Region

DUBAI — Oil-rich United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it was pressing ahead with plans to send the first Arab unmanned probe to Mars by 2021, naming it "Hope".

The probe will leave Earth in 2020 on a mission "designed to complement the science work of other missions and fill important gaps in human knowledge", the Gulf state said in a statement.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE vice-president and ruler of Dubai, said the mission "represents hope for millions of young Arabs looking for a better future".

The probe, the size and weight of a small car, will reach a speed of 126,000 kilometres per hour on the 600-million-kilometre journey, which will take around 200 days, it said.

The spacecraft will orbit Mars until at least 2023 and send back data to be analysed by experts in the UAE and shared with more than 200 institutions worldwide.

"Its unique orbits and instruments will produce entirely new types of data that will enable scientists to build the first truly holistic models of the Martian atmosphere," the statement said.

"These models will help the global Mars science community to unlock more mysteries of the Red Planet, such as why its atmosphere has been decaying into space to the point that it is now too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface," it added.

The UAE government launched in October the plan to send the unmanned probe to Mars by 2021. In July, it said that UAE investments in space technologies had already topped 20 billion dirhams ($5.4 billion, 4.8 billion euros).

The UAE, a seven-emirate federation formed in 1971, will become the ninth country in the world with space programmes to explore the Red Planet, according to the statement.

ZUWARAH, Libya — In their struggle to cope with the surge in illegal migrants bound for Europe, the coastguards in the Libyan port of Zuwarah have just one boat, and even that often breaks down.

Situated 60 kilometres from the Tunisian border, Zuwarah also is the Libyan port nearest to European soil — the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa.

"We have only one boat left over from the old regime, which often breaks down, to monitor the entire coastline of Zuwarah," said Anwar Al Atushi, who heads the area's coastguard.

"Only 15 coastguards work, with their own means, to rescue migrants at sea and bring them to port before handing them over to the security services," the official added.

The coastguards' boat, which can only carry 10 people, is moored in the harbour next to fishing trawlers.

"When the number of migrants is high, we ask permission from the owners of the fishing boats to use them."

As elsewhere along Libya's 1,770-kilometre coastline, the flow of illegal migrants from Zuwarah has skyrocketed amid the turmoil in Libya as two rival governments and a mishmash of militias vie for power.

These shores are less than 300 kilometres from Lampedusa, which now shelters thousands of migrants who have fled conflicts in Africa and the Middle East in an attempt to reach Europe.

The government in Tripoli, which is not recognised by the international community, has launched a public relations campaign to show it needs outside help to handle the influx of would-be migrants.

It has taken journalists on tours of detention centres that it says house 7,000 people stopped as they prepared to set sail across the Mediterranean.

'Primitive methods'

The authorities in Tripoli are eager to show they lack the resources to handle the upsurge that the United Nations says saw 110,000 migrants passing through Libyan territory in 2014.

"We use boats and small Zodiacs [inflatable dinghies] to boost our operations against clandestine migration," said Rida Issa, head of the coastguard service for central Libya.

"But we need another 10 equipped boats" to do the job properly, he added.

Zuwarah is also close to regions that see daily clashes between forces of the recognised government and the Fajr Libya militia alliance that controls Tripoli and most of western Libya.

"Our mission is essentially to protect the city and all security threats," said Mohamed Salem, a member of Zuwarah's security forces.

"We have nothing left over for the fight against illegal migration.”

"We lack detention centres and the finances... Sometimes we pay from our own pockets to feed the migrants we arrest."

Salem pointed out that the country has suddenly found itself in the middle of a crisis that Europe itself is unable to resolve.

In Zuwarah, "we only have one car" for patrols and arrest operations, he said.

"Our methods are very primitive and the government is doing nothing.”

"We need 4x4 utility vehicles, boats, planes and facilities to accommodate those we arrest," said Salem.

Among the equipment needed are "weapons to deal with people smugglers, along with communications and night-vision tools".

The European Union has announced a series of measures, tripling its budget for patrols off Libya and even mooting the idea of military action against smugglers.

But Salem said that "even if all the boats from all the countries in the EU were deployed, they would still fail to stop illegal migration to its shores".

