Region

CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced ousted president Mohamed Morsi and over 100 others to death Saturday over a mass prison break during the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and later brought Morsi's Islamist movement to power.

In what appears to be the first violent response to the sentence, suspected Islamic militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula gunned down three judges and their driver, who were travelling in a car in the northern Sinai city of Al Arish, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

As is customary in capital punishment cases, Judge Shaaban El Shami referred his death sentence on Morsi and the others to the nation's top Muslim theologian, or mufti, for his nonbinding opinion. Shami set June 2 for the next hearing. Regardless of the mufti's ruling, the sentences can be appealed.

Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, was ousted by the military in July 2013 following days of mass street protests by Egyptians demanding that he be removed because of his divisive policies. Morsi’s successor, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, was the military chief at the time and led the ouster. Sisi ran for president last year and won in a landslide.

Also sentenced to death with Morsi in the prison break case were 105 defendants, most tried and convicted in absentia. They include some 70 Palestinians. Those tried in absentia in Egypt receive automatic retrials once they are detained.

Supporters of Morsi and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood chanted “down, down with military rule” as Al Shami announced the verdict in the courtroom, a converted lecture hall in the national police academy in an eastern Cairo suburb.

Prosecutors alleged that armed members of the Palestinian Hamas group entered Egypt during the 18-day uprising through illegal tunnels running under the Gaza border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Taking advantage of the turmoil, the militants fought their way into several prisons, releasing Morsi, more than 30 other Brotherhood leaders and some 20,000 inmates, prosecutors say. Several prison guards were killed and parts of the stormed prisons were damaged.

Those sentenced to death with Morsi on Saturday include the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, as well as one of the Arab world’s best known Islamic scholars, the Qatar-based Youssef Al Qaradawi.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the sentencing to death of some 70 Palestinians in the prison break case was “regrettable” and “shocking”, adding that “some of those convicted were killed before the Egyptian revolution and others are serving prison terms in Israel”.

Hizbollah and Hamas operatives who had been convicted and sentenced to jail terms over terror-related charges were also broken out of jail in 2011. Hundreds of protesters were killed during the uprising and dozens of police stations across the country were stormed by demonstrators. Pro-government media maintain that the jailbreaks and the attacks on police stations were part of a Brotherhood plot to spread fear and chaos to ensure the fall of Mubarak.

The Brotherhood went on to win every election held in Egypt between 2011 and Morsi’s ouster in July 2013. Its popularity began to slide after Morsi took office in June 2012 and decreed himself above any sort of oversight later that year. Critics increasingly charged him with working for the Brotherhood and its supporters, not all Egyptians. Morsi’s supporters say he was undermined from the beginning by Mubarak-era holdovers in the security forces and other state institutions.

Hamas is the Palestinian chapter of the Brotherhood and its leaders enjoyed close relations with Morsi during his year in office. It has consistently denied meddling in Egypt’s affairs, including participating in the 2011 mass prison break, but relations between the group and the post-Morsi government in Cairo have been tense. Egypt frequently accuses Hamas of being behind some of the attacks staged by Islamic militants in northern Sinai since Morsi’s ouster.

An Islamist insurgency has been simmering in northern Sinai for years, but it intensified after Morsi’s ouster, leading the government to associate it with the Brotherhood. The militants have mostly targeted security and military personnel in Sinai and elsewhere as well as planting small, homemade devices in Cairo and other cities to disrupt life and curtail services, like electricity and transport. Targeting judges, however, is new.

Judge Moataz Khafagi, who presides over the trial of several Muslim Brotherhood leaders on criminal charges, escaped an assassination attempt when an explosive device went off outside his home in a southern Cairo suburb. The blast damaged several cars but caused no casualties.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised Morsi’s death sentence, saying the government was returning to the “old Egypt” by rolling back democracy. He also criticised the West, saying it had failed to speak out against Sisi or death sentences being handed down to Brotherhood leaders. Egypt under Morsi enjoyed close ties with Turkey. Sisi’s government has often accuses Ankara of meddling in Egypt’s affairs.

