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BEIRUT — Salma Hayek said on Monday that the animated feature film "The Prophet" she co-produced has been a personal project, one she hopes can inspire young viewers to think outside the box about ways to improve the world.

Hayek is visiting Lebanon, her ancestral homeland, for the international premiere of the film, written and directed by Roger Allers, the maker of the Disney production "The Lion King".

Hayek told The Associated Press that the movie has a "message of peace".

"I think the whole world could use a little bit of message of peace, and more than a message of peace, to watch something that's uplifting for the spirit and joyous, and that you can share with your family, " Hayek said as she walked down the red carpet for the movie premiere in a downtown Beirut cinema complex.

The film tells the story of Almitra, a young girl who finds the voice she lost through her friendship with Mustafa, a poet imprisoned for his ideas. Hayek also provides the voice of the girl's mother, Kamila.

The story is based on the "The Prophet", a book written in 1923 by iconic Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran that has inspired generations of artists. The book, a series of poems about love, joy, sorrow, and work, has been translated into at least 40 languages and has never been out of print.

The film is divided into chapters illustrated by various animators. The score is by Gabriel Yared, the French composer of Lebanese descent who won an Oscar for his work on the "English Patient".

Speaking to reporters Monday, Hayek, whose paternal grandparents are Lebanese, described the film as "a love letter to my heritage" that will hopefully encourage new generations to think differently.

"Through this book I got to know my grandfather. Through this book I got to have my grandfather teaching me about life. So it is a very personal movie for me," Hayek told reporters in Beirut ahead of the movie's premiere. The film opens in cinemas in the United States in August.

Hayek said through illustrations, it was possible to capture the spirit of Gibran's work.

"It encourages the new generation to go somewhere else to break out of the box to change the world,” she said.

The movie also helped bring to the audience a message of compassion and humanity from an author who comes from a violence-torn region.

Gibran, she said, "is an Arabic writer who wrote philosophy and poetry and who brought all religions and the world together".

On the red carpet, Hayek, who was wearing a dress by Lebanese designer Elie Saab, said she didn't read the book to her 7-year-old daughter, Valentina, but has watched the film with her.

"It's hard for a kid to understand [the Prophet] as it's written, that's why we made the movie. She understands it in the film, because she sees the images of the words," Hayek told AP.

Hayek's daughter and her father accompanied her on her first trip to Lebanon.

"This has been the most amazing trip. I was not prepared for how emotional it was going to be for my family to be here," she said.

UNITED NATIONS — Iran on Monday demanded that countries possessing nuclear weapons scrap any plans to modernise or extend the life of their atomic arsenals, while branding Israel a threat to the region due to its presumed nuclear stockpile.

Speaking on behalf of the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told signatories to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that there should be no limits on the transfer of nuclear technology and know-how to NPT signatories.

"We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernising and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities," Zarif said at the start of a month-long review conference taking stock of the NPT, the world's benchmark disarmament treaty.

"Reductions in deployments and in operational status cannot substitute for irreversible cuts in, and the total elimination of, nuclear weapons," Zarif said.

He added that Iran and the other 117 non-aligned nations that are parties to the NPT are "deeply concerned by military and security doctrines of the nuclear-weapon states as well as that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation", which he said permits the use, or threat of use, of atomic weapons.

The five permanent UN Security Council members signed the NPT as nuclear weapon states though the pact calls on them to negotiate on the reduction and eventual elimination of their arms caches. Non-nuclear weapon states complain that there have been too few steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Iran, accused by Western powers of developing a nuclear weapons capability under cover of a civilian programme, says its atomic ambitions are entirely peaceful. It is in talks with six world powers to curb sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.

Zarif said NPT signatories should not limit transfers of nuclear technology or know-how to other treaty states as the pact itself does not ban such transfers.

He said non-aligned states viewed Israel's assumed nuclear weapons as "a serious and continuing threat to the security of neighbouring and other states, and condemned Israel for continuing to develop and stockpile nuclear arsenals".

Israel neither confirms nor denies the widespread assumption that it controls the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal. Like nuclear powers India and Pakistan, which are members of the non-aligned movement, Israel has not signed the NPT.

