Region

SANAA — Officers suspected to be loyalists of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh are leading a mutiny inside the headquarters of an elite paramilitary unit, seeking to oust their commander on Thursday, officials said.

The officials say gunfire was heard Thursday afternoon inside the special forces headquarters, located in the heart of the capital near the presidential palace. The mutineers chanted "leave leave" and tried to storm the office of Mohammed Mansour Al Ghadraa, their new commander. Ghadraa was appointed in September.

Shiite rebels who seized the capital in September deployed their militiamen, officials said, adding that presidential guards cordoned off the area with armoured vehicles and soldiers.

The unit, part of the interior ministry, was led for nearly a decade by Saleh's nephew, Yahia Saleh, before he was removed in 2012. It's not immediately clear whom the mutineers want to replace Al Ghadraa.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.

Yahia Saleh's removal was part of a shakeup by Saleh's successor Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in response to widespread demands to purge Saleh's loyalists from the security forces and army. Saleh and Shiite rebels known as Houthis have joined ranks in weakening Hadi, sweeping through cities and towns, and prompting the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Saleh and two Houthi commanders.

Saleh and the Houthis are former foes who were engaged in a six-year war starting in 2004 before reaching a truce in 2010. Saleh was forced to step down after a yearlong uprising in 2011. He remains a major power broker thanks to a US-backed, Gulf-brokered deal which gave his party a share of power and granted him immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down.

In response to the sanctions, the country's ruling party the General People's Congress — which is split between Hadi and Saleh supporters — sacked Hadi from the party leadership and replaced him with another senior aide.

On Thursday, party leaders in Yemen's southern provinces including Aden, issued a joint statement rejecting the party's removal of Hadi and describing his dismissal as “void”.

CAIRO — A bomb wounded five policemen near a Cairo university Thursday, and four people were hurt in a panicked crush after an explosion at a train station in the Egyptian capital, security officials said.

Egypt has been hit by a wave of bombings and shootings since the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

The five policemen, including two officers, were hurt when a bomb exploded at a small post near Helwan University in southern Cairo, security officials said.

But the interior ministry said assailants in a speeding car threw a bomb at the policemen near the university, wounding four officers and a conscript.

Egypt is fighting an Islamist insurgency that has killed scores of policemen and soldiers, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula.

But militant groups have also staged attacks in other parts of the country, including Cairo.

They say they are acting in retaliation to a brutal government crackdown targeting Morsi's supporters that has left at least 1,400 people dead since his ouster.

A militant group called Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt) claimed Thursday's bombing on the police in a statement posted on Twitter.

"As a quick response to security forces that target university students... a group of heroes targeted the security force that besiege Helwan University," it said.

The group, which called on youth to "take up arms against security forces", said it was targeting officers in the police but warned that it did not rule out attacks on the lower ranks as well.

The group has claimed several previous attacks on security forces in Cairo, including one near Cairo University last month that wounded nine people.

Police have tightened security in and around universities across Egypt, where students supporting Morsi still stage regular protests.

During the past academic year, at least 14 students were killed in clashes with security forces on university campuses — the last bastions of pro-Morsi protesters.

Meanwhile on Thursday, four people were injured in a stampede at the capital's Ramses station after a blast inside a compartment of a train that pulled in from the Nile Delta, security officials said, adding that the blast was caused by a "sound bomb”.

Amid a growing number of attacks on public transport, 16 people were injured in panic sparked by an explosion at a Cairo metro train station on November 13.

A week earlier, a bomb on a train north of the capital killed two policemen and two passengers.

In other developments, in the delta province of Sharqiya, three empty state transport buses were set on fire in separate incidents by unknown people, the officials said.

CAIRO — Egypt welcomed a Saudi call on Wednesday to back an agreement among Gulf Arab states that ended an eight-month dispute over Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood and promotion of Arab Spring revolts.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain agreed on Sunday to return their ambassadors to Doha after resolving their row with Qatar.

In a statement on Wednesday, Saudi King Abdullah appealed to the leadership and people of Egypt to "work with us for the success of this step in the march of Arab solidarity", the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Three hours later, the office of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi issued a statement calling the king's appeal "a big step towards Arab solidarity".

"We look together to a new era that turns the page on the disputes of the past," it said.

