Region

CAIRO — At least 15 people were killed at pro-democracy protests in Egypt on Sunday, the anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, security sources said.

In the bloodiest day of protests since Abdel Fattah Al Sisi was elected president in June, security forces and
plainclothed police fired at protesters, witnesses said.

The anniversary is a test of whether Islamists and liberal activists have the resolve to challenge a government that has stamped out dissent since then-army chief Sisi ousted elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

Dozens of protesters were killed during last year's anniversary. Again this year, security forces fanned out across the capital and other cities.

The heaviest death tool was in the Cairo suburb of Matariya, a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. Special forces fired pistols and rifles at protesters, a Reuters witness said. Eight people, including one policeman, were killed, according to the health ministry.

People in Matariya chanted "down with military rule" and "a revolution all over again". Demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at security forces and fires raged.

Riot police backed by soldiers in armoured vehicles sealed off roads, including those leading to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of the 2011 revolt.

In downtown Cairo, riot police with rifles and plainclothed men with pistols chased protesters through the streets.

Six people were killed in separate protests in Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city, Giza governorate outside of Cairo and the Nile Delta province of Baheira, security sources said.

A bomb wounded two policemen stationed outside a Cairo sports club, the sources said.

Signs of discontent built up as the anniversary of the revolt against Mubarak approached, and a liberal woman activist, Shaima Sabbagh, was killed at a protest on Saturday.

About 1,000 people marched in her funeral procession on Sunday. The health ministry said she had been shot in the face and back and interior ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif said an investigation into her death had begun, adding: “No one is above the law.”

“Shaima was killed in cold blood,” Medhat Al Zahid, vice president of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party that Sabbagh belonged to, told a news conference.

Craving stability

Sisi’s crackdown has neutralised the Brotherhood but failed to end an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula near the Israeli border.

A curfew imposed in north Sinai was extended for three months, authorities said. Islamist militants based in the Sinai have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since Morsi’s removal. They have pledged support for Islamic State, the ultra-hardline group that seized parts of Iraq and Syria.

After four years of political and economic turmoil following Mubarak’s fall, many Egyptians have overlooked allegations of widespread human rights abuses and praised Sisi for restoring a measure of stability.

Sisi, who served as military intelligence chief under Mubarak, has also taken bold steps to repair the economy, such as cutting costly fuel subsidies.

But his critics accuse him of restoring authoritarian rule and repealing freedoms won in the uprising that ended three decades of iron-fisted rule under Mubarak.

“The situation is the same as it was four years ago and it is getting worse. The regime did not fall yet,” said engineer Alaa Lasheen, 34, protesting near Tahrir Square.

In a televised address on Saturday, Sisi praised the desire for change that Egyptians showed four years ago but said it would take patience to achieve all of “the revolution’s goals”.

Sheikh Youssef Al Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric based in Qatar who supports the Brotherhood, called for protests on Sunday and said Morsi was Egypt’s legitimate leader.

Qaradawi’s outspoken support for the Islamist movement has fuelled a diplomatic rift between Qatar and its Gulf Arab allies which, like Cairo, consider the group a security threat.

DOHA — A Qatari court ruled Sunday that the parents of an American teacher murdered in the Gulf state should decide whether her alleged killer is executed.

The Pennsylvania-based family of Jennifer Brown can choose between the death penalty, compensation — "blood money" under Islam law — or a pardon for the Kenyan security guard charged with first degree murder, the judge ruled.

Although the death penalty can still be handed down as a punishment in Qatar, it has been 12 years since the last execution took place.

If the Browns choose to pardon the security guard, who has yet to be convicted, court officials said he was still likely to serve a prison term.

Jennifer Brown, 40, was murdered in her company-provided home in November 2012.

She had only arrived in energy-rich Qatar two months earlier to teach at the English Modern School in the city of Al Wakrah.

The security guard has reportedly confessed, but the case has moved slowly through the Qatari legal system and been adjourned several times.

The teacher's father, Robert Brown, has expressed frustration at delays in reaching a verdict.

A US embassy representative was present at Sunday's hearing, which the judge adjourned until March 8 to hear from the Browns.

MOGADISHU — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday vowed to boost already large investments as he visited Somalia, a strategic ally offering lucrative rewards for those willing to work in the war-torn nation.

Erdogan, on a rare visit by a foreign leader to a capital hit by frequent insurgent attacks, praised the "major developments" seen in Somalia and promised to deliver more.