Israel is participating as an observer at this month's NPT conference.

North Korea, which signed but later withdrew from the NPT, has tested nuclear devices.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's President Omar Al Bashir was elected to another five years in office, results showed Monday, despite international war crimes charges and a vote marred by low turnout and an opposition boycott.

Bashir, 71, took more than 94 per cent of the vote in the election held earlier this month, the electoral commission said, prompting the opposition to reject the result as a "joke".

National Electoral Commission chief Mokhtar Al Asam announced Bashir's victory to a Khartoum news conference to cries of "Allahu akbar!" (God is greatest) from the long-serving president's supporters.

Only little-known candidates had run against Bashir and his closest competitor — Fadl Al Sayed Shuiab of the Federal Truth Party — took just 1.43 per cent of the vote.

Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) also dominated results in a simultaneous parliamentary election, taking 323 of 426 seats.

The elections took place over four days from April 13, with voting extended by a day after turnout appeared minimal. Asam said the participation rate was more than 46 per cent.

Western governments criticised the elections, which were held amid deepening economic woes and conflicts in the Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, where the UN says more than 300,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced.

Norway, the United States and Britain slammed Sudan for its "failure to create a free, fair and conducive elections environment" while the European Union said the vote could not produce a "credible" result because of Bashir's failure to engage the opposition in national dialogue talks he promised last year.

Victory rally 

But at a victory rally on Monday afternoon, Bashir hailed the elections as free and fair.

"We will not talk about the number or proportion of votes we obtained, but we thank God and the Sudanese people, who gave a lesson in fairness and transparency," he said.

Thousands of supporters cheered him, waving flags and pictures of Bashir as he spoke at the NCP headquarters on Monday afternoon.

The mainstream opposition and rebel groups — which urged voters to stay away from polling stations — rejected the vote from the beginning.

"Nobody recognised the election, it is a one-party, one-person election process, and of course we have been saying so all along," said Arnu Lodi, a spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North.

The SPLA-N launched an insurgency against Bashir's government in the South Kordofan and Blue Nile areas in 2011, complaining of economic and political marginalisation.

"The SPLA-N doesn't recognise the elections, let alone the results," he told AFP by telephone. "It's a joke and I don't think anybody can believe that figure."

His group, along with rebels in Darfur who have been fighting Khartoum's forces since 2003, had vowed to disrupt the ballots across their region.

During the four-day vote, a handful of polling stations in the troubled areas were attacked and ballots stolen.

Bashir has promised to launch the national dialogue with the opposition after the election, and rebels from Darfur and South Kordofan were due to participate.

Continued unrest 

But fighting still rages in the regions, and the election results came the day after rebels and the Sudanese military said there had been major clashes in South Darfur state, with both claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the other side.

Career soldier Bashir took power in an Islamist-backed takeover in 1989, the last in a series of coups that marked Sudan after its independence from joint British and Egyptian rule in 1956.

He has since overseen the country's split with South Sudan after a 22-year civil war.

Bashir promised on the campaign trail that his next term would be one of "security and political and economic stability for Sudan".

He made few concrete policy promises but vowed to boost development of Sudan's struggling economy, which for years has suffered from international isolation.

The United States imposed a trade embargo in 1997 over alleged rights abuses and sanctions over Khartoum's sheltering of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for five years in the early 1990s.

More than three quarters of the country's oil reserves were also lost with South Sudan's split.

SANAA — A new UN envoy was looking to kickstart peace talks in Yemen as battles raged Sunday between Iran-backed rebels and pro-government forces a month after the launch of Saudi-led air strikes.

The Shiite Houthi rebels, who have overrun large parts of the country and forced President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee abroad, have demanded an end to the air war as a condition for UN-sponsored talks.

But the raids continued on Sunday, hitting the rebel-held presidential palace in Sanaa and anti-government positions in the main southern city of Aden, military sources and witnesses said.

Fighting also intensified in Marib province, east of the capital, where Sunni tribes and pro-Hadi fighters clashed with Houthis and allied forces.

A military official said the presidential complex in Sanaa was targeted as reinforcements were being prepared to send to oil-rich Marib.

