Region

DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY/BEIRUT — Syrian Kurds battled on Saturday with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, Kurdish sources and a monitoring group said, breaking a longstanding tacit agreement between the two sides to focus on other enemies in a complex civil war.

In Syria's predominantly Kurdish northeast, Assad's forces and Kurdish militia, mainly the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), have for the most part coexisted without clashing, focusing their firepower on the Islamic State insurgent group.

However, violence broke out when army soldiers and allied militiamen took control of buildings in an area that both sides had agreed would stay demilitarised, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

"There has been some serious fighting today. The PYD [the political wing of the YPG] arrested 10 soldiers and Baath Party gunmen," observatory head Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.

"There is now fighting in many areas of Hassakeh."

The YPG and the government had divided Hassakeh into zones in a power sharing agreement, the observatory said.

The army shelled three Kurdish-majority areas on the edges of Hassakeh city, and fighters from YPG clashed with Syrian forces inside the city throughout the day, the YPG said on its website.

Syrian Kurds, who say they suffered years of marginalisation under Assad, had on occasion fought with the president's loyalists in territorial disputes, but never in sustained clashes.

Kurdish activists posted photos showing smoke rising from buildings and YPG fighters raising the Syrian Kurdistan flag in areas said to be taken from government forces.

Syrian officials were not immediately available for comment and state media did not mention the clashes. A spokesman for the YPG was not available.

Damascus has promoted its ties with the Kurds, saying that it provides military support to Kurdish forces to help them battle IS, although the PYD denies that it cooperates with the central government.

During the three-year war in Syria, Kurds have asserted control in parts of the northeast where their community predominates. IS and other hardline groups consider Kurds heretics and have fought to take areas they control.

There were smaller scale clashes in May between Assad loyalists and Kurds in Hassakeh that were contained.

Around 200,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, according to the United Nations.

SANAA — Yemen has detained two Frenchmen for questioning over suspected links to Al Qaeda, a top security official said Saturday.

"During the past two days, two French nationals accused of belonging to Al Qaeda have been arrested," said national security service chief, General Mohammed Al Ahmadi.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility for a January 7 assault on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in which two Frenchmen killed 12 people.

The perpetrators, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, are known to have trained with Al Qaeda in Yemen, which was formed in 2009 after a merger between militants there and Saudi Arabia.

"There are around 1,000 Al Qaeda militants in Yemen from 11 Arab and non-Arab countries," Ahmadi told reporters in Sanaa.

Washington regards the Yemen-based franchise as the network's most dangerous branch and has carried out a sustained drone war against its leaders.

AQAP said the orders to carry out last week's attack had come from the very top of the global jihadist network — Ayman Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who succeeded Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden after his death in 2011.

Cherif Kouachi told French media before he was killed by police that a trip he made to Yemen the same year was financed by Anwar Al Awlak, a US-Yemeni cleric killed by a US drone strike in 2011.

AQAP has a record of launching attacks far from its base, including a bid to blow up a US airliner over Michigan on Christmas Day in 2009.

It recently called on its supporters to carry out attacks in France, which is part of a US-led coalition conducting air strikes against jihadists from the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

TRIPOLI — Assailants lobbed explosives at Algeria's embassy in the Libyan capital Saturday, wounding three people, a security official said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

The IS Libya branch said "soldiers of the caliphate" attacked the empty mission in a message posted on Twitter, together with a photograph of a tree-lined street with a fire in the background.

There was no independent confirmation of the claim — reported by the US-based monitoring group SITE Intelligence.

The IS posted a similar claim for a December 27 car bomb attack outside the building of a Libyan unit tasked with securing diplomatic missions that left no casualties, SITE reported at the time.

The security official, who works for the unit, said Saturday's attack in central Tripoli seriously wounded a guard and that two passersby were lightly hurt. Medical sources confirmed the toll.

The assailants threw "a bag full of explosives from a passing car at a police car parked near a guard post", he said, adding that the attack caused damage to the building and parked cars.

