Region

BASRA, Iraq — Three Iraqis were killed on Wednesday when a booby-trapped truck exploded in Iraq near the border with Kuwait, Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported.

The agency quoted Talib Al Hosuna, a local Iraqi official saying that five other people were wounded in the explosion at a garage near the main road about 12km north of the Safwan border crossing with Kuwait.

Police sources in Iraq said the victims were civilians who died in an explosion from a truck trailer parked in a rest area some 10km north of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

Iraqi authorities have been enforcing heightened security measures at the port, where no large vehicles are allowed in or out, the police sources said.

A witness said the explosion occurred in the morning aboard a trailer truck with licence plates from Anbar province in western Iraq, where militants from the Daesh operate.

The witness, who identified himself as Abu Ziad, said he was eating breakfast with other drivers at the rest area when a driver pulled in, disconnected the trailer and drove away.

"We heard a loud explosion, thought it was a tanker that exploded, then saw it was a trailer that blew up," Abu Ziad said.

The Iraqi government has been battling Islamist militants who have seized large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Kuwait has been trying to reassure its citizens that the border with Iraq is secure. Earlier this week, the interior ministry's top border security official led journalists on a tour of the area and said that there had been no sign of any breach of the border with Iraq.

TRIPOLI/MISRATA — Ten fighters loyal to the self-proclaimed government that controls Tripoli were killed by Daesh militants in central Libya on Wednesday, officials said.

Libyan hardline Islamists who have allied themselves to Daesh group that have surged to prominence in Iraq and Syria had until recently been mostly active in the east, where the internationally recognised government is now based.

But they have expanded westwards in recent weeks to the city of Sirte, taking government buildings, a hospital and the university, posing a challenge to the Tripoli-based government, and its allied factions which have engaged them in battle.

"A number of our hero army members were assassinated this morning by the Islamic State [Daesh] in the Nawfaliyah area," said Osama Abu Naji, a senior official in the Tripoli-based government.

"The victims were assassinated, it was not confrontation," he told reporters, without elaborating. Nawfaliyah is a town southeast of Sirte.

Anticipating more clashes, Sirte residents were seen leaving in a column of cars on the main highway to Misrata, a Reuters reporter said.

Forces from Misrata loyal to Tripoli initially deployed in December east of Sirte to try seize Libya's biggest oil ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, from forces loyal to the internationally recognised government.

But they have been dragged into fighting the Islamists who are exploiting a power vacuum created by the existence of two rival governments.

Four years after the ousting of Muammar Qadhafi, Libya is divided, with official Premier Abdullah Al Thinni working from the east since a rival faction seized Tripoli in August, reinstating a previous parliament and setting up a rival administration.

Militants loyal to Daesh have claimed several high-profile attacks in the past two months including the storming of Tripoli's luxury Corinthia Hotel and the beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts from Sirte.

DAMASCUS — Syria's military said Wednesday it downed an American drone over suspicions it was spying, in what would be its first attack on an aircraft in the US-led coalition battling jihadists.

A military source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the drone was not immediately identified as being American but was shot down as a hostile aircraft.

"As soon as it entered Syrian airspace, we considered it to be gathering security and military information on Syria's territory," the source in Damascus said.

"The aircraft entered areas where Daesh is not present," he added.

Syrian state media reported late Tuesday that air defences had targeted a US surveillance aircraft over Latakia province, a coastal stronghold of President Bashar Assad.

Without specifying a location or timing for the incident, state media published a series of close-up photos showing what they said was the mangled wreckage of a small aircraft.

The US military confirmed losing communication with a Predator drone over Syria on Tuesday and said it was looking into claims the aircraft was shot down.

At about 1740 GMT, "US military controllers lost contact with a US MQ-1 Predator unarmed remotely piloted aircraft operating over northwest Syria", a US defence official said in an e-mail.

"At this time, we have no information to corroborate press reports that the aircraft was shot down. We are looking into the incident and will provide more details when available."

If confirmed, the incident would be the first time Syrian forces have attacked a US aircraft since the international coalition began its raids against Daesh in Syria in September.

Damascus is not participating in the coalition's strikes, although its own aircraft also target Daesh, but has so far refrained from taking action against the foreign planes involved in the operations.

