Region

SANAA — Shiite rebels seized a city in central Yemen Wednesday seen as a strategic link to the south, further widening their territory following deadly clashes with tribesmen, security and tribal sources said.

Yemen has been sliding into turmoil since an Arab Spring-inspired uprising ousted strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012, with armed rivals including the Houthi Shiite rebels and Al Qaeda battling each other.

The Houthis took control of Radmah — located on a road linking the capital Sanaa with the main southern city Aden — on Wednesday after 24 hours of fighting against local tribesmen, a security official told AFP.

Radmah is part of Ibb province, where the rebels have been locked in deadly battles with mostly-Sunni tribesmen this month.

The Houthis easily overran the capital in September before moving on to the Red Sea port city of Hudeida as well as Shiite-populated Dhamar and the provincial capital of Ibb.

The rebels, from the mountainous north, are seeking greater political clout in impoverished Yemen, which is located next to oil kingpin Saudi Arabia and key shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden.

Yemen is a key US ally that has allowed Washington to conduct drone strikes against Al Qaeda on its territory, and the fighting has raised fears of it collapsing into a failed state.

Radmah is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Al Islah (Reform) Party, whose supporters have been resisting the Houthi advance.

Tribal sources said that nine fighters from both sides were killed during the battle for the city.

In the provincial capital Ibb further southwest, dozens of armed rebels stormed the main security headquarters overnight and members of the security forces fled, an official said.

With the fall of Radmah, the Houthis now control Ibb province with the exception of Udain, which is in the hands of Al Qaeda and allied tribesmen, a local official said.

In Rada, in the neighbouring province of Baida, 12 Houthis were killed in an attack by Al-Qaeda suspects, tribal sources said.

The Houthis, who had long been concentrated in their northern highlands where Shiites form a majority, have been facing fierce resistance from local tribesmen as well as Al Qaeda.

The rebels appear undeterred by a weekend speech by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi who urged the Houthis to "immediately pull out" of all seized areas including the capital.

But political sources in Sanaa told AFP that tribes allied to the Shiite rebels were expected to meet in Sanaa on Friday following calls by rebel leader Abdulmalik Al Houthi to discuss ways to return the country to normality.

ISMAILIYA, Egypt — Egypt began clearing residents from its border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to create a buffer zone following some of the worst anti-state violence since President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown last year.

A day after being ordered by the army to move, many in the area had already packed their belongings and begun to leave when an announcement from Cairo made the eviction official.

"If any resident resists leaving the area in a cordial manner, their property ... will be forcibly seized," read the decree signed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb.

General Abdel Fattah Harhour, the governor of increasingly lawless northern Sinai region, told journalists the departing residents would be compensated for their lost homes.

Egypt declared a state of emergency in the border area after at least 33 security personnel were killed on Friday in two attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, a remote but strategic region bordering Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

It also accelerated plans to create a 500-metre deep buffer zone by clearing houses and trees and destroying tunnels it says are used to smuggle arms from Gaza to militants in Sinai.

A teacher at a border area school said the government, which approved the buffer zone plan at its Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, should have given residents more notice and compensated them before asking them to leave.

"What is happening will reduce people's love for their nation and make them lose trust in the government," said the teacher, who declined to be named.

One resident said people in the area had been given three options: Money to compensate for their property, an apartment in a nearby village or a plot of land on which to build.

Each displaced family is due to receive 900 Egyptian pounds ($125) to help pay for three months rent elsewhere, Harhour said, while compensation for lost property is being calculated.

Increasing army control

Border residents say about 680 houses are set to be demolished. Security forces have previously destroyed about 200 houses on the border after discovering entrances inside to smuggling tunnels leading into the Gaza Strip .

Security sources said residents living within 300 metres of the border were being evicted in the first phase of the plan. The next phase will cover another 200 metre-deep strip.

Residents of Sinai, which has long been neglected by the state, say they rely on the tunnels for their livelihoods. But Egyptian security forces see them as a security threat and regularly destroy them.

