Region

ANKARA — A Turkish politician was stabbed repeatedly in the capital Ankara on Tuesday, in an attack that his pro-Kurdish party blamed on a government-led “lynch campaign” against it.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned the stabbing of Ahmet Karatas, a member of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and denied the government had done anything to make him a target. He said a suspect had been detained and had confessed.

Mutual recriminations are running high because of what Kurds see as Turkey’s failure to protect their ethnic kin just across the border in Syria. Dozens of people were killed last month in unrest in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Politician Ahmet Karatas was knifed in the neck and leg, a party official told Reuters. An HDP statement said he had been stabbed some seven times in the attack at the party’s offices in Ankara.

Karatas was being treated in intensive care in hospital.

Kurds accuse the Turkish army of standing by and just watching as Islamic State fighters besiege the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, just across the border. While Ankara has refused to intervene militarily, it allowed Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross into Kobani with arms and ammunition from Turkey last week.

The HDP accused the government and media of turning its leader and representatives into targets with anti-Kurdish statements and reports in recent days.

“We warn the government once more in the face of this dangerous development and call on it to abandon this sustained lynch campaign,” it said.

Davutoglu rejected the accusation. “During the Kobani incidents, the HDP with its statements turned not only the government but all our citizens in the east and the whole of Turkey into targets. We never turned anyone into a target,” he told reporters.

SANAA — Overnight drone strikes killed at least 20 suspected Al Qaeda militants in Yemen, where Washington has conducted a sustained drone war against jihadist leaders, tribal sources and witnesses said on Tuesday.

The twin raids targeted Al Qaeda positions near Rada, a central town which has been the focus of deadly fighting between the jihadists and advancing Shiite rebels, the sources said.

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

Washington regards Al Qaeda's Yemen branch as its most dangerous and there has been no let-up in the drone war even as the jihadists battle the Shiite rebels alongside Sunni tribes.

The rebels, known as Houthis from the name of their leading family, overran the capital Sanaa in September and have since advanced south from the mainly Shiite northern highlands into Sunni majority areas.

The Rada area is confessionally mixed and has seen deadly clashes in recent weeks.

Armed tribesmen killed 22 rebels in a series of attacks in the area late on Monday, tribal sources said.

The attacks came as a four-day ultimatum expired for the rebels to withdraw, one tribal source told AFP.

The rebels captured several areas around Rada late last month after a suspected US drone strike and raids by the Yemeni air force killed dozens of Al Qaeda militants and their Sunni tribal allies.

The Huthis have seized on chronic instability in Yemen since the 2012 ouster of veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh to take control of large parts of the country.

LONDON — The tragic plight of 10 million stateless people is a "cancer" that must be excised, a top UN official said on Tuesday after launching an ambitious campaign to end the crisis in a decade.

With no nationality, stateless people are denied the basic rights most people take for granted. Many live in destitution and are at risk of exploitation including slavery.

"To be stateless is to be tortured every day. It's a form of psychological torture that is permanent," UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

He added it would be "deeply unethical" to perpetuate the suffering any longer.

Key countries the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) will be focusing on include Myanmar, where more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya are denied citizenship, Ivory Coast, where large-scale statelessness helped fuel years of civil war, and Dominican Republic, where an estimated 210,000 people, mostly of Haitian descent, are living in limbo.

Guterres warned there was also a risk that the Syrian war could create a new stateless crisis. More than 50,000 babies have been born to Syrian refugee women in exile, but 70 per cent of births have not been registered.

The situation is complicated by the fact that many refugee households are headed by women, but Syria is one of 27 countries which does not let women pass down their nationality.

"If you are a Syrian woman expecting a child and if your husband has been killed or disappeared in the conflict or is not known, according to Syrian legislation that child is not Syrian. So there is a real risk of statelessness," Guterres said.

He said the UNHCR was working with countries like Lebanon and Jordan which are hosting refugees to simplify birth registration.

Guterres said statelessness was the most forgotten human rights issue partly because most people could not imagine having no nationality.

"We think it's high time for the world to [realise] that there is still this cancer to be extracted," he said.

