Region

BEIRUT — Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam believes a deal settling the Iranian nuclear dispute could help pave the way towards ending the political deadlock that has left his country without a president since May.

The Mediterranean country of about 4 million has been hit hard by the war in its much larger neighbour Syria, with violence spilling across the border and threatening the fragile sectarian balance that has largely held since Lebanon's own 1975-90 civil war.

Lebanese politics — long seen as some of the Arab world's most democratic, despite their flaws — have largely ground to a halt as a result of tensions stoked by the Syrian conflict.

Lebanon has had no president since May because lawmakers divided between Shiite Muslim and Sunni-led blocs have been unable to agree on a replacement. This month parliament voted to extend its own term into 2017, forgoing scheduled elections.

Salam said resolving Lebanon's crisis would first require defusing regional tensions, possibly starting with a deal around Iran's nuclear programme, followed by an eventual resolution of Syria's war.

"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," he said in an interview at the government headquarters in Beirut. "At the moment, unfortunately, there is nothing in light yet."

Western and Iranian officials held talks this week in Oman, with a deadline for reaching a nuclear deal less than two weeks away. No imminent breakthrough is in sight.

Lebanon can ill afford a long wait. Tourism and investment have fallen since the Syrian crisis erupted in 2011, while the political stalemate has hampered efforts tackle the substantial public debt, exploit potential off-shore gas reserves and improve shoddy infrastructure.

"I have to admit the government is working at half steam," Salam said, urging politicians to elect a new president quickly. "Nobody can say a body without a head is a complete body, so, yes, we need a head for this country."

Violence may continue

Syria-linked violence has also encroached on Lebanon, with gun battles, car bombings and rocket attacks killing hundreds of people. Islamist gunmen have fought the army in two big battles since August.

Salam, who is Sunni as required by Lebanon's constitution, said it was unclear how many Sunni militants were in the country but said attacks could continue.

He also acknowledged the extent of outside influence over Lebanon, saying it had only once freely chosen a president without foreign interference since independence in 1943.

Salam's own government was formed in February after nearly a year of deadlock was ended by what was widely seen as a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two regional backers of Lebanon's political factions.

The divide between those factions, one led by the Shiite Hizbollah and the other by Sunni leader Saad Al Hariri, is still wide. Both sides accuse the other of dragging the country further into Syria's crisis.

Hizbollah has sent fighters to aid Syrian President Bashar Assad against mostly Sunni rebels, while Sunni militants have increasingly clashed with the army.

"The struggle goes on," Salam said. "From the start I never claimed that we are going to fly high. I said we will try to avoid falling down, try to avoid the negative impact of what is happening regionally. It is not an easy thing happening."

BENGHAZI, Libya — Car bombs exploded in eastern Libyan towns under the control of the internationally recognised government on Wednesday, killing at least four people and wounding 20 others, officials said.

Four more people were killed when an air strike — a possible response to the car bombs — hit targets in Derna, an eastern town home to a large radical Islamist community, medics said.

Libya is in growing chaos as armed factions compete for power. One has taken over the capital Tripoli, setting up its own government and parliament and forcing the elected parliament and administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni to move east.

One car bomb went off in a busy street in the eastern city of Tobruk near the Egyptian border, where the elected parliament is based in a hotel. "Twenty people have been wounded," said Saleh Hashem, a lawmaker. "Nobody was killed."

Another blast struck near the military airport of Labraq, used by Thinni, now based in nearby Bayda east of Benghazi. A security source said four soldiers were killed there.

A third car bomb exploded in the main eastern city of Benghazi, where the Libyan army and former general Khalifa Haftar are fighting Islamists. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Air strike on militant town

Between Tobruk and Bayda lies Derna, a hotspot for radical Islamists, where dozens of youths two weeks ago pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Unidentified aircraft carried out strikes on Derna on Wednesday, local residents said. Four people were killed and at least six wounded, medics said.

There were no details of targets. Libya has a small air force which was damaged during the 2011 uprising against Muammar Qadhafi. Haftar's forces, which back the army in Benghazi, have planes from the Qadhafi-era air force, though his foes say he also gets air support from Egypt, which is worried about the spread of Islamist militants.