But in the brief tweet, the IS said the blast was caused by an explosive device planted by its militants under the guard station.

Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra of neighbouring Algeria condemned the bombing. "Any attack on a diplomatic post is a crime under international law," he said.

Saturday's attack came a day after a coalition of militias declared a ceasefire, hours after an agreement at UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva between Libya's warring factions.

The oil-rich nation has been wracked by conflict since dictator Muammar Qadhafi was toppled and killed in a 2011 uprising, with rival governments and powerful militias battling for control of key cities and the country's oil riches.

The foreign ministry of Libya's internationally-recognised government denounced Saturday's bombing as a "cheap attempt to influence the national dialogue in Geneva" that are to continue next week.

Jihadist threat 

The Algerian embassy, like most foreign missions in the Libyan capital, was closed last year as militias battled for control of the city.

In November, two car bombs struck near the shuttered embassies of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in Tripoli within minutes of each other, wounding five guards.

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahayan blamed those attacks on Fajr Libya and Ansar Al Sharia.

Washington has blacklisted the radical Ansar Al Sharia as a terrorist group for its alleged role in a deadly 2012 attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) is a coalition of Islamist-led militias which seized control of Tripoli in August after weeks of deadly fighting with a nationalist group.

The summer fighting sparked an exodus of foreigners from Libya, with oil companies repatriating workers and embassies closing down or relocating to neighbouring countries.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Libya's Western-backed government, Abdullah Al Thani, warned that his country could become a dangerous haven for jihadists.

IS on January 12 claimed the abduction of 21 Egyptians in Libya, while Egypt has confirmed that 20 of its citizens are being held in the chaos-hit country.

ISTANBUL — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of terrorism and said Israeli "provocations" such as the bombardment of Gaza were contributing to radicalisation in the Muslim world.

In a Reuters interview, Davutoglu said peace in the Middle East and the eradication of extremist groups would be virtually impossible without the establishment of a Palestinian state.

He also warned the international community against focusing solely on fighting Islamic State militants in its efforts to end the conflict in Syria, saying the "brutality" of President Bashar Assad was the root cause of the problem.

Turkey, an EU candidate nation and member of the NATO military alliance, is a key Western ally in the fight against Islamic jihadists. But its leaders have become increasingly concerned about what they see as rising Islamophobia in Europe and increasingly outspoken in their criticism of Israel.

"[Netanyahu] himself killed, his army killed children in the playground. They killed our citizens and an American citizen in international waters. This is terrorism," Davutoglu said, referring to a 2010 Israeli assault on a Turkish boat attempting to break Israel's blockade of the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

"Nobody can argue about Israeli aggression in Jerusalem in Al Aqsa Mosque," he added. "These provocations create frustration in the Muslim world and are becoming one of the reasons why these radical trends are emerging," he said.

"If we want to establish peace and order in the Middle East, eliminating all the extremist forces, we have to solve the Palestinian question."

Davutoglu on Thursday compared Netanyahu to the Islamist militants who killed 17 people in Paris last week, saying both had committed crimes against humanity.

Netanyahu has called for an international condemnation of Davutoglu's remarks and those of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after he criticised the Israeli prime minister's attendance with other world leaders at a solidarity march in Paris.

Once-good relations between Israel and Turkey have declined markedly over the past five years, with US-efforts to revive the soured ties failing to make headway. There was no immediate reaction in Israel to Davutoglu's latest comments.

‘Assad's brutality’

Davutoglu said Turkey, which has faced criticism for failing to stop thousands of foreign fighters crossing into Syria, would do everything it could to stem the flow, describing the conflict in its southern neighbour as a major national security threat.

But he said a coherent strategy was needed for Syria before Turkey would consider a greater front-line role in the US-led coalition against Islamic State, including an internationally policed no-fly zone to protect the northern city of Aleppo from Assad's forces.

