Region

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia said late on Wednesday it had detected six new cases of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 24 hours, the biggest daily jump for months with officials blaming lax hospital procedures.

The recent surge in cases, now numbering 32 since the start of October, has been focused in Riyadh and the western city of Taif, but it remains far less extensive than an outbreak in April and May that infected hundreds.

MERS causes coughing, fever and sometimes pneumonia, killing around 40 per cent of its victims. The vast majority of confirmed cases worldwide have been found in Saudi Arabia, where 786 people have been infected, of whom 334 have died.

Two of the new cases announced by the health ministry were in medical personnel, adding to concerns about the standard of infection control procedures in medical facilities. Three different Taif hospitals have been affected.

Some of the people infected with MERS in Taif this month were being treated in one renal clinic in a hospital in the city, which authorities regard as being responsible for some of the transmissions, a senior health ministry official said.

"The secret here of success is not to prevent the cases to be introduced to the community... the success is to control the transmission within health facilities," Abdulaziz Bin Saeed, undersecretary for public health told Reuters.

He added that medical personnel may have relaxed their infection control standards after the kingdom's last outbreak before the summer ebbed, but that the ministry had intervened to improve procedures in Taif hospitals.

The six new cases confirmed on Wednesday included three in Taif, where five others have fallen ill this month, two in Riyadh, where six others have been diagnosed with MERS since the start of October, and one in Hafr Al Batin, near Kuwait.

Scientists are not sure of the origin of the virus, but several studies have linked it to camels and some experts think it is being passed to humans through close physical contact or through the consumption of camel meat or camel milk.

ANKARA — Iran has foiled an attempt to sabotage tanks used for transporting heavy water, which is needed to run some nuclear reactors, and blames a "foreign country" for the incident, a senior official was quoted by local media as saying.

The Islamic Republic is at odds with the West over suspicions it is covertly using its declared civilian atomic energy programme to develop a nuclear arms capability. It denies this and has repeatedly accused certain Western states of trying to cripple the programme through acts of sabotage.

Asghar Zarean, deputy chief in charge of nuclear protection and security at Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, was quoted by the Tehran newspaper Arman as saying the bid to damage tanks at the Arak heavy-water production plant occurred two weeks ago.

"There were attempts to cause disruption in storage tanks due to carry heavy water. But these attempts were discovered and foiled before the tanks were filled with heavy water at Arak," Zarean was quoted as saying.

"A foreign country was behind the attempt," he said, without elaborating. Iranian officials could not be immediately reached for further comment.

The Arak plant has been producing heavy water to operate a planned 40-megawatt research reactor nearby that Iran says is intended to make isotopes for cancer and other medical treatments.

But in June it said that it was redesigning the Arak reactor to sharply cut its potential output of plutonium, a nuclear bomb material, a gesture apparently meant to address a thorny issue in negotiations with six world powers.

Iran also stopped installing major components in the Arak reactor as part of an interim deal struck with the powers in November 2013, and which expires next month, to curb some sensitive nuclear activity in exchange for limited relief from sanctions. Iran also agreed not to transfer heavy water to the reactor site under this temporary pact.

STOCKHOLM — The Swedish government officially recognised the state of Palestine on Thursday and said there were signs European Union states would follow its lead.

The move drew praise from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and criticism from Israel, and has displeased the United States, Israel's principle supporter.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told reporters her government hoped it would bring a new dynamic to efforts to end decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Our decision comes at a critical time because over the last year we have seen how the peace talks have stalled, how decisions over new settlements on occupied Palestinian land have complicated a two-state solution and how violence has returned to Gaza," she said.

"There is an ongoing debate in many other EU member states and hopefully also a move in this direction," Wallstrom said. "There are clearly signs that this might happen in other member states as well".

Palestinians seek statehood in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as their capital. The land was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, although Israeli soldiers and settlers pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Years of efforts to forge a two-state solution have made little progress, with the last effort at negotiations collapsing in April. Palestinians now see little choice but to make a unilateral push for statehood.

A total of 135 countries already recognise Palestine, including several east European countries that did so before they joined the EU.

The move drew immediate criticism from Israel, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman calling it a "wretched decision" that would bolster extremist Palestinian elements.

"The Swedish government should understand that Middle East relations are more complex than a piece of self-assembled Ikea furniture, and the matter should be handled with responsibility and sensitivity," Lieberman said in a foreign ministry statement.