Haftar denies having Egyptian military support.

International attempts to mediate in the conflict have failed to bring the major armed groups to the table.

Rivalries among factions who helped topple Qadhafi in 2011 have hit oil supplies, with gunmen last week attacking the huge El Sharara oil field and forcing its shutdown after guards fled the site, which can produce 340,000 barrels a day.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH — Israeli authorities gave initial approval on Wednesday for the construction of 200 new housing units in an urban settlement in Jerusalem, a move that could aggravate tensions with Palestinians that Washington is trying to lower, Reuters reported.

Violence has flared in the past few weeks over Jerusalem's most sacred and politically sensitive site, holy to both Jews and Muslims. US Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Jordan on Wednesday for talks with His Majesty King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on efforts to calm the situation

The new housing units are slated for Ramot, a sprawling hillside complex of apartment buildings and private homes at the northern edge of Jerusalem, on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war and annexed to the city in a move never recognised internationally. Palestinians want this territory as part of a future state.

Brachie Sprung, a spokeswoman for the Jerusalem municipality, said its planning committee granted preliminary approval for a private contractor to build the 200 housing units on land he purchased in Ramot. The project must pass several more stages before construction could begin, she said.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Abbas, said in response to the announcement: "It looks like during every visit by Kerry to the region, [Israel] threatens to build new settler homes. This is a continuous escalation and contributes to a negative atmosphere."

Last month, an Israeli decision to accelerate planning for some 1,000 new settler housing units in mainly Arab East Jerusalem drew Palestinian anger and international condemnation.

That project, along with Palestinian concerns about visits by far-right Jewish legislators to the Jerusalem religious site — revered by Muslims as Nobel Sanctuary and Jews as Temple Mount — prompted an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

Palestinians fear settlements will block the creation of an independent state they seek in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and most countries view them as illegal.

Mosque torched

Israeli settlers torched a mosque near the West Bank town of Ramallah overnight, Palestinian security officials said on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

“The settlers set fire to the whole of the first floor of the mosque” in the village of Al Mughayir, near the Shilo settlement, a security official said.

Another mosque in the same village was set ablaze in a similar attack in 2012.

Hardline Jewish settlers frequently accompany their revenge attacks with graffiti bearing the legend “price tag” but that was not the case in the latest arson attack, the officials said.

A settler and an Israeli soldier were killed in separate Palestinian knife attacks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv on Monday.

On Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian protester during clashes in the southern West Bank.

Since the current round of violence began exactly five months ago with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Israeli settlers by fighters, at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to an AFP count.

BAGHDAD — US-led coalition air strikes against the Islamic State (IS) group and other extremists in Syria have killed more than 860 people, including civilians, since they began in mid-September, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the vast majority of those killed — 746 people — were IS militants, while another 68 were members of Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate known as the Nusra Front. At least 50 civilians, including eight children and five women, also have been killed in the air strikes, the group said.

In Baghdad on Wednesday, Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi shook up the country's military, relieving 26 army officers from their command, retiring 10 others and appointing 18 new commanders.

A statement posted on the official website of the prime minister's office said the changes were ordered "as part of efforts to reinforce the work of the military on the basis of professionalism and fighting graft in all its forms".

The statement did not elaborate, but a government official said the shake-up followed the findings of a probe carried out by an investigator appointed last month by Abadi on corruption in the military.

Under Iraq's constitution, Abadi, like Nouri Al Maliki before him, holds the post of General Commander of the Armed Forces. 

But it was Maliki, now a vice president, who had tightly controlled the military during his eight-year rule, with several elite units taking their orders directly from him.

Abadi’s move comes as Iraq’s military and security forces, aided by the coalition’s airstrikes, battle militants from the Islamic State group on a multitude of fronts to drive them out of about a third of the country they seized in a summer blitz. The army and security forces had melted away in the face of the onslaught but have since partially regrouped.

