Region

BAGHDAD — A bullet hit the fuselage of a flydubai airliner on its descent into Baghdad, prompting several carriers to suspend their flights to the Iraqi capital on Tuesday.

Flight FZ215 was hit by "small arms fire" before landing on Monday but all passengers disembarked safely, a flydubai spokesperson told AFP.

The no-frills carrier, a sister firm of Emirates, said it was working with Iraqi authorities to investigate the incident, adding that it will continue to fly to its other destinations in Iraq.

Other UAE airlines, including Emirates, Etihad and Air Arabia, suspended their flights to Baghdad, as did Lebanon's Middle East airlines.

"Emirates has suspended its services to Baghdad until further notice due to operational reasons," the Dubai-based airline said.

The Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways said it had "suspended all flights to the Iraqi city with immediate effect and until further notice".

The website of Sharjah-based budget carrier Air Arabia also showed that flights to Baghdad were not available.

MEA chief executive officer, Mohammad al-Hout, said Tuesday's Beirut-Baghdad service had been cancelled, although the airline's flights to other Iraqi cities were continuing as normal.

"As far as tomorrow's [flight] is concerned, we are waiting to assess the situation and see what steps are going to be taken before deciding," he told AFP.

Baghdad airport staff confirmed there had been disruption to flights after Monday's incident.

"The plane was able to land normally but some airlines have cancelled or delayed their flights today," one airport employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Flights from some of the other major airlines flying to Baghdad, such as Turkish Airlines and Royal Jordanian, were delayed, their websites showed.

Western airlines flying over Iraq have taken extra precautions in recent months for fear that jihadists of the Islamic State group might acquire weapons able to hit cruising airliners.

Baghdad International Airport is located west of the capital, near the border with Anbar province, which is largely controlled by IS fighters.

SINGAPORE — Egypt's top Islamic cleric on Tuesday backed the arrest of more than 500 supporters of the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood following clashes over the weekend on the anniversary of the country's 2011 uprising.

"I am not sad for this outcome as such criminals ought to be prosecuted," Egypt's Grand Mufti Sheikh Shawky Allam told reporters in Singapore.

"I strongly condemn their actions as they are crimes that breach the laws of our country," said Sheikh Allam during a four-day visit to the Southeast Asian city-state at the invitation of the local Islamic religious council.

"Those that have been arrested will be prosecuted legally. The reason they have been arrested is not political because they have transgressed the law," the cleric added through an interpreter.

Egypt's Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim on Monday said Egyptian security forces had arrested 516 "elements" of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were "involved in firing ammunition, planting explosives and bombing some facilities".

The arrests come after 20 people, mostly demonstrators, were killed on Sunday when protesters clashed with security forces.

Islamists had called for rallies against President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi's government as Egypt marked the fourth anniversary of the toppling of ex-strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Supporters of Mubarak's successor, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, have regularly clashed with security forces since he was ousted by then army chief Sisi in July 2013.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in a government crackdown targeting Morsi supporters, while over 15,000 have been imprisoned since he was ousted.

Rights groups have repeatedly denounced the use of "excessive force" by the authorities to crush opposition rallies.

Sheikh Allam, who is Egypt's highest Muslim authority, said Sisi's government has taken efforts to "apply [the] rule of law to every citizen".

"Any exceptional procedures in Egypt has been ratified by legal proceedings."

TRIPOLI — Two heavily armed gunmen stormed a luxury Tripoli hotel favoured by top Libyan officials and visiting delegations on Tuesday, killing at least eight people including four foreigners before blowing themselves up, authorities said.

Shooting erupted inside the five-star Corinthia Hotel and security forces evacuated guests, including Tripoli's prime minister and an American delegation, after gunmen blasted through the building's security and reception.

It was one of the worst assaults targeting foreigners since the 2011 civil war that ousted Muammar Qadhafi and fractured the oil-producing North African state into fiefs of competing armed groups with two national governments both claiming legitimacy.

A militant group associated with Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility for the hotel attack as revenge for the death of a suspected Libyan Al Qaeda operative in the United States, according to the SITE monitoring service.