Amr Darrag, a Cabinet minister under Morsi and a co-founder of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, condemned Saturday’s verdicts.

“Today will be remembered as one of the darkest days in Egypt’s history,” Darrag said in a statement. But “there is something far larger at stake — the rights of millions of Egyptians to live freely and without fear, and to choose their leaders through the ballot box.”

An Islamist opposition alliance led by the Brotherhood meanwhile called on Egyptians to step up the campaign to topple the “gang of treachery and usurpers” in the run-up to July 3, the second anniversary of Morsi’s removal from power.

Amnesty International also denounced the verdicts, which came after several mass death sentences criticised by human rights activists and Western nations. It called for a retrial, asserting that all evidence gathered from Morsi and other defendants was inadmissible because of what it called their illegal detention prior to trial.

“The death penalty has become the favorite tool for the Egyptian authorities to purge the political opposition,” Amnesty said.

Morsi already is serving a 20-year sentence following his conviction on April 21 on charges linked to the killing of protesters outside a Cairo presidential palace in December 2012.

The former president escaped a death sentence in a separate case before Shami related to allegations that Morsi, several of his aides and leaders of the Brotherhood allegedly passed state secrets to foreign groups, including Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah, during his year in office. A total of 16 senior Brotherhood leaders and aides were sentenced to death by Shami in that case. The 16 include one woman, Sondos Assem, a presidential press aide who is now a fugitive.

A verdict on Morsi’s role in that case will be announced in the June 2 hearing.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's military has dispatched reinforcements to help its battered forces in Ramadi, a city now largely held by the Deash terror group after its militants swept across it the day before, an Iraqi military spokesman said Saturday.

The spokesman of the Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim, told Iraqi state television that the US-led coalition was supporting Iraqi troops with "painful" air strikes since late Friday.

Ibrahim didn't give details on the ongoing battles, but described the situation on the ground as "positive" and vowed that the Daesh group would be pushed out of the city "in the coming hours”.

On Friday, the militants swept through Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, launching a coordinated offensive included three near-simultaneous suicide car bombs. The militants seized the main government headquarters and other key parts of the city.

Local officials said dozens of security forces and civilians were killed, mainly the families of the troops, including 10 police officers and some 30 tribal fighters allied with Iraqi forces.

In a sign of how the latest advance is worrying Washington, US Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi on Friday, promising the delivery of heavy weapons, including AT-4 shoulder-held rockets to counter suicide car bombs, according to a US Embassy statement.

The statement said both leaders agreed on the "importance and urgency of mobilising tribal fighters working in coordination with Iraqi security forces to counter Daesh and to ensure unity of effort among all of Iraq's communities," using a different acronym for the group.

Backed by US-led air strikes, Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters have made gains against the Daesh group, including capturing the northern city of Tikrit. But progress has been slow in Anbar, a vast Sunni province where anger at the Shiite-led government runs deep and where US forces struggled for years to beat back a potent insurgency. American soldiers fought some of their bloodiest battles since Vietnam on the streets of Fallujah and Ramadi.

BEIRUT — In a rare ground attack deep into Syria, US Army commandos killed a man described as the Daesh's head of oil operations, captured his wife and rescued a woman whom American officials said was enslaved.

A team of Delta Force commandos slipped across the border from Iraq under cover of darkness Saturday aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Osprey aircraft, according to a US defence official knowledgeable about details of the raid. The official was not authorised to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Americans intended to capture a militant identified by US officials as Abu Sayyaf. When they arrived at his location, a multi-storey building, they met stiff resistance, the US official said, and a firefight ensued, resulting in bullet-hole damage to the US aircraft.

Abu Sayyaf was killed, along with an estimated dozen of Daesh fighters, US officials said. No American was killed or wounded.

