Region

BEIRUT — Insurgents in Syria captured the last military base and several small villages in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, marking the latest collapse of government troops in the region now almost entirely in opposition hands, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said factions — including Al Qaeda's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, and the ultraconservative Ahrar Al Sham — captured Mastoumeh Base after days of fighting. It said government forces left the base and withdrew to the nearby town of Ariha.

The Local Coordination Committees said the Islamic militants targeted the government forces as they were retreating, heading towards Ariha.

In an implicit acknowledgement of defeat, state-run Syrian TV said army units in Mastoumeh Base were moving to reinforce defences in Ariha further south. Ariha is one of the last government holdouts to remain in Idlib.

Government troops withdrew from the provincial capital of Idlib after it fell to opposition fighters in March, followed by the strategic town of Jisr Al Shughour and Qarmeed military base days later.

The Idlib offensive is being led by a unified command known as Jaysh Al Fateh, or Conquest Army, and aided by a new strategic alliance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia to strengthen insurgents fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

Assad recently acknowledged what he said were recent military "setbacks," in the war against insurgents trying to topple him, promising a comeback by his troops in northern Syria.

His forces are also engaged in heavy fighting with Daesh militants trying to advance towards government-held areas in the central town of Palmyra, an ancient heritage site.

Meanwhile, Assad received support on Tuesday from his top ally, Iran. State-run news agency SANA said Iran is extending a credit line to make up for market needs and reported that the two countries have signed several agreements in the fields of electricity, industry, oil and investment.

The new credit was announced during a visit to Damascus by Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is believed to have supplied his government with billions of dollars since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011. Tehran extended a $1 billion credit line to Syria to help support the local currency in June 2013.

The new credit — it was not clear how much — comes as the Syrian pound's depreciation has accelerated.

Velayati, who met with Assad on Tuesday, promised continued Iranian support for Syria with everything necessary to boost the Syrian people's "resistance in defending their homeland and confronting terrorism" and its sponsors. Assad's government refers to those trying to topple him as "terrorists”.

BEIRUT — The mother of an American journalist missing in Syria for nearly three years pleaded on Tuesday for information about him, saying she believes that he is still alive.

Austin Tice, of Houston, Texas, disappeared in August 2012 while covering Syria’s civil war. A video released a month later showed the journalist blindfolded and held by armed men, saying “Oh, Jesus”. He has not been heard from since.

“I am here asking for information and for help to find my son and bring him safely home,” Debra Tice said at a news conference in Beirut marking more than 1,000 days since his disappearance. “We know Austin is not being held by any part of the opposition. Still, after all these 1,009 days, we do not know where he is nor who is holding him.”

“Someone possibly near this place knows something about my son and his whereabouts,” she said. She delivered her statement south of Beirut, near a main stronghold of Lebanon’s Hizbollah  movement. The armed Shiite group has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to battle alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops.

“Are the holders of my son ready to meet face-to-face with one individual alone and let him meet with my son? A friend of the family and known by some Shiite leaders in Lebanon and beyond?” she said.

Christophe Deloire, director-general of Reporters Without Borders, meanwhile urged the US government to have more “periodic direct contacts” with Syrian authorities over Tice.

“The Syrian government denies holding Austin, but we think it can help us bring him back safe and sound,” Deloire said.

Tice said “we have every reason to believe Austin is alive. As recently as a few weeks ago and a number of times over the past 33 months credible sources have told us Austin is alive”.

“We are grateful to his captors for keeping him well and safe. Can my son be allowed these days to communicate with me by phone while I am in Beirut?” Tice asked.

According to the family, Austin is believed not to be held by the Daesh group, which has beheaded two American journalists and an aid worker over the past year.

Tice said that for more than two years “we have been urging our government to directly engage with the Syrian government to find our son and secure his release”.

The family’s request is based on “the fact that Austin went missing in Syria and the sovereign government should have the resources to search for him and to persuade his captors to release him”, she added. She also said that the United States and Syria are “communicating directly but more is needed. Communication must be regular and consistent”.

