Region

BENGHAZI, Libya — Libya's oil output has shrunk back further after blazing oil tanks at a major terminal helped world oil prices higher and burnt a bigger hole in its dollar currency reserves.

It is surviving on a mere 128,000 barrels per day from fields connected to the eastern port of Hariga, an oil official said on Monday, while fighting halted the major ports Es Sider and Ras Lanuf.

Total oil output, adding in offshore fields and Brega output, is around 350,000 bpd — a fraction of the 1.6 million bpd it produced before the 2011 civil war. Some oil is keeping two refineries going and the official was unable to say how much, if any, was available for export.

Oil tanks at Es Sider have been on fire for days after a rocket hit one of them, destroying more than two days of Libyan production, officials said on Sunday. Libya has appealed to Italy, Germany and the United States to send firefighters.

The central bank warned Libya faced a "growing financial crisis...due to the sharp fall in oil production and prices, the widening fiscal deficit, the continued depletion of the country's foreign reserves," according to a statement.

Libya's two largest ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, have stopped since a force loyal to a rival government in Tripoli tried seizing them from forces allied to the recognised Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni.

Thinni has been forced to work out of the east since a rival group called Libya Dawn seized Tripoli in August, setting up its own government and parliament unrecognised by world powers.

A spokesman of an oil guard force allied to Thinni said there would be more air strikes on the city of Misrata unless the rival force pulled out of the vicinity of Es Sider. War planes had struck the western city linked to the rival government on Sunday.

"We have given them a 72-hour deadline to withdraw which started yesterday," the spokesman said.

Es Sider is fed from fields run by Waha Oil Co., a joint-venture between Libya's National Oil Corp. with US companies Hess, Marathon and ConocoPhillips.

The western ports of Zawiya and Mellitah have also halted oil exports as the conflict has shut down the connecting fields of El Sharara and El Feel.

BEIRUT — A car bomb explosion near a gas plant in Syria's Homs province on Monday killed nine people including four soldiers, a monitoring group said, updating an earlier toll.

The jihadist Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack and said the two bombers were killed.

State news agency SANA confirmed the attack but said that troops had captured the bombers.

"Five employees and four regime troops guarding the Firqlos gas plant were killed in a car bomb blast near the facility in the east of Homs province," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The explosion also wounded 15 people.

It took place "at the start of the working day", the Britain-based group added.

SANA, quoting a military source, said "guards captured the two terrorists who detonated the pick-up truck at the entrance to the plant while they were trying to flee".

IS said the two men, both Moroccans, had died.

The jihadists have targeted oil and gas facilities in Iraq and Syria as the group seeks funds for its fight to seize territory for a self-proclaimed Islamic "caliphate".

In November, Syrian troops backed by pro-regime militiamen recaptured the Shaer gas field in central Homs province, a week after IS fighters overran parts of the complex.

IS killed some 350 regime troops and loyalist militiamen, as well as gas plant workers, during its attempt to take Shaer.

Elsewhere in Syria, the observatory said the number of IS members killed fighting Kurdish forces in the flashpoint town of Kobani on Sunday had risen to 18.

Another two IS suicide attackers also died, as did 10 members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), it said.

The jihadists launched a major offensive in mid-September to try to capture Kobani, and at one point controlled more than half the town, known in Arabic as Ain Al Arab.

But backed by US-led coalition air strikes on IS positions, Kurdish forces have regained control of several neighbourhoods.

Coalition aircraft struck IS targets in Kobani on Sunday night, the observatory said, and a Pentagon statement said 10 strikes hit the area on Monday.

More than 1,000 people are reported to have been killed in the battle for the town, most of them jihadists.

NABLUS — Israeli troops shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank during a stone-throwing incident Monday near the northern city of Nablus, sources on both sides said.

The army claimed soldiers had fired warning shots before opening fire on a group throwing stones at what they described as Israeli “civilians” in the occupied city.

Palestinian security officials said the stones had been thrown at military vehicles.

The teenager was killed near the Tapuah settlement, south of Nablus, and a 19-year-old was wounded in the same incident, they added.

Around 20 Palestinians have been killed by the occupation army in the West Bank since June, according to an AFP tally.

UNITED NATIONS/RAMALLAH, West Bank — Arab UN delegations on Monday endorsed a Palestinian proposal to forge a peace deal with Israel within a year and end Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories by late 2017, despite Israeli and US opposition.