Saudi Arabia has strongly supported Sisi and contributed billions of dollars of aid to Egypt since he ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood last year.

The Egyptian statement did not mention Qatar by name. Relations between Cairo and Doha have deteriorated since the army removed Morsi and the Brotherhood from power following mass protests against his rule.

Egypt’s ambassador to Qatar was recalled to Cairo earlier this year over political tension between the two states.

Like Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and see political Islam as a challenge to their own systems of rule.

Qatar is seen to have been supportive of the Brotherhood in Egypt and the UAE, and more recently in Libya. It had given sanctuary to some Brotherhood members but in September asked seven senior figures from the group to leave the country following months of pressure from its neighbours.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi also see the Doha-based Al Jazeera news network as being a Brotherhood mouthpiece, which Qatar denies.

Sisi issued a decree last week allowing him to repatriate foreign prisoners in Egypt, which could enable him to release at least one of three Al Jazeera journalists currently serving a seven-year jail term for spreading lies.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel began a crackdown in East Jerusalem Wednesday, a day after an assault by Palestinians on a synagogue killed five people, razing the home of a resident behind an earlier deadly attack.

The demolition, which took place before dawn, was carried out after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a harsh response to the synagogue attack, which killed four rabbis at prayer and a policeman.

Two Palestinians wielding meat cleavers and a gun ran amok in the rare assault on a place of worship which was the city’s bloodiest attack in six years.

It came as Israel struggles to contain a wave of unrest in occupied Arab East Jerusalem that has seen a growing number of deadly attacks by lone Palestinians.

“I have ordered the destruction of the homes of the Palestinians who carried out this massacre and to speed up the demolitions of those who carried out previous attacks,” Netanyahu said late on Tuesday.

Several hours later, Israeli forces went to the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan and demolished the third-floor apartment of the family of Abdelrahman Shaludi, who deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of pedestrians last month, killing a young woman and a baby.

Shaludi was shot by Israeli forces as he fled the scene after his October 22 rampage, later dying of his wounds.

Punitive house demolitions have been used by Israel for years in the West Bank but the policy was halted in 2005 after the army said they had no proven deterrent effect.

Until now, razing homes has never been adopted as a matter of policy in occupied Arab East Jerusalem.

The family home in densely populated Silwan was little more than a shell after the demolition, its inner and outer walls blown out and piles of rubble covering the floor, an AFP correspondent reported.

A falling chunk of concrete hit a car in the street below, crushing it.

The family had moved out ahead of the demolition and were staying with relatives.

“Where can we go now? We have nowhere to live, no home,” said Nibras Shaludi, a younger sister of the man behind the attack.

Controversial practice 

Israel’s decision to resume the policy of house demolitions was taken on November 6 following a second attack by a Palestinian using a car which killed two Israelis, an official told AFP.

The aim, he said was “to restore calm in Jerusalem” following a wave of attacks in the city.

But in 2005, the army recommended halting the policy, saying it was not effective as a deterrent and suggesting it was likely to encourage violence.

Human rights groups have denounced the practice as collective punishment targeting not the perpetrators but their families.

And last week, the US State Department warned that demolishing homes would be “counterproductive” and would “exacerbate an already tense situation” in Jerusalem.

Israeli commentators too expressed scepticism.

“The effectiveness of demolishing homes is controversial,” wrote Nahum Barnea in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

“The Shin Bet [internal security service] contends that it deters, the army contends that it does not and that it could even have the opposite effect -- it sows the seeds for the next terror attack,” he wrote.

“But all that is irrelevant, because the government... feels that it must show the public that it is punishing the other side.”

Amnesty International said home demolitions were illegal under international law and warned Israel not to “trample over the rights of Palestinians ... in order to restore security.”

Aside from the homes of the two Palestinians behind the synagogue attack, there are another three East Jerusalem apartments earmarked for demolition in connection with a spate of attacks over the past three months.

ERBIL, Iraq — A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle in the heart of the usually secure Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Erbil on Wednesday, killing four people, officials said.

The bomber hit the main checkpoint on the way to the provincial government headquarters in the northern city just before noon (0900 GMT), provincial council spokesman Hamza Hamed said.

The attack killed four people, two of them police, and wounded 29, Saman Barzanchi, the director general of the Erbil health department, told AFP.