The Palestinian leadership called on other countries to follow Sweden, saying that establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital would strengthen the chances for peace.

"This decision is a message to Israel and is an answer to its continued occupation of Palestinian land," said Nabeel Abu Rdeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Earlier this month the Palestinians' chief peace negotiator said a resolution would be put to the United Nations Security Council calling for a November 2017 deadline for the establishment of two states based on the boundaries that existed before the 1967 war.

With Britain's parliament having recognised Palestine in a non-binding vote earlier this month, and similar votes in the pipeline in Spain, France and Ireland, the Palestinians hope momentum in Europe is shifting.

Wallstrom said Sweden's move aimed at supporting moderate Palestinians and making their status more equal with that of Israel in peace negotiations, as well as giving hope to young people on both sides.

"We are taking the side of the peace process," she said.

The United States said earlier this month, when the Swedish move was in the works, that it believed international recognition of a Palestinian state would be premature. Statehood should come only through a negotiated outcome, it said.

The European Union said after the Swedish announcement on Thursday that the EU's objective was a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

"In order to achieve this, what is important is direct negotiations resume as soon as possible." European Commission spokesman Maya Kocijancic told a news conference. "As for the European Union position on recognition, the EU has said in the past that it would recognise a Palestinian state when appropriate."

Some EU states, which are closer to the Israeli position, were irritated by the Swedish move, diplomats in Brussels said.

Nonetheless, the Swedish move showed growing international frustration at the lack of progress, with continued Israeli settlement building on occupied land a particular point of concern. The Gaza war of July and August also refocussed attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The UN Under Secretary-General for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, said in New York on Wednesday that Israel's decision to accelerate planning for some 1,000 new settler homes in East Jerusalem raises serious doubts about the Israeli commitment to peace with the Palestinians.

The UN General Assembly approved the de facto recognition of the state of Palestine in 2012, but the European Union and most EU countries have yet to give official recognition. 

CAIRO — Human rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday it had satellite pictures indicating that rival factions in Libya had committed war crimes by shelling densely populated residential areas in the west of the oil-producing country.

Libya plunged into anarchy when an armed faction from the western city of Misrata seized Tripoli in August after fighting with militiamen from Zintan who had held the capital's airport since the 2011 revolt that overthrew Muammar Qadhafi.

The situation has calmed in Tripoli somewhat but factional fighting continues west of the capital as well as in the major eastern port city of Benghazi, scene of a separate showdown betwen pro-governmental forces and Islamist militants.

Citing satellite images shown on its website, Amnesty said that fighters from both sides had indiscriminately fired rockets and artillery shells into hospitals and residential districts in parts of Tripoli and the western Warshafena region.

"Lawless militias and armed groups on all sides of the conflict in western Libya are carrying out rampant human rights abuses, including war crimes," Amnesty said in a statement.

"Armed groups have possibly summarily killed, tortured or ill-treated detainees in their custody and are targeting civilians based on their origins or perceived political allegiances," the London-based global rights advocate said.

It named the Misrata-led Operation Dawn, which has seized Tripoli, and their main opponents from Zintan and the Warshafena regions as responsible for gross rights violations.

A hospital and its intensive-care unit in the Warshafena area was damaged during a heavy rocket attack, Amnesty said.

Its report was the second of its kind in as many months.

On September 9, New York-based Human Rights Watch said armed faction assaults on civilians and destruction of property over five weeks of fighting to control Tripoli could amount to war crimes.

The North African country has had two governments and parliaments since the Misrata militia seized Tripoli, setting up its own Cabinet and assembly and effectively splitting Libya.

Western powers and neighbours fear Libya may become a failed state, unable to rein in former rebels who ousted Qadhafi in 2011 but now have turned their guns on each other to control the vast desert state and its energy wealth.

Internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni said on Wednesday he was ready for peace talks with his Tripoli-based opponents if all sides made concessions.

Thinni's government has retreated 1,000km  to the east where the elected parliament is also now based.

BEIRUT — Lebanese troops detained 50 people in raids on towns and Syrian refugee camps in the north of the country, the army said on Thursday, part of a security crackdown after battles with Islamist gunmen over the weekend.

The army has mounted several raids since Islamist militants clashed with soldiers in and around the northern city of Tripoli from Friday to Sunday, some of the worst fighting to spill over to Lebanon from the Syrian civil war.

