Region

ISTANBUL — At least 21 people, including children, drowned and a dozen were missing on Monday when an overloaded boat taking migrants towards EU waters sank in the Black Sea just off Istanbul, Turkish officials said.

Those on board were mainly Afghans in search of a better life in the EU. They had reportedly paid several thousand euros each to people smugglers for a seat on the overloaded vessel.

The vessel was described as a small cruiser which was carrying around 40 people — over four times its maximum capacity — including 12 children.

Six people were rescued from the stricken boat and 21 corpses recovered, the coastguard said in a statement. It added that search operations were continuing for the dozen still missing. A previous toll had given 24 confirmed dead.

The boat sank three nautical miles north of the northern entrance to the Bosphorus, one of the busiest shipping thoroughfares in the world.

They had set off earlier from Bakirkoy, an Istanbul suburb on the Sea of Marmara side of the Bosphorus. Turkish media said at least one of those who died could have been a crew member or a smuggler guiding them.

Some reports said Syrians and Turkmen could also have been on board as well as Afghans. Television pictures showed survivors draped in blankets and sobbing as rescue workers offered them soup.

Boat was too small 

The official Anatolia news agency said that rescuers, who had been alerted to the accident by fishermen, found the vessel was already semi-submerged on arrival.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the boat to sink with media citing overloading, bad weather conditions or even a collision with another vessel in the busy shipping lane as possibilities.

Anatolia said prosecutors believed the vessel could have had leaks. Istanbul prosecutors have opened an investigation into the catastrophe.

"There were lots of children on board. The wind is having a bad effect on the rescue efforts. The boat was very, very small, not enough for 40 people," a captain involved in the rescue efforts, Ali Saruhan, told CNN-Turk television.

Emre Can Kolcu, a member of a fishing crew, told NTV that after the accident "bags, shoes, coats and discarded life jackets covered the sea".

He said it was likely that the children on board had been given adult life jackets that were too big and they had simply slipped out of them once in the water.

The stricken boat "was not a fishing boat, it was a tour boat for seven to eight people, not for 40", he added.

Turkey has become a hub for illegal immigrants who aspire to reach Europe in the search for a better life.

NTV television said that the migrants had paid people smugglers 7,000 euros ($8,750) each to transport them towards Romania and then onwards to wealthier western European countries.

But the journey is perilous, and hundreds of immigrants have drowned en route to Europe in recent years.

The accident has come amid strong debate within the EU about whether to continue migrant rescue missions, on the grounds that such operations encourage the migrants to make the hazardous voyages in the first place.

Britain said last week it will not support planned EU search and rescue operations to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea as they try to reach Europe.

Meanwhile, Italy on Friday confirmed the end of its search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of boat migrants in the Mediterranean.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli far-right lawmaker visited the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem on Sunday, defying calls for restraint from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

MP Moshe Feiglin was met with protests from Muslim worshippers when he visited Al Haram Al Sharif, an AFP photographer said.

The hardline lawmaker is a member of Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud bloc.

Al Haram Al Sharif is Islam’s third holiest shrine.

BEIRUT/MURSITPINAR, Turkey  — Iraqi Kurdish fighters have joined the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants in Kobani, hoping their support for fellow Kurds backed by US-led air strikes will keep the ultra-hardline group from seizing the Syrian border town.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the civil war, said heavy clashes erupted in Kobani and that both sides had suffered casualties, while the US military said it had launched more air raids on IS over the weekend.

Idriss Nassan, deputy minister for foreign affairs in Kobani district, said Iraqi Kurds using long-range artillery had joined the battle on Saturday night against IS, which holds parts of Syria and Iraq as part of an ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East.

“The peshmerga joined the battle late yesterday and it made a big difference with their artillery. It is proper artillery,” he told Reuters.

“We didn’t have artillery we were using mortars and other locally made weapons. So this is a good thing.”

Nassan did not elaborate and it was not immediately possible to verify that progress against IS had been made.

The arrival of the 150 Iraqi fighters — known as peshmerga or “those who confront death” — marks the first time Turkey has allowed troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds, who have been defending Kobani for more than 40 days.

All eyes on Kobani

“They are supporting the YPG. They have a range of semi-heavy weapons,” said Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the peshmerga ministry in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, referring to the main Syrian Kurdish armed group.

Eyewitnesses in the Mursitpinar area on the Turkish side of the border from Kobani said two rockets were fired on Saturday night.