It has been critical of the coalition, warning before the strikes began that it would consider them an attack on Syria if they went ahead without government consent.

After the first raids on September 23, Damascus said it was notified ahead of time, though Washington has ruled out actively cooperating with Assad's government on the attacks.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem said last year that Washington had pledged its raids would not hit the Syrian army, though he added that Damascus was sceptical of the commitment.

"Do we trust this commitment? For now, we realise that President Barack Obama, for domestic reasons, wants to avoid war with Syria," he told Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper.

"But we do not know how Obama will act under mounting pressure."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the drone was shot down in Al Maqata, a village near the provincial capital of Latakia.

"There are no opposition fighters or jihadist groups anywhere in that area, but there is a large presence of regime forces," said observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

Assad family 

ancestral home 

The US-led strikes in Syria have largely been focused on Aleppo and Raqqa provinces, where Daesh has strongholds.

But the campaign has also targeted the group elsewhere and hit suspected positions of fighters affiliated with Al Nusra Front, the Syrian wing of Al Qaeda.

Daesh is largely absent from Latakia, according to the observatory, though Al Nusra fighters have a presence in the region.

Latakia is home to the Assad family's ancestral village and is a bastion of the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam to which the president belongs.

It has been mostly insulated from the brutal fighting that has wracked Syria since anti-government demonstrations that began in March 2011 spiralled into a civil war following a regime crackdown.

More than 215,000 people have been killed in the conflict, nearly a third of them civilians, according to the observatory.

DOHA — Qatar has said it will push ahead with reforming its controversial "kafala" labour system, which critics have likened to modern-day slavery, without giving a timetable for when this will happen.

Abdullah Saleh Mubarak Al Khulaifi, the minister of labour and social affairs, was quoted by local daily The Peninsula as saying there would be no going back on a promise to change the law.

Under kafala, employers can prevent foreign workers from changing jobs or leaving the country. Long criticised by rights groups, it the system has become a focus of criticism since Qatar was awarded the 2022 football World Cup.

Doha has said it will replace the system with one based instead on employment contracts.

"Qatar has fulfilled all its legal obligations in the past and will do so in the future as well," Khulaifi said.

Khulaifi, who was speaking at a foreign ministry event Monday, said the term "sponsorship" would also be abolished under the new legislation.

But it was unclear when that might happen.

The official Qatar News Agency, referring to the reform, quoted the minister as saying it is not possible to give a certain date.

"However, he added that Qatar is committed to introducing legal changes."

Previously it had been predicted that the change would come by early this year.

The statement came just a day after FIFA President Sepp Blatter visited the country and insisted that Qatar should do more on the vexed issue of labour rights.

Blatter held talks with Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani Sunday, ahead of a FIFA executive committee meeting on Thursday and Friday that will decide the final dates for the 2022 World Cup.

The tournament is widely expected to be the first held in November and December because of Qatar's scalding summer temperatures.

Recent reforms announced include the introduction of an electronic payment system for thousands of migrant labourers. Under that, workers will be paid at least once a month and, in some cases, every fortnight, though it is not yet clear when this reform will be introduced either.

New projects at providing better accommodation for up to one million migrant workers have also just been announced.

Doha expects to more than double the number of labourers to 2.5 million by 2020, ahead of hosting football's biggest event.

Amnesty International's Gulf migrant rights researcher, Mustafa Qadri, said the announcement was "yet again a promise of much-needed reform... but little beyond promises".

"Qatar has an unprecedented opportunity to be a regional leader when it comes to migrant labour rights reforms," said Qadri.

"Welcome statements must be backed up by real, implemented reforms that lead to genuine improvements in labour rights protections, not just tinkering at the edges of a broken system."

DAMASCUS — Syrian state media said the country's air defences shot down a US reconnaissance aircraft Tuesday in a northwestern province along the Mediterranean coast.

US officials said they were looking into the reports.

The SANA state news agency said the aircraft was downed north of the coastal city of Latakia. It provided no further details. State television broadcast footage of what it said was the wreckage, including a wheel and electronic parts. Soldiers in camouflage could be seen loading some of the debris into the back of a truck.

If confirmed, it would be the first American aircraft to go down over Syria since the US expanded its aerial campaign against the Daesh extremist group to the country in September.