He was welcomed at Mogadishu's new Turkish-renovated airport by Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

Turkey is a major donor to and investor in Somalia, carrying out a series of large-scale construction projects in a city devastated by more than two decades of war, and now undergoing a major building boom.

Erdogan, who was accompanied by his wife and daughter, made the one day visit under tight security.

Hundreds of soldiers and police officers shut down much of the capital's streets, where five people were killed Thursday in a suicide attack on a hotel housing the Turkish delegation in Mogadishu.

Somalia's Al Qaeda-affiliated Shabab rebels — who are fighting to overthrow the country's internationally-backed government — said they carried out the bombing, the latest in a string of attacks by the group against high-profile targets in Mogadishu.

Erdogan later visited a hospital and mosque built with Turkish support.

Mohamud praised Turkey's "prominent, exemplary role" in Somalia, where unlike most nations, Turkish citizens live and work outside heavily fortified compounds.

"Turkey did not hold back, waiting for stability before it invested. Instead, it invested to achieve it," Mohamud said.

"Where other international partners chose to plan their interventions from elsewhere, Turkey put its people on the ground in Somalia."

Turkey's relationship with Somalia dates back centuries, but since famine devastated parts of the Horn of Africa nation in 2011, Erdogan has forged close ties with Mogadishu and launched a raft of construction and development projects.

Erdogan last visited Mogadishu in 2011 as prime minister, the second major leader to visit the city in years, a few months after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

He remains one of the most high profile visitors to the city.

Erdogan had originally planned to visit Mogadishu on Friday, but postponed the trip to attend the funeral of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah.

The visit to Somalia ends Erdogan's Horn of Africa tour, which has included visits to Ethiopia and Djibouti, a key port on the Gulf of Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea.

Both countries contribute troops to the more than 20,000-strong African Union force in Somalia, which is battling the Shabab.

Shabab fighters have in the past three years lost swathes of territory and towns to the AU force and Somali government troops, and their leader was killed in a US air strike in September.

But they still remain a potent threat.

The Somali government, which took power in August 2012, was the first to be given global recognition since the collapse of Siad Barre's hardline regime in 1991.

Billions in foreign aid has been poured in, with the government initially hailed as offering the best chance for peace in a generation.

But, like its predecessors, it has since become mired in political in-fighting and corruption.

DUBAI — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is to appear before parliament following controversy over a promenade with his American counterpart during intense nuclear negotiations in Geneva, state media reported on Sunday.

Zarif, who leads Tehran's talks with "P5+1" — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — had a 15-minute walk down Geneva sidewalks with US Secretary of State John Kerry during discussions on January 14 aimed at reaching a settlement of the 12-year nuclear dispute between Iran and the West.

Media images of the top diplomats from old adversaries strolling together in a foreign land provoked an outcry among Iranian hardliners deeply wary of rapprochement with the "Great Satan".

On Friday, conservative-leaning prayer leaders heaped scorn on Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani for the "diplomatic slip-up" and newspapers said 21 members of parliament had signed a petition to call in the moderate minister to provide an explanation.

"Given the Great Satan's endless demands and sabotage during the course of the nuclear negotiations, there is no conceivable ground for intimacy between the foreign ministers of Iran and America," said the petition published in hardline Fars News.

"Your exhibitionist walk together with [Kerry] along Geneva sidewalks was certainly outside the norms of diplomacy, so why don't you put a stop to such behaviour?"

The row over the diplomatic stroll is the latest in a series of summons since Zarif took charge of the nuclear file in late 2013.

In February 2014, he caused an uproar with public comments condemning the Holocaust and was subsequently summoned to parliament. Holocaust denial has been a staple theme of public speeches in Iran for decades.

Tehran and Washington broke diplomatic ties after Iran's 1979 Islamist revolution, establishing tentative direct contact on specific cases such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently as part of the nuclear talks between Iran and "P5+1", under way since after President Rouhani's 2013 election.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has endorsed official interaction with the United States within the nuclear framework, leaving the field wide open for controversy.

Speaking to reporters in Tehran last week, Zarif sought to justify the private walk with Kerry: "We had a serious earnest session and perhaps there was a need to pause a few minutes and resume in another form. These are quite normal in the world of diplomacy, especially since our hotel had no yard or garden and surrounding alleys were packed with curious journalists."