But Tripoli officials who have set up their own self-proclaimed government blamed former Qadhafi loyalists bent on assassinating their prime minister, who was at the hotel, and said he was rescued without injury.

"The attackers opened fire inside the hotel, killing four foreigners, two men and two women, who are believed to be from East Asian countries," Omar Khadrawi, head of Tripoli security, told Reuters. "When the attackers were completely surrounded by the security forces, one of them detonated a grenade, but we don't know if it was deliberate."

A security officer was also killed in the clashes and three guards died when the attackers set off a car bomb in the car park outside the hotel.

Libya is caught in a conflict between two rival factions, one allied with the internationally recognised government, the other with “Libya Dawn” forces who took over the capital Tripoli in the summer and set up their own government.

Both claim the mantle of legitimate saviours of Libya. But in the post-revolution chaos, armed groups — from brigades of former rebels to federalist fighters and Islamist militants — have grown in power and control of territory.

‘Qadhafi loyalists’

Most foreign governments closed their embassies and pulled their staff out of Tripoli after factional fighting erupted last summer. But some diplomats, business and trade delegations still visit the capital.

Envoys from the United Nations, which is holding talks in Geneva with some of Libya’s warring parties to end hostilities and form a unity government, also frequently visit Tripoli.

Khadrawi, the Tripoli security director, said security forces had spirited the Tripoli government’s Premier, Omar Al Hassi, from the 22nd floor of the hotel where he was staying.

“The attackers were attempting to assassinate him, and that is according to our investigation.”

But citing social media, SITE monitors said a militant group claimed the attack as revenge for the death of Abu Anas Al Liby, a suspected Al Qaeda member accused of helping plan the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Liby died in a New York hospital this month ahead of his scheduled trial. Liby, a Libyan national, was snatched by US special forces from Tripoli and taken to the United States in 2013.

Foreigners and embassies have been targeted in shootings, kidnappings and bombings in the past in Libya.

In 2012, militants attacked the US Consulate in the east’s main city of Benghazi, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans. US officials blamed a Libyan Islamist group, Ansar Al Sharia, for orchestrating that attack.

Since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Gaddafi, Libya has struggled to find stability and a conflict has gradually emerged between two loose confederations of politicians, armed groups and regional factions.

Tripoli is controlled by a faction that is allied to the city of Misrata and their powerful armed forces, but also includes some Islamist-leaning former rebel fighters and politicians allied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

They are faced by the internationally recognised government of Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni and the elected parliament who now operate out of the far east of the country.

They are allied with former rebels from the town of Zintan, including some ex-Qadhafi special forces who turned against the dictator. Thinni’s ranks include former army general Khalifa Haftar, who has carried out his own military campaign against Islamist militants in Benghazi.

SANAA — The leader of Yemen's Houthis who control the capital Sanaa said on Tuesday his group was seeking a peaceful transfer of power after the resignation of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and urged all factions to work together to solve the crisis.

Abdel-Malek Al Houthi's conciliatory remarks in a televised speech came less than an hour after his supporters released Hadi's chief of staff, whom they seized last week in an attempt to gain leverage in a dispute with Hadi over the constitution.

The seizure of the aide, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak, helped to plunge Yemen deeper into political crisis, resulting in clashes between the Houthis and Hadi's presidential guards that prompted the president and the government to resign on Thursday.

Political parties in Yemen, including the Houthis, are currently trying to agree what to do after Hadi's resignation, which has left a power vacuum in a country which borders the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

In his speech, Houthi warned against allowing Yemen to be pushed to collapse and said that consultations were proceeding under United Nations auspices to resolve the country's standoff.

"We are seeking a peaceful transfer of power on the basis of partnership," Abdel-Malek Houthi said in a speech broadcast on the group's Al Maseerah television. "Let everyone go towards cooperation instead of clashing, arguing and wrestling."

He added that resolutions made during nearly a year of national dialogue organised by Hadi in 2013 and an agreement signed after the Houthis captured Sanaa last September would also be the basis for any agreement.

Describing Hadi’s resignation as a “manoeuvre”, Houthi said political parties, with UN support, have been holding consultations to bring about a “peaceful transfer of power”.

