Region

BEIRUT — Syria's army cut the last main supply route for a rebel bastion east of Damascus Sunday, further tightening a crippling siege on the area, a monitor and state media said.

"The regime has cut off the last main road for rebels leading out of Eastern Ghouta," the main opposition stronghold in Damascus province, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

He said army units had taken over almost all of the village of Maydaa, which lies along a road running east which rebels use to bring food and reinforcements into besieged neighbourhoods.

Syria's official news agency SANA quoted a military official as saying the army had taken full control of Maydaa.

"A large number of terrorists are thought to be dead," SANA reported, adding that army units "shut the last route for terrorists" that ran east.

Eastern Ghouta has been under a devastating government siege for nearly two years in an attempt to break the rebel hold over the area.

Abdel Rahman told AFP rebels could still rely on a few small roads that lead out of Eastern Ghouta but said they were "very dangerous".

He said there were clashes under way in Maydaa between Syrian regime forces and Jaysh Al Islam, the most powerful rebel group operating in the area.

Jaysh Al Islam spokesman Islam Alloush said Syrian troops tried to overrun Maydaa but were "ambushed" by the rebels.

"Clashes are still under way but if the army succeeds in taking Maydaa they could use it as a launchpad to storm Eastern Ghouta," Alloush told AFP by telephone from Turkey.

The rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta has been subjected to massive regime bombardments for months.

Syria's four-year conflict began with anti-regime protests in mid-March 2011 and spiralled into a bloody war after a harsh government crackdown on demonstrators.

More than 210,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the observatory.

BAGHDAD — Daesh terror group claimed responsibility Sunday for a late-night car bomb attack in the heart of Baghdad that killed at least 19 people, saying it was targeting a Shiite militia.

The extremist group, however, did not shed any light on accusations by Yazidi lawmakers that it had executed at least 25 prisoners from the minority community in the northern city of Tal Afar.

The two car bombs in Baghdad went off about 10 minutes apart late Saturday in the Karrada district, known for its restaurants, cafes and ice cream parlors. Police said the dead and wounded were mainly shoppers and people commemorating the birth of Imam Ali, a key figure in Shiite Islam. Two traffic policemen were among those killed.

The online claim is similar to others the group has issued this past week about bombings in Baghdad, which they describe as revenge for the fighting in nearby Anbar province.

Iraqi forces are engaged in a see-saw battle in Anbar against Daesh militants, who control some 65 per cent of the province. The fighting has caused 114,000 residents of the provincial capital, Ramadi, to flee to Baghdad.

At the same time, there has been a major spike in car bombs in Baghdad over the past week, leading some Iraqi officials to claim that militants have infiltrated the capital by hiding among the displaced.

In a sign of the deteriorating security situation in the capital, Iraqi authorities discovered five bodies of men dumped in different areas, two police officers said. The men, believed to be in their 30s, suffered gunshots to the head and chest and had their hands and legs tied, they added. No identification was found with the victims.

The appearance of dead bodies in Baghdad reminds Iraqis of the sectarian tit-for-tat killings that the roiled the country in 2006 and 2007, when armed Sunni and Shiite militias carried out assassinations.

Medical officials confirmed the causalities. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release information.

Also Sunday, a bomb went off in an outdoor market in the town of Madain south of Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding eight others, another police officer said.

Yazidi lawmakers are meanwhile looking into reports of the killing of prisoners.

The Yazidis are a tiny religious community that was directly in the path of the Daesh group when it swept through northern Iraq last year. Hundreds are believed to have been taken captive and the women sold to fighters as slaves.

The alleged killings took place at an Daesh prison camp near the town of Tal Afar, some 150 kilometres east of the Syrian border, legislator Mahma Khalil said. He said he believes some 1,400 other Yazidis are still held in the camp.

CAIRO — Egypt's top court on Sunday sentenced 14 policemen and a doctor to jail terms for torturing two prisoners to death in 2006, a judicial official said.

A colonel was jailed for three years, while 13 policemen were given one-year prison terms each in a case that also saw a doctor sentenced for a year.