A crowd of onlookers gathered at the site of the blast, which broke car windows, scarred vehicles with shrapnel and left glass and debris scattered across the blood-stained street.

The bombing is the worst attack to hit Erbil since September 29, 2013, when militants struck the headquarters of the asayesh security forces in the city, killing seven people and wounding more than 60.

In that attack, the asayesh said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the entrance to their headquarters, after which they killed four more would-be bombers before a fifth blew up an ambulance rigged with explosives.

“When you are visiting Erbil, there is absolutely no sense of danger,” said Bruno Retailleau, a French senator who was at the Erbil provincial headquarters minutes before the blast.

“Retroactively, it’s chilling,” Retailleau, who was heading a delegation that delivered 10 tonnes of aid for displaced Iraqis, told AFP.

Iraq’s three-province autonomous Kurdish region is generally spared the rampant violence plaguing other parts of the country.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Wednesday attack, which rocked a usually crowded area close to the city’s main landmark, the UNESCO-listed Erbil citadel.

But suicide bombings are usually carried out by Sunni extremists in Iraq, including a series of blasts claimed by the IS jihadist group in recent weeks.

Kurdish security forces are battling IS, which spearheaded an offensive that has overrun large areas of Iraq since June, making it a more prominent target for militants.

The initial jihadist onslaught swept federal security forces aside in the north, allowing the Kurds to take control of a swathe of disputed territory that they want to incorporate into their autonomous region over Baghdad’s objections.

But IS turned its attention to the north again in August, launching a renewed drive that pushed Kurdish forces back towards Erbil, helping to spark a US-led campaign of air strikes that has since been expanded to Syria.

Backed by the strikes, Kurdish troops have managed to regain some areas seized by IS, as have federal forces backed by pro-governmental fighters.

But significant territory, including three major cities, remain in the hands of the militants.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel on Wednesday approved the construction of 78 new housing units in two settlements on West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem, likely to aggravate Palestinian anger at a time when violence has flared, including a deadly attack on a synagogue.

Jerusalem's municipal planning committee authorised 50 new housing units in Har Homa and 28 in Ramot, a municipal spokeswoman said. Israel describes those two urban settlements as Jerusalem neighbourhoods.

The Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. They fear the Israeli enclaves will deny them contiguous territory.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said of the latest announcement: "These decisions are a continuation of the Israeli government's policy to cause more tension, push towards further escalation and waste any chance to create an atmosphere for calm."

Israel's settlement activities have drawn criticism from the European Union and from the United States, which like most countries views settlements as illegal.

Israel, citing biblical links to Jerusalem, says Jews have a right to live anywhere in the city. It regards Jerusalem, including parts of the city occupied in 1967, as its "indivisible" capital. US-brokered peace talks between Israeli and the Palestinians broke down in April.

MADRID — Spanish lawmakers adopted a motion Tuesday calling on the government to recognise a Palestinian state, following similar moves in other European nations.

The motion submitted by the opposition Socialists asks the conservative government to recognise Palestine in coordination with any similar move by the European Union.

It was adopted nearly unanimously with 319 in favour, two against and one abstention.

The vote came after Tuesday's attack at a Jerusalem synagogue that saw two Palestinians armed with a gun and meat cleavers kill five people before being shot dead. The vote, however, had been planned beforehand.

The text asks the Spanish government to "recognise Palestine as a state, subject to international law", while adding that the "only solution to the conflict is the co-existence of two states, Israel and Palestine", reached through negotiation.

"It is not binding, it does not set a timeline for the recognition, it gives the government the margin to proceed with the recognition when it feels it will be opportune," Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

"If we want to be effective this recognition must be done in coordination with the European Union," he added.

The motion follows moves in other European countries intended to increase pressure for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Britain and Ireland approved similar non-binding motions last month that call on their governments to recognise Palestine. Neither government has heeded that call.

French lawmakers will vote on November 28 on a proposal by the ruling Socialist Party urging the government to recognise Palestine as a state.

Sweden's new left-leaning government went a step further and officially recognised a Palestinian state on October 30, prompting a strong protest from Israel, which swiftly withdrew its ambassador from Stockholm.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Shortly before dawn Wednesday, a powerful explosion ripped out the walls of the home of Abdelrahman Shaludi, a 21-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem who rammed his car into Israeli pedestrians.