BEIRUT — Syrian regime forces and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hizbollah seized control Thursday of several hilltops in a mountainous area that straddles the Syria-Lebanon border, a monitor said.

Pro-government forces have been battling rebel groups and Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front in the Qalamun region, which lies north of Damascus and runs along the Lebanese border.

A Syrian source on the ground told AFP Syrian troops "and allies" had advanced around Assal Al Ward, a small regime-controlled village near the Lebanese border, and that "dozens of terrorists" were killed.

"Regime forces and Hizbollah seized control of a number of hilltops overlooking Assal Al Ward, after intense aerial shelling and attacks with Iranian-made weapons," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

He stressed that the battles "were being led by Hizbollah, with the participation of the Syrian army, notably the Republican Guard”.

On Tuesday, Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to oust rebels from the Qalamun region saying the situation "needs radical treatment" but without saying when the assault would start.

In April 2014, regime forces backed by Hezbollah took control of most of Qalamun, but hundreds of rebel fighters remain entrenched in the mountainous region.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that "what is taking place is a battle with slow advances, not a big military operation".

A spokesman for Al Nusra told AFP that the Al Qaeda affiliate had not withdrawn from any areas in Qalamun, and dismissed reports about advances by Hezbollah as "false".

But he confirmed that battles were taking place around Assal Al Ward.

Earlier this week, rebels in Qalamun announced the creation of a local branch of the Army of Conquest, a rebel coalition including Al Nusra, which seized Idlib city in Syria's northwest on March 28.

WASHINGTON — With Iran emboldened and the United States seen in retreat, President Barack Obama faces the vexed task of restoring lost trust and influence when he hosts Gulf leaders at Camp David next week.

It is a meeting that Gulf officials privately describe as "a welcome gesture", "thrown together" and "long overdue".

Six Gulf Cooperation Council leaders — including Saudi Arabia's freshly crowned King Salman — visit the White House on May 13, followed the next day by a trip to the bucolic presidential retreat near Washington.

The prestigious invite comes amid deep unease over Washington's nuclear talks with arch-foe Tehran and perceived US disengagement in the region under Obama's administration.

In public, Gulf nations have been broadly supportive of the pending nuclear deal, but in private they fear Washington is making a Faustian bargain.

From Riyadh, Manama or Abu Dhabi revelations two years ago of secret US talks with Tehran were like discovering a partner in a secret liaison with the enemy.

Even when the meetings were revealed, the nuclear talks — due to conclude in June — have continued largely behind closed doors.

"We get a call from [undersecretary of state] Wendy Sherman once in a while," a Gulf diplomat said, "but it's not enough”.

"Two years of mistrust have built up."

There is concern that the White House — always an uneasy ally with undemocratic, conservative Gulf monarchies — wants to reprise the close embrace between the United States and the Shah's pre-revolutionary Iran.

US officials stress there is no broader detente or a de facto blessing of Iran's destabilising support for proxy groups in the region.

They also point to the presence of the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain and a military base and command centre in Qatar as evidence of sustained engagement.

But Gulf states see a change in US actions in everything from a stalled State Department human rights report to Obama's reluctance to enforce his own red line on chemical weapons in Syria.

Meanwhile they look anxiously at Iran's growing influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

"That crescent is really starting to take shape," said another Gulf diplomat.

"In the last two years, if anything we have seen an increase in Iranian activity in the region, we are seeing more arms shipments, more money, more sleeper cells."

'We won't wait for permission' 

Already calculations about US engagement are changing actions on the ground.

"Our Gulf allies aren't waiting for US action anymore, they don't think it's coming soon enough, or strong enough. Or at all," said Lori Plotkin Boghardt, a former CIA analyst now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Officials from the region and beyond point to the Arab-led intervention in Yemen as a harbinger of things to come.

"Yemen shows you that we will not wait for permission anymore," one Gulf official said.

That brings significant problems for Obama, which he will not want to see repeated elsewhere.

His administration has grave misgivings about Saudi Arabia's military action to "degrade" Iranian-backed Houthi militia, which have cut through government forces.

They have pressed Saudi Arabia to ease an imprecise campaign that appears to have had a limited impact beyond destroying missiles that could reach the Saudi homeland, and which may have simply escalated the conflict.

