Region

WASHINGTON — At least 60 journalists were killed globally this year in work-related violence, with the Middle East the deadliest region, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a year-end report on Tuesday.

The 2014 death toll marks a drop from 2013, when 70 journalists were killed, the New York-based watchdog group said. The CPJ is investigating the deaths this year of at least 18 more journalists to see if they are work related.

Almost half of the journalists killed this year died in the Middle East. Syria was the deadliest country for journalists for the third year in a row, with at least 17 killed there amid a civil war.

Seventy-nine journalists have been killed in Syria since fighting started in 2011, the CPJ said.

The last three years are the deadliest worldwide since the CPJ began documenting journalists’ killings in 1992, it said.

Almost a quarter of the journalists killed in 2014 were members of the international press, about twice the proportion CPJ has recorded in recent years, it said.

International correspondents killed included Anja Niedringhaus, an Associated Press photographer shot in Afghanistan in April while covering elections.

A US freelance reporter and a US-Israeli freelancer also were killed by Islamic State militants, who have seized a large swath of Iraq and Syria.

The most common job held by slain journalists was broadcast reporter, at 35 per cent, the CPJ said. It was followed by photographer and camera operator, at 27 per cent.

The CPJ said it considered a death work related when its staff is reasonably certain a journalist is killed in reprisal for his or her work, in combat-related crossfire or while carrying out a dangerous assignment.

ALGIERS — The Algerian army said on Tuesday it had killed the head of a militant group that beheaded a French tourist after it had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The body of Abdelmalek Gouri, who claimed responsibility for the beheading of Frenchman Herve Gourdel in September, was identified after an operation in the town of Isser "that allowed us to eliminate three terrorists", the army said.

An operation lasting three months had seen 3,000 Algerian troops mobilised to catch Gourdel's killers.

The confirmation of Gouri's death came after the Nahar private television network said soldiers had killed him and two other militants late on Monday in Isser, about 60 kilometres east of Algiers.

Jund Al Khilafa, or "Soldiers of the Caliphate", beheaded Gourdel on September 24 in a gruesome video posted online after France rejected the group's demand to halt anti-IS air strikes in Iraq.

On Saturday, the army said it killed three other Islamist gunmen in a mountainous area near Sidi Daoud, and that one of them was a "dangerous criminal" wanted since 1995.

Soldiers also seized a large quantity of guns, ammunition and explosives during the operation.

On December 11, Justice Minister Tayeb Louh announced that soldiers had killed two Jund Al Khilafa members implicated in Gourdel's murder.

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

Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountain guide, was kidnapped in September while hiking in a national park that was once a draw for tourists but became a sanctuary for Islamists.

Father identifies body 

He was later decapitated by Jund Al Khilafa, which was formed at the end of August after splintering from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and pledging allegiance to IS.

His killing followed calls by IS for Muslims to kill Westerners whose nations have joined a campaign to battle the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

The defence ministry said in a statement it had received information that led to forces pursuing "a dangerous terrorist group travelling in a vehicle", before killing Gouri and two others.

A source familiar with the operation told AFP that the bodies of three suspected militants were taken to a local hospital, where Gouri's death was confirmed by his father early on Tuesday.

Violence involving Islamists has fallen considerably since the 1990s civil war, but groups linked to AQIM continue to launch attacks in the northeast, mostly on security forces.

Gouri, alias Khaled Abou 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.

The town of Isser in the Kabylie area is home to a large officer training school that was targeted in a 2008 suicide attack that killed dozens.

Gourdel's body has yet to be found, despite a widespread search by the army which has already found a Jund Al Khilafa hideout and identified the location where a video was filmed in August showing the group pledge fealty to IS.

Another two "dangerous terrorists" were killed on Tuesday in Akerrou, 120 kilometres southeast of Algiers, the army said.

TUNIS — Tunisia's presidential vote has been hailed as a landmark, but some veterans of the 2011 revolution fear the victory of an 88-year-old from the old guard will bring a return to repression.

