Region

BEIRUT — With Lebanon's most powerful political parties funded and often directed by regional powers, the country has for decades been affected by events in the Middle East.

But extraordinary chaos is exploding around the tiny Mediterranean state and Lebanon's leaders have tried to isolate themselves as best they can. The result has been a near complete shutdown of Lebanese political life.

The stalemate is choking a democracy that appears imperfect but has allowed for a civil society that thrives in a way not seen in other Arab countries.

Citing fears that the security situation in Lebanon is too fragile to hold elections, parliamentarians last week decided to extend their term for a second time, effectively doubling their constitutionally decreed four years in parliament.

Meanwhile, the presidency — which is elected by MPs — has been vacant for five months, and for most of last year there was also no Cabinet.

"The extension of the parliament mandate pushes Lebanon one step further away from reform, while also exposing the bankruptcy and paralysis of our political system," Sami Atallah, executive director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies said in a commentary published this week.

Lebanese rivalries mirror competition between regional states, notably Shiite Muslim Iran and Sunni 

Saudi Arabia, which wield decisive influence over Lebanese politics.

Powerful Shiite Hizbollah leads one bloc while Sunnis under former prime minister Saad Al Hariri lead the other. Christians, guaranteed the presidency, are divided.

With Iran and Saudi Arabia supporting opposing sides of the Syrian civil war, the past three years have seen regional enmity rise followed by a crisis in Lebanese politics 25 years after an agreement to end its own 15-year civil war.

Politics frozen

Without regional rapprochement, politics in Lebanon has frozen with parties unable to make agreements beyond keeping the country running, just about.

“Everything is connected. If we are looking towards a solution for our presidency situation in Lebanon, we would also be looking for other solutions for the whole region,” Prime Minister Tammam Salam said on Wednesday. “At the moment, unfortunately, there is nothing in light yet.”

The sectarian balance of power in Lebanon has prevented hegemony by one party and allowed a vocal civil society to flourish. But aspiring politicians and activists say they are now unable to push through any change.

Mark Daou, a 35-year-old independent candidate, was canvassing in his district of 120,000 voters in early 2013 to run for parliament. Now he’ll wait until 2017.

“The extension is a disaster ... The entire existence of the state is being delegitimised simply by not allowing citizens of Lebanon to express their opinions in the poll,” he said.

His frustration was matched by protesters who threw tomatoes at convoys of MPs as they arrived at parliament to vote to extend their rule. “No extension” is graffitied across Beirut.

With many political leaders former militia leaders from the civil war, Daou says his goal is to use a grassroots movement to “break the monopoly of the traditional sectarian religious parties”.

Sami Baroudi, a political analyst at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, says that the influence of regional players on Lebanese politicians is marginalising the state.

“We have a very, very volatile mix. A region on fire, a civil war raging on your borders and at the same time the local players are so entrenched to their positions that they are unable to reach agreement.”

Tourism and investment have dropped. The stalemate has hampered efforts to tackle public debt, exploit potential off-shore gas reserves and improve crumbling infrastructure.

Presidential vacuum

A government formed in February with Saudi-Iranian blessing has spared Lebanon from complete vacuum. But it has struggled to take even basic decisions and politicians say the two powers are unwilling to forge a similar consensus for the presidency.

Fifteen parliamentary sessions called since May to appoint a president have failed.

Breaking the political deadlock will likely require regional states to broker an agreement similar to one concluded in Qatar in 2008 that resulted in parliament electing former army commander Michel Suleiman as head of state.

The country is experiencing some of its worst sectarian violence in years. On-off fighting rages in the coastal city of Tripoli and Sunni Muslim gunmen briefly took over the north eastern town of Arsal this summer.

Raed Bou Hamdan, a young member of the mainly Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), said his party voted for the extension because it was the lesser of two evils.

Moving ahead to parliamentary elections without first appointing a president would break Lebanon’s delicate sectarian power balance and could cause further violence, he said.