As well as clearing a border strip, Egypt has expanded the jurisdiction of military courts to try civilians who block roads or damage state facilities and has authorised the army to help guard roads, bridges, oil fields and other public installations.

No group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack but similar operations have been claimed by Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, Egypt’s most active Sinai-based jihadist group.

Officials say militants operating in Sinai are inspired by Islamic State, the Al Qaeda offshoot now targeted by US-led air strikes in Iraq and Syria.

A commander from Ansar has told Reuters that IS has advised it on operating more effectively.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who overthrew Morsi last year, has since cracked down on the former president’s Muslim Brotherhood, banning it and jailing thousands of its members.

Militant attacks in Sinai have increased since Morsi’s overthrow. The Brotherhood, which says it is a peaceful movement, has distanced itself from the violence and condemned Friday’s attack. 

MARIEFRED, Sweden — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said Wednesday she is giving her entire winnings from a children's rights award to help rebuild schools in war-ravaged Gaza.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which has launched a massive $1.6 billion appeal for aid for Gaza, said she would be donating all $50,000 of her World's Children's Prize.

"This money will totally go to the rebuilding of schools for children in Gaza, so I think it will definitely help those children to continue their education, to get quality education," the 17-year-old Pakistani told a press conference in Sweden at the awards ceremony.

"We already know how children have suffered in Gaza from conflicts and war, so those children need our support right now, because they are going through many difficult situations."

The money will be donated via UNRWA to help rebuild 65 schools in the Gaza Strip.

The tiny Palestinian territory was devastated in the July-August conflict this year between Israel and Hamas-led Gaza militants.

Nearly 2,00 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians, as well as 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

The conflict also destroyed tens of thousands of houses in the impoverished strip, as well as key infrastructure, and left some 100,000 Gazans homeless.

Earlier this month UNRWA issued its largest ever appeal for $1.6 billion (1.3 billion euros) to help rehabilitate Gaza.

Malala, the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner, is also the first child to win the World's Children's Prize — apart from Anne Frank who was honoured posthumously.

She was shot in the head in 2012 by the Taliban near her home in Pakistan's Swat Valley for her advocacy of girls' right to go to school.

Organisers of the Worlds' Children's Prize said she was honoured for her "courageous and dangerous fight for girls' right to education".

Honorary awards this year also went to former Microsoft executive John Wood, founder of the Room to Read literacy group, and Indira Ranamagar from Nepal, for her work for the children of prisoners.

South Africa's anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, his widow Graca Machel and former UN chief Kofi Annan have previously been honoured.

The award was created in 2000 and is part a worldwide educational programme in which children learn about global issues, democracy and their own rights.

MOGADISHU — UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Wednesday that Somalia risks returning to famine without urgent aid, as he visited the war-torn country three years since more than 250,000 people died of hunger.

Ban, along with World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim, met Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud inside the fortified airport zone in Mogadishu, guarded by troops from the 22,000-strong UN-backed African Union force.

But Ban, who was dressed in a suit and not the bullet-proof jacket he wore on his last visit during the famine in 2011, said Somalia had still made "remarkable progress" since he had last been there.

"Over three million Somalis are in need of humanitarian assistance and unfortunately that number is growing," Ban told reporters.

"I urge donors to step up contributions to avert another famine in Somalia."

The United Nations says it has just over a third of the cash it needs, having received $318 million of the $933 million it has appealed for.

"Slowly but surely, Somalia is waking from a long nightmare," Ban said, but adding he was "very concerned" about the humanitarian crisis and the shortfall in funding.

Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab insurgents have in recent months lost swathes of territory and towns to the AU force and Somali government troops, and their leader was killed in a US air strike in September, but they still remain a potent threat.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An anonymous US official's reported description of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "chickenshit", or worthless coward, drew a sharp response on Wednesday from the Israeli leader —no stranger to acrimony with the Obama administration.

The American broadside, in an interview in The Atlantic magazine, followed a month of heated exchanges between the Netanyahu government and Washington over settlement-building in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"The thing about Bibi is, he's a chickenshit," the unidentified official was quoted as saying, using Netanyahu's nickname and a slang insult certain to redden the ears of the US-educated former commando.

