Region

RAMALLAH — Washington confirmed Friday that a Palestinian teenager shot dead by Israeli troops was a US citizen — the second time last week an American child has fallen victim to the ongoing conflict.

The army said that the youth killed Friday had been about to hurl a petrol bomb at Israeli motorists near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

An army spokeswoman said troops posted at the village of Silwad to protect a major road widely used by Jewish settlers in the occupied territory spotted a person about to hurl a petrol bomb.

"The forces fired immediately to neutralise the danger... and confirmed a hit," she said.

Palestinian officials named the youth as Orwa Hammad, 17, saying he was shot during a stone-throwing protest against troops, a regular occurrence at Silwad, near Ofra settlement.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US "expresses its deepest condolences to the family of a US citizen minor who was killed by the Israeli Defence Forces".

Calling for "a speedy and transparent investigation", Psaki said officials from the US consulate in Jerusalem were in touch with the family of the slain youth.

"We continue to urge all parties to help restore calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of the tragic recent incidents in Jerusalem and the West Bank," said Psaki.

Locals in Silwad said Hammad's father lives in the United States.

Also on Friday, Israeli forces in occupied east Jerusalem clashed with Palestinians, firing tear gas to disperse stone-throwing protesters.

They were deployed in force ahead of weekly Muslim prayers as the army restricted access to a flashpoint mosque, after a deadly Palestinian attack sent tensions soaring.

Nightly clashes

Clashes have broken out nightly since a Palestinian ploughed his car into a crowd of Israelis on Wednesday, killing a baby who Washington said was a US citizen, and injuring six other people before he was shot dead by police.

The security presence was boosted across East Jerusalem including the Old City, security spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Palestinian men under the age of 40 were not allowed into Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound for Friday prayers because of fears of further unrest, she said.

The compound is the scene of frequent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police.

The plaza houses the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site. It is also revered by Jews as the location of the biblical Jewish temples, considered Judaism's holiest place.

Prayers concluded on Friday afternoon with clashes in the Wadi Joz neighbourhood north of the Old City.

Palestinians there threw stones and fired flares at Israeli forces, who dispersed them and arrested three demonstrators, Samri said.

An AFP correspondent said undercover security personnel in the crowd of Palestinians made the arrests.

There were also clashes in East Jerusalem's Issawiya neighbourhood, where AFP photographers saw police fire bursts of tear gas to break up a crowd of Palestinians who hurled rocks and burned tyres on the streets.

There were no reports of injuries on either side.

Samri said around 8,000 people took part in prayers at Al Aqsa, with hundreds of others in areas around the site.

On Thursday night, two Palestinians were arrested during clashes in the Old City in which stones, bottles and flares were thrown or fired at police, who used unspecified "riot dispersal" weapons, Samri said.

The fighting has shaken East Jerusalem on an almost daily basis since the murder of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists in July.

Clashes intensified during the 50-day Gaza war.

Israeli forces branded Wednesday's incident — in which 21-year-old Abdelrahman Shaludi from Silwan in East Jerusalem drove at high speed into a crowd of Israelis — a "terror attack".

Silwan — a densely populated Arab neighbourhood on a steep hillside just south of the Old City — has been the focus of Palestinian anger over Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that any further attacks would be met with "the harshest response".

SANAA — Sunni Al Qaeda militants killed dozens of Yemeni Shiite rebels on Saturday in the city of Radda in central Yemen as they pushed back the rebels' advance on the Al Qaeda stronghold, tribal sources said.

Shiite Houthi rebel forces have advanced into central and western Yemen since they seized control of the country's capital Sanaa on September 21, taking on Sunni tribesmen and Al Qaeda militants, who regard the Houthis as heretics.

Fighting has flared in several provinces, alarming neighbour Saudi Arabia, the world's No. 1 oil exporter.

In Radda, in central Al Bayda province, clashes intensified on Tuesday with 30 Houthis and 18 Sunni militants killed in bloody clashes.

On Saturday, Al Qaeda fighters surrounded the Houthis on a mountain in Radda at dawn and killed dozens of them and took 12 prisoners forcing them to retreat to Damar province although clashes continued in other parts of the city, tribal sources said.

The Sunni militants seized at least six armoured vehicles and some weapons from the Shi'ite rebels as they retreated, the sources said.

Houthi leaders did not comment on the incident but one leader told Reuters that the reports of what Al Qaeda militants grabbed from their fighters were exaggerated.