"The source of the problem is the Assad regime's brutality. Without solving that source, that reason, dealing only with [Islamic State] or other bi-products of this crisis will not be solving the problem altogether," Davutoglu said.

"[We want a] no-fly zone... so that Aleppo will be protected at least against the air bombardment and there will be no new refugees coming to Turkey," he said, warning of a potential new influx of millions if the city was not defended.

He said Turkey may extend a series of existing militarised zones along its border with Syria to try to stop the passage of foreign fighters without closing the frontier to refugees.

"On the border, up to now, there are refugee camps, there are certain places where there is much more strict control... These military zones might be enlarged," he said, adding Turkey had so far been reluctant to do so, so as not to deter refugees.

The Turkish authorities had banned some 8,000 foreigners from entering the country over the past year alone because of security concerns and had further improved coordination with European intelligence agencies, Davutoglu said.

Gulen extradition

On the domestic political front, Davutoglu said he expected a request to be made to the US authorities for the extradition of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Erdogan and the government of leading a plot to seize power.

A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant in December for Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. Asked if an extradition request would now follow, Davutoglu said:

"Yes, of course, if needed yes. It is not our choice, it is the decision of the court, not the decision of the government. The government will do whatever is needed," he said.

Such a move would take Erdogan's campaign to root out Gulen supporters, including purges of the judiciary and police, to the international arena and potentially test strained relations with Washington.

Turkey and the United States have a treaty that allows extraditions in certain instances, and requires that there is enough evidence to charge the same defendant with a crime under both Turkish and US law. The treaty also allows the United States to refuse an extradition request if it deems it political in nature. A spokesman for the US Justice Department, which would handle the request, declined comment.

Alp Aslandogan, a Turkish-American academic close to Gulen, said Davutoglu's comments were "another politically motivated attempt to persecute law-abiding citiizens for engaging in democratic dissent and carry no credibility". He said he had not been informed of formal charges against Gulen.

Gulen was a close ally of Erdogan in the early years after his ruling AK Party took power in 2002 but has been in open conflict with him since a graft investigation emerged just over a year ago targeting the then-prime minister's inner circle.

Erdogan and Davutoglu portray the investigation as part of a coup attempt and have described Gulen's followers as traitors — charges that Gulen, who runs a vast network of schools and business enterprises in Turkey and abroad, denies.

BEIRUT — Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has threatened to retaliate against Israel for repeated strikes on Syria, in a television interview to be broadcast Thursday night.

Nasrallah told Beirut-based Al Mayadeen that his Iran-backed Shiite movement was well armed and always ready to fight Israel, according to excerpts of the interview issued ahead of its broadcast.

A key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Nasrallah said that Israeli strikes on Syria "target the whole of the resistance axis", which includes Hizbollah, Damascus and Tehran.

"The repeated bombings that struck several targets in Syria are a major violation, and we consider that any strike against Syria is a strike against the whole of the resistance axis, not just against Syria," he said.

"The axis is capable of responding. This can happen any time."

The Israeli air force has carried out several raids against targets in Syria, including depots storing weapons meant for Hizbollah, since the conflict there started nearly four years ago.

The most recent strike was in December, when Israeli warplanes struck weapons warehouses near Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Israel has never confirmed it carried out the strikes, but it says it has a policy of preventing arms transfers to militant groups including Hizbollah.

Israeli media said, however, after the December strikes that the air force had targeted arms convoys or depots of Iranian-made rockets.

Hizbollah has sent thousands of fighters into Syria to defend Assad's regime.

In 2006, Hizbollah and Israel fought a devastating war that killed some 1,200 Lebanese — most of them civilians — and 160 Israelis — most of them soldiers.

In Thursday's interview, Nasrallah said his movement was ready to fight a new war against Israel in Lebanon and renewed a threat to invade the Galilee region of northern Israel.

Hizbollah fighters "must be prepared", he said.