In demolishing the home of the Palestinian behind last month's attack, which killed a baby and a woman before Israeli forces shot and fatally wounded him, Israel renewed a controversial policy aimed at deterrence but one which is likely to further inflame tensions.

The blast, which rocked the densely populated Silwan neighbourhood on a steep hillside just south of Jerusalem's Old City, marked the restart of a policy of demolishing the family homes of Palestinians responsible for anti-Israeli attacks.

Amer Shaludi, a relative who lives underneath the family's third-floor apartment, said police burst in shortly after midnight, ordering everyone outside.

"Then, at around 4:00am [0200 GMT], there was a huge explosion," he told AFP.

Aware that it was slated for demolition, the family had recently moved out.

As the sun rose, all that remained of the family apartment was a gaping hole in the facade of the building.

Inside, all the walls had been knocked down by explosive charges, and piles of rubble covered the floor.

"Where can we go now? We have nowhere to live, no home," said Nibras, a teenager in a bright pink flowered headscarf and sister of the attacker.

Targeting family members 

According to Danny Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who tracks developments in East Jerusalem, it was the first punitive demolition in the city since April 2009 when Israeli forces razed the home of a Palestinian who went on the rampage a year earlier, killing three Israelis.

But on November 6, following two deadly Palestinian attacks in a fortnight, Netanyahu approved plans to knock down or seal up the homes of anyone attacking Israelis as part of a raft of measures to "restore calm" in Jerusalem.

The aim is to create deterrence: Even if those planning attacks have no concern for their own lives, they might be forced to think twice if they knew it would leave their families homeless.

"The main victims of the demolitions were family members, among them women, the elderly, and children, who bore no responsibility for the acts of their relative and were not suspected of involvement in any offence," Israeli rights group B'Tselem says.

Washington warned last week that demolishing homes could be "counterproductive" and "exacerbate an already tense situation" in Jerusalem.

B'Tselem says that between October 2001 and January 2005, 664 homes were destroyed across the occupied Palestinian territories, leaving 4,182 people homeless before the defence ministry decided to end the policy following research showing it was not an efficient deterrent and could encourage more violence.

Despite the decision, the army destroyed one home in East Jerusalem in 2009 and sealed up two others in the same year, the NGO said.

And earlier this year, troops also razed the homes of three Palestinians accused of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

Two homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron were completely destroyed, while a third was partially razed then sealed off.

48-hours to appeal 

Three other families in East Jerusalem have now been formally notified that their homes are slated for demolition.

One is the home of Mohammed Jaabis, 23, from Jabel Mukaber who rammed an earthmover into a bus on August 4, killing an Israeli and wounding five. He was shot dead by police at the scene.

Another is that of Muataz Hijazi, 32, from Abu Tor who on October 29 tried to gun down a far-right Jewish activist, critically wounding him. Hijazi was shot dead the following morning during a police raid.

The third is the home of Ibrahim Akari, 38, from Shuafat refugee camp who on November 5 rammed his car into pedestrians, killing a teenager and a policeman and wounding nine, before also being shot dead at the scene.

Israel has likewise pledged to raze the homes of Uday and Ghassan Abu Jamal from Jabal Mukaber who on Tuesday were shot dead after attacking a synagogue with meat cleavers and a gun, killing four rabbis at prayer and a policeman.

For those whose houses have been condemned, it becomes a waiting game until they receive the date.

After that, they have 48 hours to appeal against the order to the supreme court.

But the Shaludi family did not bother appealing.

"We know this is a political decision, not one based on the law," Abdelkarim Shaludi told AFP, saying the result had been decided in advance.

ISMAILIA, Egypt — Ten civilians were killed overnight during fighting between the army and Islamist militants near Egypt’s border with Gaza, where the military has launched a crackdown in recent weeks, security and medical sources said on Wednesday.

At least three of the casualties were children and three were women, the medical sources said. The victims were killed in their home by two mortar shells fired by militants during a night-time curfew, security sources said.

The sources said earlier it was possible the victims had been killed in mistaken army air strikes on militants in the area, but later ruled that out. The army spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Amid the curfew — imposed on swathes of northern Sinai after militant attacks on October 24 killed 33 security personnel — local residents, medical crews and other sources had limited information about the incident.