For his opponents, Beji Caid Essebsi's win in Sunday's run-off against incumbent Moncef Marzouki soured what was seen as the culmination of the transition to democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

The result "reverses the course of history", said Samir Ben Amor, a lawyer and member of the executive committee of Marzouki's Congress for the Republic Party.

Essebsi's opponents have accused him of seeking a return to the era of toppled autocrat Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, who clung to power for 23 years, combining authoritarian rule with a degree of prosperity and stability for his people.

Marzouki, a dissident who lived in exile in France for many years, presented himself as the guarantor of freedoms and defender of the revolt that ousted Ben Ali in January 2011.

During campaigning, he repeatedly warned against the danger of electing Essebsi, an anti-Islamist lawyer who held key posts under Habib Bourguiba, the father of Tunisian independence, as well as Ben Ali.

Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes Party also includes many members of Ben Ali's old party.

"It's really disappointing," Nejd Ben Hamza, a 34-year-old engineer, said of the presidential vote, lamenting the "short memory" of Tunisians.

"Wasn't Essebsi interior minister under Bourguiba? Didn't he support Ben Ali? Is the crowning moment of the youth revolution, four years later, the election of an 88-year-old?", he said.

"Tunisians have made sacrifices so that finally one of the old guard is going to lead the country," said Ben Hamza, alluding to the roughly 300 people killed during the December 2010-January 2011 revolution.

Essebsi sought to allay such concerns on Monday, saying he was in favour of "completely turning the page on the past".

He has accused Marzouki of representing the Islamists, whom he says have "ruined" the country since the revolution, and many voters appeared to be seeking a return to stability after a sometimes chaotic transition.

Jihadists have claimed the 2013 murders of two secular politicians that had threatened to derail Tunisia's post-Arab Spring transition until a compromise government was formed in January this year.

Fears for liberties 

The victory of Essebsi, who won 55.68 per cent of votes in the second round, has left Marzouki supporters bracing for a reversal of post-revolution freedoms.

"I really fear for our liberties, especially as the same political party will have such overarching powers," said Ali Troudi, a 39-year-old teacher.

Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes won landmark legislative elections in October and is set to form the next government.

"Essebsi talks about counterterrorism and the prestige of the state," said Troudi. "I'm afraid of a return to repressive practices in their name."

He said he was harassed under Ben Ali for going to the mosque for dawn prayers, making him a target for the old regime which repressed Islamists.

Such fears have triggered clashes between police and Marzouki supporters since the second round vote, particularly in Gabes and Tataouine in the south.

Troudi said that while he did not share Marzouki's ideology, the fact that this "democrat to the core has defended my freedom made him the right person for the next phase, the only one able to bring everyone together whatever their cultural, political or even religious differences”.

Supporters of the outgoing president fear that Tunisia's media will be largely deferential to the new leadership, as they were to Ben Ali.

"The media won't be tough on the new president and his party. On the contrary, they will be complicit and that makes me seriously worried about freedoms," said Ben Amor, who thinks the influence of the old guard on the media sector "is one of the reasons for Essebsi's victory”.

Throughout his three years as president, Marzouki maintained tense relations with the press.

His camp has accused the media of bias towards his rival and of spreading "rumours and lies" about Marzouki.

But "the fight goes on and we will never give up", vowed Ben Amor.

TUNIS — Veteran anti-Islamist politician Beji Caid Essebsi was declared the winner of Tunisia's first free presidential election on Monday, capping off the transition to democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

But in a sign of the challenges ahead, police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of youths who burned tyres in protest at the result.

Essebsi, an 88-year-old former official in previous Tunisian regimes, took 55.68 per cent of the vote to defeat incumbent Moncef Marzouki in Sunday's run-off, the electoral commission said.

Essebsi had claimed victory shortly after polls closed but Marzouki, a long-exiled 69-year-old rights activist, refused initially to concede defeat.