Before the sun had risen, the commandos flew back to Iraq where Abu Sayyaf's wife, Umm Sayyaf, was being questioned in US custody, officials said.

Abu Sayyaf was described by one official as the Daesh “emir of oil and gas”, although he also was targeted for his known association with the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.

US officials said it was likely, given Abu Sayyaf’s position, that he knew about more than just the financial side of the group’s operations.

The US official said his removal probably has temporarily halted Daesh oil-revenue operations, critical to the group’s ability to carry out military operations in Syria and Iraq and to govern the population centers it controls.

But US Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, cautioned against exaggerating the long-term gain from killing Abu Sayyaf.

He said Daesh, like Al Qaeda, “has proven adept at replacing its commanders and we will need to keep up the pressure on its leadership and financing”.

A US Treasury official told Congress in October that Daesh militants were earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales alone, and getting several million dollars a month from wealthy donors, extortion rackets and other criminal activities, such as robbing banks. Kidnappings were another large source of cash.

US air strikes in Syria since September have frequently targeted Daesh oil-collection facilities in an effort to undermine the group’s finances.

Daesh controls much of northern and eastern Syria as well as northern and western Iraq, despite months of US and coalition airstrikes and efforts by the US-backed Iraqi army to retake territory. Daesh holds most of the oil fields in Syria and has declared a caliphate governed by a harsh version of Islamic law.

Also Saturday, activists said Daesh fighters pushed into the Syrian town of Palmyra, home to famed 2,000-year-old ruins.

The US Army raid occurred one day after the US-led campaign to roll back Daesh’s gains in Iraq suffered a significant setback in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. Daesh fighters are reported to have captured a key government building in Ramadi and have established control over a substantial portion of the city, officials have said.

US House Speaker John Boehner, in a written statement Saturday praising the raid into Syria, said he was “gravely concerned” by the Daesh assault on Ramadi and that it threatened the stability and sovereignty of Iraq.

Daesh has made major inroads at Iraq’s Beiji oil refinery complex in recent days. Reports vary, but US officials have said Daesh is largely in control of the refinery, as well as the nearby town of Beiji. It’s on the main route from Baghdad to Mosul, the main Daesh stronghold in northern Iraq.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter in Washington announced the raid, followed soon after by word from the White House.

Bernadette Meehan, spokeswoman for the US National Security Council, said in a statement that the woman who was freed, a Yazidi, “appears to have been held as a slave” by Abu Sayyaf and his wife. She said the US intends to return her to her family.

Daesh militants captured hundreds of members of the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq during their rampage across the country last summer.

A senior Obama administration official said Umm Sayyaf was being debriefed at an undisclosed location in Iraq to obtain intelligence about Daesh operations. The official was not authorised to discuss details of the operation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The raid was the first known US ground operation targeting Daesh militants in Syria. A US-led coalition has been striking the extremists from the air for months, but the only previous time American troops set foot on the ground in Syria was in an unsuccessful commando mission to recover hostages last summer.

Syrian state TV earlier reported that Syrian government forces killed at least 40 Daesh fighters, including a senior commander in charge of oil fields, in an attack Saturday on the Omar field — where the US raid was said to have taken place. The Syrian report, which appeared as an urgent news bar on state TV, was not repeated by the state news agency. State TV didn’t repeat the urgent news or elaborate on it.

US officials said they had no knowledge of a Syrian raid and that the US did not coordinate its operation with the Syrian government. Meehan said the Syrian government was not informed in advance of the raid. The US has said it is not cooperating with President Bashar Assad’s government in the battle against Daesh.

“We have warned the Assad regime not to interfere with our ongoing efforts against ISIL inside of Syria,” Meehan said, using another acronym for Daesh. “As we have said before, the Assad regime is not and cannot be a partner in the fight against ISIL. In fact, the brutal actions of the regime have aided and abetted the rise of ISIL and other extremists in Syria.”

An NSC statement said President Barack Obama authorised the raid upon the “unanimous recommendation” of his national security team.