The Houthis emerged as the dominant faction in Yemen by seizing Sanaa in September and dictating terms to a humiliated Hadi, whom they held as a virtual prisoner at his home last week after clashing with his security guards.

Hadi, a former general, has blamed the Houthis’ control of Sanaa for impeding his attempt to steer Yemen toward stability after years of turmoil and tribal unrest.

In a statement, US special envoy Jamal Benomar welcomed Bin Mubarak’s release, saying “this news would help reduce tensions and enable progress” in the negotiations he was facilitating between political parties.

Benomar said he urged Ansarallah, the Houthis’ official name, to “undertake steps that would be in the best interest of all political sides and the people of Yemen”.

He also pressed all political parties to act responsibly and to give priority to the national interest, the statement said.

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country opposes the idea of a Kurdish-controlled autonomous government in northern Syria.

His comments came as Kurdish militia drove the Islamic State insurgents from the Syrian town of Kobani just across the Turkish border and raised their flags on Monday, in a heavy blow to jihadists after months of intensive fighting.

"We do not want a new Iraq. What's this? Northern Iraq," Erdogan told Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper aboard a plane en route from an African tour at the weekend. He was referring to the Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

"A northern Syria there after northern Iraq... It is not possible for us to accept this," he said.

"Such formations will lead to grave problems in the future."

Kurdish forces gradually pushed back IS militants who have captured large chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria, with the help of the US-led air raids and a group of fighters from Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Turkey, which has fought a 30-year insurgency against Kurdish rebels in its southeast, has hesitated to act for Kobani over fears it could embolden Kurdish forces.

Erdogan has in the past said that his country will not allow "a terrorist group to establish camps in northern Syria" and threaten Turkey.

Ankara blacklists the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — which uses its safe havens in northern Iraq as a springboard for deadly attacks on its soil — as a terrorist organisation and sees the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as a Syrian branch of the PKK.

Turkey has refused to play a robust role in the US-led coalition against the IS jihadists, prompting its own Kurds to take to streets in October in two days of street clashes that left 30 dead.

Turkey's sole contribution to the coalition has been allowing a contingent of Iraqi peshmerga Kurdish fighters to transit Turkish soil to fight IS militants in Kobani.

The Kurds are the world's largest stateless people, spread between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey after missing out on a state of their own in the border changes after World War I.

In recent years, Turkey has enjoyed burgeoning trade and energy ties with the Iraqi Kurdish region, while at home Ankara has started a peace process with its sizeable Kurdish minority with an ultimate goal of disarming PKK rebels.

Erdogan also renewed his call for a no-fly zone in Syria and criticised what he said was a failure by fellow NATO member the US to target the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in Syria.

Washington is "not keen on any action that targets the regime," Erdogan said. "Then there cannot be any solution."

"We have a clear policy on Syria. We never think about modifying it. The regime is our target. It cannot continue with the Assad regime," said Erdogan.

BEIRUT — Kurdish forces battled Islamic State (IS) fighters outside Kobani on Tuesday, a monitoring group said, a day after Kurds said they had taken full control of the northern Syrian town following a four-month battle.

Known as Ayn Al Arab in Arabic, the mainly Kurdish town close to the Turkish border has become a focal point in the international fight against IS, an Al Qaeda offshoot that has spread across Syria and Iraq.

There were clashes to the southeast and southwest of Kobani, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, although it added the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) had managed to recapture a village outside the town.

The YPG said on Monday Kobani had been "completely liberated" from IS, which it referred to using the pejorative Arabic acronym "Daesh".

"The defeat of Daesh in Kobani will be the beginning of the end for the group," a statement on its website said.

IS still has fighters in hundreds of nearby villages. The observatory reported air strikes around Kobani on Tuesday, and on Monday the Pentagon said the fight for the town was not yet over. IS supporters denied the group had been pushed out.

Television footage aired on Tuesday from Kobani showed entire blocks levelled by bombardment, tangled steel and chunks of cement sprawled along muddy streets. Roads were littered with unexploded ordnance and mortar casings.