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Thursday freed without questioning or charges 12 radical nationalist protesters who attacked three US sailors in the centre of Istanbul in an assault that alarmed the American military.

Several dozen members of Turkiye Genclik Birligi (Turkish Youth Union/TGB) attacked the visiting US sailors on Wednesday afternoon while their vessel the USS Ross was moored in the centre of Istanbul on its way back from exercises in the Black Sea.

They threw red dye and sought to force white sacks as hoods on the sailors in the Eminonu district on the Istanbul waterfront, a popular tourist hub.

The case of the 12 protesters arrested over the action was referred earlier Thursday to the court of justice in Istanbul, the Dogan news agency said.

However, they were all later released without charge and without even being questioned by prosecutors, it added.

TGB chairman Cagdas Cengiz said outside the courthouse that it was “our duty as Turkish youths” to attack the soldiers.

“This protest was a salute to all the oppressed nations. From now on, American soldiers will never have an easy time here. They will not be able to go around freely,” he said, quoted by the Milliyet daily.

An MP for the mainstream secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also praised the action.

“These young people have done what was necessary. Turks are hospitable but have always sided with the oppressed,” said Suheyl Batum.

‘Ugly and disturbing’

But the attack — which came amid tensions between NATO allies the United States and Turkey over the crisis in Syria — caused alarm in Washington.

“We find it ugly and disturbing,” US military spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters in Washington, describing the attackers as “what appear to be thugs on the street”.

The USS Ross had been moored in the centre of the city just beneath the Topkapi Palace, the historic home of the Ottoman Sultans.

Shore leave was cancelled for the rest of the stay for the crew after the incident, the Pentagon said.

The Turkish foreign ministry also condemned the incident saying it was “disrespectful” and “could in no way be tolerated”.

The USS Ross on Thursday afternoon sailed out of Istanbul as planned and then through the Dardanelles Strait towards the Aegean Sea, the Hurriyet daily said.

The use of hoods in the protest was a reference to an incident from the 2003 Iraq war that outraged many in Turkey when US forces in northern Iraq arrested a group of Turkish soldiers, forced hoods over their heads and held them for three days.

The incident inflamed nationalist sentiment in Turkey and formed the basis of a 2006 action film about Turkish agents in Iraq, “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq”.

Turkey’s refusal to cooperate with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused a full-blown crisis in relations between Washington and Ankara.

But tension has re-emerged in recent months over Turkey’s wariness of offering full support to the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

US Vice President Joe Biden is expected in Istanbul on November 21 for talks with Turkish leaders in a visit seen as crucial for smoothing out the current tensions.

The TGB claims to be loyal to the principles of modern Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and also staunchly opposed the ruling Islamic-rooted party co-founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Its thinking is marked by vehement anti-Americanism and it also strongly opposes Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

DUESSELDORF, Germany — A German court convicted four men on Thursday of being members of or supporting Al Qaeda and planning a potentially lethal attack on German soil, handing them jail sentences of up to nine years.

The group, dubbed the “Duesseldorf cell” by German media, was arrested in 2011 in the western cities of Duesseldorf and Bochum, days before Osama Bin Laden was killed.

During a two-year long trial, prosecutors said the men, acting under direct orders from Al Qaeda, planned to detonate a cluster bomb in a crowd of people followed by a second explosion once emergency services had arrived to treat the victims.

Moroccan Abdeladim El K, in his 30s, was the leader of the cell and is the highest-ranking member of Al Qaeda to go on trial in Germany. The court in Duesseldorf sentenced him to nine years in prison.

In her ruling, judge Barbara Havliza cited a letter to Bin Laden from senior Al Qaeda figure Younis Al Mauretani, since captured in Pakistan, which mentioned the German cell.

The letter, found at the house where Bin Laden was killed, described El K as an “intelligent and sensible brother” who had received “instructions”.

Prosecutors said he travelled to an Al Qaeda training camp in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area in 2010 where he was taught how to make explosives and use guns.