The United Nations on Saturday confirmed Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as the new special envoy to Yemen, replacing Moroccan Jamal Benomar who resigned last week following what diplomats described as sharp criticism of his performance by Gulf states.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed “will work closely with the members of the United Nations Security Council, the Gulf Cooperation Council, governments in the region and other partners, as well as the United Nations country team for Yemen”, a UN statement said.

‘End external aggression’ 

Former strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, who still holds sway over army units allied with the Shiite rebels, late Friday urged the Houthis to heed UN demands to withdraw from territory they have seized.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also called on anti-government forces to enter into political dialogue to end a conflict that the United Nations says has killed more than 1,000 people since late March.

But Mohammed Al Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, told AFP on Sunday that “dialogue cannot resume before the end of external aggression”.

The fighting has raised fears that Yemen could become a front in a proxy war between Sunni-ruled Gulf monarchies and Shiite Iran.

Tehran rejects accusations that it armed the rebels and has presented a peace plan to the UN calling for a ceasefire and the formation of a unity government.

A US aircraft carrier headed to Yemeni waters last week to monitor an Iranian convoy that had raised suspicions. It redeployed on Friday after the convoy turned back, Pentagon officials said.

The coalition has kept up air strikes days after announcing its campaign was entering a new phase aimed at resuming the political process, delivering aid and fighting “terrorism”.

Marib has been the scene of days of deadly clashes between rebels and fighters loyal to Hadi.

Sunni tribes and pro-Hadi troops battled the rebels and their allies in Marib’s Sarwah district, through which Yemen’s main oil export pipeline passes, tribal sources said.

Taez hospital hit 

The 435-kilometre pipeline links Marib’s Safir Oilfields with the Ras Isa terminal on the Red Sea coast, and control of it has been a key goal for the rebels and their allies.

Tribal sources said 90 rebels were killed in clashes and air strikes in Marib. Eight pro-Hadi fighters were also killed in fighting, they said.

AFP could not independently verify the death toll.

In other fighting, local officials in Taez southwest of Sanaa said intense clashes had caused casualties, among them civilians.

Rebels fired mortar rounds at a public hospital in Taez, including at its intensive care unit, employees there
told AFP.

Loud explosions were heard across the city as fighting raged, residents said.

A local official said that 13 civilians were killed in the rebel shelling.

In the southern city of Daleh, coalition aircraft dropped medical aid to pro-Hadi fighters after the rebels prevented a humanitarian convoy from delivering aid there, local officials said.

The United Nations says millions of people have been affected by the conflict and are struggling to access health care, water, food and fuel.

It estimates that at least 551 of those killed since late March were civilians, including at least 115 children.

BEIRUT — Syrian jets killed at least 34 people in air strikes on the town of Jisr Al Shughour in northwestern Syria on Sunday, a group monitoring the war said, one day after it was seized by Islamist fighters closing in on government-held territory by the coast.

Syrian state television said the military had ambushed some militants close to Jisr Al Shughour, which was captured on Saturday for the first time in the four-year conflict by a hardline Islamist alliance including Al Qaeda.

The observatory said around 20 air strikes since late on Saturday had killed at least 34 people including insurgents and civilians, some of them children.

Syrian television also reported that the insurgents had killed civilians, but the observatory said only supporters of the government had been detained, and no one killed.

"Terrorist groups committed a horrific massacre of civilians after entering Jisr Al Shughour," state television quoted a military source as saying. It said at least 30 civilians had been killed in the town close to the Turkish border.

But observatory said combatants had detained government backers and that there was no confirmation so far they had killed anyone.

"If we knew people were killed by them we would report it," the observatory's founder Rami Abdulrahman said. "No women and children were captured."

His monitoring group, which says it collects information from all sides of the conflict said heavy fighting continued south of the town.

The capture of the town of 50,000 people in Idlib province was the latest setback for government forces.

Insurgents have been trying to push the army out of the few remaining government areas in the province, bringing them closer to Latakia, a coastal province of vital importance to President Bashar Assad.

State news agency SANA also said the military had carried out night raids around Jisr Al Shughour and inflicted heavy losses on its enemies.