Last week, National Security Council Spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the United States government will continue “to work tirelessly” to bring Austin to his parents. Meehan added that Washington greatly appreciate the efforts of the Czech government, which acts as the US protecting power in Syria, “on behalf of our citizens, including Austin”.

“Because Austin is an American and because he is alive in Syria, we implore both governments to act on this commitment until we have the only measure as success, Austin’s safe release,” she said.

“I long to hold my son in my arms. I want my family to be whole again.”

WASHINGTON — Iraqi troops abandoned dozens of US military vehicles, including tanks, armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Daesh fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armoured personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees. He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not because they had not been moved for months.

This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year, left behind US-supplied military equipment, prompting the US to destroy them in subsequent air strikes against Daesh forces.

Asked whether the Iraqis should have destroyed the vehicles before abandoning the city in order to keep them from enhancing Daesh’s army, Warren said: “Certainly preferable if they had been destroyed; in this case they were not.”

Warren also said that while the US is confident that Ramadi will be retaken by Iraq, “it will be difficult”.

The fall of Ramadi has prompted some to question the viability of the Obama administration’s approach in Iraq, which is a blend of retraining and rebuilding the Iraqi army, prodding Baghdad to reconcile with the nation’s Sunnis, and bombing Daesh targets from the air without committing American ground combat troops.

“The president’s plan isn’t working. It’s time for him to come up with overarching strategy to defeat the ongoing terrorist threat,” House Speaker John Boehner said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama has always been open to suggestions for improving the US approach in Iraq.

“It’s something that he’s talking about with his national security team just about every day, including today,” Earnest said.

Derek Harvey, a retired army colonel and former Defence Intelligence Agency officer who served multiple tours in Iraq, says that while the extremist group has many problems and weaknesses, it is “not losing” in the face of ineffective Sunni Arab opposition.

“They are adaptive and they remain well armed and well resourced,” Harvey said of the militants. “The different lines of operation by the US coalition remain disjointed, poorly resourced and lack an effective operational framework, in my view.”

One alternative for the Obama administration would be a containment strategy — trying to fence in the conflict rather than push the Daesh group out of Iraq. That might include a combination of air strikes and US special operations raids to limit the group’s reach. In fact, a Delta Force raid in Syria on Friday killed a Daesh leader known as Abu Sayyaf who US officials said oversaw the group’s oil and gas operations, a major source of funding.

Officials have said containment might become an option but is not under active discussion now.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top US military officer, issued a written statement Monday that suggested Ramadi will trigger no change in the US approach.

“Setbacks are regrettable but not uncommon in warfare,” Dempsey said. “Much effort will now be required to reclaim the city.”

It seems highly unlikely that Obama would take the more dramatic route of sending ground combat forces into Iraq to rescue the situation in Ramadi or elsewhere. A White House spokesman, Eric Shultz, said Monday the US will continue its support through air strikes, advisers and trainers.

The administration has said repeatedly that it does not believe Iraq can be stabilised for the long term unless Iraqis do the ground fighting.

SANAA — The United Nations said more than half a million people have been displaced in the conflict in Yemen, whose capital was bombarded Tuesday for the first time since a ceasefire ended.

Hopes faded for a political breakthrough in the two-month conflict as a UN-sponsored peace conference originally set for next week was put on hold due to the resumption of fighting.

A Saudi-led coalition has waged an air war on Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March in an effort to restore the authority of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled to Riyadh.

The UN, citing Yemen’s health services, said that as of May 15, some 1,850 people had been killed and 7,394 wounded in the violence in Yemen. Another 545,000 had been displaced, up from 450,000 announced on Friday.

The UN refugee agency said its assessments on the ground during the five-day ceasefire had “exposed enormous difficulties for thousands of civilians displaced by conflict”.

The World Food Programme said while the pause was “not long enough to reach all those in need”, it had managed to deliver food to 400,000 people, just over half the 738,000 it had aimed to help.

