Region

UNITED NATIONS — The leaders of the United Nations and the Arab League made an urgent appeal to international donors Friday to expedite aid promised to the people of Gaza, following last year's devastating war.

In a joint statement, Ban Ki-moon and Nabil Al Arabi expressed their "deep concern" over limited resources to improve the situation in Gaza.

They "urgently appeal to donors to honour and disburse as soon as possible their financial commitments made at the October 2014 Cairo Conference", the statement said.

Those funds include money for UN agencies in Gaza to "prevent a further deterioration in the already dire humanitarian situation".

The international community promised $5.4 billion to the Palestinians, half of which is to help rebuild Gaza after devastating Israeli bombing aimed at stopping Hamas rocket attacks in July last year.

The two leaders pointed out reconstruction has been slow in Gaza and aid is necessary to ensure stability for the people.

Short on money, the UN announced in January they had suspended housing financial aid to tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, responsible for distributing much of the aid, has said none of the promised aid had arrived to Gaza.

BEIRUT — Lebanon has begun removing political posters and party banners from neighbourhoods of the capital in a move to unify a country still divided from a civil war, following an agreement between the militant and political group Hizbollah and its rivals.

Beirut is fragmented into fiefdoms where political banners and photographs of dead fighters and warlords have marked territory controlled by various groups since the start of the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990.

The poster ban was agreed by Lebanon's main political groupings after gunbattles, car bombs and skirmishes on the border with Syria highlighted the need for reconciliation.

Shiite Muslim Hizbollah supports Syrian President Bashar Assad against a majority Sunni insurgency, angering its Lebanese political rivals who say it is dragging the small Mediterranean state into conflict 25 years after peace accords.

In neighbourhoods where Hizbollah is strong, posters of men who fought Israel for decades have been joined by pictures of young men killed more recently in Syria's civil war.

"Ripping down the posters is sensitive but it's a political decision," said a Beirut Hizbollah supporter who asked to remain anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"One family on this road was upset because we took down a photo of their son who died late last year fighting in Syria," he said, speaking in Zarif, an old district full of battered French-style houses.

He said 1,000 posters in the area had been removed. Only a few faded photos of Assad and some tattered yellow Hizbollah flags remained.

Bashir Itani, a senior member of a rival political party, Future Movement, said: "You can now walk in the streets and find it clean... you couldn't previously see the sky due to the banners."

A large photograph of self-exiled Sunni politician Saad Hariri, a former prime minister, was taken down from the Beirut neighbourhood of Tariq Al Jadideh.

In Lebanon's coastal cities of Sidon and Tripoli, centres of sectarian violence between armed groups, a similar cleanup was launched.

Most residents interviewed by Reuters supported the move in Beirut, where the posters are seen by many as a menacing way to mark out turf.

But they said it was just one step in dampening sectarianism in a country still divided into Christian, Sunni and Shiite, Druze and Alawite villages and districts.

"It doesn't change what people feel inside," said one man.

BAGHDAD — Ahead of Baghdad ending a decade-old nightly curfew, bombs exploded across the Iraqi capital Saturday, killing at least 40 people in a stark warning of the dangers still ahead in this country torn by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The deadliest bombing happened in the capital's New Baghdad neighbourhood, where a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a street filled with hardware stores and a restaurant, killing 22 people, police said.

"The restaurant was full of young people, children and women when the suicide bomber blew himself up," witness Mohamed Saeed said. "Many got killed."

The IS group later claimed the attack, saying their bomber targeted Shiites, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a US-based terrorism monitor. The militants now hold a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria in their self-declared caliphate.

A second attack happened in central Baghdad's popular Shorja market, where two bombs some 25 metres apart exploded, killing at least 11 people, police said. Another bombing at the Abu Cheer outdoor market in southwestern Baghdad killed at least four people, police said.

In Tarmiya, a Sunni town 50 kilometres north of Baghdad, a bomb blast killed at least three soldiers in a passing convoy, authorities said.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to brief journalists. No group claimed the other attacks.

The bombings came as Iraq prepared to lift its nightly midnight-to-5am curfew on Sunday. The curfew largely has been in place since 2004, in response to the growing sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after the US-led invasion a year earlier.

There was no immediate comment Saturday from Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, who announced the end of the curfew on Thursday by decree. He also ordered that streets, long blocked off for security reasons, reopen for traffic and pedestrians.

Iraqi officials repeatedly have assured that the capital is secure, despite Sunni militant groups occasionally attacking Baghdad's Shiite-majority neighbourhoods.

CAIRO — Prominent lawyer Amal Clooney has requested a meeting with Egypt's president to push for the release of Al Jazeera reporter Mohamed Fahmy, a letter obtained by AFP on Saturday shows.