The militant group launched an assault on Kobani last year using heavy weapons seized in Iraq and forcing tens of thousands of locals over the border into Turkey. US-led air strikes and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have backed up the YPG, which called for international help during the siege.

GAZA CITY — The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday that it cannot afford to repair Gaza homes damaged in last year's war with Israel because donors have failed to pay.

"The agency has exhausted all funding to support repairs and rental subsidies," the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a statement.

"$5.4 billion was pledged at the Cairo [aid] conference last October and virtually none of it has reached Gaza. This is distressing and unacceptable.

"It is unclear why this funding has not been forthcoming," it added.

UNRWA said that the homes of more than 96,000 Palestine refugees were destroyed or damaged during the conflict.

They made up the vast majority of the more than 100,000 homes that were hit during the 50-day conflict between Israel and Gaza's Islamist de facto rulers Hamas.

UNRWA said: "Some funds remain available to begin the reconstruction of totally destroyed homes."

But it added that cutting subsidies to displaced residents currently renting alternative accommodation could force large numbers back to UN schools and centres which are already sheltering 12,000 people.

"UNRWA in Gaza has so far provided over $77 million to 66,000 Palestine refugee families to repair their home or find a temporary alternative," it said.

"This is a tremendous achievement; it is also wholly insufficient... We are talking about thousands of families who continue to suffer through this cold winter with inadequate shelter. People are literally sleeping amongst the rubble. Children have died of hypothermia."

Two babies died in Gaza earlier this month as dozens of homes were flooded in brutal storms that brought freezing rain and gale-force winds.

Gaza's sole power station, which was damaged during the war, is struggling with a severe lack of fuel and is only able to supply the enclave with six hours of power per day.

A Hamas official warned recently that the territory could become a breeding ground for extremism unless promised reconstruction is accelerated.

"Our message to the world, which is scared of terrorism and extremism, is that the delay in rebuilding Gaza and the continuing blockade against it will make it a ripe environment for the spread of extremism and terrorism," Khalil Al Haya told a Gaza City meeting of the movement's representatives in the Palestinian parliament.

Israel and Hamas, which Israel brands a terrorist organisation, fought a July-August war that killed almost 2,200 Palestinians and caused massive destruction.

Reconstruction has barely begun, with experts saying it will take years even if Israel significantly eases its eight-year blockade.

Israel, which controls two of the three crossings into Hamas-controlled Gaza, maintains tight curbs on the entry of building materials, for fear that militants could use them for military purposes.

JEDDAH — Decades ago, Saudis trekked across their kingdom to pledge allegiance to their new kings at their palaces. Now they are just using Twitter.

Thousands of Saudis have poured into the palace of King Salman who acceded the throne after the death of his half-brother King Abdullah last week.

Many others exercised the entrenched tradition at the palaces of provincial princes.

But thousands of others have pledged their allegiance to the new ruler online, taking advantage of social media networks.

Chief among them is Twitter, whose popularity has exploded with an astounding 40 per cent of Saudis now using the microblogging website.

Saudi Arabia is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, but authorities have stopped short of banning Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, unlike in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Ultra-conservatives tweet as much as liberals in the tightly censored absolute monarchy, with clerics attracting the most followers, like Mohammed Al Arefe who has 10.8 million of them.

However several users have faced jail over their posts that have been deemed offensive to the authorities or to Islam.

King Salman himself has an account that saw its number of followers surge to 1.6 million as he became the monarch.

"I pray to God to help me serve our dear people and achieve their aspirations, and to keep our country secure and stable," read a tweet posted on the account following his accession.

A hashtag in Arabic declaring "I pledge allegiance to King Salman" spread quickly among Saudi tweeps after King Abdullah died on Friday, as users of the site mourned the late monarch.

'Progress without abandoning tradition' 

"I have pledged my allegiance through Twitter because as we progress technologically, we do not abandon our identity and traditions," said Twitter user Salman Al Otaibi.

"This pledge is a duty on every Muslim," he told AFP.

Metab Al Samiri tweeted: "With full obedience, I pledge allegiance to you Salman."

The pledge is both an Islamic obligation to provide the ruler with legitimacy and a tribal commitment to obey the new leader.