After the ceasefire expired at the weekend, the Saudi-led coalition resumed its bombing early Monday with raids on second city Aden, accusing the rebels of violating the truce.

“They did not respect the humanitarian pause. That’s why we do what is necessary to be done,” spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Al Assiri told AFP.

Tuesday’s raids on the capital hit the presidential palace complex and several bases of troops loyal to former autocratic president Ali Abdullah Saleh, allied with the Houthi rebels.

Witnesses said the targets included the Republican Guard missile brigade base in Fajj Attan, south Sanaa, where strikes last month set off a chain of explosions that killed 38 civilians.

An arms depot in Mount Noqum, on Sanaa’s eastern outskirts was also targeted, as well as a house of Saleh in his Sanhan hometown, south of the capital, witnesses said.

The coalition also hit air defence and coastguard bases in Hudeida province, as well as targets in the central provinces of Taez and Ibb, and in Daleh and Aden in the south, they said.

UN talks postponed

A three-day conference in Riyadh boycotted by the rebels wrapped up with the participants publicly backing Hadi and calling for safe zones allowing his government to resume its duties.

It came as a planned, UN-brokered meeting of Yemeni political groups in Geneva was suspended indefinitely.

“Part of the problem is that the fighting has once more resumed,” said UN spokesman Farhan Haq. 

“We want the fighting decisively stopped and then we can get about to organise and invite people to the conference.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to “all parties to create the conditions leading to a permanent ceasefire”.

A US State Department spokesman said dialogue would ultimately be “the only solution to the crisis”, calling on the Houthis to “indicate their readiness and their willingness to come back to the table as part of a UN-led process”.

Rebels ‘hijacked’ aid

Iran, a key ally of the Shiite Houthi rebels, called for an end to the “barbaric” Saudi bombing, and said Riyadh was not a suitable location for peace talks.

Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign affairs adviser to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there must be an “end to barbaric Saudi raids that target innocent Yemeni civilians”.

The ceasefire allowed supplies of petrol and food to be delivered to Yemen but anti-Houthi groups accuse the rebels of confiscating the aid.

“The truce has only served the aims of the militia, which has increased its readiness and stocked fuel through aid that arrived in their areas of control,” said a statement from pro-Hadi forces in the central city of Taez.

A coalition spokesman said the rebels had “hijacked” food and fuel aid.

PARIS — Egyptian security forces have stepped up sexual attacks against detainees since the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi, using them as a “cynical political strategy” to crush opposition, a rights group charged Tuesday.

Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, was deposed in July 2013 by then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi after mass protests against his sole year in office.

Since his removal, a relentless government crackdown on dissent — mostly involving Morsi supporters — has left hundreds dead in street clashes and thousands jailed.

Many more have been sentenced to death after mass trials, described by the United Nations as “unprecedented in recent history”.

Morsi himself has been sentenced to death along with dozens of fellow defendants for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

On Tuesday, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights released a report, based on testimonies of victims, activists and witnesses, charging that sexual violence by security forces against detainees has surged since the ouster of Morsi.

“The scale of sexual violence occurring during arrests and in detention, the similarities in the methods used and the general impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators point to a cynical political strategy aimed at stifling civil society and silencing all opposition,” said FIDH President Karim Lahidji.

The report accused the “Egyptian police, National Security Intelligence officers and the military” of abusing detainees with “sexual violence, including rape, sexual assault, rape with objects, electrocution of genitalia, sex-based defamation and blackmail”.

Sex abuse fight ‘hijacked’

It said such violence is widely tolerated by the authorities, with perpetrators, be they state-employed or civilian, rarely having to answer for their crimes.

The report quoted several victims who talked of how security forces assaulted them sexually to force them or their relatives into making false confessions.

One female victim, identified only as A, talked of how police officers tried to rape her to force her husband into making a confession at a police station in the capital’s Nasr City district.

She said the officers “beat me... then they made me enter the room where he was and tried to rape me”.

“My husband begged them to leave me alone, shouting ‘Let her go, I’m going to talk’. They said to him ‘No, speak first and we’ll let her go’. They pulled off my veil and started again; I began screaming.”