Back in Germany, he recruited the other three suspects — German Halil S., German-Iranian Amid C. and German-Moroccan Jamil S. They were handed prison sentences of between 4-1/2 and seven years. The men are all in their 20s and 30s.

Prosecutors said the group had bought a large number of barbecue lighters which can contain a chemical that is used in making bombs. However, they had not chosen a concrete target for their attack.

German media have reported that the tipoff about the Duesseldorf cell came from US secret services.

Germany has been spared an attack on the scale of those in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, which together killed 243 people, but sees itself as a potential target due partly to its involvement in Afghanistan and has unearthed several plots.

SANAA/WASHINGTON — Yemeni authorities have paid out tens of thousands of dollars to victims of drone strikes using US-supplied funds, a source close to Yemen’s presidency said, echoing accounts by legal sources and a family that lost two members in a 2012 raid.

In Washington, the White House National Security Council would not discuss individual cases, but a spokesperson said that when non-combatants were killed in US strikes overseas, “condolence or other ex gratia payments... may be available for those injured and the families of those killed”.

President Barack Obama has authorised use of drones against militant groups abroad deemed a threat. Civilians are sometimes killed, a toll Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have estimated is in the dozens in Pakistan and Yemen alone.

In Sanaa, the source close to the presidency said the largest compensation payment to date amounted to one billion riyals ($4.65 million) made to victims of a December 2013 US strike that killed 15 people on their way to a wedding.

Local Yemeni officials pay compensation to the families of the victims using funds originally paid to the Yemeni side by the United States, the source said.

Lawyer Ahmed Oram, who has worked for families bereaved by drone strikes, told Reuters: “After every strike local officials go to the families of the victims and have an arbitration session with them according to tribal traditions, and then they pay normally 5 million riyals per victim.”

He said the officials routinely tell families the money comes from the Yemeni government, but “the people have no doubt that the money is from the US”.

Yemeni civil servant Faisal Bin Ali Jaber said his family had received $100,000 cash in compensation for the death of his brother-in-law Salim Bin Ali Jaber and his nephew Waleed Bin Ali Jaber in an attack in 2012.

The money was given to a family member by an official at Yemen’s National Security Bureau in July, he said, although he was not told the origin of the money.

Faisal Jaber said he had no proof the money came from the United States. But he told Reuters: “The fact that the amount came in dollars and was not received via the ministry of finance in Yemen means that it came from somewhere else.”

Those payments were first reported by Yahoo News.

The British-based legal charity Reprieve, which represented Faisal Jaber, said the United States appeared to have funded the compensation to the family.

BAGHDAD — Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed “caliph” terrorising Iraq and Syria, is a preacher who rose from obscurity to lead the world’s most feared jihadist organisation.

His Islamic State (IS) group on Thursday released an audio recording purporting to be of Baghdadi, days after rumours that air strikes may have killed or wounded him.

Like much about Baghdadi, little is known about the strikes or their results, or even where they took place — the US announced it had targeted IS leaders in north Iraq, but reports also emerged of a strike in the west.

With both areas outside government hands, verifying what transpired in either will be difficult if not impossible.

In the recording, the man said to be Baghdadi was defiant, vowing that IS’ “march will not stop and it will continue to expand”, and that his enemies would be drawn into a ground war.

Baghdadi has revived the fortunes of Iraq’s struggling Al Qaeda affiliate, turning it into the independent IS group, arguably the most brutal, powerful and wealthiest jihadist organisation in the world.

Under his leadership, IS spearheaded a militant offensive that overran much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland since June after seizing major territory in neighbouring Syria, and carried out a series of atrocities in both countries.

It launched a renewed drive in Iraq’s north in August, pushing Kurdish troops back towards their regional capital Erbil and sparking a US-led campaign of air strikes and the deployment of up to 3,100 American soldiers in the country to advise and train its forces.

The group has killed hundreds of Iraqi and Syrian tribesmen who opposed it, attacked members of the Yazidi religious minority, sold women as slaves, executed scores of Iraqi security personnel and beheaded Western journalists and aid workers on camera.