"Imagine that tomorrow you wake up and all of a sudden you discover that you have no driver's licence, no credit cards, no other ID document, that you have no social security and no job, that your children cannot go to public school, and that you are not accepted in a public hospital  that the day you die you won't even get a death certificate.

"We have testimonies from stateless people saying things as horrible as, 'We feel that we are like wild animals that we are totally lost.' And this is unacceptable in the 21st century."

‘Terrible rejection’

Guterres said the most desperate people he had met were the Rohingya who live in extreme poverty in northwest Myanmar.

"You are considered in Myanmar — where you have always lived — as an illegal migrant from Bangladesh, but if you move to Bangladesh you are considered an illegal migrant from Myanmar. You feel rejected by everybody. This feeling of rejection — nobody wants me — it's terrible."

The crisis is widely seen as one of the most intractable, but Guterres said discussions between the UNHCR and the Myanmar government were much more open than three years ago.

"This was a complete taboo, now this is something that is actively discussed," he added. "There is still a long way to go, but at least it is no longer a totally blocked issue."

A second focus of the campaign is to improve nationality laws, in particular to ensure all countries allow women to pass their nationality to their children.

The UNHCR will also be pushing countries to fine tune their nationality laws "to ensure nobody falls between the cracks". For example, every country should allow any child born on its territory to acquire nationality rather than be stateless.

Guterres admitted the campaign's 10-year goal was ambitious, but said there had been a recent change in attitudes. He pointed out that 4 million stateless people had acquired a nationality in the last decade with efforts by some countries with large stateless problems, including Ivory Coast and Thailand.

There had also been a rush of countries acceding to the two UN treaties on statelessness and others had got rid of discriminatory nationality laws.

Guterres stressed that resolving statelessness was not only a human rights issue, but vital for stability as large groups of disenfranchised people impacted national security.

"I believe that to eradicate statelessness is indeed a win-win situation for everybody," he said.

EL ARISH, Egypt — A bomb exploded Monday near Egyptian troops demolishing houses along the border with the Gaza Strip, causing no casualties but prompting authorities to raise security alert levels in the area as Egypt clears a buffer zone to halt weapons smuggling, military officials said.

The border town of Rafah and its surrounding areas in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula have been under a state of emergency for more than a week since an October 24 militant assault killed 31 troops. It was the deadliest attack on Egyptian troops in recent times.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the Northern Sinai has become a stronghold of Islamist militants who have carried out scores of attacks in recent months, mainly targeting soldiers and police.

Following the killing of the 31 troops, the government declared it will create a 500-metre buffer zone along Egypt's 13-kilometre border with Gaza extending from the Mediterranean Sea. Over the past week, troops demolished 300 houses out of more than 800 targeted, home to more than 10,000 residents.

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court appeared closely divided on Monday as it considered whether Congress overstepped its authority in passing a law designed to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports.

Congress passed the law in 2002 but the government has never enforced it. Seeking to remain neutral on the hotly contested issue of sovereignty over a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, the State Department allows passports to name Jerusalem as a place of birth, with no country name included.

The parents of a Jerusalem-born 12-year-old boy, US citizen Menachem Zivotofsky, have waged a long court battle to have his passport state he was born in Israel.

At issue is the longstanding US policy that the president, not Congress, has sole authority to provide American recognition of who controls Jerusalem, a city claimed both by Israelis and Palestinians.

During a one-hour argument, the liberal justices on the nine-member court signalled support for the government. Conservative justices were more sympathetic to the parents, Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the court's swing vote in close decisions, is likely to again find himself in that role.

Kennedy signalled some support for the government, saying if the case rests on the determination that the law indicates recognition of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, the State Department "should be given deference”.

However, he also indicated a possible compromise in which the law is enforced but the government adds disclaimers in passports saying the place of birth is not intended to recognise Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The State Department maintains the law violates the US Constitution's separation of executive and legislative powers. It says a loss for the government in the case would be seen around the world as a reversal of US policy that could cause "irreversible damage" to America's ability to influence the region's peace process.

That argument appeared to gain traction with the liberal justices, including the court's three Jewish members: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Kagan said Jerusalem's status is so contentious that any development, no matter how minor, "is a big deal" in the Middle East.