“They made me sit with my hands tied and said ‘Go on, we’ll hang her from the door to make him talk’,” she told FIDH.

The report said the testimonies indicate sexual violence is used with the knowledge of agents of the interior ministry and the armed forces.

“While tolerating these crimes, Sisi’s regime has also hijacked the fight against sexual violence as a pretext to tighten state security,” the report said.

“The Egyptian government must immediately put an end to these crimes, committed by actors under their direct authority,” said Amina Bouayach, secretary general of FIDH.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces on Tuesday deployed tanks and artillery around Ramadi to confront Daesh fighters who have captured the city in a major defeat for the Baghdad government and its Western backers.

After Ramadi fell on Sunday, Shiite militiamen allied to the Iraqi army had advanced to a nearby base in preparation for a counterattack on the city, which lies in Anbar province just 110km northwest of Baghdad.

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

Sunni Daesh fighters had set up defensive positions and laid landmines, witnesses said. As the group tightened its grip on the city, Islamists went from house to house in search of members of the police and armed forces and said they would set up courts based on Islamic Sharia law.

They released about 100 prisoners from the counter-terrorism detention centre in the city.

Saed Hammad Al Dulaimi, 37, a school teacher who is still in the city, said: “Daesh used loudspeakers urging people who have relatives in prison to gather at the main mosque in the city centre to pick them up. I saw men rushing to the mosque to receive their prisoners.”

The move could prove popular with residents who have complained that people are often subject to arbitrary detention.

Sami Abed Saheb, 37, a Ramadi restaurant owner, said Daesh found 30 women and 71 men in the detention centre. They had been shot in the feet to prevent them escaping when their captors fled.

Witnesses said the black flag of Daesh was now flying over the main mosque, government offices and other prominent buildings in Ramadi.

Jasim Mohammed, 49, who owns a women’s clothing shop, said a Daesh member had told him he must now sell only traditional Islamic garments.

“I had to remove the mannequins and replace them with other means of displaying the clothes. He told me that I shouldn’t sell underwear because it’s forbidden,” he said.

Daesh had also promised that food, medicine and doctors would soon be available.

Dulaimi said Daesh fighters were using cranes to lift blast walls from the streets and bulldozers to shovel away sand barriers built by security forces before they fled.

“I think they [Daesh] are trying to win the sympathy of people in Ramadi and give them moments of peace and freedom,” he said.

Sectarian hostility

The decision by Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, who is a Shiite, to send in the militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation, to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.

The Abadi government had pledged to equip and train pro-government Sunni tribes with a view to replicating the model applied during the “surge” campaign of 2006-07, when US Marines turned the tide against Al Qaeda fighters — forerunners of Daesh — by arming and paying local tribes in a movement known as the Anbar Awakening.

But a repeat will be more difficult. Sunni tribal leaders complain that the government was not serious about arming them again, and say they received only token support.

There are fears that weapons provided to Sunni tribes could end up with Daesh. Daesh has also worked to prevent a new Awakening movement by killing sheikhs and weakening the tribes.

Iraqi ministers on Tuesday stressed the need to arm and train police and tribal fighters. Abadi called for national unity in the battle to defend Iraq.

A spokesman for Iraqi military operations, Saad Maan, said the armed forces controlled areas between Ramadi and the Habbaniya military base about 30km away where the militia fighters are waiting.

“Security forces are reinforcing their positions and setting three defensive lines around Ramadi to repel any attempts by terrorists to launch further attacks,” Maan said.

“All these three defensive lines will become offensive launch pads once we determine the zero hour to liberate Ramadi.”

The International Organization for Migration said 40,000 people had been forced to flee Ramadi in the past four days.

About 500 people were killed in the fighting for Ramadi in recent days, local officials said.

Daesh gains in Ramadi mean it will take longer for Iraqi forces to move against them in Mosul, where militants celebrated victory in Anbar by firing shots into the air, sounding car horns and playing Islamic anthems, residents said.