Baghdadi was declared a “caliph” on June 29 in an attempt to revive a system of rule that ended nearly 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and ordered Muslims to obey him in a video from the northern city of Mosul.

The man now touted as the world’s most prominent jihadist had rarely been seen in public before and his appearance in the video appeared to mark his growing confidence, but he has remained out of sight since the air strikes began.

$10 million bounty 

Baghdadi, born in Samarra in 1971 according to Washington, apparently joined the insurgency that erupted shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, at one point spending time in an American military prison in the country.

In October 2005, American forces said they believed they had killed “Abu Dua”, one of Baghdadi’s known aliases, in a strike on the Iraq-Syria border.

But that appears to have been incorrect, as he took the reins of what was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in May 2010 after two of its chiefs were killed in a US-Iraqi raid.

Since then, details about him have slowly trickled out.

In October 2011, the US Treasury designated him as a “terrorist”, and there is now a $10-million (7.3-million-euro) bounty for his capture.

This year, Iraq released a picture it said was of Baghdadi, the first from an official source, depicting a balding, bearded man in a suit and tie.

He is touted within IS as a battlefield commander and tactician, a crucial distinction compared with Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri, and has attracted legions of foreign fighters, with estimates in the thousands, as well as supporters from around the world who distribute the group’s propaganda online.

At the time Baghdadi took over ISI in April 2010, it appeared to be on the ropes after the “surge” of US forces combined with the shifting allegiances of Sunni tribesmen to deal it a blow.

But the group bounced back, expanding into Syria in 2013.

Baghdadi sought to merge with Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Al Nusra Front, which rejected the deal, and the two groups have mostly operated separately since.

But IS received a major boost this week from Egypt when the country’s deadliest militant group, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, pledged allegiance to Baghdadi.

The announcement is the most significant pledge of support for IS in the region outside Iraq and Syria, suggesting its influence over militant groups is overshadowing its once dominant Al Qaeda rivals.

TRIPOLI — Two car bombs struck near the shuttered Egyptian and United Arab Emirates embassies in Libya's militia-controlled capital within minutes of each other Thursday, an AFP correspondent and a UAE official said.

Two guards posted outside the empty Egyptian embassy compound were wounded in the first blast, Libya's LANA news agency reported.

Three more posted outside the empty UAE compound were wounded in the second, a senior official told AFP in Abu Dhabi.

Both governments are considered hostile by the Islamist-led militias which seized Tripoli in August in an offensive during which UAE warplanes carried out strikes against them from neighbouring Egypt.

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahayan denounced the attack against his country's embassy as a "terrorist act" and blamed it on Islamist militias 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, where it is largely in control.

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

Nahayan, in a statement carried by state news agency WAM, said the bombing "badly damaged" the embassy and wounded three people in the area.

The first bomb went off in a car park close to the Egyptian embassy, shattering several of its windows, the AFP correspondent reported.

The second went off minutes later just outside the UAE mission compound, wounding three non-Emirati guards, the official in Abu Dhabi said.

"This is an indication of the state of lawlessness in the Tripoli area," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said the blast showed the need for greater support of Libya's internationally recognised government, which took refuge in the remote east of the country after the militia takeover of the capital.

"The unruly condition that we are seeing will deteriorate further if the extremist militias continue to control the Libyan capital," he said.

Support for Haftar 

A Libyan security official, who works for a unit in charge of protecting embassy and diplomatic staff, said police were investigating the bombing and studying footage from CCTV cameras.

He also linked the attacks to "support" by the governments of Egypt and Abu Dhabi for Khalifa Haftar, a former general who has launched an offensive on Islamists in Benghazi.

"This is not the first time that the embassies of those two brotherly countries are targeted... due to their continued support for Haftar's forces," he said.

He said Islamist militias had accused Cairo and Abu Dhabi of supplying Haftar with weapons and of helping him with air strikes.

Washington said Abu Dhabi launched air strikes against militia fighters from an Egyptian base in August in a failed bid to prevent their capture of Tripoli airport.