The US-led coalition’s aerial campaign in Syria began before dawn on September 23 in what President Barack Obama has called an effort to roll back and ultimately destroy the Islamic State group. The militant extremist group has been the primary target of the coalition’s strikes, although on at least two occasions the United States has targeted what it says is a specific cell within the Nusra Front allegedly plotting attacks against American interests.

The air strikes in Syria expanded upon a US-led operation in neighbouring Iraq against the Islamic State group, which has seized control of a large chunk of territory spanning the two countries.

In Iraq, government security forces and Shiite militias have largely halted the militants’ advance, even rolling them back from some areas with the help of coalition airstrikes. But heavy fighting still rages on multiple fronts, and attacks on government troops and civilians remain common, particularly in Baghdad.

On Wednesday, three bombings in and around the Iraqi capital killed at least 17 people and wounded nearly 40, police and hospital officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but they all bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group.

The deadliest bombing took place in the turbulent Youssifiyah district south of Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber hit an army checkpoint, killing six soldiers and wounding 16 people, including 10 civilians.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb near a cluster of shops in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district killed six civilians and wounded 13. Minutes later, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a nearby police station as officers were rushing out to the site of the first attack, killing five policemen and wounding 10.

Elsewhere in Iraq, government forces backed by Shiite militiamen are facing tough resistance from Islamic State fighters in the refinery town of Beiji, a day after they pushed militants out of the town center, said a senior military official reached there by telephone.

The official said reinforcements have reached Beiji, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, to protect areas of the town now under government control. However, booby-trapped houses and roadside bombs were hindering their advance toward the northern and northwestern parts of the town, where Iraq’s largest refinery is located.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Lifting the siege of the refinery, which sits inside a sprawling complex with a capacity of some 320,000 barrels a day — a quarter of Iraq’s refining capacity — was likely the next objective in the campaign to rid Beiji of the militants.

When fully retaken, the strategic town will likely be a base for staging a push to take back Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, which was overrun by the extremists last summer.

BAGHDAD  — The attack was the most humiliating the Iraqi military had faced since June, when security forces melted away in the face of the Islamic State’s (IS) lightning advance across northern Iraq.

Disguised in Iraqi army uniforms, and bearing heavy arms behind the wheels of stolen Humvees, militants stormed Camp Saqlawiyah in Iraq's western Anbar province, prompting as many as 700 to flee for their lives. At least 40 soldiers died in the September 21 onslaught. Another 68 were taken prisoner, and later, piled into a military truck and paraded through the streets of Fallujah.

The military was vulnerable, ill-prepared and poorly equipped to withstand the ambush. Soldiers who fled the front line said that they hadn't been trained for such heavy fighting, were given no orders, and had been living mainly on a diet of salty water and canned tomatoes.

The defeat shows the extent of the task as, for the first time, the Obama administration moves to deploy military advisers directly on the ground in Anbar and other battle zones. It's part of a planned expansion in training and advising of the Iraqi military — a risky step for the US, which until now has been wary about front-line involvement and fearful of history repeating itself.

"No mission that we undertake anywhere in the world is risk-free," Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Friday. "These trainers will be operating at fixed sites that we are surveying right now."

US President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $5.6 billion for the expansion. He said Friday he has authorised the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces, which could more than double the total number of US forces to 3,100. He said this represents a new phase in the campaign against IS as the US plays a bigger role in enabling the Iraqis to go on the offensive.

In Anbar, territory is increasingly slipping out of the Iraqi government's hands — most recently large parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, where the militants have gradually chipped away at the military's resistance.

An American advisory mission visited Anbar this week for site surveys at Al Asad Airbase, formerly the largest coalition base in western Iraq, as they search for potential locations for training missions to commence.

The US has already sent assessment teams to an Iraqi military base in Taji, 20 kilometres north of Baghdad, for discussions with Iraqi colleagues on the best ways to collaborate. The US is looking to train Iraqi security forces on issues ranging from weaponry, synchronisation, fire-maneuvering and gunnery, as well as ways to better integrate the efforts of ground forces with coalition airstrikes.