SANAA, Yemen — Saudi-led air strikes targeting Yemen's Shiite rebels resumed on Monday and fierce clashes were underway across the impoverished country after a five-day truce expired, as one-sided talks boycotted by the rebels offered little hope of ending the conflict.

As thousands of rebel supporters streamed into the streets of Sanaa, the capital, to protest the coalition air strikes, fighting raged in the southern and western cities of Taiz, Dhale and Aden. Air strikes meanwhile targeted the rebels, known as Houthis, in the northern province of Saada, the group's heartland, as well as Aden.

The cease-fire had been repeatedly violated, with the Houthis, and Saudi-backed forces loyal to exiled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi trading blame for the continued violence.

Dozens of politicians and tribal leaders have been holding talks in the Saudi capital to discuss a way out of the crisis, but the rebels boycotted the meeting and Iran, which supports the Houthis, objected to the venue.

The coalition accuses Shiite-majority Iran of arming the Houthi rebels as part of a larger struggle with Sunni Saudi Arabia over regional influence, something the Islamic Republic and the rebels deny.

The Riyadh dialogue is set to conclude Tuesday. The Houthis reject the main aim of the talks — the restoration of Hadi, who fled the country in March in the face of rebel advances — and their location in Saudi Arabia, which since March 26 has been leading an air campaign against the Houthis and allied military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The truce appears to have allowed the Houthis and their allies to deploy more troops to Aden, where there has been heavy fighting for weeks. Hadi had declared a temporary capital in the southern city before he fled. The Houthis captured Sanaa last year.

The Houthis and allied forces took over the southern city of Lawdar last week, which would allow them to funnel forces into Aden from the north. Witnesses said the rebels detained dozens of pro-government militiamen in Lawdar and destroyed their houses. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. In Dhale, another gateway to Aden, pro-government militia commander Ahmed Harmel said fierce clashes raged overnight.

In Taiz, Yemen's third largest city, street battles raged throughout the cease-fire. Medical officials there said more than 41 civilians have been killed and 230 wounded over the past month. They blamed most of the deaths on what they said was random shelling on residential areas by Houthis and allied forces.

Coalition air strikes meanwhile struck rebel positions, artillery pieces and tanks in several neighbourhoods of Aden after the cease-fire expired at 11 pm (2000 GMT) Sunday, Yemeni security officials said. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief reporters.

The Houthis reported continuing air strikes in their northern heartland of Saada near the Saudi border, which has come under heavy bombardment in recent weeks as the rebels have staged cross-border attacks.

From his exile in Riyadh, Yemen's Foreign Minister Riad Yassin told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya network Monday that there are no ongoing talks to renew the humanitarian pause, which he said the Houthis had violated.

Also on Monday, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told reporters during a visit to Beirut that a dialogue on Yemen should be mediated by an international organisation, such as the United Nations, and held in a "neutral country”.

Describing the Saudi-led air strikes as "savage”, Velayati said the kingdom was too deeply involved in the conflict to host peace talks.

"A national dialogue should be held... in a neutral country that has no links to Riyadh or other sides who are part of the conflict," Velayati said.

Yemen's conflict has killed more than 1,400 people — many of them civilians — since March 19, according to the UN The country of some 25 million people has endured shortages of food, water, medicine and electricity as a result of a Saudi-led blockade. Humanitarian organisations had been scrambling to distribute aid before the end of the truce.

BEIRUT — The Daesh jihadist group seized two gas fields Monday northeast of Syria's ancient Palmyra, a day after firing rockets into the city and killing five people, a monitor said.

The Al Hail and Arak gas fields, 40 and 25 kilometres respectively from Palmyra, were vital for the regime's generation of electricity for areas under its control, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Fierce clashes have rocked Palmyra's outskirts since Daesh launched an offensive on May 13 to capture the 2,000-year-old world heritage site nicknamed "the pearl of the desert".

Since then, at least 364 people, including combatants from both sides and 62 civilians, have been killed in the battle for the ancient city.