BEIRUT — Syrian activists and opposition members claimed on Tuesday that government helicopters carried out a chlorine gas attack on a northern town overnight, killing six people — an accusation that was promptly dismissed by a military official.

Two activist groups — the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees — said the attack late on Monday night targeted the town of Sarmin in northwestern Idlib province.

They said that apart from the six dead, dozens more suffered from breathing difficulties after the gas attack. The two groups collect their data from a network of activists on the ground.

A military official in the capital, Damascus, denied the claim and blamed rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad for the attack. "The army did not and will never use any internationally-prohibited weapon," the official said.

Sarmin is 8 kilometres east of the provincial capital of Idlib which is under government control.

Monday's purported attack with chlorine would be one of the deadliest uses of poison gas in Syria since August 2013, when Assad's forces were blamed by the US government for a chemical weapons attack near Damascus that killed hundreds. Damascus also blamed opposition fighters for that attack.

An opposition medical official in the area of Sarmin said there were two attacks, the first targeting rebels that injured 20 people, mostly men, while the second hit a residential area. He said the six dead were all part of one family, including three young children.

The military and the opposition medical official both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to reporters.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said that in the Sarmin attack, helicopter gunships dropped four "barrel bombs", of which two contained chlorine gas. The coalition and the opposition official said about 70 people suffered breathing problems.

Amateur videos posted online and claiming to be from the attack show three children lying on hospital beds as medics try to assist them. 

The footage shows an apparently dazed child slowly moving his head while lying on a hospital bed. The lifeless body of a woman lies on another bed.

Another video showed some bearded men inside what appeared to be a hospital room as paramedics put oxygen masks on their faces.

The video, which could not be independently verified, appeared genuine and corresponded to other reports of the events depicted.

Asad Kanjo, an activist who is based in the nearby town of Saraqeb, said that after the first bomb was dropped, Sarmin residents were called upon through local mosque loudspeakers to head for their roofs in order to avoid inhaling the gas.

“There was some kind of chaos,” Kanjo said via Skype adding that residents usually avoid going up to the roofs for fear of being targeted by government aircraft.

Pro-opposition media said some residents of Sarmin fled to nearby fields.

The attack came nearly two weeks after the UN Security Council approved a United States-drafted resolution that condemns the use of toxic chemicals such as chlorine in Syria, while threatening militarily action in case of further violations.

The resolution followed last month’s condemnation by the world’s chemical weapons watchdog of the use of chlorine in Syria as a breach of international law. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ fact-finding mission concluded “with a high degree of confidence” that chlorine was used on three villages in Syria last year, killing 13 people.

The resolution threatens action against further violations under a 2013 Security Council resolution that banned Syria’s use of chemical weapons. It applies to any party in the Syrian conflict, now in its fifth year. The civil war has so far killed an estimated 220,000 people, according to UN figures.

Earlier Tuesday, a leading international rights group criticised Syrian government bombings last November that targeted the de-facto capital of Daesh terror group, saying the air strikes killed dozens of civilians and may amount to war crimes.

Amnesty International said in a statement that it has documented a series of Syrian government air strikes between November 11 and Nov. 29 that killed up to 115 civilians, including 14 children, in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. On November 25, The Associated Press reported that at least 60 people were killed in air strikes that day in Raqqa.

Raqqa has been the stronghold of Daesh since it declared a caliphate in areas under its control in Iraq and Syria.

SAMARRA, Iraq — Iraq's offensive to retake Tikrit from Daesh terror group was stalled Tuesday because of streets and buildings rigged with booby trap bombs and by the several hundred militants still holding out there.

Troops, police and militia fairly easily boxed the jihadists in over recent days, but mopping them up is proving to be far harder.

"The battle to retake Tikrit will be difficult because of the preparations [Daesh] made," said Jawwad Al Etlebawi, spokesman for Asaib Ahl Al Haq, a Shiite militia playing a major role in the operation.

"They planted bombs on all the streets, buildings, bridges, everything... Our forces were stopped by these defensive preparations," he told AFP.

"We need forces trained in urban warfare to break in," he said, adding that the jihadists are surrounded and that "any besieged person fights fiercely”.

The assault on Tikrit, capital of Salaheddin province, began on March 2.