They were jailed "for torturing to death two criminals who were in their custody in 2006", the official said.

It was unclear whether the jail terms had already been served since the incident occurred nearly a decade ago.

Sunday's verdict, which is final and cannot be appealed, comes after two policemen were referred to trial in February on charges of torturing and beating to death a lawyer jailed after a pro-Islamist protest.

Police abuses, which surged during the last five years of ex-president Hosni Mubarak's rule, were a key factor in the uprising that toppled him in early 2011.

However, the force has managed to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of many Egyptians amid a deadly crackdown on supporters of Mubarak's successor, Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi was ousted by the army in July 2013 after mass protests against his sole year of divisive rule.

CAIRO — The Egyptian government said on Sunday it had extended by three months the deployment of "some elements of the armed forces" outside Egypt's borders to defend national and Arab security in the Gulf, Red Sea and the Strait of Mandab.

Egypt, which has one of the region's largest militaries, is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and has said it is participating in the Saudi-led coalition that has been targeting Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen with air strikes.

Egypt authorised a 40-day mandate on March 26, which the defence ministry had asked to be renewed before its expiry, the statement from the Cabinet said.

The statement did not specify if Egypt's renewed mandate included the possibility of sending ground troops, and Saudi Arabia denied that any major ground operations in Yemen were under way.

The mandate's renewal comes a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi visited Saudi Arabia, which alongside Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates has propped up Egypt's economy with billions of dollars in aid.

PARIS — It struggled for years to sell its Rafale jets abroad but French defence group Dassault has finally scored several lucrative deals, thanks in part to anti-US suspicion in the Middle East, experts say.

Egypt was the first buyer, ordering 24 planes in February. India followed suit with 36 fighter jets in early April.

On Monday, wealthy Qatar will sign a deal for 24 jets, in a ceremony in Doha attended by President Francois Hollande.

France may soon be celebrating again as negotiations with the United Arab Emirates appear to be headed in the "right direction", according to Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

"For a long time, there were doubts about this Rafale," Hollande admitted last week when the Qatar deal was announced, before applauding the deal as "good news" for the country.

French, US policies key 

Brushing aside concerns about client countries' rights abuses, France has consistently hailed the Rafale sales abroad as a success for both Dassault and French diplomacy.

Experts say that aside from the fighter jets' proven successes in combat zones like Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq, French policy in the Middle East has played a significant role in securing the sales.

"It's more specific to the Gulf countries which appreciate France's coherence" in its foreign policy, said Bruno Tertrais of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research think tank.

On Tuesday, Hollande will be the guest of honour at a summit in Riyadh of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council — a first for a Western leader.

Tertrais pointed to the summer of 2013, when Hollande said he was determined to punish the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, who had just been accused of unleashing chemical weapons on his people.

At the time, US President Barack Obama backed down from a seemingly imminent military intervention, despite having vowed chemical weapons were a "red line" in the Syrian conflict.

Tertrais also said the US response to the Arab Spring — particularly in Egypt, where Washington dropped support for ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 — shocked its allies in the Middle East.

Francois Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said countries in the region also remember the US arms embargo imposed on Turkey after it invaded Cyprus in 1974, which included stopping the delivery of spare parts for its military aircraft.

He also said "the French have shown they are negotiating hard" with Iran on its nuclear programme, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes, but the West believes is aimed at making an atomic bomb.

In contrast, the Americans "appear more flexible" with Iran, the Shiite enemy of the Sunni Gulf monarchies, Heisbourg said.

Rights concerns 

"In this region of the world, France has a strategic position that is coherent and understood," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview Sunday with the French JDD weekly.

Le Drian, most of whose 33 trips to the Middle East have been confidential, was in the UAE again this weekend.

The first foreign order by Egypt also acted as a catalyst, after multiple failed bids to sell the Rafale to South Korea, Singapore, Morocco, Switzerland and Brazil.

But the sale to Cairo sparked fury from rights groups, including Amnesty International, which accused the government of committing "alarming" abuses.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi was elected in May 2014 with 96.91 per cent of the vote a year after toppling the country's first freely elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

A subsequent crackdown on Morsi's supporters left at least 1,400 dead and thousands more in jail.