The timing for a UN vote was unclear.

Several Western council diplomats told Reuters they had been surprised by the Palestinians' sudden push to submit a final draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council on Monday and put it to a vote on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Jordan’s Ambassador  to UN Dina Kawar, the sole Arab representative on the council, told reporters Arab delegations had endorsed the Palestinian proposal, and the Jordanians and the Palestinians would consult about when to call a vote.

Kawar previously said she would like a resolution that was backed by all 15 council members including the United States.

A US State Department spokesman said the Palestinian draft resolution was not constructive and failed to address Israel’s security needs.

Nine Security Council votes are needed to adopt a resolution, which would then force the United States, Israel’s closest ally, to decide whether to veto it. Washington would be expected to vote against it, diplomats say.

Israel has said a Security Council vote, following the collapse in April of US-brokered talks on Palestinian statehood, would deepen the conflict. It supports negotiations but rejects third-party timelines.

Israeli elections

Several European countries have urged a less stringent timeline to win broader support. Washington wants to wait until after Israeli elections in March.

Palestinian officials said the proposal calls for negotiations to be based on territorial lines that existed before Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Palestine Liberation Organization said the draft calls for resolving all major differences, known as “final-status issues,” within 12 months and ending the occupation by the end of 2017.

Israel, which pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, has said its eastern border would be indefensible if it withdrew completely from the West Bank.

An earlier Palestinian draft called for Jerusalem to be the shared capital of Israel and a Palestinian state.

The final proposal reverts to a harder line, saying only that East Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine, the officials said. It also calls for an end to Israeli settlement building and releasing Palestinian prisoners.

GAZA CITY — Muntasser survived an Israeli strike on Gaza this summer which killed his young brother and three cousins. Five months and a suicide attempt later the Palestinian boy remains haunted by the memory.

Just a week into the deadly 50-day July-August war, two Israeli missiles slammed into a beach in Gaza City where Muntasser Bakr, 11, was playing football with relatives.

Four of them, all aged between 9 and 11, were killed.

Muntasser, like countless other children in the embattled Gaza Strip, now faces a personal battle to overcome the trauma and psychological damage caused by the violence.

The fighting, which lasted for six weeks after the beach strike, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and wounded more than 10,000.

In the densely populated coastal enclave, where more than half of the 1.8 million population is aged 14 and under, children paid a terrible price.

More than 500 children were killed — around a third of them 12 and under — and they made up more than a quarter of the wounded.

The UN children's fund, UNICEF, says hundreds of thousands remain in desperate need of psychological help to overcome the long-term mental health damage the war caused.

"Since the incident, Muntasser has been receiving treatment from a mental health centre," says his 55-year-old father, Ahed Bakr.

"If his appointment is delayed, or he gets his medications late — even by just 10 minutes — you can't control him."

'In another world' 

Bakr, who lost his nine-year-old son Zakaria in the beach strike, looks on worriedly as Muntasser silently chews his nails.

"He becomes extremely violent, he breaks everything and then he starts banging his head against the walls. He even tried to throw himself off the roof."

As well as trying to take his own life, Muntasser has also attacked relatives.

"The other day, we found him trying to hang his cousins," his father says, his hands fiddling restlessly with a packet of pills.

Since the bombing, Muntasser is "in another world" and refuses to go to school, says the father.

"What if he were to try and kill one of his classmates?"

Suddenly Muntasser begins to speak, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"I don't want to go to school. Before, I used to go with Zakaria, he helped me spell my name. Now he's dead," says the boy.

"I don't want to do anything, I just want to get a Kalashnikov and kill them all to avenge Zakaria and my cousins," he shouts.

For a few seconds the boy is silent before saying how he dreams of them each night.

"I dream that I am holding them in my arms. I will never go to the beach again because that's where they died."

A normal life? 

Health professional Samir Zaqqut says the children of Gaza have been too traumatised to live a normal life.

"The memories they have acquired during the war are harsh and impossible to erase."

"They have all undergone successive shocks and continuous traumas," he tells AFP.

"After three wars in six years, how can these children live a normal life?"

Coping with the flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety is made even harder by the lack of mental health clinics and professionals working in the battered territory, Zaqqut says.

When the fighting ended in August, Kamela Abu Hadaf discovered that all five of her children had began wetting the bed — a common symptom of stress and anxiety.

"I don't know what to do to help them," the 45-year-old mother tells AFP.

