Region

BAGHDAD/ERBIL,Iraq — Daesh militants have destroyed ancient remains of the 2,000-year-old city of Hatra in northern Iraq, the tourism and antiquities ministry said on Saturday.

An official told Reuters that the ministry had received reports from its employees in the northern city of Mosul, which is under the control of the Daesh terror group, that the site at Hatra had been demolished on Saturday.

The official said it was difficult to confirm the reports and the ministry had not received any pictures showing the extent of the damage at Hatra, which was named a world heritage site in 1987.

But a resident in the area told Reuters he heard a powerful explosion early on Saturday and said that other people nearby had reported that Daesh militants had destroyed some of the larger buildings in Hatra and were bulldozing other parts.

Hatra lies about 110km  south of Mosul, the largest city under Daesh control. A week ago the militants released a video showing them smashing statues and carvings in the city's museum, home to priceless Assyrian and Hellenistic artefacts dating back 3,000 years.

On Thursday, they attacked the remains of the Assyrian city of Nimrud, south of Mosul, with bulldozers. The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO condemned the actions as "cultural cleansing" and said they amounted to war crimes.

Hatra dates back 2,000 years to the Seleucid empire which controlled a large part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great. It is famous for its striking pillared temple at the centre of a sprawling archaeological site.

Saeed Mamuzini, spokesman for the Mosul branch of the Kurdish Democratic Party, said the militants had used explosives to blow up buildings at Hatra and were also bulldozing it.

The antiquities ministry said the lack of tough international response to earlier Daesh attacks on Iraq's historic sites had encouraged the group to continue its campaign.

"The delay in international support for Iraq has encouraged terrorists to commit another crime of stealing and demolishing the remains of the city of Hatra," it said in a statement.

Archaeologists have compared the assault on Iraq's cultural history to the Taliban's destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas in 2001. But the damage wreaked by Daesh, not just on ancient monuments but also on rival Muslim places of worship, has been swift, relentless and more wide-ranging.

Last week's video showed them toppling statues and carvings from plinths in the Mosul museum and smashing them with sledge hammers and drills. It also showed damage to a huge statue of a bull at the Nergal Gate into the city of Nineveh.

Daesh, which rules a self-declared “caliphate” in parts of Iraq and Syria, promotes a fiercely purist interpretation of Sunni Islam which draws its inspiration from early Islamic history. It rejects religious shrines of any sort and condemns Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims as heretics.

Last July, it destroyed the tomb of Prophet Jonah in Mosul. It has also attacked Shiite places of worship and last year gave Mosul's Christians an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. It has also targeted the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar mountains, west of Mosul.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — After years of strained relations over the Syrian conflict, Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is looking to mend ties with its traditional backer Iran. But reconciliation is proving far from simple.

The outbreak of Syria's civil war nearly four years ago provoked a rupture between Hamas and Iran, after the movement threw its support behind rebels fighting President Bashar  Assad, a close ally of Tehran.

Wrongly banking on Assad's overthrow, Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Mishaal in 2012 abandoned host Damascus to move his base to Qatar.

And after reports that Hamas' military wing was helping Sunni rebels fighting the Assad regime, financial support from Shiite Iran soon began to dry up.

With Hamas now in dire straits after a destructive war last year with Israel in the Gaza Strip, officials have begun making overtures to Iran and its allies, seeking to return to the axis that links Tehran, Damascus and Hizbollah, Lebanon's powerful Shiite movement.

"In terms of logistics and training, Iran has done more than any other country in supporting the resistance," Hamas official Ahmad Yusef told AFP.

"Iran has always helped us."

But the path to reconciliation is fraught with obstacles and it will take time to fully restore ties, experts say.

"Reconciliation between Hamas and Iran is on its way to being realised, but is going very, very slowly, and faces obstacles which ensure it won't be a fait accompli in the near future," said Adnan Abu Amer, politics professor at Gaza's Ummah University.

Experts say the biggest hurdle is Hamas' position on Assad.

Its gamble on his downfall alienated the movement from longtime backers Tehran, Damascus and Hizbollah, in favour of a closer alignment with Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni supporters of anti-Assad rebels.

Supporting Assad?

"The Iranians still have a quarrel with Mishaal, because they see him as deciding to leave Syria for the Qatar-Turkey-Gulf axis," Abu Amer said.