Despite resurgent criticisms, Zarif held another round of secret nuclear talks with Kerry on Friday in Davos, Switzerland. There has been no word of a breakthrough in the quest for a deal to curb Iran's atomic programme in return for lifting economic sanctions imposed as punishment on Iran in the past.

The United States and other Western countries have long suspected the Islamic republic of seeking nuclear weapons know-how, but Iran insists its programme is geared to production of non-fossil fuel and scientific research.

AMMAN — Syrian insurgents including fighters from Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front, seized an important government army base in the southwestern Deraa province on Sunday, fighters who took part in the battle said.

The base, one of several used to pound rebel-held villages and towns in southern Syria and along the frontier with Jordan, lies at the heart of a heavily fortified zone which has formed a southern line of defence protecting the capital, Damascus.

The fighters said hundreds of insurgents armed with rocket launchers and anti-aircraft weapons had taken over the Brigade 82 base near the town of Sheikh Maskeen, close to the main north-south highway between Damascus and Jordan.

"This advance will help us cut supply routes of the regime forces in the south from their supplies in the north to be able to eventually take over Deraa city," Colonel Saber Safar, a leader of the First Army, a major faction of Western-backed rebels in the "Southern Front" grouping, told Reuters by phone.

The rebel gain is the latest advance in the south, where President Bashar Assad's forces have been on the defensive, losing control of large areas of countryside as well as parts of the border along with Israel near the Golan Heights, according to regional military experts and diplomats.

Fighters said the capture of the base had helped them to overrun most of the nearby town of Sheikh Maskeen, which they have attacked several times in last few months, but failed to seize.

The town is one of the main army supply routes to the city of Deraa, along the border with Jordan that was mainly in government hands.

The south is the last major stronghold of the mainstream, anti-Assad opposition, who have been weakened elsewhere by the expansion of the ultra-hardline Islamic State group in the east and north, and gains by Al Nusra Front in the northwest.

However, Al Nusra is fighting in the south alongside the Western-backed groups, who have proved more united there than in other parts of Syria.

In a separate development on Sunday, Islamist fighters struck the Syrian capital with at least 38 rockets, killing seven people, a monitoring group said, in one of heaviest attacks on Damascus in over a year.

The Saudi-backed Islam Army had warned earlier that it would hit back against an air strike last week in the eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, in which more than 40 people were killed.

RIYADH — More foreign leaders flocked to Saudi Arabia paying their respects to King Salman Sunday, as the normally gridlocked streets of Riyadh turned quiet on a day of mourning for his predecessor King Abdullah.

Singapore's Home Affairs Minister Teo Chee Hean arrived, as did Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and Libya's internationally-recognised Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thani.

From across the Arab and Muslim worlds, from Europe, Asia, and America, presidents, prime ministers and sheikhs have flown in to express condolences.

It is a recognition of the Islamic kingdom's power as the world's leading oil exporter, a political heavyweight in a region threatened by extremist violence, and as home to Islam's holiest sites.

Salman, 79, acceded to the throne on Friday after King Abdullah's death at the age of about 90.

US President Barack Obama announced he would cut short a visit to India to travel to the kingdom on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia has long been a key United States ally and last year joined the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State jihadist group.

Obama "called King Salman Bin Abdulaziz from Air Force One today to personally express his sympathies", the White House said on Saturday.

King Salman, a half-brother of King Abdullah who reigned for almost a decade, declared Sunday a nationwide holiday "to provide comfort and facilitation to all citizens in offering condolences" and allegiance to the new monarch, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

Low-key mourning 

Dignitaries greeted King Salman and his heir Crown Prince Moqren, 69, on Saturday night at Al Yamamah Palace, the royal court.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Shiite-dominated Iran was among the guests, making a rare visit as Tehran tries to improve relations with its Sunni regional rival.

Both Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko joined the well-wishers, even as pro-Kremlin rebels announced a major new offensive on a strategic government-held Ukrainian port.

Other guests included French President Francois Hollande, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla and European royalty. Prince Charles and Prime Minister David Cameron came from Britain.

Outside, a helicopter patrolled and four lanes of cars — everything from luxury Bentleys to everyday models — inched towards the palace grounds carrying Saudi well-wishers past guards with pistols strapped to their thighs.

Away from the palace and nearby roadblocks, life continued with shops open and almost no indication a new era had begun, except for billboards expressing condolences for King Abdullah's death.