Kagan likened the statute to a "very selective vanity plate law", referring to customised car license plates. She noted that Jerusalem-born US citizens of Palestinian heritage cannot ask for a passport stating they were born in Palestine.

Of the conservative justices, Antonin Scalia seemed most supportive of the family, saying foreign policy concerns should not be taken into account when deciding whether Congress had authority to pass the law.

"If it is within Congress's power, what difference does it make whether it antagonises foreign countries?" Scalia said.

While Israel calls Jerusalem its capital, few other countries accept that. Most, including the United States, maintain embassies in Tel Aviv. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in a 1967 war, as capital of the state they aim to establish alongside Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

The case is Zivotofsky v. Kerry, US Supreme Court, 13-628.

BEIRUT — Al Qaeda-linked militants pressed an offensive Monday against Western-backed rebels in northern Syria, closing in on a vital border crossing with Turkey and exposing the weakness of mainstream opposition groups that the US hopes to forge into a fighting force to take on Islamic extremists.

Al Nusra Front's recent surge has overrun strongholds in Syria's Idlib province of two prominent rebel factions that proved unable to repel the assault despite getting arms and training from the US. The opposition groups' collapse marks a significant setback to Washington's plan of partnering with more moderate brigades to fight the Islamic State (IS) and other radicals.

Al Nusra Front — a bitter and bloody rival of IS despite their shared extremist ideology — was massing its fighters Monday in the town of Sarmada near the Bab Al Hawa border crossing after sweeping through rebel-held towns and villages over the weekend. As the extent of the rout became apparent, reports also emerged that some rebels had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda affiliate.

The fighting takes place against the backdrop of US-led air strikes to roll back and destroy IS, which has seized huge chunks of territory spanning Syria and Iraq. That effort has recently focused on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border, where fighting has raged since September.

The two primary targets of Al Nusra Front's attack are the Syria Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm. While both rebel groups have received US support, it never reached the levels that either deemed necessary to make significant advances against President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria's 3½-year-old civil war. At the same time, the link to the Americans also earned them the enmity of radical groups.

"The Nusra Front is deeply suspicious of both the SRF and Harakat Hazm because they receive support from the US," said Aron Lund, editor of Syria in Crisis, a website run by the Carnegie Endowment. "The US is also quite open about training rebels to take on both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, to which the Nusra Front belongs. So from the Nusra Front's perspective, these groups aren't just troublesome rivals, they're a pro-Western fifth column that are slowly being readied for a purge of jihadis."

Tensions between the groups worsened after the US bombed Al Nusra Front bases in Idlib province on the opening night of its air campaign focused primarily on IS. Those air strikes won Al Nusra Front, which has largely focused on fighting Assad's forces, the sympathy of many in opposition-held areas.

Mainstream rebel groups maintain a presence in parts of northern Syria and are also active in the south along the Jordanian border. But the quick defeat of two groups previously considered among the stronger factions in Idlib province "shows that... the moderates are weaker than what we have been led to believe, despite increased funding from the West," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow the Brookings Doha Centre.

It was unclear how far Al Nusra Front intended to take its offensive in Idlib. In recent days, the group's fighters have been gathering in the town of Sarmada in northern Idlib province, about 6 kilometres from Bab Al Hawa, said Assad Kanjo, an anti-Assad activist based in the province.

Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said Nusra fighters had flowed into Sarmada, but said there was no indication they had advanced on the crossing, which is held by a rebel alliance known as the Islamic Front. Bab Al Hawa serves as an important supply route for Western-backed fighters as well as aid groups in northern Syria.

Lister said he did not believe Al Nusra fighters would attack the crossing, saying they were unlikely to directly challenge the Islamic Front, a collection of hardline and moderate Muslim groups. He said that likely would create new, unnecessary enemies for the group.

"Most likely, they will seek to consolidate their influence in the area around Bab Al Hawa," he said.

Either way, the group's advances have dealt a sharp blow to Harakat Hazm and the Syria Revolutionary Front.