Qatar has also faced heavy criticism over its rights record, particularly over its treatment of migrant workers.

CAIRO — A Nile Delta prosecutor said Sunday he referred 40 people to trial on charges of belonging to Daesh terror group and planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Egypt.

The announcement marks the first time people in Egypt's Nile Delta have been accused of belonging to the group, which holds a third of Iraq and Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

Bilal Abu Khadra, a prosecutor in Egypt's Sharqiya province, said that those charged communicated with Daesh militants in Syria. He also said the cell's leader confessed to receiving money from the extremists to recruit and help militants travel to Syria.

Khadra said 20 of the defendants are detained, while the others will be tried in absentia.

The Daesh group gained a foothold in Egypt last November when a Sinai-based militant group declared itself an affiliate of the extremists.

Amid the burgeoning Islamist insurgency in Egypt, thousands have been arrested in the course of a sweeping crackdown on Islamists since the military's 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

BAGHDAD — Congress may reconsider a provision in an upcoming bill funding the training of the Iraqi army that would send weapons separately to Arab Sunnis and Kurds, a congressman visiting Baghdad said Sunday.

Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security visiting Baghdad with seven other members, said he realised the priority in the country was the defense of Baghdad and the provision could threaten Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi's position.

"If Baghdad falls, so does the entire country, so this is why we have to go back to that provision to see if we can change that," McCaul told The Associated Press ahead of his meeting with the prime minister.

On Wednesday, influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, whose militia was once a major force, threatened to attack US interests if the provision, which would divert 25 per cent of the $715 million defense bill to train the Iraqi army, passed.

Sadr's statement precipitated a cascade of condemnations by members of the Shiite-dominated government and its allied militias.

Abadi said he brought up the issue with Vice President Joe Biden in a phone conversation, warning that such a provision would undermine the country's sovereignty, according to the prime minister's website Sunday.

The provision stems from concerns that the Iraqi government is keeping weapons from the Kurdish peshmerga forces, which are bearing the brunt of the fight against Daesh in the north.

The US would also like to see Sunni tribesmen armed and brought into the fight but the Shiite-dominated government doesn't trust them.

The United States has already spent billions arming and training the Iraqi military, but it performed poorly last year when Daesh militants swept across western and northern Iraq, routing four divisions.

For the US to bypass the central government in distributing weapons, however, was seen by critics as a threat to the country's national unity.

President Barack Obama has also expressed his opposition to the move.

TUNIS — Tunisia said Sunday security measures have already been taken to protect Jewish pilgrims at a religious festival next week on the island of Djerba, after Israel warned of "concrete threats".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israel had learned of "concrete threats" of terror attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets in the North African country, prompting a quick denial from Tunis.

Interior Minister Najem Gharsalli told journalists in the holiday resort of Djerba, which hosts an annual pilgrimage to the Ghriba, Africa's oldest synagogue, that security forces and the army were ready.

"They are here and the security plan is in place" for the May 6-7 pilgrimage, he said.

"Tunisia is a safe country and Djerba too is a safe city. Visitors from the world over are welcome," Gharsalli said.

"What I am saying now is a response to many who cast doubt over Tunisia's security and its capacity to secure celebrations," he added.

A statement from Netanyahu's office late on Saturday said: "Information indicates that there are plans for terrorist attacks against Israelis or Jews in Tunisia connected to the pilgrimage.”

Thousands of pilgrims visit the tombs of famous rabbis for the Lag BaOmer Jewish Festival, including on Djerba island, where one of the last Jewish communities in the Arab world still lives.

Beginning 33 days after the start of the Jewish Passover festival, the Ghriba pilgrimage used to attract thousands of pilgrims from France and Israel and other tourists.

But their number fell dramatically after an April 2002 bombing blamed on Al Qaeda that killed 21 people.