The foreign ministry in Egypt, which has denied participating in the raids, also denounced Thursday's "terrorist bombings".

Egypt closed its embassy in Tripoli in January and the UAE followed suit in May as security conditions in the capital deteriorated.

Three years after dictator Muammar Qadhafi was toppled and killed in a NATO-backed revolt, Libya is awash with weapons and powerful militias, and run by rival governments and parliaments.

DUBAI — Behzad Omrani grew up in Tehran, in a house ringing to the sounds of his father's record collection — mostly the twangs and twirls of American Country & Western.

Years later he formed Bomrani, one of the Islamic republic's first country-blues bands, and one of a handful of groups that has started disrupting the local music scene with performances a world away from Iran's traditional rhythms.

"I really like Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, John Denver, B.B. King, Gogol Bordello, Eric Clapton and Roger Waters," the 29-year-old told Reuters by phone from the Iranian capital.

His father brought his records back from his studies in Tennessee. Omrani's distinctive gruff voice and six-piece band had now taken those influences onto the stages of Tehran, a considerable achievement in a country where some once called America the "Great Satan".

Five-member band Pallett has been finding similar success with its jazzier fusions of clarinet, cello and double bass.

Both bands' musical styles are a refreshing alternatives to generic pop that is breaking out in other parts of the music scene. But the subject matter of their songs is less likely to jolt traditionalists in the Islamic state.

"A Thousand Tales", one of Pallett's most popular songs, is infused with imagery of soldiers and revolutionaries, evoking memories of Iran's eight-year long war with Iraq.

"The brother is covered with blood. The brother will rise, like the sun into a house," sings frontman Omid Nemati.

Fan Sarah Nasiri said the song brought back images of her childhood. "It brings back to life those dark years. In many ways, we lost our childhood because of the war" said the young woman, whose brother served in the war as a pilot.

Pallett's songs pop up on Spotify and iTunes but band co-founder Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz said he does not know who is selling the royalties to use the songs, or getting money from them being played.

"We get no money and we don't even know who is selling them ... Whoever it is, I hope that they get what they deserve!" he joked. They have to resort to making money the old-fashioned way at home, selling 60,000 copies of their first CD, "Mr. Violet".

CAYKARA, Turkey — Their collars pulled up against the evening cold, a group of men and women peer through binoculars, scanning the fields along a barbed wire fence. A few kilometres away across the Turkish border, black smoke rises from the besieged Kurdish Syrian town of Kobani, the dull thud of mortars carrying across on the breeze.

They are some of the hundreds of volunteers, predominantly Turkish Kurds, who have traveled from villages, towns and cities across southeastern Turkey and even from Istanbul, to keep watch on the border. They are on the lookout for potential fighters of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group attempting to cross into Kobani, besieged since mid-September by IS and defended by Kurdish Syrian fighters known as the People's Protection Units.

"To be honest, we don't trust [the Turkish border guards], because we have seen many occasions that the Turkish government has loosened its borders for ISIS fighters, weapons and logistical support to cross," said Ibrahim Binici, a Kurdish lawmaker for the left-wing HDP Party, which put out a call in September for the volunteers.

It's a claim Turkey vehemently rejects. But the deep distrust of Turkish authorities in the border area reflects Turkey's complicated attitude toward the Islamic extremists who captured swaths of Iraq and Syria, and its strained relations with its own Kurdish population.

The country's reluctance to join a US-led international coalition action against IS in Syria and Iraq, mainly through air strikes, has frustrated Turkey's American and European allies. Ankara, however, insists the priority should be the unseating of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose 2011 crackdown on protesters sparked an uprising that soon spun into a vicious civil war.

Turkey's position on IS is "ambivalent at best, uncertain at worse”, said Serhat Guvenc, international relations professor at Istanbul's Kadir Has University.

One reason, Guvenc explained, is that Turkey suspects IS "is here to stay" — that the group will eventually become part of the Sunni establishment in Syria and Iraq, which also borders Turkey. Ankara therefore fears it will inevitably have to deal with the group.