Clooney, who married Hollywood star George Clooney last year, has thrown her legal clout and celebrity behind Fahmy to secure his release.

An Egyptian government official had said that Fahmy, a Canadian citizen, would be freed soon after his Australian colleague Peter Greste was deported on February 1.

"Since Mr Greste's release, Mr Fahmy's Egyptian counsel has been informed by Egyptian government officials that his release was to follow, and that it was imminent," Clooney wrote in the letter addressed to President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and his foreign minister.

"This was to be expected, given that Mr Fahmy has been the victim of the same injustice as Mr Greste," wrote the Britain-based lawyer who has represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and taken on other high profile cases.

"Since this has not yet occurred, however, I now write to request a meeting with you, or your designated officials, as soon as possible to discuss the status of the case," she wrote.

Fahmy and Greste, along with Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed, were arrested and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison after being convicted of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in their coverage, a charge rights groups called absurd.

The court sentenced them to up to 10 years in prison. An appeals court overturned the verdict and ordered a retrial.

Fahmy had to drop his Egyptian nationality in order to be eligible for release under a Sisi decree that allows the deportation of foreign prisoners.

The former CNN reporter had only recently begun work for the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera English service when secret police arrested him and his colleagues in December 2013.

Their arrests came against the backdrop of a cold war between Egypt and Qatar, which supported the Islamist movement of president Mohamed Morsi, whom Sisi deposed in July 2013.

Clooney repeated in her letter that Fahmy's detention was "illegal" and wrote she would visit Cairo to push for his release.

"Despite clear assurances that he would be released, Mr Fahmy remains in detention in Egypt," she wrote.

"I, therefore, plan to visit Cairo in the near future to meet with Mr Fahmy and to discuss the prospects for his release."

GAZA CITY — Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated outside Egypt's diplomatic mission in Gaza City Friday, to protest a Cairo court ruling designating Hamas' armed wing as a terrorist group.

They waved green Hamas flags and chanted in support of the Izzeddine Al Qassem Brigades: "Qassem are the pride of the nation, not terrorists!"

In a sign of worsening relations between the Islamist movement and the Egyptian government, the Egyptian court banned the Brigades Saturday and declared it a terrorist group.

Egypt accuses Hamas of supporting jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip, after the killing of scores of security forces in a wave of attacks.

"We call on the Egyptian authorities to overturn this oppressive ruling," senior Hamas figure Salah Al Bardawil told journalists at the rally.

"Those who seek to undermine Egypt's security in Sinai are its enemies, and not Hamas or Qassem," he said.

"The weapons of the Palestinian resistance remain pointed towards the Zionist enemy [Israel], and we will not dirty our hands with Arab blood."

In early January, Egypt began work on doubling the width of a buffer zone along the border with Gaza to prevent militants infiltrating from the enclave.

The buffer zone was created following a suicide bombing on October 24 last year that killed 30 Egyptian soldiers and wounded scores.

CAIRO — Egyptian security forces killed 47 Islamic militants in the country's Northern Sinai on Friday in one of the biggest operations in the region in months, security sources said.

Apache helicopters killed 27 militants from the Sinai Province group, which pledges allegiance to Islamic State, the ultra-hardline militants who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, the sources said.

Hours later, soldiers shot and killed 20 militants, said the sources.

Sinai Province, fighting to topple the Cairo government, has claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks that killed more than 30 members of the security forces in late January.

After that bloodshed, President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi told Egyptians the country faced a long, tough battle against militants.

Also on Friday, a bomb exploded along a street in Egypt's second largest city Alexandria, killing one person and wounding four others, security sources said.

Sinai-based militants have killed hundreds of soldiers and police since then army chief Sisi toppled president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013 after mass protests against his rule.

A security crackdown on Brotherhood supporters, in which hundreds were killed in the streets and thousands arrested, has weakened the group.

On Friday, Brotherhood supporters and security forces clashed in the Cairo suburb of Matariya, the state news agency reported.

Eighteen people were killed in the Brotherhood stronghold during the January 25 anniversary of the start of the 2011 uprising that ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptian authorities have also jailed activists, including some who gained prominence in the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Mubarak, on charges of violating a law that effectively bans protests.

ANKARA/NEW YORK — Iran's foreign minister has warned the United States that failure to agree a nuclear deal would likely herald the political demise of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani, Iranian officials said, raising the stakes as the decade-old stand-off nears its end-game.

Mohammad Javad Zarif pressed the concern with US Secretary of State John Kerry at several meetings in recent weeks, according to three senior Iranian officials, who said Iran had also raised the issue with other Western powers. Zarif's warning has not been previously reported.

In a statement posted on the Iranian foreign ministry's website, Zarif later denied discussing domestic issues with Western officials.