Harakat Hazm emerged earlier this year, and online videos have showed its fighters using Western-donated weapons, including US anti-tank weapons in the spring. It has made modest advances in Idlib.

The Syria Revolutionary Front, meanwhile, has sought to present itself as a force against extremists like the Islamic State. The group's leader, Jamal Maarouf, has emerged as a wily commander who has gotten the support of Western backers. He presents himself as a moderate but has used sharp sectarian language to refer to the Syrian army.

In an online video posted Saturday after his forces were pushed out of parts of Idlib, Maarouf accused Al Nusra fighters of "occupying" Idlib and compared them to Assad's forces.

In the messy alliances that have characterised the Syrian war, Al Nusra Front has fought alongside other rebel groups against Assad's forces. But it has particularly poor relations with Maarouf's men. They had fought in summer over what appeared to be the rights to smuggling Syrian fuel to Turkey.

BAGHDAD — Iraq boosted security Monday amid fears of the Islamic State (IS) group launching major attacks on Shiite pilgrims flocking to the shrine city of Karbala as further reports emerged of mass killings.

The pilgrims are prime targets for the IS jihadists, who have carried out a series of mass executions in recent days, killing scores of members of a tribe in Iraq's western Anbar province.

The jihadists are reported to have slaughtered dozens of members of the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe, which took up arms against them in Anbar.

On Monday, tribal leader Naim Al Kuoud Al Nimrawi told AFP that IS "executed 36 people, including four women and three children" on Sunday alone.

Accounts have varied as to the number and timings of the executions, but sources have spoken of more than 200 people murdered in recent days.

A police officer and an official gave figures of more than 200 to 258 people killed, while Iraq's human rights ministry put the toll at 322 and a tribal leader said 381 were executed.

The mass killings appear aimed at discouraging resistance from powerful local tribes in Anbar, where IS overran large areas in June as pro-government forces suffered a string of setbacks.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected in Karbala for the Tuesday peak of Ashoura marking the death of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures.

At least 19 people were killed in bomb blasts targeting Shiites in Baghdad on Sunday claimed by IS, and security forces were on alert for further attacks.

Karbala’s deputy governor, Jassem Al Fatlawi, told AFP "hundreds of thousands of Iraqi pilgrims" and 65,000 others from 20 different countries have thronged Karbala.

IS calls Shiites 'heretics' 

Pilgrims have been targeted during Ashoura before, but this year they face even greater danger after the IS lightning offensive in June.

Like other Sunni extremists, IS considers Shiites heretics.

Authorities have deployed thousands of security personnel and allied militiamen to protect the pilgrims, in a major test for the new government headed by Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi.

“The security plan is fully in effect and the security forces are on a state of high alert,” an Iraqi police colonel told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Police were deployed throughout Shiite districts of Baghdad and security forces are guarding the 100-kilometre route from the capital to Karbala.

More than 26,000 members of the security forces were deployed in Karbala itself, backed by helicopters providing air support and monitoring desert areas, army staff Lieutenant General Othman Al Ghanimi told reporters.

Police used X-ray trucks to scan vehicles as sniffer dogs monitored arrivals and some 1,500 policewomen checked female pilgrims.

The Sunni extremist IS group has declared a “caliphate” in parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria under its control, imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law and committing widespread atrocities.

There are fears that Anbar province, stretching from Iraq’s borders with Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the Western approach to Baghdad, could fall entirely.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel approved Monday plans for some 500 new settler housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, a watchdog said, a week after a government pledge to build the structures drew Palestinian ire.

The interior ministry gave the go-ahead for the units located in the existing settlement of Ramat Shlomo in volatile East Jerusalem, the Peace Now non-governmental organisation told AFP.

"The... decision on the 500 homes in the Ramat Shlomo settlement come after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement last week that he would accelerate construction in East Jerusalem," Peace Now spokeswoman Hagit Ofran said.

Netanyahu’s office pledged on October 27 to build more than 1,000 new settler homes — more than 600 in Ramat Shlomo and around another 400 in Har Homa, another East Jerusalem settlement.

“Israel is absolutely within its rights to build in Jewish neighbourhoods, and Palestinians have understood that these areas will remain under Israel control under any [peace] agreement,” Netanyahu said at the time.