Soldiers moved on the towns of Al Minya, Mashta Hassan, Mashta Hammoud and refugee camps in the town of Behneen on Wednesday. The 50 detainees were mainly Syrian but included nine Lebanese and one Palestinian, an army statement said.

In one of the raids, soldiers seized a number of weapons including rocket-propelled grenade launchers as well as communications equipment, the statement said.

Soldiers also stopped and arrested a man at a checkpoint near the northern Lebanese border town of Arsal who confessed to being a weapons smuggler for militants in the area.

Lebanese officials fear Islamist insurgents from the Syrian war are trying to expand their influence into Sunni Muslim areas of northern Lebanon. They see a rising threat from groups such as Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front and the ultra hardline Islamic State (IS), who may try to open up new supply routes between Syria and Lebanon as winter unfolds.

On Thursday, a military court charged a man it said was an important member of IS, a judicial source said, adding that 17 others were also charged in absentia.

The man, Ahmed Salim Mikati, was arrested by the army in a raid in northern Lebanon last week and was described by the military forces as one of the group's most important operatives in the region.

Syria's war has sparked gunbattles, bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon and forced more than 1 million Syrian refugees into the small Mediterranean country, putting a strain on its shaky infrastructure.

IS has seized large tracts of territory in Syria and Iraq and is the target of a bombing campaign by US-led forces in both countries.

The Lebanese army said at the time of his arrest that Mikati, who is in his mid-40s, had set up IS cells in Lebanon, had recruited fighters and was planning to carry out a major "terrorist act" with his son.

Lebanon has suffered from a series of bomb attacks and clashes with links to Syria since the start of the year. The northern battles at the weekend killed at least 11 soldiers, eight civilians and 22 militants, according to security sources.

The fighting marked the worst Syria-related violence in Lebanon since early August, when Islamist insurgents affiliated to Al Nusra Front and IS staged an incursion into Arsal and took around 20 soldiers captive.

In the southeast close to the Syrian border, Lebanese security services arrested 12 Syrians on suspicion of belonging to militant groups involved in the fighting at Arsal and of entering the country illegally, the army said in a separate statement on Thursday.

CAIRO — Egypt on Thursday banned a pressure group that has pushed for the reinstatement of president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was overthrown by the army last year, dealing a new blow to the country's oldest Islamist movement.

Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood itself last year and dissolved its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, in August precluding it from running in parliamentary elections expected to take place in the next few months.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb issued a decree on Thursday dissolving the National Coalition to Support Legitimacy and Reject the Coup as well as its political arm, the Independence Party, in line with an earlier court ruling.

There was no immediate comment from the group.

The Coalition, which included Brotherhood supporters and other Islamist groups, was set up after then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi overthrew Morsi in July 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Egyptian authorities have since cracked down on the Brotherhood, declaring it a terrorist group, throwing thousands of its members in jail and killing hundreds on a single day in one of the bloodiest episodes in Egypt's modern history.

The pro-Morsi Coalition called for mass protests in the aftermath of that deadly crackdown in August last year, but was able to muster little support in the streets. Demonstrations have dwindled as the authorities have pursued their campaign against it.

The Coalition was conceived as a vehicle to bring together Egyptians from across the political spectrum who were opposed to the overthrow of a democratic president. In reality, it attracted individuals and groups sympathetic to the Brotherhood's brand of political Islam.

Two of the main Islamist parties that initially supported the Coalition have distanced themselves in recent months and its public statements have largely dried up.

Once among Egypt's best-organised and most successful political movements, the Brotherhood won Egypt's first parliamentary and presidential elections after the 2011 Tahrir Square revolt that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi ruled for a year, but angered many Egyptians by giving himself sweeping powers and mismanaging the economy.

In the wake of his overthrow, Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders were rounded up and hundreds have since been sentenced to death in mass trials that have drawn criticism from Western governments and human rights groups.

Sisi, who went on to win a presidential election in May, has vowed that the Brotherhood would cease to exist under his rule.

But many of the leading secular activists behind the 2011 uprising have also found themselves on the wrong side of the new political leadership, facing charges for taking part in peaceful demonstrations after Sisi banned unlicensed protests.

CAIRO — Hundreds of police surround its walls, patrolling in armoured vehicles with sirens blaring, while muscle-bound security guards man metal detectors, searching all who enter.