A Reuters witness said fighting on Sunday was heavier than in the last two days, noting a strike in the late morning and the sound of three explosions.

Attention has focused on Kobani, seen as key test of the effectiveness of American air strikes, and of whether combined Kurdish forces can fend off IS, an Al Qaeda offshoot made up of Arabs and foreign fighters.

Air strikes have helped to foil several attempts by IS, notorious for its beheading of hostages and opponents, to take over Kobani.

But they have done little to stop its advances, in particular in Sunni areas of western Iraq, where it has been executing hundreds of members of a tribe that resisted its territorial gains.

In their latest air strikes, US military forces staged seven attacks on IS targets in Syria on Saturday and Sunday and were joined by allies in two more attacks in Iraq, the US Central Command said.

In the Kobani area, five strikes hit five small IS units, while two strikes near Dayr Az Zawr 240km to the southeast in Syria destroyed an IS tank and vehicle shelters.

US and partner nations hit small IS units near the Iraqi cities of Baiji and Fallujah.

DUBAI — A Bahraini court Sunday freed prominent Shiite activist Nabeel Rajab but barred him from travel until his trial resumes over remarks on Twitter deemed insulting to public institutions, a judicial source said.

The criminal court in Manama ordered Rajab's release from custody and adjourned the trial until January 20, the source told AFP.

A picture on his Twitter account later showed Rajab in a car, smiling and flashing a "V" for victory sign, as his family said he arrived home.

Rajab, a member of Bahrain's Shiite majority which has held protests against the Gulf kingdom's Sunni rulers since 2011, was arrested on October 1 after posting comments on Twitter about the interior and defence ministries.

In one of the tweets which were deemed offensive, Rajab charged that many of the Bahrainis fighting with jihadists in Syria were former security forces personnel who had developed Sunni extremist views while in service.

Rajab's lawyer, Jalila Al Sayyed, used Sunday's hearing to call for her client to be freed, according to the judicial source.

The trial has been condemned by advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, which also called for the charges against Rajab to be dropped.

Rajab is the director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and was freed in May after serving two years in jail for taking part in unauthorised protests.

He had led anti-government marches following a bloody crackdown on Shiite-led demonstrations against Al Khalifa ruling family in March 2011.

BEIRUT — Nearly 2,000 people have died in Syrian prisons of torture, starvation and lack of medical treatment so far this year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

The Britain-based monitor said it had documented 1,917 deaths in Syrian prisons since the start of 2014, among them 27 children under the age of 18 and 11 women.

Rights groups have regularly criticised conditions in Syrian detention facilities, accusing the regime of widespread torture and abuse.

Earlier this year, 55,000 photos smuggled out of Syria by a former Syrian military police photographer gave a glimpse of some of the abuses being committed in Syrian jails.

The digital images of 11,000 dead detainees showed emaciated bodies and the defector, identified only as Ceasar, described seeing corpses with "deep wounds and burns and strangulations."

The Observatory said the bodies of some of those killed in jail were turned over to their relatives, while other families were simply told their loved ones had died and instructed to collect a death certificate.

In some cases families were forced to sign documents saying their relatives had been killed by opposition forces, according to the Observatory which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The monitor said some 200,000 people are being detained by the regime in jails and other government facilities.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said a lack of accountability had led to widespread deaths in prison.

SANAA — The UN special adviser on Yemen praised on Sunday the agreement of all Yemeni parties and political groups on the formation of an apolitical technocrat Cabinet that ended a deadlock of over two weeks.

Jamal Benomar, in a statement, said that Saturday night's compromise is an important step towards implementing the agreement of peace and national partnership and consolidating the country's stability.

In the last few weeks, Shiite rebels known as Houthis captured the capital and demanded the president appoint a new government because they complained the previous one was too close to their rival conservative Sunni Islamist party. A UN brokered deal was reached through which Khaled Bahah was nominated as prime minister and tasked with forming a new government. But the dispute over who will populate Bahah's Cabinet has, until now, ground the process to a halt at a critical time.

The Houthi rebels had given Bahah and President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi an ultimatum Friday, hinting of a takeover if they didn't succeed in forming a government. Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied with the Houthis, and other groups had earlier insisted on the formation of a Cabinet that included representatives of all political factions. But amid rising international pressure and the UN involvement, the different groups reversed course on Saturday and agreed to support a Cabinet of apolitical technocrats.

A joint statement said the different Yemeni political factions were, "committed completely to not question the decisions of the president and prime minister, and also committed to provide the new government with the necessary support".