Obama has said restoring Iraq's borders is his first priority, ahead of trying to roll back IS in Syria. But if Iraqi forces are unable to push back IS and recover lost territory, Obama would be faced with a choice of accepting failure in Iraq or committing US combat troops — which would break his pledge not to get involved in fighting another Iraq war.

Anbar resonates with many Americans because they recall how costly the fighting was there for US troops. A lasting image of the war was the bodies of US contractors hanging from a Euphrates River bridge in Fallujah in March 2004. And the November 2004 fight to retake Fallujah was an iconic moment for the Marines.

More than 3,500 US soldiers died in combat in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 — and there are concerns that sending Americans back to Anbar in any capacity will inevitably make them a target.

The return of US forces in greater numbers also raises the old question of granting American troops immunity from Iraqi law. Under the government of former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki, immunity was a major sticking point between Washington and Baghdad which ultimately led to the decision to withdraw all remaining US troops by December 2011. With American forces now returning, albeit in much smaller numbers, Iraq's new Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi will inevitably face these questions.

The militant Islamist group has overrun a large part of Anbar province in its push to expand its territory, which now stands at about a third of both Iraq and Syria. This month, more than 200 men, women and children from the Sunni Al Bu Nimr tribe in Anbar were killed by the militant group, which apparently feared the tribe would challenge its authority in the province.

Until now, 12 US advisory teams had been operating in Iraq since August — seven in a joint operations centre in Baghdad, and the remainder at a similar facility in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

But advisers alone may not be the answer. The US-trained Iraqi military has been gutted since the crisis began.

After months of small-scale attacks around Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, it buckled almost instantly in June when militants advanced on the city. Commanders disappeared. Pleas for more ammunition went unanswered. In some cases, soldiers stripped off their uniforms and ran.

Iraqi officials say the country's total military and police force stands at one million men. However, a senior US military official told The Associated Press that as of June, the Iraqi military strength stood, generously, at 125,000 men, down from 205,000 in January 2014, forcing it to rely heavily on unruly Shiite militias for reinforcement. The official spoke anonymously as he is not authorised to brief the media.

Part of the plan to boost Iraqi forces includes training, equipping and paying Sunni tribesmen to join in the fight against IS, reminiscent of the Sunni Sahwa, or Awakening movement which confronted Al Qaeda in Iraq starting in 2006. On Tuesday, a low-key ceremony led by Parliament Speaker Salim Al Jabouri was held at Al Asad Airbase in Anbar to inaugurate the first group of Sunni fighters in what Iraqi and American officials hope is the makings of a full-fledged non-sectarian national guard. However, this has been a challenging process since many of the Sunni tribes involved in the Sahwa campaign felt a breach of trust after the American and Iraqi governments' commitment to the programme waned.

Even as an expanding coalition joins the aerial campaign targeting the militant group, Iraqi forces are struggling to maintain a grip on this historically problematic province. This leaves the US and its allies in a difficult position as it increasingly commits to tackling this growing threat.

"The issue is whether there is political will in the White House to accept the types of plans that are being recommended," said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert at RAND Corporation and a former department of defence policymaker. There is "pressure to keep numbers small, which is going to undermine recommendations of commanders on the ground".

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi sacked 26 military commanders on Wednesday for corruption and incompetence, in an apparent effort to improve the army's performance against Islamic State (IS) militants.

"The military leadership should have competence, and this is an important thing, as it is not possible for someone who is not efficient to do his work properly," Abadi said in comments to army officers broadcast on state television.

"The second thing is integrity, as efficiency without integrity produces a vacuum. The third is courage, so that the soldier will fight in a proper way when he sees his commander has such qualifications."

Abadi, who heads a Shiite-led government, did not elaborate and officials in his office were not immediately available to comment on which commanders had been removed.

IS militants have taken control of large areas of Iraq in recent months, facing little resistance from the US-trained army. The Sunni Islamists also hold territory in Syria.

Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, said on Friday corruption in the armed forces had enabled IS to seize large chunks of Iraq, in criticism that added to pressure for reforms.