Ofran said the plans had been put on hold since 2006, but with the new approval, building itself could begin within six to 12 months.

“The decision to move forward in Ramat Shlomo is irresponsible,” Ofran said.

“It proves that Netanyahu does not want a two-state solution, only a settler state.”

Israel, at odds with the international community, views Jewish settlements in annexed East Jerusalem as neighbourhoods where it has the right to build, because it considers the entire city, including the eastern sector, its undivided capital.

Last week’s announcement infuriated the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and came after Israel’s ally the United States warned Israel over its controversial settlements policy.

The State Department has said it is “deeply concerned” over settlement building, and the White House warned last month that continued settlement plans would “distance Israel from even its closest allies”.

The European Union has repeatedly slammed Israeli moves to build more settler homes, saying they undermines efforts to achieve peace through a two-state solution.

The settlements issue has derailed round upon round of failed Middle East peace talks, most recently in April after a nine-month concerted push by Washington to bring about a peace agreement.

Israel occupied Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move never recognised by the international community.

WASHINGTON — Concerned about foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq, Washington imposed tighter security screening on Monday for travellers from countries, mostly in Europe and Asia, whose citizens do not need a visa to get into the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said people from countries in the US Visa Waiver Programme will have to provide additional information on an electronic application they need to file to be eligible to enter.

"We are taking this step to enhance the security of the Visa Waiver Programme, to learn more about travellers from countries from whom we do not require a visa," Johnson said in a statement.

The move was in response to the security threat posed by the possible radicalisation of foreign fighters in Syria who hold Western passports and thus would not arouse suspicion at airports or other entry points.

Thirty-eight countries participate in the Visa Waiver Programme, or VWP, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other European countries as well as Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, according to the State Department.

"DHS is concerned about the risks posed by the situation in Syria and Iraq, where increasing instability has attracted thousands of foreign fighters, including many from VWP countries," the DHS official said on condition of anonymity.

The official cited cases in which people travelled from Syria to Europe and carried out attacks, including a museum shooting in Belgium in May, as well as public threats against the United States in response to its involvement in Iraq.

Islamic State militants have released videos of the beheading of American civilians that blamed US air strikes for their actions.

In order to travel without a visa from these countries, visitors must get approved through an online system called Electronic System for Travel Authorisation, or ESTA, and pay a fee.

Under the rules that took effect Monday, people from those countries will have to provide additional information — passport data, contact details and other names used — in their travel application submitted through ESTA, Johnson said.

The DHS official said the additional data will help security officials identify threats to the United States and prevent suspected terrorists from getting in.

"We are also confident these changes will not hinder lawful trade and travel between our nation and our trusted foreign allies in the Visa Waiver Programme," Johnson said.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia and France are to finalise Tuesday a deal to provide Lebanon's army with $3 billion worth of French weapons, with Riyadh footing the bill, a Saudi daily and a French source said.

The deal, first announced in December, comes as the poorly equipped Lebanese army battles jihadists, including from the Islamic State (IS) , in the north and along its border with war-torn Syria.

"This battle requires equipment, materiel and technology that the army doesn't have," Lebanon's army chief Jean Kahwaji told AFP in August, urging France to speed up the promised weapons supplies.

A signing ceremony for the deal would be held on Tuesday morning in Riyadh, the French source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The contract, which has gone through months of negotiations over the list of weapons to be supplied, would now "be rapidly implemented", the French source said.

Al Hayat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily, said the first arms shipment under the deal would be delivered to Lebanon "within a month".

The newspaper, quoting sources in Paris, said the arms deal would be signed by Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim Al Assad and Edouard Guillaud, the head of the ODAS organisation set up by France for the export of defence equipment.

In December, OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia agreed to finance a $3-billion package of French military equipment and arms for the Lebanese army.

And in mid-June, at a conference in Rome, the international community pledged its backing for the Lebanese military.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil on September 10 urged the international community to present a "common front" against IS, saying his country was "impatiently" waiting for the French-made weapons.

Saudi Arabia in August gave Lebanon's military another $1 billion to strengthen security.