On Saturday, the jihadists seized most of the city's north, but were pushed out by government troops less than 24 hours later. 

"The military situation is under control in the city, but the clashes are ongoing north and northwest of it," said Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province where Palmyra is located.

"At least five civilians, including two children, were killed Sunday night when Daesh fired rockets on numerous neighbourhoods in Tadmur," the observatory said, using the Arabic name for the city.

"Everyone is holed up at home," Khalil Al Hariri, head of the local museum, told AFP by phone from Palmyra.

"People are afraid of going out."

According to Syrian antiquities director Mamoun Abdulkarim, two rockets on Sunday hit the garden of Palmyra's museum which housed statues, sarcophagi and other well-preserved artefacts, without causing any damage.

"The museum was emptied a few weeks ago, and the main objects were transferred to secret safe spaces," he told AFP.

Nevertheless, "there are still pieces that we could not transport because they are fixed on the wall", Abdulkarim added.

The antiquities director, who had called on the international community to prevent a "catastrophe" at Palmyra, said he remained worried about the "ancient city, especially its sculpted sarcophagi".

Since Saturday, the jihadists have been firmly entrenched 1km from Palmyra's archaeological treasures, including colonnaded alleys and elaborate tombs southwest of the city.

Fears that Daesh would destroy the beautiful artefacts spurred urgent calls from UNESCO for international action.

Northeast of the city, Daesh seized the Al Hail and Arak gas fields after attacking the facilities on Sunday. The jihadists consolidated their control by Monday, with at least 56 regime forces killed in the two-day assault.

Al Hail is the largest gas field in Homs province after the massive Shaer field, which remains under regime control but has been attacked by Daesh before.

The Homs governor confirmed Daesh had attacked the fields, but denied reports they had fallen.

"We cannot say they are in control of these fields, as Daesh is incapable of holding one position for a long time," Barazi said.

In the northwest, rebels and Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front also edged closer to the Al Mastumah military compound, one of the regime's last military bases in Idlib province.

BAGHDAD — Shiite militias converged on Ramadi Monday to try to recapture it from jihadists who dealt the Iraqi government a stinging blow by overrunning the city in a deadly three-day blitz.

The loss of the capital of Iraq’s largest province was Baghdad’s worst military setback since it started clawing back territory from the Daesh group late last year.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi had been reluctant to deploy Shiite militias to Anbar province for fear of alienating its overwhelmingly Sunni Arab population. 

He favoured developing locally recruited forces, a policy that had strong US support.

But militia commanders said Monday Ramadi’s fall had shown the government could not do without the Popular Mobilisation units (Hashed Al Shaabi).

Badr militia chief Hadi Al Ameri, a senior figure in the Hashed who has been critical of the government’s policies in Anbar, went to Habbaniyah Monday to discuss operations.

With the huge numbers and battle experience of the paramilitary groups, a counter-offensive was expected to start before Daesh can build up its defences.

The US-led coalition said it carried out 15 air strikes against Daesh in the Ramadi area in 48 hours.

Various militias announced they had units already in Anbar — including around Fallujah and Habbaniyah — ready to close in on Ramadi.

Massive reinforcements

A spokesman for Ketaeb Hizbollah, a leading Shiite paramilitary group, said it had units ready to join the Ramadi front from three directions.

“Tomorrow, God willing, these reinforcements will continue towards Anbar and Ramadi and the start of operations to cleanse the areas recently captured by Daesh will be announced,” Jaafar Al Husseini told AFP.

Asaib Ahl Al Haq, a group routinely accused of abuses, said it was discussing its deployment with the government.

“When it comes to readiness, we have more than 3,000 fighters waiting for a signal” from Asaib chief Sheikh Qais Al Khazali, spokesman Jawad Al Talabawi said.

The fall of Ramadi, some 100 kilometres west of Baghdad, came when beleaguered security forces pulled out of their last bases on Sunday.

The jihadists used waves of suicide bomb attacks involving cars, trucks and bulldozers to thrust into government-controlled neighbourhoods on Thursday and Friday.

