda in Yemen, one of the group’s more active affiliates, to make peace with the government and focus on America.

Bin Laden’s view was that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) ought to sign a truce with Yemeni authorities or arrange an accommodation in which Yemeni authorities would leave the group alone “in exchange for focusing on America”.

“The purpose is to focus on striking inside America and its interest abroad, especially oil producing countries, to agitate public opinion and to force US to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to a summary of the letter by a bin Laden associate identified as “Atiyyah”.

It says the associate recommended “extra security measures” for Anwar Al Awlaki, a US-born radical preacher who became one of AQAP’s principal strategists and spokesman, and also that Awlaki should be required to “change his way of life”.

Awlaki had served as an imam at a mosque in a Virginia suburb of Washington, which was attended by two militants who participated in the September 11, 2001 attacks. He fled to Yemen after the attacks and was killed in 2011 by a CIA drone strike.

The documents released on Wednesday were part of a cache seized by US commandos who conducted the 2012 raid on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when Bin Laden was killed.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement that the release of the documents followed a “rigorous” review by US government agencies as required by the 2014 Intelligence Authorisation Act.

Among the materials were declassified documents, including translations of purported correspondence between Bin Laden, his aides and members of his family; a list of English-language books recovered from the compound and material published by other militant groups.

US House of Representatives intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in a statement that Wednesday’s release of 86 new reports brought the total number of declassified reports seized from Bin Laden’s house to 120.

“I look forward to the conclusion of the ongoing efforts to declassify the hundreds of remaining Abbottabad reports to meet congressional requirements,” he said.

BEIRUT — Daesh militants took control of areas of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra from government forces in fierce fighting on Wednesday, and the Syrian antiquities chief called on the world to save its ancient heritage from the jihadists.

The central city, known as Tadmur in Arabic, is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site and is also a strategic military location in central Syria linked by highways to the cities of Homs and Damascus, some 240km to the southwest.

"The news at the moment is very bad. There are small groups that managed to enter the city from certain points," Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters.

"There were very fierce clashes."

Abdulkarim, who received UNESCO's Cultural Heritage Rescue Prize last year, said hundreds of statues had been moved to safe locations but called on the Syrian army, opposition and international community to save the site.

"The fear is for the museum and the large monuments that cannot be moved," he said. "This is the entire world's battle."

Daesh has destroyed antiquities and ancient monuments in neighbouring Iraq and is being targeted by US-led air strikes in both countries.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said that Al Qaeda offshoot Daesh had captured around a third of Palmyra.

Palmyra's 2,000-year-old monuments, which lie on the south-western fringe of the modern city, were put on UNESCO's World Heritage in danger list in 2013. The ruins were part of a desert oasis that was one of the most significant cultural centres of the ancient world.

The attack is part of a westward advance by Daesh that is adding to the pressures on President Bashar Assad's overstretched military and allied militia that are also losing ground to insurgents in the northwest.

Syrian state television said in a news flash that armed forces had confronted "the Daesh [Islamic State] terrorist group" when it tried to enter a northern Palmyra neighbourhood.

A video posted by an activist network on YouTube appeared to show black smoke rising into the sky. The caption dated May 20 said it was footage of air strikes on the city. A communications tower and a citadel could be seen in the video.

The observatory said the two sides were shelling each other and that the military had carried out air strikes.

Daesh supporters posted pictures on social media showing what they said were gunmen in the streets of Palmyra, which is the location of one of Syria's biggest weapons depots as well as army bases, an airport and a major prison.

Kurds battle Daesh in northeast

In Syria's northeast, Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes are pressing an attack on Daesh that has killed at least 170 members of the jihadist group this week, a Kurdish official and the observatory said.

The official said Kurdish YPG fighters and allied militia had encircled Daesh in a dozen villages near the town of Tel Tamr in Hasaka province, which borders land controlled by Daesh in neighbouring Iraq.

The Kurdish YPG, trying to drive Daesh from a stronghold in the mountainous Jabal Abdul Aziz area to the southwest of Tel Tamr, had taken control of large parts of the area, the observatory said.

The US-led alliance bombing Daesh has been coordinating its air strikes in Hasaka with the YPG, after joining forces with the Kurds to drive the jihadists from Kobani, or Ayn Al Arab, in January.

The Kurdish official, Nasir Haj Mansour, said around 80 Daesh fighters were killed in an ambush when they tried to flee the Tel Tamr area for Jabal Abdul Aziz earlier this week. Dozens more were killed in air strikes.