Western officials acknowledged the move may be just a negotiating tactic to persuade them to give more ground, but said they shared the view that Rouhani's political clout would be heavily damaged by the failure of talks.

The warning that a breakdown in talks would empower Iran's conservative hardliners comes as the 12-year-old stand-off reaches a crucial phase, with a March deadline to reach a political agreement ahead of a final deal by June 30.

The agreement aims to end sanctions in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme, though hard-to-bridge differences remain, particularly on the timing of the relief on economic sanctions and the duration of the deal.

Both US President Barack Obama and Rouhani, who Iranian officials say has staked his career on the deal, are facing stiff domestic opposition to an agreement, narrowing the scope for compromise.

The Iranian officials who spoke to Reuters said Zarif had raised the concern over Rouhani's fate with Kerry. The two men have met repeatedly in recent weeks in an attempt to break the impasse, most recently on Friday when they talked for over an hour on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

"As Rouhani is on the front line, naturally he will be more harmed," said one of the officials, who has direct knowledge of Zarif's discussions with Kerry.

Other Western officials said the Iranian delegation had raised the same concern in talks recently. If the talks fail, Rouhani would likely be sidelined and his influence dramatically reduced, giving hardliners like Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps an upper hand, Iranian officials and Western analysts say.

However, a senior US official denied that Zarif had issued any such warning about Rouhani.

"We'll leave assessment of Iranian politics to the Iranians but this rumour is untrue," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The Iranian foreign ministry website quoted Zarif as saying: "Domestic issues were never raised with foreign officials during any of the meetings."

Conflicts

A comprehensive nuclear deal is seen as crucial to reducing the risk of a wider Middle East war, at a time when Iran is deeply involved in conflicts in Syria and Iraq. After nearly a year of talks, negotiators failed for the second time in November to meet a self-imposed deadline for an agreement.

Iran rejects allegations it is developing the capability to produce atomic weapons. But it has refused to halt uranium enrichment and other sensitive atomic work, leading to the US, European Union and UN sanctions that have hobbled its economy.

One of the Iranian officials, who also had direct access to the talks, said the Americans were talking in terms of years for the sanctions relief while Iran wanted curbs on oil and banking to be lifted within six months.

Rouhani was elected in 2013 on promises of ending Western sanctions, improving the economy and reducing Iran's diplomatic isolation.

But he faces a worsening power struggle with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has said Iran should immunise itself against sanctions, suggesting he is prepared to live with them. Khamenei has the final word on any deal.

Rouhani has said Iran needs to end its isolation to help its economy, which has also been hit hard by plunging oil prices.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are suspicious of the US decision to engage with Iran on the nuclear issue. Israel has threatened to use military force against Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy fails to contain the threat it feels Tehran poses.

The United States, officials familiar with the talks say, has already compromised on the issue of how many centrifuges Iran would be allowed to operate.

Obama could temporarily suspend many of the harshest unilateral US sanctions against Iran but permanent removal would have to be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, where there is little appetite for sanctions relief.

The Senate is finalising a bill for tougher sanctions if there is no final nuclear deal by June 30. Obama has vowed to veto any new Iran sanctions bill.

Another Western official said Rouhani appeared to have underestimated the resolve of Washington and Europe to demand limitations on Iranian nuclear activities for a decade or more in exchange for sanctions relief.

"Rouhani thought that by speaking nicely and not calling for Israel's destruction, Western powers would rush to sign a deal, any deal, with Iran," the official said. "He miscalculated. The Western powers may also want an agreement but they're also constrained by Congress, Israel and Saudi."

WASHINGTON — The US military has moved search-and-rescue crews to northern Iraq in recent days, following an uproar over the killing of the Jordanian pilot captured in Syria by Islamic State (IS)  fighters, defence officials said Thursday.

The action is intended to shorten response times for search-and-rescue teams.

The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak by name about a move that has not been announced.

IS militants have extremely limited air defences, and the Syrian government has not challenged US or coalition aircraft flying over its territory. Even so, combat pilots face the risk of going down behind enemy lines, and they are trained in coordinating with search-and-rescue crews.

US pilots are flying missions over Syria daily from bases in the region. Partner nations, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, are flying less often. The United Arab Emirates suspended its participation in air strikes in December after the Jordanian pilot was captured, but it may reconsider soon after getting extra training, two officials said.

Lt. Muath Kasasbeh, whose F-16 crashed over Syria in December, was captured by IS and taken to an unknown location, where he was held until his captors killed him by burning him alive in a cage on January 3.

US officials have sought to play down the Emiratis’ decision to stop launching air strikes, and have focused instead on Jordan’s determination to step up the fight against the IS. Jordan’s military said Thursday that it had launched a new round of strikes against IS targets in Syria.