The black Daesh flag was soon flying over the provincial headquarters and, with reinforcements slow to come, thousands of families fled.

Anbar officials said at least 500 people died in three days.

“We’re continuing to monitor reports of tough fighting in Ramadi and the situation remains fluid and contested,” Pentagon spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told AFP late Sunday.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington, Baghdad’s two main foreign partners, also played out during the battle for executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, which the government took back last month.

Abadi met the head of US Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, on Sunday, and on Monday Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan arrived in Baghdad.

Palmyra rocket fire

Hashed involvement was key in the recapture of Tikrit, but analysts had always warned Anbar would be a bigger task.

“Right now we’re dealing with the Sunni heartland... where the Sunni community has not completely rejected IS,” Ayham Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, said.

“It is not necessarily approval of Daesh, it could be fear or hedging, but they are not rising against IS,” he said.

Daesh on Monday released a video of celebrations in Mosul, Iraq’s second city and whose liberation from the jihadists now looks an ever more distant prospect.

In the Syrian half of the “caliphate” Daesh supremo Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi proclaimed last year, jihadist fighters nearly notched up another high-profile victory.

Government forces on Sunday repelled a Daesh advance on the ancient oasis town of Palmyra that had sparked concern that another jewel of the Middle East’s architectural heritage could be destroyed by the jihadists.

“Daesh’s attack was foiled,” provincial governor Talal Barazi said Sunday after troops ousted the jihadists from the northern part of the town which they seized on Saturday.

But the jihadists remained on the outskirts and fired a barrage of rockets into the town late Sunday, killing at least five civilians including two children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian antiquities director Mamoun Abdulkarim said two rockets struck the garden of Palmyra’s museum but caused no damage to its priceless collection of statues, sarcophagi and other artefacts.

UNESCO has urged both sides to spare Palmyra, which it describes as one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world.

On Monday, Daesh seized the Al Hail and Arak gas fields northeast of Palmyra, vital to the regime for generating electricity for areas it controls, the observatory said.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — After dawn prayers in Gaza, a few dozen men descend a metal staircase to gather in the steamy confines of Hamam Al Sumara, a centuries-old bathhouse where residents of the isolated territory find respite and relief.

Stained glass windows in the central dome allow rays of light to pierce the clouds of steam. On the heated marble platforms below, men recline between visits to the steam room or massages.

"I come to this bath for treatment of diseases such as muscle spasms or cramps, getting rid of inflammation," said Shafiq Al Aqqad. He also comes here to celebrate happy occasions, like weddings.

Historic bathhouses like this one can be found across the Middle East, where they preserve a tradition of public bathing that goes back to ancient times. Hamam Al Sumara, Arabic for the Samaritans' Bath, dates back 1,000 years but has been renovated, most recently in the 1990s by the Palestinian Authority.

Gaza City used to boast a half dozen bathhouses, but most were dismantled to make room for the city's rapid expansion in the last century, including after the 1948 war, when some 200,000 Palestinians came to Gaza after fleeing or being expelled from their homes in what is now Israel. Gaza had previously been home to just 60,000 people.

In more recent times, the surviving bathhouse has actually benefited from the conflict. A blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007 has made it virtually impossible for most residents to leave the narrow coastal strip. Civil servants working for the Western-backed Palestinian Authority meanwhile still receive their salaries despite being ordered not to work with Hamas authorities. The result, bathhouse owners say, is that clients have more time on their hands and fewer ways to spend it.

Visitors pay around $5 to enter the bathhouse, with separate times reserved for men and women. Wearing slippers and towels wrapped around their waists, the men begin with a bracing visit to the steam room, before dousing themselves with cold water. Attendants offer full body scrubs with exfoliating gloves, as well as massages and more specific treatments.

"We deal with several cases of pain in the backbone or legs," said Mohammed Masoud, a physical therapist, as he pressed on the shoulders of a client.

The bathers can then soak in a warm pool beneath the dome before retiring to a lounge area for tea or coffee.