Last month, the hardline Sunni Islamist rebels seized Idlib city, the provincial capital, after forming an alliance that includes Nusra, Ahrar Al Sham movement and Jund Al Aqsa, but not the rival Daesh terror group which controls large tracts of Syria and Iraq.

The Islamist alliance calls itself the Army of Fateh, a reference to the conquests that spread Islam across the Middle East from the 7th century.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's army announced it was making progress in the battle against Daesh militants in Anbar province Sunday even as it struggled to retake territory lost over the weekend and a string of bombings rocked the capital.

After driving militants out of the northern city of Tikrit earlier this month, Iraqi forces have turned their attention to Anbar province, large parts of which have been under Daesh control for more than a year. The see-saw conflict has seen both sides take and lose territory.

Defence Minister Khalid Al Obeidi said on Iraqi television that the army has achieved "90 per cent" of its objectives in the town of Garma, between Baghdad and the Daesh-held city of Fallujah. He added that an operation had been launched to retake the water control station on a canal lost over the weekend.

"Our bold military units in Anbar are still holding their positions," he said. "In the coming days, we will implement a well-organised plan to attack the enemy and drive it out of its positions seized in Anbar."

The attack on the water control station on the canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River late Friday was a setback for the Iraqi military, killing the general commanding the 1st Division and a dozen other officers and soldiers. Obeidi said eight soldiers lost in the fighting had been recovered.

ISTANBUL — The Turkish coastguard has rounded up 350 mainly Syrian migrants in an operation against a ship planning to take them to Europe, the official Anatolia news agency said Sunday.

Coastguard personnel overnight Saturday to Sunday raided the Mongolian-flagged "Ole" vessel after a tip-off that migrants were being carried on board.

The coastguard picked up 71 migrants on board the ship off the southeastern Turkish city of Mersin and captured 279 others waiting their turn at the port to board the vessel, Anatolia said.

It said the migrants, including women and children, were seeking to reach European Union countries, in particular Italy.

Police detained 10 crewmen and seized the inflatable boats used to transfer the migrants to the ship.

Turkey, which already hosts 1.8 million Syrian refugees from the civil war, has become a key transit point for migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Mersin has become known as an increasingly important hub for Syrian migrants, with local authorities saying that 1,754 illegal migrants were apprehended at sea off the port last year.

Turkish authorities have stepped up operations on migrant boats amid a surge in the numbers attempting the perilous crossing, following the Mediterranean's worst migrant disaster recently in which as many as 800 people drowned off Libya.

BCHARRE, Lebanon — Salma Hayek is in Lebanon, her first visit to her ancestral homeland, to launch "The Prophet", an animated feature film she co-produced.

Hayek visited the picturesque mountain village of Bcharre in northern Lebanon on Sunday to pay homage to Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-born poet who wrote "The Prophet", the book on which the film is based.

"Let us have a private moment in this place that we dreamt so long to be a part of," Hayek said before entering the Gibran Museum.

"The Prophet”, written in 1923, has inspired generations of artists. The book, a series of poems about love, joy, sorrow, work and spirituality, has been translated into at least 40 languages.

Gibran also was a sculptor and a painter influenced by the English Romantics. He migrated to the United States in the late 1890s, dying there in 1931.

Hayek posed with one of Gibran's towering sculptures outside the museum and dipped her feet in nearby mountain spring waters before visiting his tomb and viewing his work.

"The Prophet" director Roger Allers, who also directed Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King", accompanied Hayek.

"I have been living with the spirit of Gibran for the last three years and it has been a very intimate experience and now to come to his home is very moving," Allers said.

The film tells the story of a friendship between a young girl and an imprisoned poet. Quoting from Gibran's book, Allers said: "'Work is love made visible.' And I really feel that about this movie."

The film premieres April 30 in Lebanon. Distributor Mohammed Fadallah said it will be showing in 20 theaters here before going to the Gulf region and North Africa.

Hayek arrived Friday in Lebanon. The Mexican-American actress' paternal grandfather was Lebanese and immigrated to Mexico.