"During the war, they were completely terrorised, but we adults were also afraid so we weren't able to reassure them."

Today, her children are receiving some help from a group of German doctors who hold counselling sessions with them.

Raghda Ahmed also worries about her eight-year-old son Wissam.

"Since the war, he won't leave me alone any more, not even for a minute. He says: 'Stay with me so if the planes bomb us again we will die together'," says the 30-year-old.

"Often I stay with him even at school."

Wissam suddenly interrupts his mother: "But why do we go to school and study? We will only be killed in the next war."

DAMASCUS — Three Syrian diplomats left Damascus for Kuwait Monday where they will reopen their country's embassy in the Persian Gulf nation, a Syrian official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, told The Associated Press that the diplomats include a charge d'affaires.

Kuwait, where tens of thousands of Syrians live, has been a strong supporter of the opposition trying to remove President Bashar Assad from power.

Khaled Al Jarallah, an undersecretary at Kuwait's foreign ministry, was quoted in the local Kuwaiti news website Aljarida earlier this month as saying that the Syrian diplomats left Kuwait City voluntarily in March and are returning voluntarily to resume consular services for Syrian residents there.

Jarallah was quoted as saying that this does not mean a normalisation of relations with Syria and that Kuwaiti diplomats would not be returning to Damascus, where the embassy closed after Syria's crisis began in March 2011.

The Syrian embassy in Kuwait shuttered it doors nine months ago, forcing some 130,000 Syrian residents there to seek consular services from the embassy that remains open in the United Arab Emirates. 

Syrians across the Gulf Arab states have struggled to renew their passports and register marriages, births and deaths with their government because of the closure of Syrian embassies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

In early 2012, amid calls for the expulsion of the Syrian diplomats, demonstrators stormed the Syrian embassy compound in Kuwait City, breaking windows and hoisting the green-striped flag of the anti-Assad opposition.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked Shiite pilgrims north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 17 people, officials and a survivor of the blast said.

The attack in the Taji area, which targeted a tent serving refreshments to pilgrims, also wounded at least 35 people.

Pilgrims from Iraq and abroad are making their way to Samarra, north of Baghdad, to commemorate the death of Hassan Al Askari, one of the 12 revered Shiite imams, who is buried in the city.

"We were distributing food, fruit and tea to the pilgrims who were walking to Samarra, and a suicide [bomber] blew himself up," Sajjad, 25, said at a Baghdad hospital where his brother Mustafa was being treated for shrapnel wounds.

The bomber carried a Shiite flag as a disguise and yelled "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) before detonating the explosives he carried, Sajjad said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suicide bombings are almost exclusively carried out by Sunni extremists in Iraq, including the Islamic State group.

IS spearheaded a June offensive that overran large parts of the country, and Iraqi security forces, Kurdish fighters and Shiite and Sunni militiamen are battling to push the militants back.

A US-led coalition is carrying out air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria, and also providing training to Iraqi forces.

SALAHUDDIN PROVINCE, Iraq — The machine gun poking out from between a framed portrait of a Shiite imam and a stuffed toy Minnie Mouse was trained on anyone who approached the checkpoint.

Like dozens of other communities in Iraq, this small Sunni settlement in northern Salahuddin province's Tuz Khurmatu district has been reduced to rubble. In October, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga captured the village from the Sunni militant group Islamic State (IS). The victors then laid it to waste, looting anything of value and setting fire to much of the rest. Residents have still not been allowed to return.

"Our people are burning them," said one of the Shiite militiamen when asked about the smoke drifting up from still smouldering houses. Asked why, he shrugged as if the answer was self-evident.

The Shiite and Kurdish paramilitary groups now patrol the scorched landscape, eager to claim the most strategic areas or the few houses that are still intact. For now, the two forces are convenient but uncomfortable allies against the nihilist IS.

This is how the new Iraq is being forged: block by block, house by house, village by village, mostly out of sight and control of officials in Baghdad.

What is emerging is a different country to the one that existed before June. That month, Iraq's military and national police, rotten with corruption and sectarian politics, collapsed after IS forces attacked Mosul. The militant group's victory in the largest city in the north was one step on its remarkable dash across Iraq.

IS’ campaign slowed towards the end of the summer. But it has left the group in charge of roughly one-third of Iraq, including huge swathes of its western desert and parts of its war ravaged central belt. It also shattered the illusion of a unified and functioning state, triggering multiple sectarian fractures and pushing rival groups to protect their turf or be destroyed.