"It seems they're demanding as a precondition... that he publicly declare his support for the Assad regime," which Hamas is refusing to do, he added.

Hamas has for months trumpeted an upcoming meeting between Mishaal and Iran’s leaders which has not materialised — a clear sign of problems, according to Nathan Thrall of International Crisis Group.

A visit by Mishaal to Tehran “would be the signal there’s a real shift taking place, and that hasn’t come yet,” he told AFP.

“Even in the best-case scenario... relations are unlikely to return to what they once were.”

Hamas appears to have had more success mending ties with Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hizbollah.

A Hizbollah website in January published what it said was a letter from Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif calling for forces hostile to Israel to “unite”.

Yezid Sayigh, an expert at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, said Hamas’ efforts to rebuild the relationship with Iran and Hizbollah were still at a very early stage.

“More is expected of Hamas than it can give right away, including reversing its stance towards Assad.”

Israel’s 50-day war with Hamas last July and August left much of Gaza in ruins and severely depleted the Palestinian militants’ rocket supply.

Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave, is also unable to pay its security forces due to a lack of cash.

Neighbouring Egypt has since 2013 destroyed hundreds of cross-border smuggling tunnels that were a key supply line for materials, supplies and funds into the Palestinian enclave.

Reconciliation with Iran could mean “that money begins to come from Tehran to Gaza, in the middle of a financial crisis for Gaza”, Abu Amer said.

“Iran also has ways and means, through the Red Sea, through Sudan, Sinai, and so on, to send weapons to Hamas.”

Nuclear uncertainty

Reconciliation prospects are clouded by efforts between world powers and Iran to seal a deal over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“There’s huge uncertainty about what Iran’s policies are going to be if they reach a deal with the US, and that’s uncertainty for Hamas,” Thrall said.

A nuclear agreement could either embolden Iran to become “more aggressive” — pumping money and arms to militant groups such as Hamas — or to enter a tacit alliance with the US, Thrall said.

And in a Middle East where numerous proxy battles are being fought — often between Iran’s allies on one side and Sunni groups on the other — Hamas might hedge its bets, Abu Amer said, suggesting the group was optimistic of rapprochement with Riyadh, Doha and Ankara.

Supporting Assad “would be a loss for Hamas in popularity among Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.

“It might not be in a rush for reconciliation with Iran if it fears losing support from the Gulf axis.”

RIYADH — US Secretary of State John Kerry told Gulf Arab states on Thursday Washington was not seeking a "grand bargain" with Iran, and said a nuclear deal with Tehran would be in their interests.

The United State's Gulf allies, particularly the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are concerned that Shiite Iran will gain from any agreement to end years of dispute over its nuclear ambitions.

"Even as we engage in these discussions with Iran around its nuclear programme, we will not take our eye off of Iran's other destabilising actions in places like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula, Yemen particularly," Kerry said after meeting Saudi King Salman and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal.

"Let me underscore: we are not seeking a grand bargain. Nothing will be different the day after this agreement, if we were to reach one, with respect to all of the other issues that challenge us in this region."

Kerry also met the foreign ministers of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

The US secretary of state arrived in Riyadh late on Wednesday from Montreux, Switzerland, where he said he had made progress in talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Gulf countries, like Israel and many Western states, fear Iran is using its atomic programme to develop a nuclear weapons capability, something Tehran denies.

Saudi Arabia regards Iran as its main regional rival and the two countries back opposing sides in wars and political struggles across the region, often along sectarian lines.

Saudi Arabia and its allies worry that a nuclear accord will not stop Iran from gaining the bomb. They are also concerned it would ease international pressure on Tehran and give it more room to intervene in regional issues.

Speaking alongside Kerry, Prince Saud said Saudi Arabia was concerned by the involvement of Iran in the push being made by Iraqi forces alongside Shiite militias to retake the city of Tikrit from Daesh terror group.

“The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about. Iran is taking over the country,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to the US Congress on Tuesday a deal with Iran would be “a countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare”.

RAMALLAH — Leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, decided on Thursday to stop all forms of security coordination with Israel, Palestinian officials said.

Three members of the Palestinian Central Council (PCC), the second highest Palestinian decision-making body, told Reuters the decision was taken during the two-day meeting that ended on Thursday. Decisions by the PLO are usually binding on the Palestinian Authority.