On Monday, however, Marzouki's spokesman said on Facebook the outgoing president had congratulated his rival.

A first round of voting on November 23 had seen Essebsi in the lead with 39 per cent of the vote, six points ahead of Marzouki.

Participation in the second round was 60.1 per cent, electoral commission chief Chafik Sarsar said, after authorities had urged a high turnout.

US President Barack Obama congratulated Essebsi and hailed the vote as "a vital step towards the completion of Tunisia's momentous transition to democracy", a White House statement said.

Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, said: "Tunisia has provided a shining example to the region and the world of what can be achieved through dedication to democracy, consensus, and an inclusive political process."

The vote was seen as a landmark in Tunisia, which sparked the Arab Spring mass revolutions with the 2011 ouster of longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

However, the campaign was bitter and divisive, with Marzouki insisting a win for Essebsi would mark the return of Tunisia’s old guard of ruling elites.

Essebsi in turn accused his rival of representing the moderately Islamist party Ennahda that ruled Tunisia after the revolution and which installed him as president.

Continued divisions were clear as some 300-400 protesters clashed with police in El Hamma in the south, where Marzouki had widespread support.

Protesters “set fire to tyres and tried to attack a police station by throwing stones. Security forces responded with tear gas”, interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said.

Several police were wounded in the clashes, which began late on Sunday, Aroui said.

After declaring victory on Sunday, Essebsi had urged Marzouki to “work together for the future of Tunisia”.

‘Milestone’ vote 

The vote was the first time Tunisians have freely elected their president since independence from France in 1956.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday congratulated the country on its “milestone” vote.

“The successful staging of this presidential election confirms Tunisia’s historic role,” he said in a statement.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in neighbouring Algeria also congratulated Essebsi and the “maturity” of the Tunisian electorate.

The weekly Tunis Hebdo said the vote would “enhance Tunisia’s reputation as the only Arab Spring country that has managed to survive”.

The revolution that began in Tunisia spread to many parts of the Arab world, with mass protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

In every country except Tunisia the revolution was followed by violent turmoil or, as in Syria’s case, a devastating civil war.

Sunday’s vote was largely peaceful, though troops guarding ballot papers in the central region of Kairouan who came under attack shot dead one assailant and captured three, the defence ministry said.

The authorities had deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and police for polling day.

Ahead of the vote, jihadists had issued a videotaped threat against Tunisia’s political establishment.

Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes Party won parliamentary polls in October and he promised to begin the process of forming a government after the presidential vote.

Under a new post-revolution constitution, the powers of the president have been curbed to guard against a return to dictatorship.

Ennahda came second in the general election and has not ruled out joining in a governing coalition.

The next government will face major challenges.

Tunisia’s economy is struggling to recover from the upheaval of the revolution and there are fears that widespread joblessness will cause social unrest.

A nascent jihadist threat has also emerged, with militant groups long suppressed under Ben Ali carrying out several attacks including the killings of two anti-Islamist politicians.

BEIRUT — The Syrian government has approved the delivery of medicine and surgical supplies to three areas of the country aid workers were previously unable to reach regularly, including opposition-held Aleppo, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.

All sides in Syria’s three-year civil war have prevented medicine from crossing front lines fearing it could be used to help wounded enemy fighters. This has deprived trapped civilians from life-saving medical assistance.

Elizabeth Hoff, the WHO’s Syria representative, told Reuters the government has now promised access to Aleppo, the besieged Damascus district of Mouadamiya, and Eastern Ghouta, outside the capital.

“It is something that we have been negotiating, after the constraints we’ve had, we have had top level meetings. There has been a willingness from the ministry of health and the ministry of foreign affairs. We see a positive outlook,” Hoff said.

“We have had some constraints in the past with delivering surgical supplies, syringes, but the situation is much better at the moment,” she said.

The United Nations says 4.7 million Syrians live in areas that are hard to reach, including at least 241,000 people who remain besieged by either government or opposition forces.