Sistani has become increasingly critical of Iraqi leaders since Islamic State's advances plunged the country into crisis.

The performance of the army, recipient of $25 billion in US training and funding, is crucial to the long-term stability of Iraq.

"There are widespread accusations of corruption inside the military institutions," said Abadi. "Nobody should be afraid to fight corruption. Whoever is fighting corruption, I will stand with him absolutely."

IS gains and the beheading of Western hostages triggered US-led airstrikes which have slowed down the group in recent weeks.

"After we defeat Islamic State the army will move away from a domestic conflict and will defend the country," said Abadi.

BEIRUT — Traction is growing for one of the few ideas left for peace in Syria's civil war: Work out a series of local ceasefires to try to quiet the bloodiest fronts around the country, without tackling the core issues of the conflict between President Bashar Assad's government and the rebels.

The UN envoy to Syria called Tuesday for such an incremental truce in the northern city of Aleppo as a building block for more — an idea that Assad has said is "worth studying".

The Islamic State (IS) group’s onslaught has given greater urgency to finding some sort of solution for the nearly 4-year-old conflict. But reaching even small-scale truces in the fragmented country of multiple, divided fighting forces could be a near impossible task.

Staffan de Mistura is the third UN envoy to try to mediate a solution to the Syrian war. Previous peace initiatives and ceasefire attempts brokered by veteran UN diplomats Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi all ended in failure, including the brief deployment of a UN monitoring mission and two rounds of peace talks in Geneva earlier this year meant to discuss a political transition.

Since then, the situation has become infinitely more complicated with the growing influence of extremist groups like IS and Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, and US air strikes targeting militants in the country.

On Tuesday, de Mistura suggested "freezing" the conflict, starting with Aleppo, the last major metropolis where mainstream rebels fighting to topple Assad hold large areas.

"That means stop fighting, stop fighting. No one moves from where they are," the UN envoy told a news conference in the Syrian capital, Damascus. This would not be a substitute for a political solution but could become a "building block" for an eventual political process, de Mistura said.

He did not elaborate on how the freeze could come about. Much of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once-vibrant commercial centre, is in ruins. Rebel-held areas in the eastern part of the city are pulverised and abandoned after thousands were killed in government bombings. Rebels there are under attack from advancing government forces and increasingly feel squeezed by approaching IS militants trying to take nearby communities. Residents in the government-held west live in fear of shelling and explosions even as they try to go about their daily business.

Opposition activists said local truces would only help Assad unless they were part of a comprehensive political solution to a war that has killed some 200,000 people and displaced millions of people since March 2011.

"Ceasefires without a clear vision for a full and comprehensive political solution will give the regime time to regroup and reorganise itself to continue its crimes against the Syrian people at a later stage," said Hadi Bahra, head of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition.

Noah Bonsey, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Assad's stated willingness to study the local ceasefire idea is nothing new. The Syrian government has accepted almost every peace initiative offered in the course of the war, only to disentangle from them later on.

"Unless the regime fears consequences for continuing with the status quo, it's hard to see why it would agree to a deal in Aleppo that preserves the mainstream armed opposition, which remains its first priority" to defeat, Bonsey said.

Many Aleppo-based opposition activists said they believed residents would welcome a truce, badly needed after three years of relentless shelling, bombing and displacement.

But they expressed fears the government would merely exploit a truce in Aleppo to gather its forces to fight elsewhere, and questioned how a ceasefire could work when IS fighters are trying to sweep through the area.

Mohammed Al Shafi, a 25-year-old Aleppo activist, said it would be a challenge to get Syrian rebels to agree to a truce.

"Each commander has his own men, his own faction, with his own support. Each one has his own agenda," he said in an interview via Skype. But, he added, residents are tired and would pressure rebels to agree to a truce if Syrian government forces did.

"Those who live outside Aleppo cannot imagine our lives. Nobody has lived like this."