Combat missions also are being flown daily over portions of Iraq, mainly in the north and west. The majority are flown by American pilots, though France, Belgium, Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Denmark also are flying missions.

The US typically keeps a tight lid on information about its combat search-and-rescue capabilities in a war zone in order to maximise the effectiveness. The missions usually are led by the air force’s pararescue jumpers, or PJs, who undergo extensive training to be able to find, rescue and provide medical treatment to aircrew members behind enemy lines or at sea.

US Central Command, which is responsible for the American part of the military campaign in Iraq and Syria, has not said publicly why it did not previously expand the search-and-rescue crews in northern Iraq.

Peter Mansoor, a retired army colonel who served in Iraq, said Thursday the Iraqi government may have objected to having such teams based in the Kurdish north for political reasons.

“You want to be as close as possible to where a downed pilot could potentially be so that you could get to him quicker,” Mansoor said in a telephone interview from Ohio State University, where he teaches military history.

“It could be that the Iraqi government wouldn’t allow it before,” he added. “It no doubt is based out of the Kurdish region,” which is a semi-autonomous area with its own defence forces, known as the peshmerga.

It’s also possible that Gen. Lloyd Austin, the Central Command commander, believed that prior arrangements for search-and-rescue crews were adequate. The loss of the Jordanian pilot and the UAE suspension of combat flights may have changed that assessment.

“Maybe the military felt comfortable with what they had in place until recent events have shown how critical it is to have [rescue crews] really close,” Mansoor said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said this week that the US has “taken the necessary precautions to do everything we can to try to make that very dangerous mission as safe as possible for American fighter pilots who are putting themselves in harm’s way.”

Administration officials have said pilots of coalition nations are afforded the same protections and resources as Americans. “There is no risk coalition airmen are taking that American airmen don’t share,” a State Department official said.

Gaza City — A Palestinian journalist who also works as adviser in the Gaza Strip to Dutch diplomats was kidnapped and beaten by men claiming to belong to the Islamic State (IS) group, a relative said Wednesday.

Mohammed Al Maghayer went missing Tuesday morning and was released several hours later after having been interrogated about his links to the Dutch, the relative said.

The Dutch delegation to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank had no immediate comment.

A medic at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital treated Maghayer for "wounds to his legs" and he was discharged early Wednesday.

"Mohammed was kidnapped around 8:00 am near his home in Gaza City," the relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

"His abductors told him they belonged to the Islamic State group.”

"They put metal handcuffs on him and drove him to an undisclosed location where they held him for about eight hours, asking information about himself and his work with the Dutch."

Maghayer, who said he works for the Dutch as a local adviser on Gaza, told AFP he was "kidnapped and beaten", but made no further comment.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said its "security forces have launched an investigation to find who is behind this attack”.

SANAA — Most Yemeni factions have agreed to set up an interim presidential council to manage the country for up to one year, negotiators said on Thursday, in a step to ease a power struggle that forced the president to step down two weeks ago.

The dominant Houthi movement had set a Wednesday deadline for political factions to agree a way out of the crisis that led to the resignation of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi on January 22. Otherwise, the group said, it would impose its own solution.

Delegates said that nine parties and groups, including a faction from the southern separatist Herak, agreed during negotiations in Sanaa on a five-member presidential council that would be headed by Ali Nasser Mohammed, a former president of South Yemen before the 1990 merger with North Yemen.

A source close to Mohammed confirmed consultations were under way with the ex-president but said they have yet to be finalised.

The Sunni Islamist Islah Party was still considering the agreement but the Yemen Socialist Party, which ruled the former South Yemen, said on Thursday it had approved the council.

Yemen's stability is particularly important to neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter. The Arabian Peninsula country is also fighting one of the most formidable branches of Al Qaeda with the help of US drone strikes.

The Houthis, Shiite Muslims backed by Iran, had said on Wednesday night that they had put off acting alone as parties appeared close to a consensus on a way out of the stand-off.

But even as a solution seemed within reach, Yemen's deep divisions were as apparent as ever. The editor in chief of independent newspaper Al Akhbar Al Yawm, which has been critical of the Houthis, told Reuters on Thursday that its building had been taken over by armed men.

"Three cars full of armed Houthis seized the newspaper's building and detained several editors and some employees inside," Ibrahim Mujahid told Reuters by telephone. It was not yet clear what the Houthis' demands were towards the newspaper.

Yemen has been in political limbo since Hadi and the government of Prime Minister Khaled Bahah resigned after the Houthis seized the presidential palace and confined the head of state to his residence in a struggle to tighten control.

The Houthis, who became power brokers when they overran Sanaa in September, had been holding talks with major political factions trying to agree on a way out of the stand-off.