The administration clearly is concerned by the resilience of Daesh even as officials publicly express confidence that the extremists cannot sustain their territorial gains and ultimately will be defeated.

Saturday’s raid came as Daesh fighters have advanced in central and northeastern Syria. Activists said Daesh fighters pushed into Palmyra, home to famed 2,000-year-old ruins, after seizing an oil field and taking control of the water company on the outskirts.

Daesh said fighters took full control of Saker Island in the Euphrates River near Deir Al Zour, a provincial capital in eastern Syria split between Daesh and government forces.

DUBAI — Iran will help oppressed people in the region, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday, days after Gulf Arab leaders met US President Barack Obama and expressed concern about Iranian expansionism.

Khamenei also denounced Saudi Arabia for its role leading a coalition of Sunni-ruled Arab states against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, comparing it to the pagans who ruled the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam in the seventh century.

His speech to a meeting of Iranian leaders and diplomats from the Muslim world, reported by the state news agency IRNA, brought the issues of political and religious legitimacy squarely into the struggle between the two regional powers.

“Yemen, Bahrain and Palestine are oppressed, and we protect oppressed people as much as we can,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

“Those people who bring suffering to Yemeni families during sacred months are even worse than the ancient pagans of Mecca,” he said at the event for the holiday of Lailat Al Miraj, when Islam says the Prophet Mohammad visited heaven and met Jesus, Abraham, Moses and other prophets.

Gulf Arab leaders met with Obama on Thursday to express their concern that Iran is trying to expand its influence in the region aggressively, parallel to nuclear negotiations under way with world powers.

The US backs the Saudi-led Sunni coalition waging the military campaign against the Shiite Houthi rebels. Riyadh has accused Tehran of arming the Houthis.

By mentioning Bahrain, Khamenei’s comments will also raise suspicions that Iran plays a role in the small island nation whose Sunni royal family is accused by rights groups of repressing dissent among the majority Shiite population.

Iran denies playing a role in either country, but has consistently criticised the campaign in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s influence in Bahrain, where it sent armed forces to help put down popular protests in 2011.

Gulf shipping

The stand-off has raised concerns for shipping in the Gulf, a transit route for millions of barrels of oil per day. In the past month, Iranian forces have twice tried to seize commercial ships to settle legal disputes.

“Security in the Persian Gulf is in the interests of everyone... If it is insecure, it will be insecure for all,” Khamenei said, indicating Iran’s apparent willingness to cause disruption if attacked.

Tensions have also reached the Gulf of Aden, another crucial choke point for oil shipments, after Iran on Monday dispatched a cargo ship towards Yemen under military escort.

Forces from the Saudi-led coalition have imposed inspections on all vessels entering Yemeni waters, raising the potential for a stand-off with the Iranian flotilla which is due to arrive in the coming days.

DUBAI — US President Barack Obama said on Friday that Washington would help Gulf allies face conventional military aggression but also get them to work more in their own defence against any unconventional menace, such as destabilising Iranian actions in the region.

Speaking to Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television following a rare summit with Gulf Arab leaders he described as “very frank and honest”, the US leader reiterated his reluctance to take unilateral American action overseas.

Obama said Syria’s civil war would “probably not” end before he left office, describing the situation as heartbreaking but adding that Washington could never on its own have brought that conflict to an end.

Many states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are critical of what they see as Obama’s hesitant approach to the war in Syria, where President Bashar Assad is backed by their regional rival Iran.

Obama said he sought to reassure Gulf states anxious over US-led efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, saying Tehran would have to “re-earn the trust of the international community” by accepting close monitoring of its nuclear work.

“The alternative is not to have any idea what is taking place inside of Iran and that is, I think, a much more dangerous situation for everyone in the region,” he said.

Iran concerns

The United States and five other world powers are seeking to reach a final deal with Iran on curbing its nuclear programme by a June 30 deadline. The GCC agreed in a joint communique that a “comprehensive, verifiable” accord with Tehran would be in their interests.