"When the resistance [Hizbollah] leadership... asks you [fighters]... to enter into Galilee, that means the resistance must be ready to enter into Galilee and to go even beyond the Galilee."

Asked about Hizbollah's arsenal, Nasrallah said the group had "all [the weapons] you can imagine... and in great quantities". He added: "We are now stronger than we ever were as a resistance movement."

ALGIERS — Algerian troops found the body Thursday of French tourist Herve Gourdel, security sources said, months after he was beheaded by jihadists demanding that France halt air strikes against the Islamic State (IS) group.

The body was found buried without its head in Akbil, where Gourdel was abducted by the Jund Al Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate) group, the sources said.

The army had mobilised 3,000 troops to find the 55-year-old mountain guide's body and launched a new search operation on Wednesday.

Excavations were carried out in Akbil and the neighbouring town of Abu Youssef following a tip-off by an Islamist detainee, a security source told AFP.

The search was headed by an elite army unit and aided by sniffer dogs.

Police experts arrived at the burial site, located in a forested area known as Tabounecht Abu Youssef, that had been rigged with explosives, which a local resident said was aimed at "causing casualties among the searchers".

The military had to bring in munitions experts to sweep the area first, the source said.

Forensic experts were present to perform tests to formally identify the body, which was exhumed in the presence of Algeria's senior terrorism prosecutor and the judge presiding over Gourdel's case.

Gourdel was abducted by Jund Al Khilafa on September 21, while hiking in a national park that was once a draw for tourists but became a sanctuary for Islamists.

He was beheaded days later in a video posted online after France rejected the jihadists' demand to halt air strikes against the IS in Iraq and Syria.

Jund Al Khilafa had earlier pledged allegiance to IS.

In December, the army said it had killed the leader of the militants who beheaded Gourdel.

The body of Abdelmalek Gouri, who claimed responsibility for the Frenchman's killing, was identified after an operation in which two other suspected militants were killed in Isser, about 60 kilometres east of Algiers.

An Algerian court has also launched legal proceedings against 15 people suspected of participating in the beheading.

Gourdel's death followed calls by IS for Muslims to kill Westerners whose nations have joined a campaign to battle the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria.

Violence involving armed Islamists in Algeria has fallen considerably since the civil war of the 1990s, but groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continue to launch attacks in the northeast, mostly on security forces.

Gouri, alias Khaled Abu Souleimane, was the former right-hand man of AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel, and is suspected of helping to organise suicide attacks on the government palace and against a UN contingent in Algiers in 2007.

He is also thought to have masterminded an April attack that killed 11 soldiers in Iboudrarene, the same region where Gourdel was kidnapped.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A Libyan warplane attacked a fishing trawler carrying gasoline to the port of Benghazi this week after the internationally recognised government suspected it of supplying Islamist militants, a military official said on Thursday.

Libya's recognised government, which has been driven out of the capital, is locked in escalating conflict with a self-declared government of a faction known as Libya Dawn that seized Tripoli last summer.

There were no details about the ownership or origin of the vessel which military official Mohamed Hejazi said was attacked on Tuesday off the coast of the eastern city of Benghazi, which has seen heavy fighting for months between pro-government forces and Islamist militants.

Forces from the recognised government carried out an air strike on a Greek-operated oil tanker on January 4, killing two crewmen, after claiming it was acting suspiciously.

The United Nations on Thursday held a second day of talks aimed at ending Libya's crisis, forming a unity government and halting hostilities. But representatives of the Tripoli government have postponed a decision to join talks.

"Discussions during the first session on Wednesday were constructive and were conducted in a positive atmosphere. There was a clear sense of determination among the participants to ensure that this dialogue succeeds," the UN said in a statement.

Each rival government is backed by heavily armed factions of former rebels who once battled side by side to oust Muammar Qadhafi, but have since turned against each other in a scramble for power and control over Libya's oil wealth.