But this is not a military barracks or police station, it is Cairo University, where the government has tightened security as it seeks to avert another year of unrest on university campuses, among the last bastions of protest and dissent in Egypt.

The government has cracked down on critics since July 2013, when then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, after mass protests against his rule.

The Brotherhood was banned, thousands of its supporters were locked up and hundreds were killed when police broke up two protest camps last year. The net has since widened to include secular activists who played a leading role in the 2011 uprising that toppled long-serving autocrat Hosni Mubarak and ignited hopes for deeper change.

As the noose tightened around activists and the government banned unlicensed demonstrations, Egypt's state universities emerged as one of the few remaining spaces to express dissent.

Scores of students were killed last year in clashes with police and hundreds more were detained, leading the government to delay the start of the new academic year to mid-October while it put security procedures in place.

Sisi, now president, has warned that violence at universities would no longer be tolerated. After the long summer hiatus, increased security has come as a relief for many students who had found themselves traversing battlegrounds on their way to class.

But opponents accuse the government of trying to stamp out the last flickers of political expression. They criticise the moves as an attempt to return campuses to the grip of the security services, which ruled by fear under Mubarak.

"[The government] is eliminating politics inside the university and outside it," said Khaled Reda, a student leader at Zagazig University in the Nile Delta. "The situation inside the university will be even more difficult than it is outside."

Universities have banned partisan activity on campus, limiting extra-curricular pursuits to sports or culture.

A decree issued in June means appointments to positions including principal or faculty head must be approved by the president himself, an apparent effort to keep politically active academics from attaining senior positions.

Regulations introduced in September at the thousand-year-old Al Azhar University, among the world's most venerable centres of Islamic learning, give the administration new powers to sack or expel any faculty member or student involved in activities that damage university property, disrupt the learning process or incite violence.

The Cabinet has approved similar rules for all universities. Sisi has yet to sign the measures into law, but the plans have drawn criticism from students and professors active across the political spectrum who say they are too vague and leave the door open for principals to remove anyone they find too outspoken.

"It is clear that there is interference from the security services and the target is to suppress academic freedoms under the pretext of combating terrorism," Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor at Cairo University, told Reuters.

"We are against terrorism... but we are also against exploiting the current political situation and the state of polarisation to restore the [old] regime."

State of violence

Student activism has played a key role in Egyptian politics for the last century, fomenting unrest against the British occupation and the ensuing succession of Egyptian leaders hailing from the military, eventually helping topple Mubarak.

Prominent politicians launched their careers as student leaders, including former presidential candidates Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, a moderate Islamist, and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi.

Changes introduced in the aftermath of the 2011 revolt, saw academic staff electing faculty chiefs for the first time.

Under the new law, they must be named or approved by the president, giving top political leaders direct control over what are meant to be independent educational institutions.

Gaber Gad Nassar, president of Cairo University, denied the security measures were intended to restrict academic freedoms.

"There is a state of violence which we had to confront for the sake of protecting the students and the university facilities," he told Reuters in an interview at his office under the university's iconic dome.

"In what country is storming the university gates with a Molotov [cocktail] accommodated as academic freedom?"

The presence of security forces inside universities has been a contentious issue for years. Before the 2011 uprising, a special police force was dedicated to universities, crushing protest and monitoring dissent.

A court ruling in 2010, shortly before the Tahrir Square revolt, banned police from entering campuses. But after the spread of violence during the last academic year, the government allowed police to step on site at the request of principals.

Universities have since hired private security firms to patrol on campus, while police scour the perimeters for any signs of trouble among Egypt's 1.5 million university students.

"We will not deal except with those who try to disturb or terrify students," police general Medhat El Menshawi, the head of special operations at interior ministry, told Reuters outside the main gate of Al Azhar on the first day of the academic year.

Polarised campuses

Protests in the first few days lasted only a few minutes and resulted in the arrest of scores of students, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.

Clashes have since broken out, with police breaking up protests with tear gas, confiscating fireworks and defusing six makeshift bombs inside Mansoura University this week.

A bomb outside Cairo University as students left for the day wounded 11 people on October 22, among them police.

Students who are not politically active or who support the government say they just want the violence to end.

"Last year most students, including me, only came to the university for exams because of the disturbances," said Mohamed Salah, a medical student at Al Azhar University. "I am not for the university having political activity."