Obama said the US military would help Gulf Arab states defend against any conventional armed threat, such as Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. When it came to non-traditional threats, Washington would work with Gulf Arab states to improve their own special forces, intelligence and capability to stop weapons smuggling.

He suggested concerns about non-traditional threats centred on Iran. “When we talk about the need for us to have joint capabilities to address destabilising activities and conflicts in the region, some of those are directly related to the concerns surrounding Iran,” he said.

Obama rebuffed a suggestion by the interviewer that Syria could be his “Rwanda”, a reference to the 1994 genocide that came to haunt the then administration of President Bill Clinton.

“You have a civil war in a country that arises out of a long standing grievance: It was not something triggered by the United States, it was not something that could have been stopped by the United States,” Obama said of Syria’s conflict.

Frank

“One of the things that I said in the summit... is all too often in the Middle East region, people attribute everything to the United States,” he said, adding he was “very frank with the GCC leaders... The United States ultimately can only work through Arab countries who are also working on their own behalf to deal with these issues”.

He said the United States had not launched missiles at Assad in 2013 because his government had given up its stocks of chemical weapons.

In 2013, the United States threatened military intervention against Syria’s government after sarin gas attacks in August of that year killed hundreds of residents in Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Damascus has denied using sarin or any chemical weapons in battle during Syria’s ongoing civil war.

On May 8 this year, diplomatic sources told Reuters that international inspectors had found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Diplomats and analysts said the finding of VX and sarin supported assertions by Western governments that Assad had withheld some of his stockpile, or had not disclosed the full extent of Syria’s chemical capability or arsenal to the OPCW.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis met Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on Saturday, calling him “an angel of peace”, days after the Vatican said it was preparing to sign its first accord with Palestine to the anger of Israel.

Abbas met the pontiff for about 20 minutes at a private audience, which came a day before the head of the Roman Catholic Church was due to canonise two Palestinian nuns, who will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

The Vatican said in a statement the Pope and Abbas discussed the peace process with Israel and that “the hope was expressed that direct negotiations between the parties be resumed in order to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict”.

“To this end the wish was reiterated that, with the support of the international community, Israelis and Palestinians may take with determination courageous decisions to promote peace,” it said.

The two men also touched on other conflicts in the Middle East and the need to combat “terrorism”, it added.

They exchanged gifts with the Pope giving Abbas a medal with a figure of the angel of peace “which destroys the evil spirit of war”.

“I thought of you because you are an angel of peace,” he told Abbas.

On Wednesday, the Vatican announced that it was preparing to sign its first treaty with Palestine, two years after officially recognising it as a state.

A bilateral commission is putting the final touches to the agreement, on the Catholic Church’s life and activities in Palestine.

The agreement would “be signed in the near future”, the Vatican statement said.

The news of the treaty drew ire from Israel earlier this week.

“Israel heard with disappointment the decision of the Holy See to agree a final formulation of an agreement with the Palestinians including the use of the term ‘Palestinian State’,” said an Israeli foreign ministry official.

“Such a development does not further the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct bilateral negotiations. Israel will study the agreement and consider its next step.”

The agreement, 15 years in the making, expresses the Vatican’s “hope for a solution to the Palestinian question and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians according to the Two-State Solution,” Antoine Camilleri, the Vatican’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview earlier this week.

In an interview with the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper, Camilleri said he hoped “the accord could, even in an indirect way, help the Palestinians in the establishment and recognition of an independent, sovereign and democratic State of Palestine”.

The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 countries to have recognised Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

First Palestinian saints

Abbas’ meeting with the Pope came a day before two nuns who lived in Ottoman Palestine during the 19th century will be made saints at a Vatican ceremony.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas of Jerusalem and Mariam Bawardy of Galilee will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

SANAA — Fierce clashes between rebels and pro-government forces killed dozens across south Yemen on Saturday, threatening to derail a humanitarian ceasefire drawn up to bring vital aid to the war-wracked country.