"The confirmed number of [Islamic State] dead is between 170 and 200," said Mansour, speaking by telephone from Syria.

US special forces reached deep into eastern Syria in the early hours of Saturday for a ground assault against Daesh, killing not only the declared target, but also two other important figures.

TRIPOLI — Fresh elections are the only way to end conflict in Libya where two governments and parliaments are competing for power and the country's oil wealth, an influential Islamist supporter of a self-declared government in Tripoli said.

Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni's internationally recognised government and elected parliament have operated out of eastern Libya since a rival armed faction called Libya Dawn, took over Tripoli in August and set up its own government.

The United Nations has been hosting talks to persuade the rival factions to form a national government, four years after the civil war that ousted Muammar Qadhafi.

But progress has been slow as both sides want their own parliament — the House of Representatives in Tobruk or its predecessor, the General National Congress in the capital, Tripoli — to form any such unity cabinet.

"The Libyan people should elect new personalities to represent them. I think this is a very appropriate solution," said Khalid Sherif, a former deputy defence minister. "This is a national solution," he told Reuters in an interview.

Sherif fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan and sought to overthrow Qadhafi in 1990s before joining Libya's 2011 uprising. He remains an influential figure in the Islamist camp backing the Tripoli government.

He said the mandate of the Tobruk-based assembly would end by law in October, opening the way to a new vote as compromise. Both sides would have to agree on a ceasefire until a vote could take place in October.

"We ask the international community to oversee the elections so there is no forgery," Sherif said. "All sides should oversee the elections in all areas of Libya."

The House of Representatives was elected in June 2014, in a vote marred by a low turnout, for 18 months during which a proposal for a constitution was meant to be put up for vote.

That plan was derailed by the fighting, and a committee is still working on a constitutional proposal.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces said they fought off an overnight attack by Daesh militants near the city of Ramadi, which the insurgents overran at the weekend in the most significant setback for the government in a year.

Daesh is seeking to consolidate its gains in the vast desert province of Anbar, of which Ramadi is capital, where only pockets of territory remain under government control. The Daesh advance has exposed the shortcomings of Iraq’s army and the limitations of US air strikes.

Government forces backed by Shiite militias have meanwhile been building up at a base near Ramadi in preparation for a counterattack to retake the city, where Sunni Daesh forces have taken over tanks and artillery and large amounts of ammunition abandoned by fleeing Iraqi forces.

The Anbar police chief, Kadhum Al Fahdawi, said reinforcements were arriving as Iraqi forces dug in. The US-led coalition staged 25 air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria since early on Tuesday.

There was however no indication that the counterattack on Ramadi was imminent.

Ramadi was Daesh’s biggest success since it captured the northern city of Mosul last year and declared itself an Islamic caliphate. While it has been forced to give ground in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, and in the Syrian city of Kobani, the group still controls large areas of Iraq and Syria.

Sectarian fears

There are fears in Washington and elsewhere that the fighting in Iraq will become a polarising clash between Shiites and Sunnis as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, a Shiite, becomes increasingly dependent on the Iranian-backed Shiite militias to step in where the Iraqi military has failed.

Daesh fighters attacked government forces in the town of Husaiba Al Sharqiya, about halfway between Ramadi and the Habbaniya military base where militia fighters have assembled, police and pro-government forces said.

“Daesh attacked us around midnight after a wave of mortar shelling on our positions,” Amir Al Fahdawi, a leader of the pro-government Sunni tribal force in the area, told Reuters on Wednesday.

“This time they came from another direction in an attempt to launch a surprise attack, but we were vigilant and, after around four hours of fighting, we aborted their offensive,” he added.

The Habbaniya base is midway between Ramadi and Fallujah, which has been under Daesh control for more than a year and is 50km from Baghdad. Daesh appears to be trying to join up Ramadi and Fallujah by taking territory in between.

“They want to occupy more of Anbar,” said Sabah Karhout, head of the Anbar provincial council. “Their primary aim is to connect Ramadi to Fallujah.”

As pressure mounted for action to retake Ramadi, a local government official urged citizens to join the police and the army to join what Shiite militiamen have said will be the “Battle of Anbar”.

Daesh fighters have set up defensive positions and laid landmines, witnesses in Ramadi said. The group’s black flags are flying over the main mosque and other buildings.