Fighting over oil assets has closed two major oil ports in the east and slashed Libya's oil output to around 300,000 barrels per day from the 1.6 million bpd produced before the NATO-backed civil war toppled Qadhafi in 2011.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels and government forces began observing a 10-day truce on Thursday in the last rebel-held area of the central city of Homs, marking another setback for opposition fighters, activists said.

Government forces had blockaded Al Waar for some 20 months, only sporadically allowing in food. It is not clear how many civilians remain in the sprawling area separated from the rest of the city by the Orontes River.

Activist Beibars Al Tilawi said officials promised to allow the UN to deliver more food while the two sides discussed how to end the standoff. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the truce.

Tilawi, who spoke from Al Waar via Skype, said the rebels were outgunned, and that the experience of fighters once holed up Homs' Old City was instructive: the area was destroyed, thousands of civilians were killed or forced to flee, and ultimately rebels negotiated their surrender in May 2014.

"They want to prevent Syrian forces from targeting Al Waar area with military action, so it won't be like the old city of Homs, where in the end, negotiations and diplomacy solved the problem," Tilawi said.

He said the rebels may end up surrendering the area over to government forces or remain there under a more lasting deal. Both approaches have been employed in other parts of Syria in the past.

Western diplomats and local officials have championed local truces as a way of easing the suffering caused by Syria's four-year conflict, which the UN estimates has killed some 220,000 people. But critics say the truces reward Syrian government forces for blockading civilians and that the government does not always live up to its obligation to allow the regular delivery of food and other aid.

Western-backed rebels have been retreating in northern Syria for months, caught between government forces on one side and jihadi groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front on the other.

Russia, a key ally of President Bashar Assad, is meanwhile hoping to bring the government and the opposition together in a
January 26 meeting to agree on the basis of a future dialogue.

Most opposition groups, including the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, have said they will not attend the Moscow talks, saying the framework for the discussions is unclear and the meetings have little chance of success.

In an interview with the Czech newspaper Literarni Noviny, Assad said the two sides would discuss the foundations for a dialogue focusing on Syria’s unity, fighting terrorism and supporting the army.

“As to what I expect from this meeting, I think we should be realistic since we are dealing with personalities,” Assad said. “If we succeed, it’s a good thing. If we don’t, we will not lose anything.”

In Geneva, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura urged the international community to make 2015 the year in which movement toward a political settlement of the conflict takes place. He welcomed the Moscow initiative, but also pushed his idea for a so-called “freeze” in the fighting in the northern city of Aleppo.

“We are aiming at the reduction of violence and possibly a freeze of all military activities, bearing in mind the need of an accelerated humanitarian aid,” he said. “Our hope is that Aleppo could be a signal of goodwill, a confidence-building measure which could and can facilitate the re-starting of a political process with a clear political horizon.”

OTTAWA — Five Canadians have died fighting alongside Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria, including a man who called for lone wolf attacks in Canada, local media reported Wednesday.

The National Post said Ottawa-born John Maguire, who joined IS jihadists in Syria in January 2013, died Wednesday in the flashpoint town Kobani.

In a video message last year, the former University of Ottawa student warned Canada it faces retaliation for participating in US-led air strikes against IS.

Calling himself Abu Anwar Al Canadi, Maguire urged Muslims to follow the example of a driver in a hit-and-run killing of a soldier near Montreal and of a gunman who killed an unarmed soldier in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, broadcaster CBC said that four other Canadians from a single family of Somali origin died in recent months while fighting with IS in Syria.

Three of the cousins are thought to have left Canada in October 2013, the CBC reported.

Ahmed Hirsi said his 20-year-old son Mahad was killed last fall along with cousins Hamsa and Hersi Kariye.

The CBC said another cousin from Minnesota, Hanad Abdullahi Mohallim, was also killed.

Hirsi said his son had called him from Egypt to say he was traveling to Syria.

Hamsa and Hersi's brother confirmed the two men had died, but did not say how or where. He denied they had travelled to Syria and said instead they went to Egypt to study Islam.