Illustrating the pitfalls ahead, Zaher Al Saket, the Aleppo commander for the Free Syrian Army, a loose umbrella group for Western-backed rebels, placed four near-impossible preconditions for accepting a truce. These included a halt to government airstrikes, turning in those responsible for chemical weapons attacks, the release of prisoners from detention centres and the withdrawal of Hizbollah troops from Syria.

In pressing for a truce in Aleppo, de Mistura seemed to be building on other local ceasefires reached in Syria this year.

Assad has turned to local truces to pacify flashpoint areas around the capital where neither side has been able to clinch a victory. They have largely succeeded in several areas near Damascus and the central city of Homs, but the deals were seen as heavily lopsided in favour of the government.

The US cast doubt on Assad's willingness to implement an equitable ceasefire.

"Unfortunately, many local truces achieved thus far have more closely resembled surrender arrangements as opposed to genuine, sustainable ceasefire arrangements," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday.

Still, the momentum is growing to save the embattled city of Aleppo.

"Abandoning Aleppo would mean condemning 300,000 men, women and children to a terrible fate," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius wrote in a column published last week in international newspapers.

Fabius urged the international coalition fighting the IS in the embattled Syrian town of Kobani to also help the moderate rebels in Aleppo.

A report released Tuesday that examined 35 negotiations for local ceasefires in Syria over the past three years concluded that local peace deals could be "the best hope" for alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people and provide a basis for a larger resolution to the country's conflict.

The report, presented in Beirut by Carnegie Middle East Centre in partnership with Oxfam, said local agreements have delivered tangible improvements on the ground that top-level talks failed to do.

"Peace in Syria should be brokered piece by piece, on the ground, but within the context of a national plan," said Rim Turkmani, principal author of the report, "Hungry For Peace: Positives and Drawbacks of Local Truces and Ceasefires in Syria."

Bonsey said one of the reasons that previous ceasefires have failed is that the regime has agreed to them only in order to advance its military strategy.

"So long as the regime, and Iran in particular and to a lesser extent Russia, view the status quo in this conflict as working in their favour, I don't see why they're going to suddenly without precedence really agree to equitable ceasefires," he said.

Shafi, the Aleppo-based activist, said he thought a truce was now irrelevant after the destruction wrought on Aleppo.

"After all those barrel [bombs] and 40,000 people dead, it's not just too late. Aleppo's finished," he said.

BEIRUT/MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Syrian Kurds backed by fighters from northern Iraq have gained ground towards breaking the siege of the Syrian border town of Kobani but are drawing heavy fire from Islamic State (IS) insurgents and have yet to win back control.

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, or "those who face death", arrived with armoured vehicles and artillery more than a week ago to try to repulse a more than month-old siege that has tested a US-led coalition's ability to halt the Islamist insurgents.

Known in Arabic as Ayn Al Arab, the town is among a few areas in civil war-ridden Syria where the coalition can coordinate air strikes against IS with operations by an effective ground force.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fierce overnight clashes between Kurdish and IS forces along Kobani's southern front, combined with heavy artillery fire by peshmerga, yield new gains for the Kurds.

The Observatory quoted sources around Kobani as saying the radical Sunni Muslim insurgents had been surprised by the resilience of the Kurdish forces and that the battle for the town had killed hundreds of IS combatants. 

Kurdish forces have retaken some villages around Kobani but a Reuters correspondent on the Turkish side of the border said the front lines in the town itself appeared little changed, with the insurgents still controlling its eastern part.

Mortar bombs launched from IS positions hit the centre of town on Tuesday and there were exchanges of machinegun fire as jets flew overhead. The Observatory said coalition planes launched three air strikes south of Kobani overnight.

Idris Nassan, a local official in Kobani, estimated that IS now controlled less than 20 per cent of the town and that heavy artillery salvoes by peshmerga had helped the Kurds to advance to the south and east.

Peshmerga fighters, positioned on a hill on the western side of the town, launched rockets at a building where IS had raised its black flag, according to a Reuters witness.

A video on YouTube distributed by IS supporters showed fighters purportedly in Syria's northern province of Raqqa promising to reinforce Kobani.