Strikes like those on the airport at Aden — which Gulf officials say was necessary to stop Iranian weapons deliveries — have prompted humanitarian outrage.

Around 1,200 people have been killed.

As an olive branch, Obama could use Camp David to help give Saudi Arabia's new leader — as well as his son and defence minister Mohammed Bin Salman, who has become intertwined in the operation — a path to save face.

US support for a "humanitarian pause" in Saudi military operations, backing for talks leading to a unity government and cleaving wealthy former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh away from the Houthis could all help Saudi Arabia.

Gulf leaders will also come with a wish list of weapons to counter the threat from Iran.

Officials say the visitors will seek advanced US weapons systems including F-35 stealth fighters to help establish an Arab "qualitative military edge" as Iran grows its advanced missile capabilities.

Russia recently agreed to sell Iran the S-300 air defence missile system capable of shooting down fighters currently used by Gulf states.

US backing for Saudi or Emirati nuclear programmes are off the table, but missile defence is not.

But diplomats warn that with existing US military commitments to Israel, Japan, Egypt and Turkey, determining who gets what weapons and when, while maintaining a favorable military balance, will be fraught.

Experts also point out that Arab states face an asymmetric threat, and militarily would probably be better served by strengthening troop numbers and developing more mechanised units rather than gaining more high-tech weaponry which already outguns Iran.

Managing the balance of power at the same time as keeping Gulf allies close and Iran talks on track will mean that for Obama, the Camp David meeting will be anything but a pleasant walk in the woods.

BEIRUT/GENEVA — The United Nations has adopted a cautious approach to the Syria talks it launched this week, avoiding raising expectations that this latest initiative can end a four-year-old conflict which has so far defied all diplomatic efforts to resolve it.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura says he wants to talk to diplomats, activists and political and military leaders to see if there is any new common ground since a roadmap for ending the war was declared in 2012.

Diplomats are sceptical his efforts will come to anything, but agree this year alone much has changed, both on the battlefield and in the relationships between allies and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

"The balance of power has shifted," said one Western diplomat who tracks Syria. "The government sees that they have lost some battles but not the war. But it could still be the beginning of the end, everything is possible."

On the battlefield Sunni Islamist insurgents including Al Qaeda wing Al Nusra Front have made significant gains in recent weeks in the northwestern province of Idlib, edging closer to the government-held heartland of Latakia.

In the southwest, rebels have captured a crossing with Jordan, suggesting new resolve by Arab backers who want Assad to step down. 

But diplomats say Assad’s inner circle remains strong after government defections earlier in the uprising and main allies Iran and Russia are steadfast.

Hardliners including Daesh have advanced at the expense of more mainstream rebels since the last round of Geneva talks in February 2014. US-led forces have been striking the group in Iraq and in Syria since the summer.

De Mistura, whose two predecessors resigned in frustration at the failure to make headway, has already had to drop his first initiative — a proposed freeze to hostilities in the city of Aleppo which he hoped could expand into a wider truce.

He is not calling his consultations “peace talks” or “Geneva 3”, a name that suggests a third attempt at a UN-brokered truce. But some diplomats think that is what his separate, one-on-one discussions are designed to lead into.

Participants invited include the Syrian government, a myriad of opposition groups and non-jihadist armed factions, civil society members, non-governmental organisations, representatives of five major world powers, Iran, bordering countries as well as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The most fertile ground for consensus may be widespread opposition to Daesh terror group, a common foe which has surged through Iraq and Syria.

Western officials say tackling the group is a priority. Thousands of people from across Europe, Africa and the Middle East have travelled to Syria to fight for Daesh. Governments fear they could carry out attacks on home soil.

“I expect a declaration that everybody will fight terrorism and discussions will continue to seek a political compromise. the Western diplomat said, adding that a political solution was unlikely “because the regime does not want it and the opposition is also not able to take it”.

The conflict has killed 220,000 people and displaced millions since 2011, despite earlier diplomatic efforts by de Mistura’s predecessors — Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi.

“It will ultimately be military pressure inside Syria that will determine whether such an initiative has any chance of success,” wrote Charles Lister, visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre.