A low-key way of mourning and King Abdullah's burial in an unmarked grave reflect the kingdom's adherence to the austere teachings of 18th century Muslim scholar Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab.

"What is not encouraged in Sharia is to be hysterical" in grief, said Khalid Al Dakhil, an independent political analyst and expert on Wahhabism.

He was referring to Islamic Sharia law that governs religious and secular duties in the kingdom.

Global tributes 

Millions of Saudis would likely visit local government headquarters to offer condolences and allegiance, Dakhil said, but others would pledge "just in their hearts".

That is exactly what one woman living in eastern Saudi Arabia did.

"Of course I pledged allegiance but with my heart like my husband said I should," said the woman, the wife of an Imam in the conservative kingdom. She declined to be named.

An unemployed graduate, who gave his name only as Waleed, said:

"If I pledge or not, will it make a difference?"

He joked that if he finds work he will pledge "maybe next year".

Youth unemployment was 28 per cent in the first half of last year, according to official data cited by Jadwa Investment.

World leaders have praised King Abdullah as a key mediator between Muslims and the West, but activists criticised his human rights record and urged King Salman to do more to protect free speech and freedoms for women.

"Saudi Arabia is a partner, both economic and political," Hollande said before his arrival in Riyadh with Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

King Salman pledged to keep the kingdom on a steady course and acted to cement his hold on power with key appointments.

Saudi Arabia has been the force behind a refusal by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to slash crude output in support of prices, which have fallen by more than 50 per cent since June.

King Salman is widely expected to follow King Abdullah's foreign and energy policies as well as moderate reforms.

CAIRO — Two sons of Egypt's ousted leader Hosni Mubarak seen as symbols of his era's corruption were freed from prison on Friday pending a graft retrial, state media reported.

Alaa and Gamal Mubarak left jail early Friday after a court ordered their release because they had served the maximum pretrial detention, the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper reported on its website.

Mubarak, who was unseated in Egypt's 2011 uprising, was convicted by a lower court on corruption charges with his two sons last year, with Alaa and Gamal receiving four-year sentences.

Their charges included embezzling at least $16 million earmarked for the maintenance of presidential palaces.

The retrial of the former leader and his two sons was ordered this month and their lawyer Farid Al Deeb said at the time that the elder Mubarak, who is in a military hospital, would also be a free man.

But state media reported there had been no orders yet for his release and there have been no signs of the 86-year-old leaving the hospital.

The release of the Mubaraks presents a dilemma for President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, a former army chief whom opponents accuse of reviving Mubarak-era practices.

Sisi took power after ousting Egypt's first post-revolution leader — Islamist president Mohamed Morsi — in 2013 and won an election with massive support last year.

But he has faced accusations of being even more authoritarian than Mubarak, unleashing a crackdown on Morsi supporters that has killed at least 1,400 people.

The release of the Mubaraks so close to the January 25 anniversary of the 2011 revolt risks antagonising government critics.

CAIRO — Benghazi-based extremist Islamic militant group Ansar Al Sharia said Saturday its leader Mohammed Al Zahawi has been killed.

Unconfirmed reports that Zahawi was injured or killed in an attack late last year had circulated on jihadist websites for months although the group dismissed them at the time.

The statement, posted on the group's official Twitter account Saturday, gave no details about how or when Zahawi was killed.

It gave condolences and vowed to take revenge and "shake the seat of power". The statement included a photo allegedly showing Al Zahawi after his death.

The group has been blamed for the September 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In the attack, gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and stormed the mission, many waving the black banners of Ansar Al Sharia. The compound's main building was set ablaze. Stevens suffocated to death inside and another American was shot dead. Later in the evening, gunmen attacked and shelled a safe house, killing two more Americans.

The United States designated it a terrorist organisation in January 2014, saying that the group emerged after the fall of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. It said that along with the attack on the US Consulate, the group has been involved in "terrorist attacks against civilian targets, frequent assassinations, and attempted assassinations of security officials and political actors in eastern Libya."

The United Nations also listed Ansar Al Sharia as a terrorist organisation in November 2014, saying it runs training camps for foreign fighters travelling to Syria, Iraq and Mali.

Ansar Al Sharia is part of the shura council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, an umbrella group for the city's hardline militias. Last spring Khalifa Hiftar, a former army general, led a unilateral offensive against extremist militias in Benghazi. On October 15, Hiftar and the elected government joined ranks against the militias.