The five-day truce initiated by a Saudi-led coalition that has bombarded the Iran-backed rebels for more than six weeks expires late Sunday, and Riyadh has already warned it was “ready to act” against any ceasefire violations.

In the latest violence, at least 12 civilians were killed and 51 wounded when the Shiite Houthi rebels shelled several neighbourhoods in Yemen’s third city Taez, military and local sources said.

The clashes came after overnight fighting killed 26 rebels and militiamen loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh as well as 14 pro-government forces, military sources said.

The United Nations has expressed deep concern about the civilian death toll from the Saudi-led bombing as well as the humanitarian impact of an air and sea blockade imposed by the coalition.

It says more than 1,500 people have died in the conflict since late March.

Some aid has trickled into Yemen since the pause in fighting, but residents of areas where clashes persist complain they remain without the most basic supplies.

The fighting in Taez overnight forced many to flee to the countryside.

“Humanitarian aid hasn’t reached Taez, where we haven’t received fuel, food or medical equipment,” said a government official in the city.

However, UN refugee agency the UNHCR sent two planes loaded with aid to Sanaa on Saturday, airport sources said, while Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical crews also flew in to the capital.

The United Nations has called for the Saudi-led coalition to simplify import inspections after warning that supplies were still blocked. 

UN coordinator Johannes van der Klaauw warned that the inspections, introduced under an arms embargo slapped on the Houthi rebels last month, were hampering aid deliveries.

Clashes despite truce

“The arms embargo and its inspection regime results in commercial goods, be it by air or by ship, no longer reaching the country,” he said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir has accused the Houthis of repeatedly violating ceasefire terms, but the rebels have pledged to honour the truce.

“We are hoping that the Houthis will abide by the terms of the ceasefire and stop their aggressive behaviour if they want the ceasefire to hold,” he said.

But clashes rocked Aden on Saturday, an AFP correspondent said.

Heavy artillery, including tank shells, hit the city’s northern sector where rebels and troops loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi continue to fight over territory, including a main road into central Aden, military sources said.

West Aden was also hit by shelling, they added.

And in southern Daleh province, five Houthis were killed overnight when their convoy was ambushed, an official said.

The chaos in Yemen has been exploited by armed groups, including the country’s branch of Al Qaeda, which is viewed by the United States as the world’s most dangerous.

A local official said 36 Yemen soldiers were kidnapped by suspected Al Qaeda members overnight in the southern port of Mukalla.

The extremist group has controlled Mukalla, the capital of Yemen’s vast desert Hadramawt province, since April and has for months claimed deadly attacks against Yemen’s government-controlled armed forces.

The official said Al Qaeda seized the soldiers late Friday after accusing them of supporting the Houthis.

In nearby Shabwa province, armed tribesmen took control of an oil-producing region after two days of clashes with rebel fighters, tribal and military sources said.

A conference on Sunday in Riyadh is set to bring rival Yemeni factions around the table in a bid to end the crisis, but the Houthis, who want talks to be held in Yemen, are boycotting the meeting.

Saudi Arabia has vowed to continue military action in Yemen until Hadi’s government is restored.

BEIRUT — Hizbollah’s chief said Saturday his Shiite movement had expelled Syrian opposition fighters from most of Syria’s Qalamun region bordering Lebanon but the battle was not over. 

Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised speech, said the battle in the mountainous area was “ongoing in terms of time and place,” but that Hizbollah had dealt “resounding defeats” to rebels there.

Hizbollah and the Syrian regime have “kicked out the armed groups from the battlefield, retaking control of 300 kilometres of territory”, Nasrallah said. 

He dismissed reports that Hizbollah had lost dozens of fighters in the battle, saying 13 had been killed. 

The Qalamun region straddles the Syria-Lebanon border and was a stronghold of rebel forces until a major operation by Syrian regime troops backed by Hizbollah fighters last year.