Another is the Kurdish issue. Separatists, mainly led by the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, have fought a 30-year guerrilla war in Turkey's southeast which has left tens of thousands dead. An uneasy ceasefire has been in place for only about two years. The PKK is on the terrorist list of Turkey, the European Union and the US, and Ankara is deeply suspicious of the People's Protection Units, which it views as an extension of the PKK.

When the IS onslaught in Kobani began, Turkish Kurds were furious that their government was not doing more against IS or allowing them to cross into Syria to help fellow Kurds defend the town from extremists beheading prisoners and carrying out mass executions. Riots in predominantly Kurdish towns and cities ensued, leaving more than a dozen people dead.

But Kurdish resistance in Kobani has been a major public relations success for the Kurds, who have managed — along with the coalition airstrikes — to prevent IS from taking the town.

"Empowerment of the Kurds in the region is kind of upsetting the Turkish positions... because they're getting credit as the only group in the region that could put up a fight and win against ISIS," said Guvenc.

However, he noted, credit was due to Ankara for recently allowing 150 Peshmerga troops — Kurdish fighters from northern Iraq — to cross through Turkey to bolster the People's Protection Units with artillery in Kobani.

Binici, the Kurdish member of parliament, said the border observers' main aim was to prevent "the mass passage of IS fighters, since you cannot control individuals We believe that we managed to stop that”.

About 10,000 people responded to the initial call for volunteers and were deployed in 10 villages. Now, about 2,000-3,000 people remain in three villages, numbers falling due to winter weather and what activists said was targeting by Turkish authorities with tear gas and rubber bullets.

"We've had police intervening and we had many injuries" from the tear gas," said Ipek Gunes, a volunteer from the city of Mardin.

In the villages still hosting volunteers, tents stand among mud and concrete brick houses and meals are provided in outdoor communal kitchens, with everyone taking turns to cook stews in vats over wood fires.

With a roughly 900-kilometre border with Syria and 330-kilometre border with Iraq, Turkey's attraction as an entry point for fighters is obvious. Ankara insists it has cracked down. Checks have increased at ports and airports, a government official said, with 2,000 people interrogated, 1,400 deported and more than 7,000 people denied entry into Turkey since October 2013.

The official, who was not authorised to comment on the issue and therefore demanded anonymity, said allegations of cooperation between border guards and IS fighters were "deliberate disinformation". The army had strengthened border security with fences, thermal cameras and patrols, the official said — but added that authorities "can't check every metre" of the border. The official also noted that hundreds of wounded fighters from the People's Protection Units had been treated in Turkish hospitals.

The foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The credibility of reports that Turkish guards are ignoring IS fighters crossing the border — or even helping them — is hotly contested. Fighters of the People's Protection Units also cross the border, often using smuggling routes.

"What we are witnessing is part reality, partly constructed reality. There is a big PR war going on, on both sides," said Guvenc. "It seems that the Kurds are more successful at this level of struggle."

SANAA — A powerful suicide bomb attack on Shiite militia fighters in central Yemen left dozens of people dead on Wednesday, military and tribal sources said.

Yemen has been rocked by fresh instability since the Shiite fighters, known as Houthis, seized control of the capital Sanaa in September.

The Houthis have since been expanding their presence throughout the Arabian Peninsula nation but are facing fierce resistance from local Sunni tribes and Al Qaeda’s powerful Yemeni branch.

Wednesday’s blast hit a large gathering of Houthis at the residence of a local tribal chief in Rada, a mixed Shiite-Sunni town that has seen heavy fighting, military and tribal sources said.

The explosion was the heaviest to hit Rada since the Houthis took over parts of the town last month, the military source said, adding that it was carried out by a suicide car bomber.

Residents said the dawn bombing was felt across the whole town.

Both the military and tribal sources said dozens were killed, but a more accurate toll was not immediately available.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

At least 26 more Houthis were killed in attacks that targeted them in several areas around Rada since early Tuesday, tribal sources said, giving a toll that AFP could not immediately confirm.