“We have actually got promises to deliver to Aleppo and the hard to reach areas around Aleppo. This will happen this week. And next week we have deliveries for Mouadamiya, which has been besieged for a long time,” she aid.

United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura has proposed a freeze in fighting in Aleppo to help get humanitarian assistance into the city that has been divided for more than two years between opposition fighters and government troops.

“We also promised to deliver vaccines for regular vaccination programmes to Eastern Ghouta which has been closed for a long time,” Hoff said. “These are the prospects for the next two weeks and approved by the government.”

Syrian activists in these areas say disease is spreading due to poor sanitary conditions and government siege.

A plunge in vaccination rates from 90 per cent before the war to 52 per cent this year and contaminated water have allowed disease to take hold. Insecurity from the war remains the biggest impediment to aid deliveries, Hoff said.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011 with popular protests against President Bashar Assad and spiralled into civil war after a crackdown by security forces.

MOUNT SINJAR, Iraq — Kurdish fighters in Iraq pushed deeper Monday into the town of Sinjar, held by the Islamic State group, but are facing stiff resistance from the Sunni militants who captured it in August.

One of the fighters, Bakhil Elias, said clashes since late last night have been "fierce" and that IS militants are using snipers. At least two Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been killed by snipers and 25 were wounded in the latest fighting.

Large plumes of black smoke are billowing into the sky from inside the town.

The Kurdish forces say the militants are burning tyres and oil to create a smoke screen of thick dark clouds to obstruct air strikes against their positions by the US-led coalition.

Last week, the Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched the operation to retake Sinjar and were able to reach thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar.

Peshmerga fighters opened up a corridor to the mountain and are regularly bringing truckloads of aid and food to the area.

In neighbouring Syria, Kurdish fighters pushed into an IS-held neighbourhood in the northern town of Kobani, capturing a cultural centre that they had besieged on Saturday.

“The centre is very important morally and militarily,” said Kobani-based activist Mustafa Bali, referring to the site, located on a hill that overlooks several neighbourhoods east and southeast of the town.

“This will change the military rhythm in the coming days,” Bali said, adding that the aim of Kurdish fighters in Syria is to evict IS militants from Kobani and nearby villages.

Kurdish fighters have been slowly advancing in Kobani over the past weeks backed by Iraqi peshmerga fighters who came to help, and airstrikes by the US-led coalition.

The IS group began its Kobani offensive in mid-September, capturing parts of the town as well as dozens of nearby villages. Hundreds of fighters on both sides have been killed since.

Idriss Nassan, a Kobani local official, said that over the past days the Syrian Kurdish force known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, “has taken the initiative” and advanced in IS-controlled neighbourhoods.

Nassan said peshmerga fighters usually bombard IS positions in the town while YPG fighters carry out the ground attack with the help of airstrikes that target militant positions.

BENGHAZI/TRIPOLI — Fighting between Libya's competing governments has spread to a third oil port, curbing gas exports to Italy and cutting crude production to less than needed to cover the North African country's own domestic requirements, officials said.

The OPEC producer is struggling with fighting on several fronts as brigades of former rebels, who once battled side by side to oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011, now clash for political power and a share of oil revenues.

Libya has had two governments and parliaments since a group called Libya Dawn seized the capital Tripoli in August by expelling a rival faction, installing its own prime minister and forcing the internationally recognised Cabinet to operate out of the east with the elected house of representatives.

While Tripoli has been largely quiet for months, clashes erupted more than a week ago near the two biggest oil export ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, when a force allied to Tripoli’s self-declared government moved east to try to seize the terminals.

The recognised government flew air strikes against what it called military targets in Sirte, a central city west of the ports, a military official said, the latest in almost daily raids. A top commander of the rival force, Tarek Eshnaina, was killed in clashes, a spokesman said in Tripoli.

Es Sider and Ras Lanuf with their connected oil and gas field have stopped functioning, lowering oil output by an estimated 300,000 barrels a day from the 1.4 million bpd before last summer. Oil and gas exports are Libya’s economic lifeline.