According to legend, the Ghriba synagogue was founded in 586 BC by Jews fleeing the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

Tunisian Jews now number around 1,500, compared with an estimated 100,000 when Tunisia gained independence in 1956.

The Israeli Counter-Terrorism Bureau said it was advising people against visiting Tunisia in view of the "threats".

But Gharsalli insisted that Tunisia can protect visitors "better than any other country".

The authorities have been trying to reassure foreign visitors they will be safe since 21 tourists were killed in a jihadist attack on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis in March.

AL KHOR, Qatar — Taliban representatives met with Afghan political figures for a second day on Sunday, but it was unclear if the dialogue hosted by Qatar moved any closer to long-awaited formal negotiations to end Afghanistan's devastating war.

Participants in the meeting in Al Khor, a seaside town north of Doha, emerged from the venue smiling and laughing on Sunday, but they refused to talk to reporters.

One Afghan who was part of the talks said that the Taliban and several other Afghan political movements were participating and all sides had agreed not to make any statements until a common statement had been agreed upon.

The Qatar meeting was the first sign of life in weeks for the hoped-for peace process to end the more than 13-year-old war between the Taliban and the US-backed Afghan government.

Several previous initiatives have failed over the years to end the war that has killed tens of thousands of Afghans since the US and its allies drove the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime from power in 2001.

The informal talks came even as fighting in Afghanistan escalated after the withdrawal of most US and allied troops.

The Taliban recently launched a fierce new offensive in northern Afghanistan that brought its fighters to the outskirts of Kunduz city, a provincial capital.

Afghan police and army soldiers have launched a counter-offensive in Kunduz, but the Taliban advance has proved a severe test of the NATO-trained Afghan security forces.

Pakistan, which recently told the Afghan government that some Taliban leaders were open to talks, had no comment on whether it had representatives at the Qatar meetings but expressed approval.

"Pakistan fully supports peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban in Qatar," said Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry. "Peace in Afghanistan is imperative for peace in the region."

The Afghan government has made no official statement on the meetings, though a member of the country's High Peace Council confirmed a delegation would attend meetings in Qatar with the Taliban.

The Qatar meetings are being held behind closed doors, and there has been confusion over their nature.

The Taliban's official spokesman has denied any peace talks, saying representatives were only attending a world affairs forum organised by Pugwash Council, a global organisation that promotes conflict resolution.

However, Qatar's foreign ministry later announced it was holding "open discussions" involving the Taliban and Afghan figures aiming to bring reconciliation. It was not immediately clear if the two events were one and the same.

BAGHDAD — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a surprise visit Saturday to Iraq pledging to continue its support for the country's battle against Daesh terror group.

Harper's visit to both Baghdad and Iraq's Kurdish region in the north came as seven women and children were killed by a roadside bomb and a suicide blast killed six Iraqi troops.

The UN mission in Iraq reported Saturday that 812 Iraqis, including 277 members of security forces and allied militias, were killed in April, with more than 300 civilians slain in and around Baghdad alone.

The Canadian government has announced $139 million in additional aid to address the refugee crisis around the region precipitated by the fighting, in addition to the $67 million already committed to Iraq.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi received Harper in Baghdad. Canada is part of the US-led international coalition supporting the Iraqi military with air strikes, training and weapons.

Harper pledged to continue his government's support for Iraq.

“Canada will not stand idly by while Daesh threatens Canadians and commits barbaric acts of violence and injustice in Iraq against innocent civilians,” Harper said in a statement, referring to the Daesh group by an alternate acronym.

Abadi hailed Canada’s role in that coalition as “essential” and called on the international community to join forces against the extremist threat as “terrorism is not only threatening Iraq, but the region and the whole world.”

Meanwhile Saturday, a bomb killed five women and two children traveling in a minibus in the eastern Diyala province, police said. Daesh fighters were largely driven out of the eastern province earlier this year but still plant roadside bombs.

In Anbar province, six troops were killed and nine were wounded when a suicide car bomber drove an explosive-rigged Humvee into their headquarters in the town of Garma, another police officer said. The dead included three soldiers and three militia members, he said.

Two medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release the information.