Underlining the tension that still grips Yemen, gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a prominent liberal politician in Sanaa who was a member of the committee that sought a political compromise on the new government and other transition issues, security officials said.

Mohammed Abdel-Malik Mutawakel, a Sanaa University political science professor and formerly a government minister in the 1970s, was a pro-democracy advocate who was viewed by many as close to the Houthis. A liberal, Mutawakel had said Yemen can only be governed from now on democratically. It is not clear who is behind his killing.

Bahah is set to become Yemen's first new prime minister in two years, after Mohammed Salem Bassindwa was forced out in September. Bassindwa was criticised for the country's deteriorating security situation and as too close to the Islamist Islah party, which is one of Yemen's traditional power bases.

Meanwhile, security officials said militants of Yemen's Al Qaeda branch attacked the security headquarters in the small town of Jabal Ras in Hudayda province on Saturday and killed 19 army soldiers and security guards.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media, said three Al Qaeda militants and two civilian passersby were killed during the exchange of fire.

In Cairo, Arab League permanent representatives urged all Yemeni factions to abide by the agreement and to speed up the process of forming a new government.

In a statement issued after Sunday's meeting, the Arab League stressed that "only Yemen's constitutional bodies are responsible for the country's security, unity and stability".

It called on the Shiite Houthi militias to stop their military activities, withdraw from the areas they control and return the weapons they seized.

CAIRO — At least 210 people were killed in fighting in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi since troops loyal to the country’s elected government launched an attempt to retake the city from Islamist militias two weeks earlier, a medical official said Sunday.

The official would not identify those killed, or say whether they included government troops, indicating that the battle for control of Benghazi has not yet been settled.

The turmoil in Benghazi started when renegade Gen. Khalifa Haftar — a former Qadhafi army chief who joined the opposition decades before the uprising — launched a campaign against Islamist militias which were implicated in series of assassinations and attacks on journalists, activists, and security forces in the city.

Haftar won support among large sectors of Libyans but the army units loosely allied with him were defeated and forced to leave the city by Islamist militias.

Then, the internationally recognised government, led by Abdullah Al Thinni, joined ranks with Hifter and on October 15, launched a wide offensive to retake the city. Until then, Haftar troops had largely fought from bases outside the city.

On Sunday, a security official in Benghazi said government troops have entered a new neighbourhood in the city. The official said the troops are carrying out a wave of arrests against Islamist militias and have arrested one of their spokesmen.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to brief reporters.

Libya is witnessing one of the worst spasms of violence since the downfall of Muammar Qadhafi. Powerful militias, who had fought to bring Qadhafi down, took control of the country, challenging the authority of central government.

SURUC, Turkey — Iraqi peshmerga fighters prepared Saturday to join the fight against jihadists for the Syrian border town of Kobani, lifting hopes among residents of a turning point in the highly symbolic battle.

The roughly 150 Iraqi fighters, many of them chanting "Kobani", received a hero's welcome as they crossed the frontier from Turkey late Friday to join fellow Kurds trying to repel the Islamic State (IS) group.

The peshmerga "are making preparations, deploying weapons, getting to know the area", Polat Can, a spokesman for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), said Saturday.

"The artillery and heavy weapons they have will play a good role," he told AFP by telephone.

The town has become a key battleground whose capture would be a major prize for the jihadists, giving them unbroken control of a long stretch of Syria's border with Turkey.

Kobani's defenders have been pleading for reinforcements, and the peshmerga armed with automatic weapons and rocket launchers travelled through Turkey to Syria from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

They stood atop their pick-ups, waving to onlookers and brandishing their rifles in the air as they headed for the frontier.

"People definitely feel optimism about the arrival of the peshmerga. People have been calling me to discuss when we might be able to go home," said Kobani activist Mustafa Ebdi, speaking from across the border in Turkey.

Ankara also allowed dozens of lightly armed Free Syrian Army rebels to cross into Kobani this week.

Tipping point? 

But the sense of hope was also tinged with caution about how much difference 150 fighters could make in a stand-off involving thousands of fighters.

“Some people think the battle will be over very quickly, but I think it will still be long,” Ebdi said.