"That is the path my brothers wanted to take from day one," he told CBC.

"These people left their country to go study their religion."

Canada has joined the US-led campaign against the IS group, which has taken over large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Last week, three were arrested in Canada over "serious" potential threats, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said Tuesday.

RAMALLAH — In the spirit of Charlie Hebdo, Palestinian cartoonist Ramzy Taweel is making his feelings about the French satirical weekly crystal clear — his latest illustration equates the publication to toilet paper.

Palestinian political cartoonists, including Taweel, rushed to eulogise the staff of Charlie Hebdo killed by Islamic extremists in an attack on their offices in Paris last week, publishing images defending free speech, condemning violence and expressing solidarity with France.

But as the magazine bounced back and sold out in record time with a fresh cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad, the Palestinian illustrators generally agreed that mocking Islam, or any religion, is overstepping the mark.

"My heart is with the families, and what happened was terrible, for France, for its people, and for cartoonists," 36-year-old Taweel said, hunched at his home in Ramallah over an electronic sketch pad.

"It's forbidden to kill anybody for his thoughts. I can give you many quotes from the Koran forbidding you to so much as talk to someone who insults you.

"But does that mean that I accept what they draw? No."

Taweel's latest drawing, which he worked on as Charlie Hebdo's latest edition was about to hit the shelves, features a man sitting on a lavatory, reading a copy of the French magazine and exclaiming in English: "Toilet paper industry is flourishing!"

"Is it really freedom to insult one billion Christians or Muslims?" asked Taweel, who draws on a freelance basis for cartoon websites.

Fellow Palestinian illustrator Mohammad Sabaaneh, who works for Al Hayat Al Jadida newspaper, agrees that insulting religion is tasteless, but has chosen not to criticise Charlie Hebdo.

"What happened in Paris, especially in a country where there is genuine freedom, was a shock, and struck us particularly as cartoonists," he told AFP sitting in his uncluttered office in Ramallah.

"Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali was killed because of his drawings," he said, looking solemnly at a large portrait of the late, celebrated illustrator who was gunned down in London in 1987 in a case never solved.

Ali created the ubiquitous Handala, an eternally wandering Palestinian refugee child who watches injustices unfold before him, and still features in street art throughout the West Bank.

The political cartoons made him many enemies throughout the Middle East, but Palestinians and other Arabs allege he was assassinated by Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

'The pen and the smile' 

For 36-year-old Sabaaneh, who sports round glasses and a scarf and scribbles furiously on a sketchpad, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo's office were despicable and damaging to Islam.

His cartoon from just after the attacks shows a militant firing a rocket into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, while the blowback from the rocket launcher blackens and damages a mosque just behind the attacker.

Still, Sabaaneh says poking fun at religion — a staple of the French weekly's content — is a luxury for countries that don't suffer the same political upheaval as the Arab world.

"In Palestine we're asking for political freedom, to improve the situation of Palestinian citizens under Israel's occupation,” he said. “We have more pressing problems to talk about than religion.”

"Faith is a very sensitive topic and I try to keep away from it. In any case, there's a difference between constructive criticism and criticism for the sake of it — swearing or insult," he said.

"Personally, as a cartoonist and a Muslim, I reject the cartoons that insult the Prophet. But you have to react in kind, combating idea with idea, cartoons with cartoons — not through murder."

The mufti of Jerusalem condemned Charlie Hebdo's latest depiction of Mohammad, which featured the Muslim Prophet holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign expressing solidarity with the magazine.

But he and other mainstream Muslim leaders slammed the use of violence in reaction to depictions of the Prophet, which are considered forbidden in Islam.

Veteran Palestinian cartoonist Baha Al Boukhari, who draws for daily Al Ayyam, said the reaction should be to simply shrug off the offence.

"From an artistic point of view, I don't find those images funny — I sort of think, it's an insulting image, so what?" the 70-year-old said.

"Our weapon is the pen and the smile," he said.