Egypt is creating a one-kilometre deep buffer strip along the border with Gaza by clearing houses and trees and destroying subterranean tunnels it says are used to smuggle arms from the Palestinian enclave to militants in Sinai.

Residents of Sinai, who complain they have long been neglected by the state, say many rely on smuggling goods through the tunnels for their livelihoods and the creation of the buffer zone has stoked resentment.

Militant violence in Sinai, a remote but strategic region bordering Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal, has surged since the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and cracked down on his Muslim Brotherhood, jailing thousands of members and labelling it a terrorist organisation.

The Brotherhood maintains it is peaceful and condemned last month’s attacks.

Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, a militant group that has sworn allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, has stepped up attacks on police and soldiers in Sinai and released a video this month purporting to show it was behind the October 24 attack.

TUNIS — Tunisia holds its first multi-candidate presidential election on Sunday in the final stage of a post-revolution transition that has set it apart from the turmoil of other Arab Spring states.

Twenty-seven candidates are in the running, with former premier Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics whose anti-Islamist party Nidaa Tounes won an October 26 parliamentary election, the hot favourite.

Among his challengers are outgoing President Moncef Marzouki, several ministers who served under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s longtime ruler who was ousted in a 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, leftwinger Hamma Hammami, business magnate Slim Riahi and a lone woman, magistrate Kalthoum Kannou.

A second round is to be contested at the end of December if the winner fails to secure an absolute majority.

Until the revolution the North African country had known only two heads of state: Habib Bourguiba, the “father of independence” from France in 1956, and then Ben Ali who deposed him in a December 7, 1987 coup.

Ben Ali held onto the president’s Palais de Carthage until the revolt forced him to take flight to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011.

To prevent another dictatorship, presidential powers have been restricted under a new constitution hammered out by political parties across the board and executive prerogatives transferred to a prime minister drawn from the winning party of parliamentary polls.

The clear frontrunner despite his age, Essebsi has run on a campaign of “state prestige”, a slogan with wide appeal to Tunisians anxious for an end to instability.

Supporters argue he alone can stand up to the Islamists who held power in the post-Ben Ali era until his party’s election triumph last month, while critics charge he is out to restore the old regime, having served under both Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

Marzouki has been hammering home the argument that he is the only leader capable of preserving the gains of the uprising which swept the country between December 2010 and January 2011.

Coalition at stake

Moderate Islamist party Ennahda, which came second to Nidaa Tounes in the legislative election but denied its rival a working majority in parliament, is not running its own candidate and has invited its members “to elect a president who will guarantee democracy”.

Speculation has been rife on the makeup of a new government and the possibility of a coalition between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda in spite of their fundamental differences.

Neither party has ruled out the prospect, with Essebsi saying Nidaa Tounes will await the outcome of the presidential poll before opening negotiations with other parties.

“The main thing at stake in the presidential election is the formation of a future coalition capable of naming a government and a stable majority for the next five years,” independent analyst Selim Kharrat told AFP.

Nidaa Tounes and Essebsi “need a victory... to be able on the one hand to have a president who comes from the party but also a head of government” as well as a parliamentary majority.

Opponents say such a scenario would amount to single-party domination of Tunisian politics.

But Kharrat says safeguards are in place to allow the democratic process to move forward, such as strong civil society groups.

Economic challenges

Serious challenges along the way, especially the 2013 assassination of two opposition politicians by suspected jihadists, have delayed by two years the process of establishing permanent institutions in Tunisia, with the presidential election as the final act.

But Tunisia has won international plaudits — despite security and economic setbacks over the past four years — for having largely steered clear of the violence, repression and lawlessness of fellow Arab Spring countries such as Libya.

Whoever wins the election, tackling Tunisia’s faltering economy will be a top priority.

After a revolution in which poverty was a leading cause, unemployment is running at 15 per cent.

“There are university graduates like me who... have no choice,” said Slim Shimi, who has worked as a waiter in a coffee shop for five years since graduating with a degree in geography.

“The economy, which has perhaps been ignored or put to one side in the initial phase, must be tackled head-on because the economic challenges are there and are getting worse in some cases,” said Jean-Luc Bernasconi, the World Bank’s chief economist in Tunis.