Realignment of power

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has said there was no point in consultations unless they focused on ending “terrorism”, and Russia’s ambassador in Geneva, Alexey Borodavkin, said he hopes the talks can forge a united front against Daesh.

Borodavkin sees this leading to a political transition although Assad, who was re-elected president last year, has rejected calls for him to step aside.

Iran has not signalled whether it will accept the invitation, another diplomatic source said, and its position may not become clear until it concludes talks on its nuclear programme - negotiations that are set to last as long as de Mistura’s consultations.

Nuclear rapprochement could give momentum to the Syria talks but might exacerbate Shiite-led Iran’s rivalry with Sunni power Saudi Arabia, another Western diplomat who tracks Syria said.

“Saudi Arabia is uneasy about the nuclear talks. Some people are even talking about a major shift between the US and Saudi, a realignment. All of this has an effect on Syria.”

Unlike his predecessors, de Mistura hopes to consult leaders of opposition armed groups, a step seen as important if all sides are to be part of an eventual deal.

However, they may only stop fighting and join a peace process if state backers push them to, some diplomats say - and that means big powers need to agree.

“It is up to the [external] players,” said a diplomat. “The US, Russia, Iran, Saudi, Turkey, Qatar. They are the ones that need to agree.”

With many of the powers involved in Syria also involved in wars or proxy wars in Yemen or Libya, de Mistura says Syria is not a war in isolation, but the most important one to end.

“I will focus on Syria because...[it] is the biggest humanitarian tragedy since the Second World War,” he said.

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM  — In recent weeks, a flurry of envoys has beaten a path to Gaza's door: representatives from Qatar, Turkey, the United Nations, the European Union and former US president Jimmy Carter have all visited or tried to visit.

Yet the result has been the same: no success in reconciling Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled Gaza since 2007, and Fateh, the more secular, Western-backed party that runs the Palestinian administration from the West Bank.

Nearly a year since Hamas and Fateh signed a "national reconciliation" agreement, the two are no nearer to bridging their differences or tackling the mounting challenges Palestinians' face.

Fateh is convinced Hamas, which fought a war with Israel in Gaza nine months ago, is trying to carve out an Islamist fiefdom in the 360 square kilometres of the Gaza Strip. Hamas goads Fateh about its unwillingness to hold elections out of fear it will lose and Hamas will end up in full control.

Such deep internal divisions are in part the reason why Israel repeats that it has no Palestinian partner to deal with, making a return to peace negotiations near impossible.

"Hamas does not want the division to end," said senior Fateh official Amin Maqboul, adding that Hamas, whose leader lives in self-imposed exile in Qatar, has its own plan for Gaza.

"We know that Hamas has never been in favour of a Palestinian state," he said, suggesting that rather than forging unity with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the group is determined to create an Islamist "emirate" on the Mediterranean.

For its part, Hamas says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shows no real inclination towards reconciliation, sending envoys to Gaza rather than coming himself from the West Bank. His large home in Gaza, not far from the sea, has been turned into an office for Cabinet ministers and a venue for angry rallies.

“There is nothing more we can do, no more that we can do to facilitate reconciliation,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Foreign diplomats express deep frustration with the situation and tend to find blame on both sides: Hamas is authoritarian and difficult to pin down, but Abbas and Fateh seem inclined to wash their hands of Gaza, too.

“You can’t impose a solution from the outside. These guys have got to sort it out themselves,” said one European diplomat.

Gaza political analyst Hani Habib sees a dangerous future.

“Seven years on, we are closer to having two [Palestinian] states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank, not the two states of Palestine and Israel,” he said.

Democracy on hold

The impact of the stand-off is widespread, but in two areas it is particularly problematic: it is stalling rebuilding in Gaza after the war and it is undermining democratic legitimacy, with the last Palestinian elections held nearly a decade ago.

A UN-brokered agreement with Israel to allow reconstruction materials into Gaza, where 130,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in last year’s war, requires the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) to take back control of border security and administration in Gaza.

But there is no agreement between Hamas and the PA on such cooperation. As a result there is still only a trickle of reconstruction goods and equipment flowing into Gaza, a source of intense aggravation to Gazans.