Hasty retreat

Abadi’s decision to send in the Shiite militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation, to try to retake predominantly Sunni Ramadi could stir up further sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.

Local officials say 500 people were killed in the fighting to take they city and the international migration agency says more than 40,000 people have fled.

When the Iraqi forces beat a hasty retreat from Ramadi at the weekend, they left behind a large amount of military supplies, including about a half a dozen tanks, 100 wheeled vehicles and some artillery, the Pentagon said.

A Pentagon spokesman said it would have been preferable if the Iraqi troops had destroyed the equipment before leaving.

An Iraqi army officer who commanded an armoured regiment in Ramadi said the militants had seized a depot that held enough ammunition to sustain Daesh for months.

Ministers from members of the coalition fighting Daesh will meet in Paris on June 2 to plot strategy including how to reverse recent losses, French officials said.

BAGHDAD — The United States said it is considering accelerating the training and equipping of Iraqi tribal forces to fight the Daesh group after the fall of the city of Ramadi.

The jihadists' capture of city was their most significant victory since mid-2014 when they conquered swathes of land, sparking a US-led air campaign to support Baghdad.

Besides the more than 3,000 air strikes carried out so far, Washington has supported a deep reform of Iraq's army and offered training to Sunni tribal fighters to retake their own provinces.

But that approach failed to prevent the fall of Ramadi, where militias backed by US arch-foe Iran will now take the lead in any counter-attack and reinforce their influence in Iraq.

US President Barack Obama huddled Tuesday with his national security team at the White House but signalled no change of tack, despite mounting calls for a more decisive approach.

"There is no formal strategy review," National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey told AFP after the meeting, which included the CIA and Pentagon chiefs.

"We are looking at how best to support local ground forces in Anbar," he said, "including accelerating the training and equipping of local tribes and supporting an Iraqi-led operation to retake Ramadi”.

There was no suggestion, however, that weapons would be sent directly to tribal fighters opposed to Daesh in Anbar province, of which Ramadi is the capital, instead of via the central government in Baghdad.

"This defeat was avoidable. Neither Daesh [Islamic State] nor any other Al Qaeda offshoot has ever taken a major urban area actively defended by the United States in partnership with local forces," the Institute for the Study of War wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post.

“This is what happens when a policy of half-measures, restrictions and posturing meets a skillful and determined enemy on the battlefield,” it said.

The United States has sent thousands of military advisers to train Sunni tribal fighters and help reform Iraq’s shambolic army, but the pace of change has failed to match Daesh’s aggressive military tactics.

Role of Iran

After the capital of Iraq’s largest province fell to Daesh, Abadi had no choice but to call in the Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation (Hashed Al Shaabi) forces.

He and Washington had hoped to rely on regular forces and locally recruited Sunni tribal fighters newly incorporated into the Hashed Al Shaabi.

Such a solution was meant to be more palatable to Anbar’s Sunni population and check the expansion of Shiite militias loyal to Tehran.

On Wednesday, Iraqi government forces and the Hashed Al Shaabi were preparing an offensive to retake Ramadi before Daesh builds up its defences.

However, there were no reports of major fighting as senior Iraqi officers said the anti-Daesh camp needed time to plan and coordinate its operations.

The Hashed is an umbrella organisation for volunteers and Iraq’s many Iran-backed militia groups, which have made no secret of their displeasure with Abadi’s policies.

When Ramadi fell to Daesh, the separate militias announced they were rushing forces to the area and blamed the government for making that decision a month too late.

During a visit to Baghdad, Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan stressed Tehran’s commitment to Iraqi unity but also emphasised Iran’s role in the fight against Daesh.

“The strategic cooperation between the two countries will play an important role for peace, stability and security in the region,” he said.

According to officials from Anbar, at least 500 people were killed in three days of fighting in Ramadi during which Daesh used waves of suicide car bombs.

The army’s retreat was chaotic, once again raising questions over the credibility of Iraq’s regular forces.

At least 40,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the process, and many were left stranded at a bridge separating Anbar from the Baghdad governorate.

Officials said five displaced people, including children, died there on Tuesday.

The United Nations called for increased assistance to those displaced by the violence.

UNITED NATIONS/DUBAI — UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday announced talks between warring Yemeni parties in Geneva on May 28 to end over seven weeks of war, as Iran agreed for international inspections of an aid ship sailing to Yemen.