A poster outside the museum bearing one of Gibran's poems also welcomed her: "The children of my Lebanon, those who migrate with nothing but courage in their hearts and strength in their arms but who return with wealth in their hands and a wreath of glory upon their heads."

MOGADISHU — Somalia's Al Shabab militants killed two city council officials, a former parliamentarian and a senior prison officer in Mogadishu, police and the rebel group said on Sunday.

Al Qaeda-allied group has stepped up its gun and bomb attacks in the Horn of Africa nation over the past week. Six people were killed in an attack on a vehicle carrying UN staff in the semi-autonomous Puntland region on Monday, and a suicide bomber killed 10 in a restaurant in Mogadishu on Tuesday.

Gunmen shot dead the former lawmaker and two city council officials on Saturday and a senior prison officer was killed near the Bakara market in Mogadishu on Sunday, Major Nur Afrah, a police officer, told Reuters.

Al Shabab claimed responsibility for all the killings and vowed to carry out more attacks.

"We killed the lawmaker, the two city officials and the prison colonel on Saturday and Sunday. We shall continue killing them," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, told Reuters.

The militant group has carried out regular attacks in Somalia and neighbouring countries aimed at imposing its strict interpretation of Islamic law and overthrowing the Somali government, which is backed by Western donors and African peacekeepers.

It often targets officials and politicians for assassination.

The group, which once controlled Mogadishu and large chunks of territory in other regions, was driven out of the capital in 2011 and has been losing ground since then. But it still launches frequent guerrilla-style attacks and has struck across the border in Kenya.

This month, it claimed responsibility for an attack on a university in northeast Kenya that killed 148 people.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel will take part as an observer in a major nuclear non-proliferation conference that opens at the United Nations on Monday, ending a 20-year absence in hope of fostering dialogue with Arab states, a senior Israeli official said.

Assumed to have the Middle East's sole nuclear arsenal, and having never joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel has stayed away from gatherings of NPT signatories since 1995 in protest at resolutions it regarded as biased against it.

Citing the example of disarmament talks in other regions, Israel says it would consider submitting to international nuclear inspections and controls only once at peace with the Arabs and Iran. Those countries want Israel curbed first.

With Middle East upheaval and the disputed Iranian nuclear programme often pitting Tehran-aligned Shiite Muslims against Sunni Arabs, a senior Israeli official saw in the April 27-May 22 NPT review conference a chance to stake out common causes.

Israel deems Iran its top threat. The Islamic Republic has said it seeks only nuclear energy, not bombs, from uranium enrichment. Six global powers are negotiating a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran — a process Israel has denounced, fearing it will not restrain Tehran's atomic activities sufficiently.

"We think that this is the time for all moderate countries to sit and discuss the problems that everyone is facing in the region," the Israeli official, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject, told Reuters on Sunday.

"I see this, coming as an observer to the conference now, as trying to demonstrate our good faith in terms of having such a conversation. We need direct negotiations between the regional parties, a regional security conversation, a conversation based on consensus. This [attendance at the NPT conference] is meant not to change our policy. It's meant to emphasise our policy."

The question of sequencing — if peace should precede disarmament — has helped mire negotiations on the creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. An Egyptian plan for an international meeting laying the groundwork for such a deal was agreed at the last NPT review conference, in 2010.

The Israeli official doubted the deadlock would be resolved at the pending NPT conference — anticipating, instead, an "Arab proposal that would not adopt the position of direct engagement" with Israel.

Still, the official described the NPT conference as a chance to build on opposition Israel shared with some Arabs to the April 2 outline nuclear deal between world powers and Iran.

The conference "doesn't contradict a broader possible outreach”, the official said. Without naming specific countries, the official said some Arabs appeared less attentive to Israel's non-NPT status as they were "too busy with bigger problems".

Among these might be Egypt, which had long been vocally opposed to Israel's nuclear opacity but has recently closed ranks with its neighbour against common Islamist adversaries.

"Our initiative for a Middle East free of non-conventional weapons is a principle. It will not change. But nothing is against Israel itself. It's for everyone — Iran, Israel, everyone," an Egyptian official said on condition on anonymity.

"Will we go and pressure Israel [at the conference]? I don't think so. I don't think the pressure will be intolerable."