The far north is now effectively an independent Kurdish region that has expanded into oil-rich Kirkuk, long disputed between the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs. Other areas in the north have fallen to Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who claim land where they can.

In Baghdad's rural outskirts and in the Diyala province to the east and north towards Samarra, militias, sometimes backed by Iraqi military, are seizing land and destroying houses in Sunni areas.

Last there is Baghdad and Iraq's southern provinces, which are ostensibly still ruled by the country's Shiite-led government. But the state is a shell of what it once was. As respect for the army and police has faded, Iraqis in the south have turned to the Shiite militia groups who responded to the rallying cry of Iraq's most senior clergy to take on IS.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, a Shiite moderate who became Iraq's new leader in September, four months after national elections, hopes that the country can be stitched back together. Abadi has tried to engage the three main communities, taking a more conciliatory tone than that of his predecessor Nouri Al Maliki, who was often confrontational and divisive. Abadi, the Kurds and even some Sunni politicians now all speak of the need for federal regions, so the country's communities can govern themselves and remain part of a unified state.

Iraq, though, has been splintered into more than just three parts, and the longer those fragments exist on their own the harder it will be to rebuild the country even as a loose federation. Such an arrangement would require the defeat of IS, a massive rebuilding programme in the Sunni regions, unity among Iraq's fractious political and tribal leaders, and an accommodation between the Kurds and Baghdad on the Kurds' territorial gains.

Even the optimists recognise all that will be difficult. Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd who wants Iraq to stay united, says he can picture Iraq eventually regaining its "strength and balance". But, he concedes, "the country is severely fractured right now”.

Ali Allawi, a former minister of trade, defense and finance, and author of two books on Iraqi history, agrees. "There is so much up in the air," he said. "There are the trappings of a functioning state, but it is like a functioning state lying on a sea of Jello...The ground is so unstable and shifting."

Kurdistan

Iraq's Kurds often see opportunity in times of trouble. This year they moved quickly to take lands long disputed with Arab Iraqis, including Kirkuk. For a while, talk of secession increased, but then quieted after IS mounted a successful attack into Kurdistan in August. Since then, buoyed by US air strikes designed to hurt IS, the Kurds have recaptured areas they lost and forged an agreement to export oil from Kirkuk and its own fields for Baghdad.

Kurdish business tycoon Sirwan Barzani, a nephew of Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, sees this as a moment to advance his people's nationalist dream. He was in Paris chairing a board meeting of the telecom company he founded in 2000 when he received news that IS had overrun Mosul. A former peshmerga fighter in the 1980s, he cancelled his holiday plans in Marbella and rushed back to Kurdistan to help prepare for war, taking command of peshmerga forces along a 130km stretch of the Kurds' front line with IS.

Washington sees the Kurds as its most dependable ally in Iraq. For Barzani and other Kurds, though, the fight against IS is simply the continuation of a long struggle for an independent nation.

Before leading an offensive last month to drive IS back across the river Zab towards Mosul, Barzani said he met with an American general to talk strategy and coordinate air strikes.

"They asked about my plan," Barzani told Reuters in a military base on the frontline near Gwer, 48 kilometres south of the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil. "I said, 'My plan is to change the Sykes-Picot agreement'" — a reference to the 1916 agreement between France and Britain that marked out what would become the borders of today's Middle East.

"Iraq is not real," Barzani said. "It exists only on the map. The country is killing itself. The Shiites and Sunnis cannot live together. How can they expect us to live with them? Our culture is different. The mentality of Kurds is different. We want a divorce."

The Sunnis

Where Kurds saw opportunity in 2014, Iraq's Sunnis saw endless turmoil and new oppression. Residents in the western and northern cities of Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah — all now controlled by IS — complain about fuel and water shortages, and IS directives that women cover themselves and smokers be fined. They tell stories about the destruction wrought by shelling by the Iraqi government and US forces.

In places where Sunnis themselves are battling IS, the brutality can be unrelenting. Many wonder what will be left when the war finishes and whether it will be possible for Sunnis to reconcile even among themselves.

Sheikh Ali Abed Al Fraih has spent months fighting IS. A tribal soldier in Anbar province, he has sunken, tired eyes and a frown. His clothes are one size too big for him. He sees the conflict as an internal battle among the Anbar tribes. Some have chosen to join IS, others to fight the group. Some of his enemies, he says, are from his own clan. The fight will not end even if areas around his town of Haditha and other Anbar cities are cleared, he says. All sides will want revenge. "Blood demands blood. Anbar will never stop."