Meanwhile, the question of Palestinian elections will not go away. Hamas narrowly won the last legislative vote in January 2006, although its government only lasted until mid-2007, when a Fateh-Hamas conflict blew up and the Islamists seized Gaza.

At the same time, Abbas has been Palestinian president since 2005, even though his term theoretically expired in 2009.

Now 80, he has indicated that he will not run for another term, but he has also set no date for legislative and presidential elections, saying the time is not right.

The concern is that Hamas is too popular. A student council election last month at Birzeit University, a liberal West Bank institution, was handily won by Hamas. Another election at An-Najah University was cancelled, although officials said it wasn’t because of the Hamas threat.

Since then, Hamas supporters have teased Fateh about its reluctance to hold elections. Carter and other envoys have urged Palestinian leaders not to abandon the democratic process.

But quietly diplomats also acknowledge that if parliamentary and presidential elections were to be held and Hamas won — as is possible — it would be extremely difficult to engage, with Hamas listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and EU.

And it would rule out any return to negotiations with Israel’s newly elected right-wing government, putting a two-state solution to the conflict even further out of reach.

WASHINGTON — The unity of Iraq "is voluntary and not compulsory", the head of the country's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region said on Wednesday, while stressing the Kurds had no immediate plans to break away from the central government in Baghdad.

Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani was speaking in Washington after holding talks earlier with US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on issues that included the campaign to battle Daesh.

The White House said that in those talks, Obama and Biden stressed that Washington supports "a united, federal and democratic Iraq”.

There have been fears that the country could fracture further along ethnic and religious lines following rapid advances by Daesh, a radical militant group.

Barzani said the Kurds were coordinating with Baghdad in the fight against Daesh, where their Peshmerga military forces have played a major role. But he voiced the Kurds' long-held dream of their own independent state.

"Certainly the independent Kurdistan is coming," he said, speaking through a translator at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council and US Institute of Peace think tanks. "It's a continued process. It will not stop, it will not step back.”

Iraq’s unity “is voluntary and not compulsory, so therefore the important thing is for attempts to be made for everyone in Iraq to have that conviction that it would be a voluntary union and not a forced union”, he said. He added that any changes in Iraq’s make-up should be made peacefully.

Barzani said the Kurdistan Regional Government, based in Irbil, has not received 17 per cent of Iraq’s federal budget due to it under an agreement in which the Kurds are supposed to export an average of 550,000 barrels of oil per day.

Irbil has not always been able to meet its export target, and the cash-strapped Baghdad government has missed payments in the past.

“We hope that Baghdad honours that agreement,” Barzani said.

ADEN/CAIRO — Yemen's Houthi militia battled its way into Aden's Tawahi district on Wednesday despite Saudi-led air strikes, strengthening its hold on the city whose fate is seen as crucial to determining the country's civil war.

The fighting across Yemen killed 120 people on Wednesday, mostly civilians, including at least 40 who were trying to flee the southern port city of Aden by a boat that was struck by Houthi shells, rescue workers and witnesses said.

The Houthis and ex-army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have besieged Aden for weeks in an effort to end resistance in the city where President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi briefly based his government before fleeing to Saudi Arabia.

Hadi's Foreign Minister Reyad Yassin Abdullah appealed for the international community to intervene to stop the Houthi assault on Aden in a televised news conference from Riyadh.

Insisting that the city had not fallen, he described the militia as “the killers of men and children” and said Aden’s residents had appealed to Saudi Arabia for help “in the name of the brotherhood of blood and religion”.

Locals said the Houthis had penetrated the historic district of Al Tawahi, where the presidential palace, main port and Aden television station are located. Fighting still raged, they said.

Saudi Arabia regards the Houthis, who are mostly members of the Zaydi Shiite sect from Yemen’s northern highlands, as a proxy for its main regional foe Iran and has led a Sunni Arab coalition in strikes aimed at restoring Hadi’s government.

Coalition jets have bombarded the Houthis and Saleh’s forces in and around Aden, have dropped supplies for local allies, and have deployed there Yemeni soldiers who were retrained in Gulf states, it has said.

Meanwhile, in Yemen’s far north, coalition air strikes killed 43 civilians, Houthi sources said, following the death of five Saudi civilians on Tuesday in mortar and rocket fire, the first such deaths in the kingdom since the campaign began on March 26.