Activists worry the government could use the unrest as a pretext to interfere in student elections, as it did under Mubarak. Student unions play an important role in Egypt as a training ground for the next generation of political leaders.

Most student unions are currently inactive because so many members have already been detained. A new round of elections, usually held in the start of term, has not yet been announced.

Staff worry that the security net is slowly widening, and will eventually stifle any free expression.

"This is an assault on the independence of universities," Hani Al Husseini, a mathematics professor at Cairo University, said at a silent faculty protest on the second day of the term.

TEHRAN — Iran's President Hassan Rouhani suffered a fresh setback on Wednesday when the conservative-dominated parliament rejected his choice for science minister as too close to reformists.

Mahmoud Nili-Ahmadabadi, the pick for minister of science, research and technology, lost a vote of confidence by a margin of 79 to 160 following a parliamentary debate lasting almost three hours.

It was the third time since Rouhani took office that deputies rejected his candidate for the influential post that covers Iranian universities.

Lawmakers questioned Nili-Ahmadabadi over his stance on the mass protests which broke out after the June 2009 re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"None of my colleagues nor I have crossed the red lines set" by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he said.

"You will not find a single case of our having overstepped these limits," he said, questioned over a letter sent to Khamenei and signed by academics including himself to condemn attacks on student protesters inside university campuses.

"All my colleagues believe in the system [of the Islamic republic] and acted within the framework of the system," Nili-Ahmadabadi said.

Parliament in August sacked Rouhani's previous science minister, Reza Faraji Dana, for trying to recruit to his staff people accused of involvement in the 2009 protest movement, in which thousands of university students took part.

Reformers and moderates have accused conservatives, who viewed the protests as a "plot" against the Islamic system, of working to weaken Rouhani's government.

A Western diplomat in Tehran told AFP that the post of science minister was so sensitive because Iranian universities were "very politically active and difficult to manage".

Faraji Dana was already Rouhani's third choice as minister for science after parliament rejected the first two nominees.

The role of science minister will be held on an acting basis by Mohammad Ali Najafi, whose permanent appointment was also voted down by lawmakers.

Underlying tensions

The refusal to back Nili-Ahmadabadi demonstrates underlying tension between Iran's government and parliament, many members of which are wary of Rouhani's overtures of reform and frequently criticise the "invasion" of Western values in Iranian society.

Rouhani kicked off Wednesday's session by defending Nili-Ahmadabadi, adding that "universities need a peaceful atmosphere".

In response, conservatives warned of "sedition" — a term often used in reference to the 2009 protests.

Rouhani allies criticised the conservatives' stance.

"This question of sedition has become a stick through which fundamentalists and conservatives impose their will," university professor Ahmad Shirzad told the Aftab news agency, which is seen as close to Rouhani.

But the conservative camp blamed the government for its failure to field a suitable candidate for the sensitive role.

"If relations between the [government and parliament] were good, this candidate would have won a vote of confidence," said lawmaker Ali Motahari, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a pillar of the conservative bloc who is close to Khamenei, said an acceptable candidate would be "a competent manager" who could prevent a pro-reform enviroment taking hold again in universities.

KHARTOUM — Libya's internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni said on Wednesday he was ready for peace talks with rivals controlling the capital Tripoli and questioning his legitimacy if all sides made concessions.

The North African country has had two governments and parliaments since a militia group from the western city of Misrata seized the capital Tripoli in August, setting up its own Cabinet and assembly and effectively
splitting Libya.

Thinni, whose government has retreated 1,000km to the east where also the elected parliament is now based, set one condition for talks with his rivals.

"We open the doors of dialogue with our brothers on the condition that there be concessions from all sides," Thinni told reporters in Khartoum at the end of a three-day visit to Sudan.

Western powers worry that the Libya is heading towards civil war as authorities are too weak to control former rebels who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but now defy state authority to grab power and a share of oil revenues.

The United Nations has been trying to bring together the House of Representatives, the country's elected parliament allied to Thinni's government, for talks with Misrata members who have boycotted its sessions.

The talks do not include armed groups from Misrata. But since some lawmakers come from the western city linked to a rival parliament set up in Tripoli, diplomats hope the talks will lead to a broader dialogue.

Thinni did not say what concessions he was asking for or if armed groups would have a seat at the negotiating table.

UN Special Envoy Bernandino Leon said on Wednesday the oil-producing country is "very close to the point of no return".