"The council decided to cease all forms of security coordination with Israel," a PLO official told Reuters.

A statement issued by the 110-member PCC read: "Security coordination in all its forms with the authority of the Israeli occupation will be stopped in the light of its [Israel's] non-compliance with the agreements signed between the two sides."

It said Israel "should shoulder all its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people in the occupied state of Palestine as an occupation authority according to international law".

The decision was certain to provoke Israel. Security coordination is seen as vital to maintain calm in the West Bank.

BAGHDAD — Daesh militants have set fire to oil wells northeast of the city of Tikrit to obstruct an assault by Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers trying to drive them from the Sunni Muslim city and surrounding towns, a witness said.

The witness and a military source said Daesh fighters ignited the fire at the Ajil oil field to shield themselves from attack by Iraqi military helicopters.

The offensive is the biggest Iraqi forces have yet mounted against Daesh, which has declared an “Islamic caliphate” on captured territory in Iraq and Syria and spread fear across the region by slaughtering Arab and Western hostages and killing or kidnapping members of religious minorities like Yazidis and Christians.

Black smoke could be seen rising from the oil field since Wednesday afternoon, said the witness, who accompanied Iraqi militia and soldiers as they advanced on Tikrit from the east.

Control of oil fields has played an important part in funding Daesh, even if it lacks the technical expertise to run them at full capacity.

Before Daesh took over Ajil last June, the field produced 25,000 barrels per day of crude that were shipped to the Kirkuk refinery to the northeast, as well as 150 million cubic feet of gas per day piped to the government-controlled Kirkuk power station.

An engineer at the site, about 35km northeast of Tikrit, told Reuters last July that Daesh fighters were pumping lower volumes of oil from Ajil, fearing that their primitive extraction techniques could ignite the gas.

Bombing in August damaged the Ajil field’s control room, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The outcome of the battle for Tikrit, best known as the hometown of executed Sunni president Saddam Hussein, will determine whether and how fast the Iraqi forces can advance further north and attempt to win back Mosul, the biggest city under Daesh rule.

The army, backed by Shiite militia and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, has yet to reconquer and secure any city held by Daesh, despite seven months of air strikes by a US-led coalition, as well as weapons supplies and strategic support from
neighbouring Iran.

Tehran, not Washington, has been the key player in the current offensive, with Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani seen directing operations on the eastern flank, and Iranian-backed militia leading much of the operation.

Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia expressed alarm on Thursday. “The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about. Iran is taking over the country,” Prince Saud Al Faisal, foreign minister of the Sunni Muslim kingdom, said after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

A spokesman for the local Salahuddin tribal council said 4,000 Sunnis were also taking part in the Tikrit campaign, part of an overall force of more than 20,000 troops and militiamen.

Militia leader killed

Soldiers and militia are also advancing along the Tigris River from the north and south of Tikrit, preparing for a joint offensive expected in coming days. They are likely to attack first the towns of Al Dour and Al Alam to the south and north of Tikrit.

Their approach has been slowed by roadside bombs, snipers and suicide attacks.

A Daesh suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden tanker on Wednesday night into a camp on the eastern edge of Al Dour, killing a leader of the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl Al Haq militia, Madi Al Kinani, and four others, a military source said.

Al Ahd, the militia’s television channel, confirmed Kinani’s death on Thursday, when he was buried in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of the capital Baghdad.

A Salahuddin police source said an eight-vehicle convoy of Daesh insurgents attacked Iraqi forces at dawn on Thursday in Al Muaibidi, east of Al Alam. The source said the army returned fire, killing four militants and burning two of their cars.

An online video published early on Thursday purported to show Daesh militants in Tikrit and Al Alam, taunting their attackers.

“Here we stand in central Tikrit, that’s the mosque of the martyrs behind us... You claimed, as usual that you raided the Sunnis and their homes and have claimed Al Dour, Al Jalam, Al Alam, Tikrit and others. By God, you have lied,” a fighter said.

In Baghdad, 10 people were killed on Thursday in a series of bomb and mortar attacks, police and medical sources said.

The deadliest incidents were in the southeastern, Sunni neighbourhood of Nahrawan, where three people were killed by a bomb in a market, and the northern district of Rashidiya where three soldiers were killed by two roadside bombs.