"The good thing about Netanyahu is that he's scared to launch wars," the official said, alluding to past hints of possible Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear programme. "The bad thing about him is that he won't do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states."

Netanyahu, the official was reported to have said, is interested only in "protecting himself from political defeat... He's got no guts".

Israeli leaders usually do not respond to comments by unidentified officials. But Netanyahu addressed those remarks directly in opening a memorial ceremony in parliament for an Israeli Cabinet minister assassinated by a Palestinian in 2001.

"Our supreme interests, chiefly the security and unity of Jerusalem, are not the main concern of those anonymous officials who attack us and me personally, as the assault on me comes only because I defend the State of Israel," Netanyahu said.

"Despite all of the attacks I suffer, I will continue to defend our country. I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel," he said.

Such pledges by Netanyahu have resonated among Israeli voters, even amid fears his strained relations with US President Barack Obama could ultimately weaken support from Israel's main diplomatic ally and arms provider.

After Netanyahu's speech, Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, dismissed the purported slur, denying that it reflected how the Obama administration felt about the Israeli leader.

"Certainly that's not the administration's view, and we think such comments are inappropriate and counter-productive."

Some Israeli pundits predict an Israeli election in 2015, two years early, speculation seemingly supported by increasingly vocal challenges to his policies from senior ministers to the left and right of him within the coalition government.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose ultranationalist Jewish Home Party belongs to the coalition but who has had testy relations with Netanyahu, defended him on Wednesday.

"The prime minister of Israel is not a private person. He is the leader of the Jewish state and the entire Jewish people. Cursing the prime minister and calling him names is an insult not just to him but to the millions of Israeli citizens and Jews across the globe," he wrote on Faceboook.

Friction

Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog sounded a more critical note, telling Channel Two television: "Netanyahu is acting like a political pyromaniac, and he has brought our relations with the United States to an unprecedented low."

In a series of recent speeches widely seen in Israel as setting the stage for a possible poll, Netanyahu has highlighted growing security concerns in the wake of the July-August war with Hamas in Gaza and regional unrest that has brought Islamist militants to Israel's northern border with Syria.

Israel also worries that US-led world powers will agree to what it deems insufficient curbs on the nuclear programme of its arch-foe, Iran, in talks with a looming November 24 deadline.

Fears of a possible new Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, have been stoked in Israel by now-daily rock-throwing by Palestinians in Jerusalem amid Muslim fears of an end to an Israeli de facto ban on Jewish worship at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the holy city where Biblical temples once stood.

Netanyahu has pledged to preserve the "status quo" at the site, a commitment Palestinian leaders view with suspicion.

But drawing Palestinian outrage and a State Department accusation that Israel was distancing peace, Netanyahu pledged on Monday to fast-track plans for 1,000 new settler housing units in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu described such criticism as being "detached from reality", saying Jews had a right to live anywhere in Jerusalem, regarded by Israel as its united capital — a claim not internationally recognised.

Baskey, the US spokesman, acknowledged longstanding policy differences between Israel and Washington over settlements. "Obviously, despite the extremely close relationship between the US and Israel, we do not agree on every issue," he said.

"For instance we have repeatedly made clear the United States' longstanding view that settlement activity is illegitimate and complicates efforts to achieve a two-state solution." Despite these differences "the US-Israel relationship remains as strong as ever", Baskey added.

Most countries and the World Court deem the settlements Israel has built in areas occupied in a 1967 war to be illegal. Israel disputes this, and has settled 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, among 2.4 million Palestinians.

TUNIS — Foreign observers on Tuesday praised Tunisia's landmark "free" elections, after the Islamists conceded defeat in a vote that raised hopes of a peaceful transition in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

The Islamist Ennahda Party, which had steered the North African nation through the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, congratulated its secular rival Nidaa Tounes which it said would be the largest party in parliament.

Ennahda called on its supporters to celebrate "democracy" and hundreds rallied outside its Tunis headquarters despite the defeat.