The death toll from two weeks of street fighting between pro-government forces and Islamist armed groups in the eastern city of Benghazi has risen to 180, according to medics.

Thinni's trip to Sudan comes after his numerous accusations that Sudan, as well as Qatar, have been arming the Islamist militants that have forced his government to relocate

Khartoum and Doha have denied the allegations and Sudan's President Omar Bashir sounded a reconciliatory note during Thinni's visit.

SANLIURFA, Turkey — Heavily armed Iraqi peshmerga fighters were set Wednesday to reinforce fellow Kurds defending the Syrian border town of Kobani from the Islamic State group, as anti-regime rebels also joined the battle.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels crossed from Turkey to Kobani on Wednesday, officials said, to help Kurdish militia who have faced an onslaught by IS jihadists for weeks.

The peshmerga were expected to follow after a convoy of trucks carrying fighters, machineguns, heavy artillery and rocket launchers crossed the Iraqi-Turkish border early on Wednesday.

Flashing V for victory signs, the peshmerga received a euphoric welcome from Turkish Kurds who cheered and waved Kurdish flags, an AFP photographer reported.

Another group of several dozen peshmerga was already near the border after flying in from Iraq overnight to the Turkish city of Sanliurfa.

Escorted by Turkish armoured vehicles, the group boarded buses and headed towards the border on a road that security forces closed to journalists.

“They are waiting for the land contingent to arrive, so that they will cross together depending on the situation,” a local Turkish official said.

Under heavy pressure from the United States, Turkey announced last week it would allow fighters from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish province to cross its territory to join the fight for Kobani.

Iraqi Kurdish officials said up to 200 fighters would be sent.

The town has become an important symbol in the battle against IS, an extremist Sunni Muslim group that has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.

Kobani’s Kurdish defenders have been helped by weapon drops and intensified US-led air strikes against jihadist positions in and around the town, but until now they have received little in the way of reinforcement.

‘Peshmerga will
arrive soon’ 

Turkey has been wary of giving support to the Kurdish militia force in Kobani, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has close links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has fought a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Ankara has instead pushed for Syrian rebel forces to help the town’s defenders, and on Wednesday a first contingent was reported to have crossed over.

The local Turkish official told AFP that a group of 150 FSA fighters had entered the town from Turkey overnight.

Senior Syrian Kurdish official Newaf Khalil confirmed the FSA fighters had arrived in Kobani but said they numbered only about 50. He said they were equipped with light arms and machine guns.

“This crossing, as with the crossing of any military group to Kobani, was done in coordination with the YPG... They are the ones who make decisions on the ground,” Khalil said.

“The peshmerga will arrive soon,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said Kobani’s Kurdish defenders were engaged in fierce clashes with the jihadists in various areas including the town centre.

Coalition air strikes hit IS positions in the town’s northeast not far from the main border crossing with Turkey, said the observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

IS assault on oil field

The observatory said IS jihadists had also attacked an oil and gas field held by President Bashar Al Assad’s regime, killing 30 pro-regime gunmen and security guards.

IS was in control of parts of the Shaer field in Homs province, the observatory said, adding that an unknown number of jihadists were also killed in the assault on Tuesday.

Fighting continued in the area on Wednesday, as pro-government Syrian media reported that IS had seized control of two oil wells and a hill.

IS has targeted oil and gas facilities in Iraq and Syria as it seeks funds for its fight to seize territory.

Washington has forged an alliance of Western and Arab nations to battle IS and the coalition has carried out a barrage of air strikes on the group in Iraq and Syria.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that US cargo planes had also parachuted aid to a beleaguered Sunni tribe in western Iraq’s Anbar province.

American C-130 aircraft carried out an air drop of food near Al-Asad air base early on Monday at the request of the Baghdad government, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters.

Dropping humanitarian aid by air to Anbar province underscored the Iraqi government’s difficulties in the west of the country and suggested Baghdad troops were not able to move safely over roads in the area.

The IS militants have been pushing back Iraqi forces in the west over the past month, but the Pentagon said Iraqi troops had made gains elsewhere in Iraq over the previous 36 hours.

In central Iraq, north of Baghdad, Iraqi forces had expanded control of territory near the Baiji oil refinery and were “making progress”, Kirby said.

Iraqi forces also had advanced against IS militants west of Baghdad, said Kirby, without providing more details.