While most of the region was recaptured, opposition militants and jihadists remain entrenched in the area along the porous and ill-defined border.

From there, jihadists have launched attacks inside Lebanon, including in August 2014 when fighters from Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front and the Daesh group briefly overran the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal.

As they withdrew from Arsal, the groups took several dozen Lebanese security forces with them as hostages and remained hidden in the town’s outskirts.

“As long as the armed groups are present in Arsal’s outskirts and in the remaining parts of Qalamun... we cannot talk about full security,” Nasrallah said.

He said Hizbollah was fighting “from hill to hill, from valley to valley” to push back armed groups and that Lebanese border villages were safer as a result.

CANNES, France — Iran has significantly stepped up its presence at the cinema market of the Cannes Film Festival this year as Tehran opens up to the world ahead of a possible suspension of Western sanctions.

For the first time since 2009 Iran’s government has splurged tens of thousands of euros (dollars) to rent a stand-alone pavilion on the glittering port of the French Riviera town, a culture ministry official manning it told AFP.

“It’s the first time in six years” Iran has had such a tent-office flying its national flag and promoting national cinema production, said the ministry’s international affairs director, Arash Amini.

“Under the new government, we thought we should open the doors and improve our artistic, cultural relations with other cultures, other countries. That’s our overall policy,” he said.

The step was another sign of efforts by Iran’s relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani to do away with the more isolationist stances of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran and world powers have been negotiating a deal that would see the Islamic state curb its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from the Western sanctions that have crippled its economy. 

An interim accord has brought a small easing in the strictures, but a broader suspension will only happen if a full agreement is struck by a June 30 deadline.

Under Ahmadinejad, Iran whittled down its Cannes presence to a bare-bones stand tucked away inside a crowded, labyrinthine market area, despite movie export successes such as 2011’s Oscar-winning “A Separation”. 

That Cannes market stand was still running this year, with three women wearing hijabs (Islamic headscarves) behind the counter. 

But it was Amini who was handling from the seaside pavilion the high-level business of selling Iranian movies and checking out other films for Iranian film festivals.

He said Asian interest was strong in Iranian cinema, especially China wanting its sensitive family dramas.

Amini said the sanctions had little effect on Iran movie sector, but predicted the current lessening of some sanctions “will improve things a bit for transferring money”.

If a full nuclear/sanctions deal were struck in June, he said, “that would surely improve things. We hope that things will become a lot easier.”

TRIPOLI — Shelling of residential areas of Libya’s second city Benghazi killed at least eight children this week, the United Nations said, warning that such attacks may amount to war crimes.

The UNSMIL mission to Libya, in a statement posted on its website, did not specify exactly when or where the children were killed nor indicate who may have been behind the deadly attacks.

It condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the targeting of residential areas of Libyan cities that also included Gharyan, south of Tripoli, and Zawiya to the west of the capital.

UN envoy “Bernardino Leon strongly deplores the death of at least eight children and the injury of four more, as a result of the shelling of residential areas of Benghazi on two occasions this week,” said the UNSMIL statement issued late Friday.

“The artillery shelling of residential neighbourhoods in the cities of Gharyan and Zawiya are also a tragic reminder of the heavy toll borne by the Libyan people in this conflict.”

“UNSMIL reminds all parties that attacks against civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law and can constitute war crimes.”

Libya’s internationally recognised government said on its Facebook page that seven children and one man were killed in shelling that hit residential areas of Benghazi on Tuesday night.

The government, which is based in the east of the country, had already announced on Facebook on Wednesday that four other children from the same family were killed the day before in shelling of Benghazi.

It was unclear from the statement if these four children were the same that the UN mission said had been wounded.

Libya plunged into lawlessness after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Muammar Qadhafi, with armed groups battling for control of the North African country’s oil wealth and cities.

The chaos has been further compounded with the country politically divided, with rival governments and parliaments vying for power and the Daesh group also spreading its influence.