Tunisia is the "only tree still standing in a devastated forest", its leader Rached Ghannouchi told the crowd, alluding to other countries where the hopes of the Arab Spring uprisings have given way to conflict or renewed repression.

The European Union's observer mission hailed the conduct of Sunday's election, which took place against a backdrop of tight security because of fears of extremist attacks.

“The Tunisian people have reinforced their commitment to democracy with credible and transparent elections that gave Tunisians of all political tendencies a free vote,” mission chief Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck told a news conference.

Political horse-trading 

With neither party expected to win an outright majority, the political horse-trading began ahead of the announcement of full results of polls, in which an array of smaller parties also fielded candidates.

Nidaa Tounes leader Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics, vowed to form a coalition with other parties to take the country forward.

“We took the decision in advance that Nidaa Tounes would not govern alone, even if we won an absolute majority,” Essebsi told Al Hiwar Al Tounsi television.

“We will govern with those closest to us, with the democratic family, so to speak,” he said.

During the campaign he did not rule out sharing power with the Islamists if necessary.

“That will depend on the results,” he said. “Once the results are final we will think about that question.”

Essebsi has also said he would stand in the November 23 presidential election, and is considered to be a front-runner.

Election organisers have until Thursday to announce the outcome. Projections suggest that Nidaa Tounes will win around 80 of the 217 seats in parliament, against around 70 for Ennahda.

Under Tunisia’s electoral system, the party that wins without an outright majority is given a mandate to form a coalition government.

‘Fair play’ 

Ennahda’s admission of defeat was in stark contrast to neighbouring Libya, where Islamists led a militia takeover of the capital Tripoli after they were defeated in a June election.

Ghannouchi “congratulates B Sebsi [Essebsi] on his party’s win,” his daughter Soumaya said on Twitter.

La Presse de Tunisie, the country’s main French-language newspaper, congratulated the Islamists on their sense of “fair play”.

“That they conceded defeat and congratulated their opponents is comforting and reassuring in a country... still seeking the anchor of democratic traditions,” it said.

Even before the election, Ennahda had called for a government of national unity.

Ghannouchi said compromise and consensus were what had spared Tunisia the devastating violence that has shattered other Arab Spring countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen.

“Whoever comes out top, Nidaa or Ennahda, the main thing is that Tunisia needs a government of national unity, a political consensus,” he told Hannibal television.

“This is the policy that has saved the country from what other Arab Spring countries are going through.”

Ennahda has not put forward its own candidate for the presidential election, keeping its options open over whom it will back.

There had been fears of violence by Islamist militant groups as voters went to the polls, and about 80,000 troops were deployed to provide security.

A policeman and six suspected militants were killed when police besieged then stormed a house in a Tunis suburb late last week.

While Tunisia is seen as a beacon of hope compared with other Arab Spring countries, its transition has been tested by militant attacks and social unrest.

Poverty and unemployment, which were key factors that sparked the 2011 revolt, remain unresolved and the election campaign was fought on the axis of the economy and security.

Erbil, Iraq — Dozens of Kurdish peshmerga fighters left a base in northern Iraq on Tuesday headed for the battleground Syrian town of Kobani, an AFP journalist reported.

The town on the Turkish border has become a crucial front in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, which overran large parts of Iraq in June and also holds significant territory in Syria.

The AFP journalist saw dozens of military trucks leaving the base northeast of Kurdish regional capital Erbil from which officers said fighters bound for Kobani would depart.

The convoy included two towed artillery pieces and a number of covered trucks, some of them carrying rocket launchers.

Earlier, the fighters loaded machine guns and mortars into the trucks and packed bags for the trip.

"Forty vehicles carrying machine guns and weapons and artillery with 80 of the peshmerga forces will head to Dohuk [province] and then cross the border today," a Kurdish officer told AFP.

A further 72 will fly to Turkey early on Wednesday, the officer said.

Halgord Hekmat, the spokesman of the Kurdish ministry responsible for the peshmerga, had said the fighters are "support forces" and will be armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket launchers.

The deployment will be open-ended, with peshmerga minister Mustafa Qader saying: "They will remain there until they are no longer needed."