PARIS — Syria's exiled opposition chief told AFP he wants to pull together the country's divided dissidents to end the nearly five-year bloodbath, as he met the French president for the first time Thursday.

Khaled Khoja, who has headed the main Syrian National Coalition since January, said President Bashar Assad's ouster should not be a pre-condition to enter into a new round of talks with the regime.

Softening the coalition's previous refusal to work with Damascus-tolerated opposition groups, 50-year-old Khoja said he wants "a common ground" with other dissidents, and to "establish a new framework for the Syrian opposition”.

The interview comes less than a week after the exiled coalition met in Paris with the domestic National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change.

For the first time in Syria's war, the two groups agreed on a draft roadmap for future negotiations with Assad's regime.

"We insist on the goal of toppling Assad and the security services... It is not necessary to have these conditions at the beginning of the process, but it is... necessary to end the process with a new regime and a new free Syria," he said.

He also said that while the opposition's main demand is Assad's ouster, it wants to "preserve the Syrian state".

"Unfortunately, the state is being demolished by the regime. Half of the hospitals have been demolished. More than half the schools have been demolished," said Khoja, who has lived in Turkey since the 1980s, after being imprisoned by the regime twice over his political activism.

After meeting Khoja, French President Francois Hollande said Assad is "the main cause of his people's suffering, and for the rise of terrorist groups in Syria".

"He is therefore not a credible interlocutor to fight against Daesh and prepare Syria's future," Hollande said.

Khoja meanwhile told reporters after the meeting that a UN plan to " freeze" the fighting in the main northern Syrian city of Aleppo is "extremely difficult" to implement because "the regime does not respect its commitments".

The National Coalition was established in Doha in 2012. It is recognised by dozens of states and organisations as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

It has entered into two failed rounds of negotiations with the regime, and has faced frequent accusations of being disconnected from the situation inside Syria.

Khoja blamed Assad for the rise of militants such as the brutal Daesh group, which is known for its execution videos and mass kidnappings of minority groups in Syria and Iraq.

"The roots of terror," he said, are "Bashar's intelligence services".

ALGIERS — Algeria's parliament passed a law on Thursday criminalising violence against women, in a move criticised by both Islamist lawmakers as well as Amnesty.

The law makes inflicting injury on one's spouse punishable with up to 20 years in prison, and allows a judge to hand down life sentences for domestic violence resulting in death.

The bill passed in a vote attended by more than half of Algeria's 462 MPs, and the result drew the ire of some of the assembly's Islamists.

Abdelallah Djaballah of El Adala Party said the new law "takes revenge on the husband and on the man in general", accusing the legislation of seeking to "break up the family".

In contrast, a deputy from the ruling National Liberation Front told AFP that Thursday was "a great day" following the adoption of the anti-violence measures.

Between 100 and 200 women die each year in instances of domestic violence in Algeria, according to statistics published by local media.

Amnesty International called for an amendment dropping a clause which allows the survivor of domestic violence to pardon the perpetrator, warning it was "a dangerous precedent".

"The provision fails to confront the reality of the power relations and inequality between men and women," it said.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court opened the trial on Thursday of 213 suspected militants, including members of the army and police, on charges of joining Egypt's most active militant group and attempting to assassinate the interior minister, judicial sources said.

Egypt has been grappling with rising Islamist militancy since then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi ousted freely elected president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

Hundreds of soldiers and policemen have been killed in deadly attacks claimed by the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis group, which changed its name to Sinai Province after pledging allegiance to Daesh, the hardline Sunni militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Egyptian authorities make no distinction between the Brotherhood, Daesh and Al Qaeda, arguing that they have a shared ideology and are equally dangerous.

Judge Hassan Farid who is presiding over the case adjourned proceedings to April 4 after indictments were read out.

The defendants, 143 of whom are in detention, are charged with forming and joining a terrorist group, attacking state facilities, murder, attempted murder, and possessing weapons, judicial sources said, citing the state prosecutor's indictments.

Of the defendants, at least five belong to the army and police services. Two of them are in detention while three are on the run, the sources said

Egypt's public prosecutor Hesham Barakat had said in May that the defendants had launched 51 "terrorist" attacks that killed 40 policemen and 15 civilians, and wounded 348 people.