"God's servants have prepared the explosives and bombs... We are coming with the sword and the Koran... We tell our brothers in [Kobani] that we're coming to support you," one of the insurgents said in the video.

BERLIN — EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Tuesday voiced concern about escalating violence in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urged progress toward a two-state solution.

"We need a Palestinian state living in peace and security next to the Israeli state," said Europe's top diplomat in Berlin, after recently visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"And I am particularly sad and worried about the escalation of violence that we are witnessing these hours," she told reporters, flanked by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Recent violence had "demonstrated very clearly that if we do not offer political perspective both to the Israelis to live in security and to the Palestinians to have a state, their own state, violence will come back", she said.

"I know that we can work closely together in that direction" in the 28-member EU, she said.

In recent weeks tensions have soared, with Israel pushing plans to build new Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and Jewish extremists demanding the right to pray at the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

RAMALLAH — Palestinians commemorated 10 years since the mysterious death of their iconic leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday but a war of words between rival factions Fateh and Hamas marred the anniversary.

The frictions blocked a rare memorial service for Arafat planned for Gaza, after Hamas said it could not provide security following a series of bomb blasts in the territory.

President Mahmud Abbas, the Fateh leader and Arafat's successor, accused the Islamist movement Hamas that controls Gaza of trying "to destroy" efforts to broker national unity.

Hamas hit back, accusing Abbas of uttering "lies, insults and disinformation".

The contrast for the anniversary was striking on the ground in Gaza City and the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas's Palestinian Authority is based.

As a band paid musical tributes, thousands of people waving the yellow flag of Fateh gathered at the Mouqataa compound in Ramallah where Arafat was buried after his death at 75 in a hospital near Paris on November 11, 2004.

"The hour of freedom and independence has arrived," read a giant banner on the stage where Abbas gave a speech.

In Gaza City, Arafat's portrait was nowhere to be seen and the stage where a tribute was to have been paid bore the marks of an explosion last Friday.

"We were hoping this anniversary would mark the end of Palestinian divisions and show national unity, with Hamas standing alongside Fateh in paying tribute," said Suheila Barbah, a young woman in Gaza City.

Arafat was "the personification of national unity", said Refaat Hajaj, a Gazan in his 30s. "They have deprived us of this anniversary."

In his speech for the anniversary, Abbas charged that Hamas was behind the Gaza explosions which targeted Fateh leaders.

"Those who caused the explosions in Gaza are the leaders of Hamas — they are responsible," he said, accusing the rival faction of trying "to sabotage and destroy the Palestinian national project".

Arafat's legacy 

Earlier this year, the two movements signed a reconciliation agreement aimed at ending seven years of bitter and sometimes bloody rivalry which saw the West Bank and Gaza ruled by separate administrations.

The deal led to the creation of a national consensus government which took office in Ramallah but has yet to fully exert its powers in Gaza, Hamas's stronghold.

Following his speech, Abbas was denounced by Hamas as "sectarian and partisan".

"Abbas's speech is a web of lies, insults and disinformation," said Mushir Al Masri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.

"What the Palestinian people need is a courageous president."

Fayez Abou Eita, spokesman for Fateh in Gaza, called for an inquiry into the "terrorist" blasts, which reportedly caused no casualties.

Abbas also reaffirmed his plans to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council this month calling for an end to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories by November 2016.

He promised that the Palestinians, who won the UN rank of observer state in 2012, would apply to join a host of international organisations if the resolution was blocked by a US veto.

In a letter to mark the anniversary, Marwan Barghouthi, a prominent jailed Palestinian, said that "choosing global and armed resistance" was being "faithful to Arafat's legacy, to his ideas and his principles for which tens of thousands died as martyrs".

He also remarked on the still unexplained circumstances of Arafat's death, saying his "assassination" was the result of "an official Israeli-American decision".

Two years ago, Swiss experts who examined the personal effects of the veteran Palestinian leader reported finding "abnormal" levels of polonium, an extremely radioactive toxin, fuelling the widespread Palestinian belief that he was poisoned by Israel.

Israel has repeatedly denied any role in Arafat's death.