Loyalists had already failed three times retake the city, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, which was captured by Daesh last summer.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ghabban said Monday the operation had been halted to avoid casualties and to protect infrastructure.

But it is unclear how anything other than an extended siege would achieve either of those objectives, unless there is additional external support, such as air strikes.

Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab Al Saadi, commander for Salaheddin, told AFP Sunday his forces in Tikrit needed air support from the US-led coalition.

He said he had asked the defence ministry to request air support, but that none had yet been forthcoming.

The longer the operation drags on, the longer civilians remaining in Tikrit will be caught in the middle.

Adnan Yunis, spokesman for the Red Crescent in Salaheddin, said only a maximum 20 per cent of Tikrit’s pre-conflict population is believed to remain in the city.

There are “no more than 30,000, probably quite a bit less,” he said.

“They are people who stayed because they do not have enough money to leave, they don’t have a car, they have a disability or because they chose to cooperate” with Daesh, Yunis said.

Daesh beheadings 

Iraq has formed paramilitary units dubbed the Popular Mobilisation forces to fight alongside security forces.

They are made up largely of Shiite militiamen but some Sunni Arabs have also taken part in fighting in the Tikrit area, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab.

Daesh posted pictures Tuesday of the beheading of four men it said were recruiters for the units.

The images show the men dressed in black kneeling in an empty street with knife-wielding militants standing behind them, after which they are pictured being beheaded.

Daesh has carried out numerous atrocities, including public beheadings and mass executions as well as enslavement and rape, and caused millions to be displaced.

It spearheaded a sweeping offensive that overran large areas north and west of Baghdad last June.

It also holds significant territory in neighbouring Syria, where it has taken advantage of the four-year uprising against President Bashar Assad, to oust government forces and rival rebel groups from a swathe of the east and north.

TUNIS — One of Tunisia's most wanted men, a senior commander of Daesh militants in Libya, has been killed fighting with Libyan forces near the city of Sirte, Tunisian security sources said on Tuesday.

The death of Tunisian militant Ahmed Rouissi, who was fighting in Libya's Daesh ranks, confirms the growing importance of foreign fighters in the Libyan conflict, where two rival governments and armed forces battle for control.

Western governments and Libya's North African neighbours are increasingly worried about Islamist militants, especially Daesh allies, extending their foothold in the chaotic country just across the Mediterranean from Europe.

"According to the information we have, we can say Rouissi has been killed in the most recent fighting in Sirte," a Tunisian security source said.

Libya is in chaos with two rival governments — one internationally recognised, the other set up in Tripoli after its forces took over the capital — that are fighting for control four years after a civil war ousted Muammar Qadhafi.

In the turmoil, militants allied to Daesh this year have claimed a string of high-profile attacks targeting foreigners, including an assault on a luxury hotel in Tripoli, the storming of oil fields and kidnapping of oil workers.

Rouissi was a top member of Tunisia's Ansar Al Sharia extremist group branded as terrorists by Washington.

Tunisian officials believe he was the mastermind in the murders of two Tunisian opposition leaders in 2013 that plunged the country into crisis.

He later joined Daesh in Libya and had been running training and recruitment operations with other foreign fighters there, according to the Tunisian security source.

Tunisians make up one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, but more recently militants have been sending jihadists to take part in the conflict in Tunisia's North African neighbour Libya.

Tunisia also said on Tuesday it had dismantled a recruiting cell sending jihadists to fight in Libya and arrested dozens in part of tighter security and border controls to counter Islamist militants.

"Security officers and the army arrested ten terrorists trying to sneak into Libya to join the armed groups in Libya," the interior ministry said in a statement.

The communique said security forces also dismantled four terrorist cells that were recruiting for Libya and arrested 22 more suspects in those operations.

WASHINGTON — A nuclear deal with Iran would be a diplomatic victory for Barack Obama, but its historic worth and impact on the US president's legacy may not be known for a decade or more.

In July 2007, a dark-haired, fresh-faced US Senator was asked if he would meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without precondition in the first year of his presidency.

"I would", he shot back without hesitation. The idea that you punish countries by not talking to them "is ridiculous”.

After more than 2,600 days in the Oval Office, Obama has publicly greeted only two of those leaders — those of Venezuela and Cuba — and then only briefly.