In a new front, fighting spread west of Tripoli close to the oil and gas port of Mellitah, operated by NOC and Italy’s ENI , the state-run National Oil Corp. (NOC) said.

The recognised government of Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni has been trying to take the Tunisian border area west of Tripoli from Libya Dawn, using allied tribesmen and air strikes.

“Crude production of the state of Libya has fallen to very low levels which will not meet local demand,” NOC said in a statement, without providing an output figure.

“NOC is worried about the events happening at the Mellitah oil and gas port,” it said. A spokesman said the port, located near the border, remained open but declined to comment further.

The fighting near the oil ports has been complicated by a separate battle between pro-government forces and Islamist rebels in Benghazi, Libya’s second city. At least 11 people were killed and 63 wounded in clashes on Monday.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Eight Palestinians from annexed East Jerusalem were indicted on Monday for inciting anti-Jewish violence and supporting "terror" in postings on Facebook, a justice ministry spokeswoman said.

The eight men, aged 18-45, were charged at Jerusalem magistrate's court with "incitement to violence or terror and supporting a terrorist group" on Facebook, a ministry statement read.

The incriminating posts were put online in recent months as a wave of violence rocked the city during which several Palestinians staged lone wolf attacks killing nine people.

The defendants "directly called for violence and terror against [Jewish] citizens and security forces and praised, encouraged and supported these deeds and their perpetrators" on the Internet, the statement read.

Among the remarks posted online were "It is good to kidnap soldiers", "Zionists flee because you'll soon be killed by a car" and words expressing hope that a rightwing Jewish activist, who survived an assassination attempt in October, would die a painful death, the indictment said.

All eight were arrested earlier this month in what police said was their biggest operation yet aimed at halting incitement to violence on social networks.

Tensions in Jerusalem have since abated although clashes still erupt sporadically in the Arab eastern sector of the city which was occupied and annexed by Israel during the 1967 war.

BERLIN — A German government minister said Monday Berlin aimed to set up a trauma centre for victims of a mass rape campaign by the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Overseas Development Minister Gerd Mueller told the Bild newspaper that the care facility in Germany could serve 100 women and girls from Syria and Iraq.

Mueller said he had spoken with five young girls on a visit to Iraq who had been captured by IS and gang raped.

"Three of them are now pregnant. We have to take care of such girls," he said.

Mueller did not provide a timetable or say where in Germany the centre would be established.

IS spearheaded a sweeping offensive that has overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria since June.

In November, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria released its first report focused on IS crimes, presenting a horrifying picture of what life is like in areas controlled by the jihadists, including massacres, beheadings, torture, sexual enslavement and forced pregnancy.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has become the continent's top destination for asylum seekers. It expects around 230,000 asylum seekers in 2015, up from a predicted 200,000 this year.

The influx has spawned a far-right populist movement which has been staging demonstrations in cities across the country against the "Islamisation" of Germany.

BEIRUT — The Islamic State group has claimed the arrests of four jihadists it classified as "extremists" accused of plotting against the organisation in areas of Iraq and Syria under its control.

In a video purportedly posted by IS on jihadist websites, a male voice claims to have "captured an extremist religious cell planning to take up arms against the caliphate," referring to the regions it controls in both countries.

In what IS said were confessions, the four detained men said they had plotted against IS as the group doesn't view "all Iraqis and Syrians as infidels".

The men, speaking Azerbaijani Turkish, accused IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi of being "an infidel as he takes money from infidels".

The video does not specify when or where the men were arrested but it carries the initials of Syria's Raqqa province, a stronghold of IS in the north of the war-ravaged country.

The fate of the four detainees is also not revealed, although the video ends with the recitation of a Koranic verse stating that those who fight against God and the Prophet Mohammad deserve to die or have their arms and legs amputated.

The Financial Times newspaper over the weekend reported that 100 foreign IS members had been executed by the group after trying to flee Raqqa.