The moves are aimed at defusing the deepening crisis in the southern Arabian Peninsula, where Saudi-led forces killed at least 15 Houthis in the latest air strikes in a campaign to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and regional Shiite powerhouse Iran are in a tussle over influence in the Middle East, where sectarian tensions are fuelling civil strife in Syria and Iraq that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

"The secretary general is pleased to announce the launch of inclusive consultations starting on 28 May in Geneva to restore momentum towards a Yemeni-led political transition process," the UN statement issued in New York said.

It said the initiative, which would bring together the Yemeni government and other parties, including the Houthis, followed extensive consultations by the secretary general's special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed has visited Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and was due to travel to Iran as he pushes for an end to the fighting that has killed more than 1,800 people since March.

A UN Security Council source said Ban was expected to attend the opening session.

The foreign minister of the exiled Yemeni government based in Saudi Arabia appeared surprised by the announcement and said the Houthis must first disarm and quit cities they seized since last September first.

“We didn’t get an official invitation,” Reyad Yassin Abdulla said by phone. “It’s very short notice. If it happens, it shouldn’t be on May 28,” he added.

But Yemen’s UN Ambassador Khaled Alyemany said all parties, including the Houthis, would attend.

“Of course President Hadi will be represented in Geneva,” he told reporters in New York. “He might be sending Vice President and Prime Minister [Khaled] Bahah, he might be sending somebody else.”

A conference organised by the Yemeni government, which was not attended by the Houthis and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, concluded in Riyadh on Tuesday by calling on the Houthis to drop their weapons and withdraw from the cities they had captured before any talks could begin.

Iranian aid ship inspection

The UN announcement came as Iran announced that the Iranian cargo ship sailing to Yemen with 2,500 tonnes of food and medical supplies would submit to international inspections in Djibouti before continuing on to Yemen’s Hodaida Port, which is under Houthi control.

The move reduces the risk of a potential showdown between the vessel, which had been escorted by Iranian warships, and Saudi-led forces enforcing inspections on vessels entering Yemeni ports to prevent arms supplies from reaching the Houthis.

“We have decided to dock our ship in Djibouti so the United Nations inspection protocol can take place,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

The vessel’s voyage had threatened to escalate the regional confrontation over Yemen, in which 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 dismisses the allegation.

Saudi-led forces have imposed searches on all ships trying to enter Yemen to prevent weapons reaching the Houthis, who control much of the country.

Reuters ship tracking data showed the Iran Shahed positioned southwest of Aden at 1446 GMT on Wednesday.

Abdollahian also said Iran would send an aid flight to Yemen through Djibouti on Thursday, a possible sign that Iran will begin to divert all of its Yemen-bound aid through the hub.

Saudi-led war planes last month bombed the runways of Sanaa and Hodaida airports as it tried to stop an Iranian plane from landing there without permission. Tehran said the plane was delivering humanitarian supplies.

Iran has condemned the air strikes in Yemen and officials in Tehran have previously said they would not let Saudi-led forces inspect the cargo ship.

Sustained bombing

Residents said on Wednesday that overnight, warplanes carried out the most sustained bombardment of Yemen’s capital Sanaa since the offensive started, hitting army bases and weapons depots.

The coalition has been bombing Houthi forces since March 26 in a bid to restore Hadi to power after the Shiite Muslim group forced him to flee the country.

Tribal sources along the Saudi-Yemeni border also said that more than 15 Houthi fighters and at least one Saudi officer were killed in intense clashes along their common border near the Saudi city of Najran.

Planes also bombed a Yemeni army camp in the northern border province of Hajjah. Residents said huge explosions had been heard at the camp, in a sign the strike might have hit missile storage facilities.

PANKISI GORGE, Georgia — One day this April, instead of coming home from school, two teenagers left their valley high in the Caucasus, and went off to war.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a 20-year-old stole her friend's passport to make the same hazardous journey.

From New Zealand, came a former security guard; from Canada, a hockey fan who loved to fish and hunt.

And there have been many, many more: between 16,000 and 17,000, according to one independent Western estimate, men and a small number of women from 90 countries or more who have streamed to Syria and Iraq to wage Muslim holy war for the Daesh.

Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the group's leader, has appealed to Muslims throughout the world to move to lands under its control — to fight, but also to work as administrators, doctors, judges, engineers and scholars, and to marry, put down roots and start families.