Intense fighting erupted late Friday and continued during the night as Kurdish fighters fended off a new IS attack in the north of the town, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

About 3,000-4,000 jihadists — backed by tanks — are fighting in Kobani against about 1,500-2,000 members of the YPG, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

Fierce clashes in and around Kobani have killed about 100 IS fighters in the past three days, according to the Britain-based monitoring group, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The observatory said 958 people had been killed since IS launched an assault on Kobani in mid-September — 576 IS jihadists, 361 Kurdish fighters and 21 civilians.

IS has seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq for a self-proclaimed “caliphate”, imposing its harsh interpretation of Sharia law.

The United States, along with European and Arab allies, has conducted daily air raids against the group.

The US military reported five air strikes against IS near Kobani on Friday and Saturday, while coalition warplanes carried out five raids in Iraq.

Solidarity marches 

In Turkey, thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday for an international day of solidarity with Kobani.

At least 15,000 people marched in the largest Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, while around 1,000 pro-Kurdish supporters turned out in central Istanbul.

The multi-sided Syrian war has killed more than 180,000 people and forced millions from their homes since it began three and a half years ago as an uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

US hopes of creating and training a moderate rebel force as a counterweight to jihadists and Assad’s forces suffered a blow after Al Qaeda-affiliated militants drove rebels of the Western-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front from their bastion in the northwestern province of Idlib.

The Al Nusra Front jihadist group captured the village of Deir Sinbel and seized arms and tanks from the SRF, the observatory said Saturday after 24 hours of combat.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli occupation forces deployed heavily around Jerusalem's flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound as it reopened Friday for Muslim prayers after a rare closure during clashes over the killing of a Palestinian by Israeli forces.

The streets of East Jerusalem were calm before the prayers at midday but teeming with additional security forces, including many in riot gear, after an Israeli clampdown on Al Haram Al Sharif, the third holiest shrine in Islam.

Clashes had erupted early Thursday when Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian accused of trying to kill Yehuda Glick, a hard-line rabbi linked to tensions at the compound.

The closure was the first for decades and prompted a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the move as an Israeli “declaration of war”.

Israeli security spokesperson Luba Samri said that because of “fears of unrest” at the midday prayers, entry for Muslim men was restricted to those over 50.

Hundreds of security personnel were seen manning a series of checkpoints leading from the Old City’s outer gates all the way to Al Aqsa compound, an AFP correspondent said.

Ordinary and riot security officers checked identity papers of people passing between the barricades, both those on their way to pray at the site and those who worked nearby.

Female officers were deployed to stop and search Muslim women.

Zuheir Dana, 67, said he was unable to get from his shop to his home.

“I wanted just to get home, which is about 50 metres away from Al Aqsa compound, but [security forces] didn’t let me through,” he said.

“[They] are stopping and searching whoever they please according to how they perceive the atmosphere. They’re not letting in men over the age of 50, they’re only letting in men over the age of 60.”

“It’s been bad every day here since Ramadan,” he added, referring to the Muslim fasting month which this year fell in July.

Markets in the Old City, normally bustling on a Friday morning, were nearly deserted due to the security lockdown.

Additional forces were deployed around Al Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in the heart of the Old City, with media reporting the presence of some 3,000 officers, three times more than usual.

Clashes subsided late Thursday with a few sporadic confrontations between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces firing rubber bullets and tear gas. Three Palestinians were arrested, Samri said.

The funeral of Muataz Hejazi, who was suspected of shooting and critically wounding the rabbi on Wednesday night, passed off without incident, she added.

The hospital treating Glick said the Jewish hardliner’s condition was slightly improved Friday but that his life was still in danger.

Jerusalem has been shaken by months of unrest sparked by the murder of a Palestinian teenager in July in revenge for the killings of three Jewish teenagers in the West Bank.

A 50-day Israeli war on Gaza in July and August intensified protests and clashes in the Holy City.

Al Haram Al Sharif and adjacent East Jerusalem neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls have been the scene of the latest violence in the city, and the site itself is a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to Jewish attempts to take control of it.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A mortar fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel, the Israeli military said on Saturday, the second such incident since a seven-week war in the Palestinian enclave ended in August.

Hours after the projectile struck harmlessly, there was no Israeli counter-strike, an apparent sign Israel was looking to avoid any escalation. An August 26 Gaza truce has largely held.

The rocket fire came amid rising tension between Israel and the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of a future state, along with Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

"Overnight a rocket or mortar launched from Gaza struck southern Israel. No damage or injuries reported," Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said on Twitter.

There was no claim of responsibility from any armed faction in Gaza, dominated by the Islamist Hamas group. A military spokeswoman said forces were still searching for debris.