Widespread militia violence has plunged Libya into chaos less than four years after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed Qadhafi.

MOSCOW — Russia plans to bring together members of the Syrian regime and opposition in a new push to resuscitate talks on ending the country's nearly four-year civil war, although hopes of a breakthrough are slim.

The January 26-29 behind closed doors talks will include Syria's regime-tolerated domestic opposition and members of Bashar Al Assad's government but not the Western-backed exiled National Coalition.

Moscow hopes to burnish its credentials as a top diplomatic mediator, although Russia itself is mired in a showdown with the West over fighting in Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed hope that the meetings would help the UN peace envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, organise a new peace conference to negotiate a way out of the civil war that has claimed an estimated more than 200,000 lives.

Two previous rounds of talks in Geneva ended without success.

The latest initiative from the Syrian regime's most powerful backer comes amid signs that Washington may be recalibrating its strategy, prioritising the fight against the hardline Islamic State (IS) group, which is increasingly active within Syria, over Assad's exit.

Analysts said the talks were unlikely to bear fruit and some said it would be an achievement if they take place at all, pointing to a lack of agreement among Syrian opposition members.

But they said Russia will use the meeting to show the West it can do business with the Syrian regime and buttress Assad.

"If there is some sort of agreement at this meeting — and we are hoping there will be — of course, this will strengthen the legitimacy of Bashar Assad as president," said Boris Dolgov, a researcher at the Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies.

Lavrov this week pointed to efforts by the Syrian government to destroy its chemical weapons, rubbishing claims that Damascus was not a reliable partner.

"Such excuses no longer work," he said.

US-Syria policy shifting? 

Lavrov also praised US President Barack Obama for what he called Washington's growing realisation that it is IS militants — and not Assad — who present the most serious threat.

He said he detected a shift in Washington's perception of the Syria crisis, referring to Obama's State of the Union address in which he asked lawmakers to give him updated war powers to go after the IS group.

"It's good that this understanding is growing," Lavrov said.

US Secretary John Kerry called taming IS "the challenge of our time", speaking after Islamist attacks in Paris claimed 17 lives this month.

Moscow will see any possible changes to Washington’s Syria policy as a vindication of its view that Islamist extremists are the main threat to regional security.

“In the States they’ve begun to realise the truth of the old adage: ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’,” Vladimir Isayev, a professor at the Institute of the Asian and African Studies at the Moscow State University, told AFP.

He said that compared to the IS, Assad was predictable.

“But what those bashi-bazouks are doing..., they are unpredictable,” he said, using a term for soldiers of the Ottoman army known for their atrocities.

‘Talks without preconditions’

Washington welcomed the Moscow talks but said it would be up to the opposition whether to attend.

“We’ve certainly conveyed we’d support them attending the meetings,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

But the exiled National Coalition and top opposition figure Moaz Al Khatib have announced they will not attend the meeting.

“Any talks should be held in a neutral country and overseen by the United Nations,” a source in the Coalition said.

In Syria, a government source indicated the authorities did not pin too much hope on the Moscow meetings, either, but expressed hope that participants would agree on a roadmap to “fight terrorism”, among other issues.

“You have to start modestly, brick by brick, not agree on an all-encompassing plan which is impossible at this stage.”

Vitaly Naumkin, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies and moderator at the talks, said Moscow had sent out a few dozen invitations.

“A strict principle is, the talks are taking place without pre-conditions,” he told reporters.

But analysts do not expect a breakthrough.

“Without the National Coalition the talks do not make much sense,” said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

BAGHDAD — A series of bombings, mainly targeting Shiite neighbourhoods, killed at least 13 people in Baghdad on Saturday, said Iraqi officials.

Police officials said one bomb exploded Saturday near a small restaurant in Baghdad's mainly Shiite southeastern district of Zafaraniyah, killing four people and wounding 13.

Later, police say a bomb blast missed a passing police patrol, but killed three civilians and wounded eight in western Baghdad. They say the blast also damaged several cars.

At night, a blast near a cafe in Baghdad's Shiite district of Al Ameen killed three people and wounded eight others.

Also, a bomb exploded near a bus stop and a line of shops selling vegetables and fruit in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Mashtal, killing three people and wounding seven others.

Medical officials in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties from all the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to talk to journalists.

Iraq sees near-daily attacks, mainly targeting the country's Shiite majority and security forces. The attacks often are claimed by the Islamic State group, which seized about a third of the country last year.