One of these attacks was the attempted assassination of Mohamed Ibrahim, the interior minister who was replaced in a cabinet reshuffle on Thursday.

Daesh's Egypt wing has claimed responsibility for one of the bloodiest attacks on Egyptian security forces in years. At least 30 security force members were killed in a series of coordinated operations in Northern Sinai in January.

Sisi, who was elected President last year, has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for violence.

The army-backed government has mounted one of the biggest crackdowns in its modern history on the Brotherhood since the ouster of Mursi. The movement denies any connection with militants and says it is committed to peaceful activism.

SKHIRATE, Morocco — Libya's warring factions held United Nations-backed talks in Morocco on Thursday seeking to end the conflict between two rival governments that threatens to drive the North African oil state into civil war.

Air strikes between rival forces had escalated before Thursday's negotiations on Libya, where Western governments worry spreading chaos allows Islamist militants to gain ground in a threat to mainland Europe across the Mediterranean.

The internationally recognised government and elected House of Representatives have operated out of the east since an armed alliance known as Libya Dawn took over the capital in summer and set up its own self-declared government.

Both governments are backed by heavily-armed alliances of former rebels who fought together to oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but later fell out over control of oil wealth.

Western officials see the UN talks as the only hope to form a unity government and halt fighting. But previous talks yielded little.

"Key players are here and all those invited have come, so it is a good sign," United Nations Libya mission spokesman Samir Ghattas said.

Delegates at the talks in coastal town of Skhirate near Rabat met separately with the United Nations mediators.

Tripoli representatives said one delicate point would be the role of Khalifa Haftar, a former Qadhafi ally, who last year began his own military campaign against Islamist militants in Benghazi. He is now the recognised government's army chief.

Libya's North African neighbours are also concerned about spillover and the growing threat of Islamist militants claiming ties to Daesh in Iraq and Syria.

Just before the Morocco talks, Libyan forces from the recognised government said they would halt air strikes for three days.

Warplanes from both factions have for three days hit Tripoli's Maitiga, oil ports in the east and an airport in the western down of Zintan, but without causing major damage.

The North African OPEC state declared force majeure and halted production on 11 oilfields late on Wednesday because of deteriorating security after Islamist fighters overran the Bahi and Mabrouk fields in the central Sirte basin.

Fighting had already closed two main oil ports, Ras Lanuf and Es Sidra, leaving Libya's production at around 400,000 barrels per day, less than half the 1.6 million bpd it produced before the NATO-backed war that ousted Qadhafi.

BEIRUT — Government helicopter gunships on Thursday bombed the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens, activists said.

The bombings came even as Syrian President Bashar Assad vehemently denied in an interview with Portuguese state television that his military drops such explosives, known as barrel bombs, on civilians.

"You are talking about massive propaganda," Assad said in the interview.

The aerial attack on a rebel-held neighbourhood was in apparent reprisal for an attack that was carried out one day before by opposition fighters against a building used by the government's state intelligence services.

Syrian aircraft have dropped hundreds of barrel bombs over the course of the civil war, killing thousands of civilians and causing widespread destruction. The crude tactic — which often involves hurling explosive-filled canisters from helicopters — has been widely criticised by human rights groups because the bombs are not precise.

An Aleppo-based activist who goes by the name Abu Raed said one barrel bomb struck a shop that sells gasoline and diesel fuel. He said a fire broke out and many bystanders were burned.

Abu Raed said the strike on the Qadi Askar neighbourhood killed at least 20 people, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number at 18 dead.

The aerial attack come after Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, and other radical Islamic factions launched an assault on the intelligence building in Aleppo, blowing up part of the facility before trying to storm it.

"This is revenge," Abu Raed said referring to the airstrikes.

Syria's crisis which began in March 2011 has killed more than 220,000 people, a figure that was disputed by Assad in the interview as an exaggeration.

"It's a human disaster we live in Syria," he said.

Assad also predicted that the 5,000 moderate rebels that the US hopes to train to fight against the Daesh group will eventually join the militants. He was referring to Western-backed rebel factions that have already fought and been defeated by Daesh and the Nusra Front.

Last month, the US Defence Department said that the US has screened about 1,200 moderate Syrian rebels to participate in training in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The US Congress has passed legislation authorising the training and providing $500 million for training about 5,000 rebels over the next year.