"Every person can contribute something to Daesh [Islamic State]," a Canadian enlistee in Daesh, Andre Poulin, says in a videotaped statement that has been used for online recruitment. "You can easily earn yourself a higher station with God almighty for the next life by sacrificing just a small bit of this worldly life."

The contingent of foreigners who have taken up arms on behalf of Daesh during the past 3 1/2 years is more than twice as big as the French Foreign Legion. The conflict in Syria and Iraq has now drawn more volunteer fighters than past Islamist causes in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia — and an estimated eight out of 10 enlistees have joined Daesh.

They have been there for defeats and victories. Following major losses in both Syria and Iraq, the fighters of Daesh appear to have gotten a second wind in recent days, capturing Ramadi, capital of Iraq's largest Sunni province, and advancing in central Syria to the outskirts of the ancient city of Palmyra, famous for its 2,000-year-old ruins.

There are battle-hardened Bosnians and Chechens, prized for their experience and elan under fire. There are religious zealots untested in combat but eager to die for their faith.

They include around 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, a think tank at King’s College London.

Ten to 15 per cent of the enlistees are believed to have died in action. Hundreds of others have survived and gone home; their governments now worry about the consequences.

“We all share the concern that fighters will attempt to return to their home countries or regions, and look to participate in or support terrorism and the radicalisation to violence,” Nicholas J. Rasmussen, director of the US government’s National Counterterrorism Centre, told a Senate hearing earlier this year.

“Just like Osama Bin Laden started his career in international terrorism as a foreign fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the next generation of Osama Bin Laden’s are currently starting theirs in Syria and Iraq,” ICSR director Peter Neumann told a White House summit on combating extremist violence in February.

One problem in choking off the flow of recruits has been the variety of their profiles and motives.

Associated Press reporters on five continents tracked some of those who have left to join Daesh, and found people born into the Islamic faith as well as converts, adventurers, educated professionals and people struggling to cope with disappointing lives.

“There is no typical profile,” according to a study by German security authorities, obtained by AP.

The study reported that among people leaving that country for Syria out of “Islamic extremist motives”, 65 per cent were believed to have prior criminal records. They ranged in age between 15 and 63. Sixty-one per cent were German-born, and there were nine men for every woman.

In contrast, John G. Horgan, a psychologist who directs the Centre for Terrorism & Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, found some common traits among American recruits or would-be recruits for jihad. Typically, he said, they are in their late teens or early 20s, though a few have been in their mid-30s.

“From a psychological perspective, many of them are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to find their place in the world — who they are, what their purpose is,” Horgan said. “They certainly describe themselves as people who are struggling with conflict. They are trying to reconcile this dual identity of being a Muslim and being a Westerner, or being an American.”

Some are driven by religious zeal to protect the caliphate, or Muslim theocracy, that the Daesh has proclaimed in the one-third of Syrian and Iraqi territory now in its hands; others are thrilled by the chance to join what is tantamount to a secret and forbidden club.

Still others appear to enlist mainly because others do.

“What they have in common is that they are young, they are impressionable and they are hungry for excitement,” Horgan said.

Once recruits arrive in areas held by Daesh, they appear to receive only rudimentary military training — including how to load and fire a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Nonetheless, they have been involved in “some of the most violent forms of attacks” by the group, including suicide bombings and filmed beheadings of foreigners, said William Braniff, executive director for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a multidisciplinary research centre headquartered at the University of Maryland.

Areeb Majeed, 23, from a suburb of Mumbai, India, joined Daesh in May 2014 and fought for six months, killing up to 55 people and taking a gunshot to the chest.

But all was not heroics. He eventually called his parents from Turkey and asked to come home, according to Indian newspapers. Majeed’s chief complaint, officials from India’s National Investigation Agency were quoted as saying, was that the group didn’t pay him, and made him clean toilets and haul water on the battlefield.

Often, though, the foreign combatants use social media to serve as “role models and facilitators for the next volunteers”, Braniff said.

“Before I came here to Syria, I had money, I had a family, I had good friends, it wasn’t like I was some anarchist or somebody who just wants to destroy the world, to kill everybody,” said Poulin, the Canadian Daesh recruiter.

“Put God almighty before your family, put it before yourself, put it before everything. Put Allah before everything,” the bearded and bespectacled transplant from Ontario urges in the video.

Poulin’s jihad ended last August; he was reported killed during an assault on a government-controlled airfield in northern Syria.

But not, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., before he had recruited five others from Toronto to come fight for the Daesh.