Tempered by experience and the weight of office, Obama's eagerly outstretched arm has evolved into a tougher doctrine of engagement coupled with "strategic patience”.

The apogee of that doctrine is a political deal with Iran that appears near completion.

The agreement would limit Tehran's nuclear programme for 10 to 15 years in return for sanctions relief.

"It would be a historical achievement," said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution.

“It would be a vindication of the approach of engaging with regimes that we have deemed as rogue states or simply as adversaries.”

But in essence, the deal is a postponement.

It’s a bet that in just over a decade Iran’s government will be less hardline and perhaps more willing to dismantle, not just limit, controversial aspects of its nuclear programme.

It’s a bet on patience.

“It’s a large gamble,” said Gary Samore, a White House non-proliferation adviser during Obama’s first term.

“Iran is not making a strategic decision to abandon its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, they are deciding for tactical reasons to accept temporary constraints on the programme in exchange for sanctions relief.”

Serious conflagration 

Samore says it may take a decade or more before we know if the gamble has paid off.

“Whether it ends up being successful or not no one can say. We are not going to know during President Obama’s presidency.”

In the 1990s a similar deal with North Korea fell to pieces and Kim Jong il acquired a bomb.

Repeating that would be a disaster for Obama’s legacy and could precipitate the serious military conflagration with Iran that he now seeks to avoid.

Alternatively, a deal that is honoured could help repair ties severed after the 1979 Islamic revolution and the and subsequent 444 day detainment of 52 US hostages in Tehran.

That in turn could redraw strategic alliances in the Middle East. Iran has only become more powerful since the collapse of president Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

“There is going to be a rise of Iran, no matter which way you cut it,” said Hillary Mann Leverett, a former adviser on the National Security Council.

For Mann Leverett, president Richard Nixon’s visit 1972 visit to China might be a more apt historical parallel for Obama than a failed deal with North Korea.

“The question is: can the US work with Iran for the constructive peaceful rise of Iran in a region that works more together, economically, politically and in security terms for the next generation. That’s exactly what we did in Asia.”

The deal will first have to survive opposition from Obama’s allies in Israel and the Arab Gulf states.

In the short term, measures to reassure those allies is likely to put the deal under strain.

“The immediate consequence of a nuclear deal will be to intensify tension between the US and Iran,” said Samore.

“I would expect that you would see intensified US efforts to challenge Iranian influence in Syria, in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and so-forth and certainly to strengthen security assurances to the Arab Gulf states.”

Already Obama’s White House is stressing that a “grand bargain” ending 30 years of animosity will take more than a nuclear agreement.

At a minimum, Tehran’s leaders will have to stop threatening Israel and halt support for terror groups.

Getting to a point where that may be under discussion may prove the lasting achievement of Obama’s open foreign policy.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu closed a gap with centre-left rival Isaac Herzog in a hard-fought Israeli election on Tuesday, exit polls showed, leaving both men with a chance to rule but Netanyahu with the clearer path to forming a coalition.

A new centrist party, Kulanu, led by a former member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud, seemed destined to emerge the kingmaker in possibly weeks of coalition negotiations.

Two television polls, for Channel 10 and Channel 1, said Likud and Herzog's Zionist Union had each secured 27 seats each in the 120-member Knesset. Channel 2 gave Netanyahu a narrow edge, with 28 to 27 for his challenger.

Final results were not expected until early on Wednesday morning.

In the final days of the campaign, opinion polls had given Zionist Union a lead of three to four seats over Likud, a margin that appeared to give Herzog a fighting chance to score an upset over the prime minister.

If the exit polls prove accurate, Netanyahu could have smoother path towards a coalition, with right-wing and religious parties his traditional allies.

But Herzog also could prevail, should Kulanu and a bloc of Arab Israelis — which the polls predicted would be Israel's third largest party — throw their support behind him.

A national unity government grouping both major parties is also possible. Before the vote, Netanyahu rejected such a coalition.

On Twitter, Netanyahu claimed a "great victory" in Israel's election.

"Against all odds: a great victory for Likud, a great victory for the national camp led by Likud, a great victory for the people of Israel," Netanyahu wrote on his official Twitter account.

Netanyahu took extraordinary steps to drum up support from right-wing voters, reversing policy on the eve of the election with an announcement that he would never allow a Palestinian state.