Fraih flew to Baghdad in late December to beg the government to send help to Haditha, which is pinned to the west and east by IS and defended by a 5km-long berm. Fraih could only reach Baghdad by military plane. The government had promised for two months to send food and medicine, but no help had come. The week before Christmas the government told him help would come in a week. Fraih tried be polite about the promise, but it's hard. "It's all words," he said.

Every day, tribal fighters and Iraqi soldiers in Haditha stop IS assaults and defend the city's massive dam. If IS take the dam they could flood Anbar and choke off water supplies to the Shiite south. The army, in particular, is struggling, he said. "In every fight the army loses 50 soldiers. Their vehicles get destroyed, they are short on fuel, and no new vehicles are coming. They are hurting more than my own men."

The city's one lifeline to the outside world is a huge government airbase called Ain Al Assad, some 36km south. Fraih recently met US Special Forces there. They assured him that if IS breaks through the barriers to Haditha, the US will carry out air strikes. The logic confuses Fraih. "They know the people have no food, no weapons, no ammunition, nothing. We are sinking. If you are not going to help us, at least take us to the south and north. We are dying now."

His faith in getting help from anyone has almost vanished.

"What is left of Iraq if it keeps moving this way?" he asked.

The Shiites

In a house on the outskirts of Baghdad, a Shiite tribal leader sat and imagined his world as "a dark tunnel with no light" at its end.

"Iraq is not a country now," he said. "It was before Mosul."

The sheikh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would like to see his country reunited but suspects Abadi is too weak to counter the many forces working against him. Now the Shiite militias and Iran, whom the sheikh fought in the 1980s, are his protectors. It is a situation he accepts with a grim inevitability.

"We are like a sinking ship. Whoever gives you a hand lifting you from the sea whether enemy or friend, you take it without seeing his face because he is there."

Iranian-advised paramilitaries now visit his house regularly. He has come to enjoy the Iranian commander of a branch of the Khorasani Brigades, a group named for a region in northeastern Iran. The commander likes to joke, speaks good Arabic and has an easy way, while other fighters speak only Persian, the sheikh said. He expresses appreciation for their defense of his relatives in the Shiite town of Balad, which is under assault from the IS.

The sheikh's changing perceptions are shared by other Iraqi Shiites. They once viewed Iran as the enemy but now see their neighbour as Iraq's one real friend. The streets of Baghdad and southern Iraq are decorated with images of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The sheikh, though, does not believe he can rely on Iran altogether. He is sure some Iranian-backed militiamen would happily kill him. He has heard of one case in Diyala where a militia leader shot dead the son of a popular Shiite tribal leader. He has also watched as militia fighters aligned with police and army officers kidnapped a cousin and a friend for ransom. "I feel threatened by their bad elements," he said of the militias.

If the state doesn't rebuild its military quickly and replace the multiple groups now patrolling the lands, the sheikh fears Shiite parts of Iraq will descend further into lawlessness. "It will be chaos like the old times, where strong tribes take land from the weak tribe. Militias fight militias," he said. "It will be the rule of the jungle, where the strong animal eats the weak."

LONDON — Rallies were held in London and The Hague on Monday in support of three Al Jazeera journalists as they marked a year in prison in Egypt.

Australian journalist Peter Greste has been behind bars since December 29, 2013, along with Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed in a case that sparked a global outcry.

Greste and Fahmy were sentenced to seven years and Mohamed was jailed for 10 years on charges of defaming Egypt and aiding banned Islamists, prompting claims their trial was politically motivated — and demands for a presidential pardon.

Australia has played down hopes Greste could be freed ahead of an appeal this week.

Three other foreign journalists, including British television reporter Sue Turton and Dutch journalist Rena Natjes, were sentenced to 10 years in absentia.

In London, around 50 demonstrators gathered outside the Egyptian embassy, holding placards reading "Free them now" and "Journalism is not a crime".

Many stood with manacled wrists or tape over their mouths.

"The message is 'enough is enough'. Our guys have now been in prison for 365 days," Turton said.

She said the journalists were jailed because the Egyptian government was trying to "send a message" to Qatar, which had backed the Muslim Brotherhood.

"For Egypt's sake, their economy is not looking too healthy, the tourism industry is flat-lining, so if they release our guys the image of Egypt will improve significantly."