Al Qaeda claimed twin attacks at the weekend that it said killed dozens of Houthi fighters in Rada.

The rise of the Houthis has challenged the authority of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, an ally of the United States, and violence has continued despite UN-backed efforts to find a political solution.

The instability in Yemen, which lies next to key shipping routes from the Suez Canal to the Gulf, stems from the 2012 overthrow of longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been accused of backing the Huthis.

Saleh is a member of the Zaidi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which the Houthis belong.

Washington on Monday hit Saleh and two Houthi commanders with sanctions, accusing them of “engaging in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security, or stability of Yemen”.

The UN Security Council previously approved sanctions against the three men.

Drone strike kills
Al Qaeda militants 

A new Cabinet, including members considered close to the Houthis, was sworn in Sunday in a bid to resolve Yemen’s political crisis, despite calls for a boycott from both Saleh and the Shiite militia.

But authorities have made no move to tackle the militia in Sanaa or to impose order in other parts of the country.

Yemen is an important US ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. The group’s Yemeni branch is considered one of its deadliest and has organised attacks against Western targets.

A suspected US drone strike killed seven Al Qaeda militants in Yemen’s south Wednesday, the defence ministry and tribal sources said, the latest in a series of raids against the extremist network.

The militants were hit while gathered “under a group of trees” in Azzan village in the southern province of Shabwa, a tribal source said.

The defence ministry said in a brief statement on its website that seven Al Qaeda militants were killed in an air raid Wednesday in Azzan.

“Those killed were planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Azzan using a bomb-laden vehicle,” it said, without confirming the strike was carried out by a US drone.

Drone strikes against Al Qaeda suspects in Yemen have intensified this month, with at least 20 militants killed in raids by unmanned aircraft in the central province of Baida on November 3.

The United States is the only country operating drones over Yemen, but US officials rarely confirm individual strikes.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has announced the deaths of two top commanders, Shawki Al Baadani and Nabil Al Dahab, in such raids.

PARIS — French lawmakers will vote later this month on a proposal urging the government to recognise Palestine as a state, a parliamentary source said Wednesday, as diplomatic tensions continue to rise between Europe and Israel.

The non-binding but highly symbolic vote on November 28 was proposed by the ruling Socialist Party, and follows a similar resolution by the British parliament and an official decision to recognise Palestine by the Swedish government.

A draft of the new proposal states that the lower house National Assembly “invites the French government to use the recognition of the state of Palestine as an instrument to gain a definitive resolution of the conflict”.

European leaders have shown signs of mounting impatience with Israel over its continued settlement-building in Palestinian territories.

Criticism has become more focused in the wake of this summer’s 50-day offensive by the Israeli army in Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and dozens of Israelis.

France saw a spate of pro-Palestinian protests during the offensive.

Some turned violent, with looters in July destroying Jewish businesses and shouting anti-Israel obscenities in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles — sometimes known as “Little Jerusalem” for its large community of Sephardic Jews.

The Jewish Agency for Israel, an advocacy group, said in September that more Jews had left France for Israel than from any other country in 2014, blaming a “climate of anti-Semitism”.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius acknowledged in an interview with AFP last week that France would “obviously at a certain moment recognise the Palestinian state”.

“The question is when and how? Because this recognition must be useful for efforts to break the deadlock and contribute to a final resolution of the conflict,” he added.

The French parliamentary vote will come hot on the heels of a similar resolution to “recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution” approved by British lawmakers on October 13.

Then Sweden announced on October 30 it officially recognised the Palestinian state, a move heavily criticised by Israel and the United States.

And on Saturday, Europe’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called for a Palestinian state sharing Jerusalem as its capital with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority estimates that 134 countries have now recognised Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

An AFP count puts the number of states that recognise Palestine at 112.

France was among 14 EU nations that voted in favour of granting Palestinian territories observer status at the United Nations in November 2012.