More than 30 air strikes hit Saada province and there was heavy artillery fire from across the border, local sources said.

The figure could not be independently verified. 

Humanitarian disaster 

The conflict has disrupted imports to Yemen, where about 20 million people or 80 per cent of the population are estimated to be going hungry, a statement by the United Nations and the Yemen International NGO Forum said.

A shortage of fuel has crippled hospitals and food supplies in recent weeks, and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has said its fuel needs have leapt from 40,000 litres a month to 1 million litres.

The WFP also dismissed an announcement by the Saudi alliance of a possible truce in some areas to allow for humanitarian supplies, saying a permanent end to hostilities was needed.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that Washington was concerned about the dire humanitarian situation and pledged $68 million for relief work in the country.

He told journalists in Djibouti that he would discuss a possible pause in fighting with Saudi officials later on Wednesday to try to get food, fuel and medicine to civilians

“We have urged all sides to comply with humanitarian law to take every precaution to keep civilians out of the line of fire,” he said.

Aden residents said at least 30 Houthi gunmen and 10 local fighters died in overnight fighting, including a local commander, Brigadier General Ali Nasser Hadi, who was reportedly killed by a Houthi sniper.

Another nine people were killed and 18 were injured in air strikes on a police academy in Dhamar province, south of the capital Sanaa, the Houthi-run Saba news agency said on Wednesday.

The United Nations said on Tuesday at least 646 civilians had been killed since coalition air strikes began, including 131 children, with over 1,364 civilians wounded.

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday instructed his country’s negotiators to steer clear of “humiliation” in nuclear talks with world powers that resume next week in Vienna.

“The negotiators must respect the red lines and tolerate neither pressure nor humiliation, or threats,” he said in a speech to teachers carried on his website.

“It is unacceptable for the other side to make threats while negotiations are taking place. What use is negotiation in the shadow of threats?” Khamenei asked.

Negotiations seeking a definitive accord on Iran’s nuclear programme are to resume on May 12 in the Austrian capital, the European Union and Tehran said Tuesday.

Iran and the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany — want to turn a framework accord reached in Switzerland on April 2 into a full agreement by June 30.

“What has been done so far does not guarantee an agreement, nor its contents, nor even that the negotiations will continue to the end,” Khamenei, who has the final word on all policy matters in Iran, said a week after the preliminary deal.

Khamenei wants punitive international sanctions lifted without Iran having to abandon uranium enrichment for its nuclear programme.

Damascus — Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that setbacks are a normal part of war and do not mean the conflict is lost, in his first comments after several regime defeats.

“Today we are fighting a war, not a battle. War is not one battle, but a series of many battles,” he said at a rare public appearance on Syria’s Martyrs Day.

“We are not talking about tens or hundreds but thousands of battles and... it is the nature of battles for there to be advances and retreats, victories and losses, ups and downs.”

Assad’s remarks at an appearance at a Damascus school were his first since a string of regime losses, particularly in northwestern Idlib province.

In the past few weeks, rebel forces including Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front have seized Idlib’s provincial capital, the strategic town of Jisr Al Shughur, and a military base in the region.

The losses in the province, along with rebel advances in the south, have worried some in government-held areas and prompted speculation about the strength of the regime’s forces.

But Assad urged his supporters to remain confident in the face of setbacks.

He warned against “the spread of a spirit of frustration or despair at a loss here or there”.

“In battles... anything can change except for faith in the fighter and the fighter’s faith in victory,” he said.

“So when there are setbacks, we must do our duty as a society and give the army morale and not wait for it to give us morale.”

While Assad did not explicitly acknowledge his army’s losses in Idlib, he paid tribute to regime forces that remain holed up in a hospital building in the now-rebel-held town of Jisr Al Shughur.

“The army will arrive soon to these heroes trapped in the Jisr Al Shughur hospital,” he pledged.

He also had harsh words for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, calling him a “butcher” and comparing him to the Ottoman ruler who ordered the 1916 executions that Martyrs Day commemorates.

Syria’s government has regularly criticised Turkey and other opposition supporters, accusing them of backing “terrorism”.

More than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since March 2011, when the conflict began with anti-government demonstrations that were met with a regime crackdown.