Ann Marcus, Egypt country coordinator for the human rights group Amnesty International, who was at the demonstration, called the reporters' trial "farcical".

There was also a small gathering outside the Egyptian embassy in The Hague, where Natjes read out a letter from Fahmy.

In Australia, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop downplayed hopes that Greste will be released before a January 1 appeal.

She said there had been mixed signals from Egyptian authorities, adding that Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry had warned her not to expect any developments before this week's appeal.

"We're doing what we can to bring Peter Greste home as soon as possible and I remain hopeful that we can get that message through to the Egyptian government," Bishop told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

In a letter to his supporters last week, Greste said he felt proud at what had been achieved so far in stirring political debate about the right to a free press and the persecution of journalists in Egypt.

"We have galvanised an incredible coalition of political, diplomatic and media figures, as well as a vast army of social media supporters for that most basic of rights — the right to know," Greste said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said earlier this year he could not consider a plea of clemency or a pardon until all legal proceedings have been concluded, including an appeal.

DUBAI — Detained Bahraini Shiite opposition chief Sheikh Ali Salman is suspected of inciting hatred and violence, a minister said, warning against any escalation in protests that saw supporters clashing with police Monday.

News of the Al Wefaq leader's arrest Sunday prompted hundreds of his supporters onto the streets of Shiite villages outside the capital of the Sunni-ruled kingdom, leading to clashes with security forces.

Police have fired tear gas and birdshot to disperse them, many of whom had gathered in Salman's home village of Bilad Al Qadeem, witnesses said.

Salman has been mainly "subjected to questioning for breaches of the law, including inciting hatred and violence", Information Minister Isa Abdulrahman Al Hammadi told AFP.

He is also being questioned about "promoting political change using illegal and forceful means and for explicitly inciting hatred against specific segments of the society”.

Authorities had been tight-lipped about Salman's whereabouts since summoning over "violating certain aspects of the law”.

Salman's lawyer, Abdullah Al Shamlan, tweeted Sunday that his client had been arrested and accused of inciting hatred against the regime and calling for its overthrow by force.

Shamlan said he was also accused of insulting the judiciary and the executive branch, sectarian incitement, spreading false news likely to cause panic and undermine security and participating in events detrimental to the economy.

He said he had not been allowed to attend Salman's questioning.

Hammadi said: "The government of Bahrain supports the right to free speech, which is protected by the constitution, but no country and no government can allow hate speech to go by unchecked."

He warned that any escalation in violence will be dealt with "in accordance with the law in Bahrain" where authorities clamp down on unauthorised protests.

A statement of opposition groups led by Al Wefaq said Salman's detention is "an escalating step that targets social stability and civil peace in Bahrain”.

Authorities are "moving backward to a police state instead of taking steps towards a political solution and an end to the serious human rights violations against citizens."

On Monday, clerics gathered in Imam Al Sadeq Mosque in Al Guful village, brandishing photographs of Salman, pictures posted on Al  Wefaq's Twitter account showed.

The party has demanded Salman's immediate release.

Several rights groups have also condemned Salman's arrest.

'Insult to people' 

Top Shiite clerics issued a statement late Sunday criticising the questioning of Salman as a "huge insult to the whole people".

Four leading clerics, including Isa Al Qassem, considered the spiritual leader of Al Wefaq, said summoning Salman does not demonstrate "wise political reasoning", warning that harming Salman "amounts to harming the whole population".

The Gulf kingdom, with a majority Shiite population but ruled by the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty, has been gripped by sporadic violence ever since the authorities crushed monthlong protests led by Al Wefaq in 2011.

At least 89 people have been killed since then in clashes with security forces, and hundreds have been arrested and put on trial, human rights groups say.

Strategically located just across the Gulf from Iran, Bahrain is home base of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and Britain announced plans earlier this month to build a naval base of its own there.

Bahrain is also a partner in the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Authorities have rejected Al Wefaq's demand for an elected prime minister to replace the current government dominated by the ruling family.

Al Wefaq's announcement that it would boycott a November parliamentary election it dismissed as a farce was followed by a court order banning the party in late October.

Salman, reelected as party leader Friday, marked the occasion by leading a protest march outside the capital.

In other developments Monday, a Manama court sentenced two Shiites to death and a third to life in prison for killing a policeman, BNA state news agency said. Nine others were jailed for six years over involvement in the explosion that killed him.