Twitter has also proven to be a headache for authorities in Gulf monarchies as social media blogging sites render their censorship largely helpless.

Users calling for reforms in the kingdom have taken to the platform to voice discontent and demand concessions from the ruling family.

"We want a consultative shura council that is elected by the people, capable of legislating laws and holding the Cabinet to account," said one tweet.

"This way, the alleged reforms could be achieved," it added, using another popular hashtag that said: "Demands for King Salman."

Despite timid steps to introduce reforms, Saudi Arabia under King Abdullah remained a tightly controlled kingdom, where conservatives continue to play a strong role.

The case of blogger Raef Badawi serves as an example of the Gulf state's ever-tightening freedom of expression.

Badawi is serving a 10-year jail sentence for insulting Islam, and he has also been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, having received 50 of them in public this month.

Twitter is "the source of all evil and devastation", said the kingdom's top cleric Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh in a fatwa edict in October.

"People are rushing to it thinking it's a source of credible information but it's a source of lies and falsehood," he said.

Despite such warnings, there are no signs of Twitter's popularity waning in Saudi Arabia, whose 5 million users give the kingdom the world's highest penetration.

CAIRO — A video emerged Monday showing the killing of an Egyptian police captain by extremists in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula earlier this month.

The footage, which circulated on jihadi forums and social media, shows a group of masked men capturing the officer at gunpoint at a crossroads, binding his arms roughly as jihadi chants play in the background. The men are armed with automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

In a later scene, the officer speaks to the camera, holding back tears as he identifies himself. He shows his pistol to explain that he was armed when ambushed "by the Mujahedeen of the Province of Sinai", the name used by Islamist militants who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which controls large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Repeating demands of the militants, he accused the state of imprisoning, torturing and raping female students and urged their release, saying "otherwise, all officers of the Interior Ministry will be targeted”.

The officer is then shown kneeling, eyes and arms bound, before a man carrying a Kalashnikov shoots him several times in the back of the head. The footage conforms to Associated Press reporting of the killing, which was already confirmed by Egyptian authorities.

The captain was snatched from a taxi by gunmen as he headed to work at the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, state prosecutors said earlier this month. They had imposed a media gag order on the case, a rare incident of militants seizing an officer in an area where the military is conducting an ongoing offensive against powerful local Islamic militias.

The officer was found shot dead near the village of El Muqatta, near the Gaza border following a military search for him in the area that led to clashes which officials said killed 10 militants.

North Sinai has seen a spike in militant attacks against security forces, particularly after the military ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The area has been under a dusk-to-dawn curfew since last October, which the government on Monday extended for another three months.

Khanke, Iraq — The international community is failing in its duty to protect civilians affected by the conflict in Iraq and Syria, US actress Angelina Jolie said Sunday in northern Iraq.

In her capacity as special envoy for the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), the Hollywood star visited Syrian refugees and displaced Iraqis near Dohuk, in the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

"I'm shocked by what I've seen today. This is my fifth visit to Iraq since 2007 and the suffering is worse than anything I've seen in that time," she told reporters at a camp in Khanke.

Jolie last visited Iraq in 2012, before the Islamic State jihadist group became a dominant force in large parts of Syria and launched a devastating offensive in Iraq last year.

More than two million people have been internally displaced in Iraq over the past year alone. Nearly half of them have found refuge in Kurdistan and the numbers continue to grow.

"UNHCR received only half of the funding it needed in 2014 for programmes in Iraq and Syria and is extremely concerned at the slow pace of pledges for this year. Without more assistance, the situation is unsustainable," Jolie added.

"We are being tested here as an international community and so far, for all the immense efforts and good intentions, the international community failed," she said.

Neil Wright, the UNHCR representative in Iraq, deplored that world powers' financial pledges did not reflect the scope of a crisis that has forced more than 13 million people from their homes in Syria and Iraq.

"It is time to question whether the governments, whether the donors need to recalibrate the billions they are spending on military solutions and the millions that they are spending on relieving suffering amongst the displaced and amongst the communities who are so generously hosting them," he said.

According to the UNHCR, more than 3.8 million Syrians have fled to neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and to Egypt.