Last week, under heavy US pressure, Turkey unexpectedly announced it would allow the peshmerga fighters to cross its territory to join the fight for Kobani.

The main Syrian Kurdish fighting force in the town, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), has close links with the outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Ankara had previously resisted calls to allow in reinforcements.

The deployment, which comes at a time when Kurdish forces are still engaged in heavy fighting against IS militants in Iraq, stretches the bounds of regional autonomy, and had previously drawn flak from some federal lawmakers.

But the Iraqi premier and other senior federal officials have been publicly silent on the issue, indicating their at least tacit acceptance of the deployment.

Lawmaker Samira Al Mussawi, a member of the national parliament’s foreign relations committee, said it is “illegal and unconstitutional”.

And MP Alia Nsayif said in an e-mail that the deployment violates several articles of Iraq’s constitution.

She cited articles naming the prime minister as commander in chief of the armed forces and outlining powers reserved for the central government, including formulating foreign and national security policy.

But a Kurdish member of parliament earlier defended the deployment as justified.

“For us, it is a humanitarian matter — there are people besieged by barbaric forces and it is up to all communities and people to defend” them, MP Shirko Mohammed said.

And MP Hakim Al Zamili, a senior leader of one of the country’s largest Shiite militias, said the deployment is “natural” and “in the interest of the Iraqi people, because the Iraqi and Syrian arenas are one”.

KHARTOUM — Sudan began registration on Tuesday for its first elections since the south of the country won independence, but many voters said they would ignore polls they believe are guaranteed to extend the 25-year rule of President Omar Hassan Al Bashir.

Wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, Bashir had promised to step down in April’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

But the ruling National Congress Party named him on Saturday as its presidential candidate, dashing hopes that the vote would mark a new start for a country facing diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and armed insurrection in five provinces.

Some Sudanese, alarmed by the chaos that has engulfed Libya and Syria, say they would prefer stagnation under Bashir to an unknown future if he stepped aside. Even so, they may not bother to sign up to parliamentary and presidential elections whose results they say are a foregone conclusion.

“I will not participate because they are not free elections. The outcome is known and Bashir is the next president,” 70-year-old pensioner Ibrahim Ali said after Bashir’s renomination.

Bashir, a former military commander who rules in an alliance with hardline Islamists, has contested three elections since coming to power in 1989.

He won 68 per cent of the vote in the last polls in 2010, according to government figures, though international monitors cast doubt on the fairness of that election.

This time, the economy will play a much bigger role for those who choose to go to the polls. Sudan’s economy has been in free fall since the oil-rich southern third of the country seceded in 2011 and the government has slashed services and subsidies as its foreign exchange reserves shrink.

With inflation at 40 per cent, voters are concerned with finding jobs and feeding their families.

“I am sure the elections will not change anything in my life and will not provide us with jobs after graduation,” university student Samia Ibrahim said. “Bashir is the next president and my voice does not mean anything. Can anyone but Bashir win?”

With the three main opposition parties boycotting the elections along with smaller liberal and communist parties, many are asking the same question. Candidate registration will take place at the end of December, when it will become clearer who will participate.

Leading opposition figure Sadiq Al Mahdi repeated his call for a boycott on Tuesday, and suggested that Bashir should be offered the chance to avoid trial by the International Criminal Court (ICC) if he relinquished power.

Bashir has denied ICC charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide relating to the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, and refuses to go before the Hague-based court.

His government has dismissed concerns that the April election results are a foregone conclusion.

“Today we begin the electoral process, and we are committed to transparency and neutrality,” Mukhtar Al Asim, president of the national election commission said.

The commission said it hoped to attract wider participation this time round, with registration open for the next two weeks.

CAIRO — Egypt’s ultimatum to thousands of non-governmental organisations to register with the government by November 10 will deal a death blow to the country’s civil society, activists say.

Armed with a law from the era of Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic president ousted in 2011, the new authorities in Egypt are aiming to keep tabs on the activities and funding of NGOs by forcing them to register.

The move comes nearly three years after Egypt’s then military rulers infuriated Washington by raiding five foreign NGOs and putting on trial their staff, including the son of Ray LaHood, the US transport secretary at the time.

Rights activists say it is part of an ongoing crackdown against supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, as well as the government’s secular opponents.

“This is an attempt to silence the last voice speaking against the repressive measures of the police state,” one of them, lawyer Gamal Eid, told AFP.

Several Egyptian and international NGOs, which have been operating as law firms or private companies, have frequently denounced the crackdown.

Since Morsi’s ouster last year, at least 1,400 supporters of the Islamist and his Muslim Brotherhood have been killed and thousands jailed.

Dozens of secularists, including prominent anti-Mubarak activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, have also been jailed for holding unauthorised protests.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and supporters of the former army chief say democracy cannot come at the expense of stability, and that Egypt needs a firm hand to get back on its feet after almost four years of turbulence.

In August, the authorities barred Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth from entering the country.

Roth had been due to present a report that charged that the dispersals by police of protests at two Cairo squares in August 2013, in which hundreds of Morsi supporters died, were likely “crimes against humanity”.

Some rights groups have already shut their offices in Egypt, including a democracy watchdog founded by former US president Jimmy Carter.

The Carter Centre said it closed its Egypt field office this month because “the current environment in Egypt is not conducive to genuine democratic and civic participation”.

‘Goal same as Mubarak’s’ 

Experts say the registration of NGOs would allow the government to closely monitor their activities and sources of funding, especially if they came from abroad.

The move would also give the authorities means to quickly dissolve NGOs if required.

The authorities could “interfere in all activities of these associations in detail”, said Mohamed Zaree of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Activists are also concerned about a new law that is still being drawn up.

According to a draft that the authorities circulated to NGOs, the government proposes setting up an inter-ministerial commission including security representatives to oversee nearly 47,000 NGOs in the country.

The commission would supervise foreign funds received by Egyptian NGOs, and also vet foreign ones that want to set up chapters in the country.

The new law would “respect international standards,” said Khaled Soltan, an official at the social solidarity ministry.

“We are neither against human rights, nor against organisations that defend them... but any NGO should be subjected to administrative supervision.”

In December 2011, the military junta that ruled after Mubarak raided and closed 17 Egyptian and foreign NGOs.

Forty-three of their staff, among them foreigners, were sentenced to prison after being convicted of working for organisations that had operated without licences and received illicit funds.

Most of the foreigners were sentenced in absentia, including Sam LaHood, the son of the US transport secretary, who was able to fly out of the country after a travel ban was lifted.

“If Egypt is serious about moving forward from its recent past, the authorities must turn away from this law and instead enable an environment for NGOs to ensure human rights are protected and promoted,” Amnesty International’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said in May.

Activists who believe these NGOs have played a vital role in exposing human rights violations in Egypt say the future of these groups is at stake.

“The goal is the same as during Mubarak’s rule, to control organisations defending human rights with an iron fist,” said Ehab Radi, a lawyer at the Arab House for Human Rights.

BEIRUT — Lebanon is negotiating with Sunni militants to prevent the killing of two captured soldiers, the country's health minister told Reuters on Tuesday.

Wael Abu Faour would not say which group he was talking with but both Islamic State and Al Qaeda's Syria wing, the Nusra Front, have captured Lebanese soldiers. Three have been killed.

"We received a specific request from the kidnappers in exchange for halting the execution of the soldiers... Matters are going in a positive direction," he said, without giving details on the demand.

Many Sunni Syrian rebels and hardline Lebanese Sunni Islamists accuse Lebanon's army of working with the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah, which has sent fighters to aid Syrian President Bashar Assad, a member of the Shiite-derived Alawite minority.

A two-day battle over the weekend between Sunni militants and the army ended on Monday when government forces retook neighbourhoods in the coastal city of Tripoli.

At least 11 soldiers, eight civilians and 22 militants were killed in the fighting. The army was sweeping the area for mines on Tuesday, a security source said.

The army said in a statement on Tuesday that it had arrested 33 people "suspected of belonging to terrorist groups”.