Radda, with a population of 60,000, has long been a stronghold of Al Qaeda, which has drawn many fighters from local tribes who oppose the new presence of the Houthi rebels in the mainly Sunni-populated region.

The northern-based Shiite Houthis established themselves as power brokers in Yemen last month by capturing Sanaa against scant resistance from the weak administration of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who appears not to have a full grip on the country's fractious military.

CAIRO — A state of emergency came into force Saturday across much of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula after 30 soldiers were killed in a suicide car bombing by suspected jihadists.

It was the deadliest attack on the country’s security forces since the army deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, to the fury of his supporters.

The state of emergency, which took effect from 0300 GMT in the north and centre of the Sinai, will remain in place for three months, the president’s office said.

A curfew is in force from 5pm to 7am.

Egypt also announced it would close the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, the only route into the Palestinian territory not controlled by Israel.

“The army and the police will take all necessary measures to tackle the dangers of terrorism and its financing, to preserve the security of the region... and protect the lives of citizens,” the presidential decree said.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was due to meet on Saturday to decide what measures to implement under the state of emergency.

The bombing on Friday was carried out by a suspected jihadist who rammed a checkpoint with his explosives-packed vehicle, security officials said.

The attack, in an agricultural area northwest of El Arish, the main town in north Sinai, also left 29 other soldiers wounded, medics said.

A senior army official and five officers were said to be among those wounded.

Gunmen also shot dead an officer and wounded two soldiers on Friday at another checkpoint south of El Arish, security officials said.

Jihadists in the peninsula have killed scores of policemen and soldiers since Morsi’s overthrow to avenge a bloody police crackdown on his supporters.

Tourism hit 

The attacks have dealt a further blow to a tourism industry already reeling after a 2011 uprising that overthrew long-time president Hosni Mubarak.

While south Sinai is dotted with tourist resorts on the Red Sea — a popular destination for scuba divers — the lawless north is a base for militants who have launched a wave of attacks, mostly targeting security forces.

The peninsula’s southern coastline has been largely spared from the violence rocking the country since the 2011 revolt, partly thanks to security checkpoints in the region.

But it has not been completely untouched by the militants.

In February, a suicide bomber killed three South Korean tourists in an attack on a bus in the south Sinai resort of Taba that was claimed by Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, the most active militant group in Egypt.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the army chief who toppled Morsi and later won elections, has pledged to eradicate the jihadists.

After Friday’s attack, Sisi announced three days of national mourning and summoned a meeting of the national defence council — the country’s highest security body — to discuss the killings, his office said.

International condemnation

The European Union and United States both denounced the attack.

“A prosperous and dynamic Egypt requires an environment of security and stability,” the State Department said.

It was the latest in a string of bloody attacks against security forces in Egypt.

In August 2013, just weeks after the army ousted Morsi, 25 soldiers were killed in the Sinai when gunmen opened fire at two buses transporting troops with automatic rifles and rocket launchers.

In July this year, 22 border guards were killed in the western desert near the border with Libya.

From the desert and mountainous Sinai, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel, the attacks have also extended to the capital and the Nile Delta to the north.

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis tried to assassinate the interior minister in Cairo last year with a car bomb.

The group has expressed support for Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in Iraq and Syria, although it has not formally pledged its allegiance.

While militants have been killed or arrested, the army has been unable so far to crush them despite a massive operation in which it has deployed attack helicopters and tanks.

The latest bombing came after an Egyptian military court sentenced to death seven members of Ansar Beit Al Maqdis on Tuesday for deadly attacks on the army.

Since Morsi’s ouster, more than 1,400 of his supporters have been killed in a crackdown by the authorities.

Over 15,000 others have been jailed, including Morsi and the top leadership of his Muslim Brotherhood, and more than 200 sentenced to death in speedy trials.

TUNIS (AFP) — Tunisian police killed six suspected militants, five of them women, in a raid on a suburban house Friday after a 28-hour standoff, fanning tensions ahead of a landmark election.

Two children were hospitalised after security forces stormed the home near Tunis, a day after a policeman was killed in a firefight with the suspects, interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said.

He said their father, whose earlier arrest led police to the house, was a member of Ansar Al Sharia, a jihadist group branded a terrorist group by Washington.

The North African nation is preparing to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers and police for its first parliamentary polls Sunday since an uprising three years ago that inspired the Arab Spring revolutions.

The authorities have expressed fears that “terrorists” will seek to disrupt the election.

Authorities had appealed for the children and women to be allowed to leave the house in Oued Ellil, giving the gunmen an ultimatum to surrender.

“Special forces approached the kitchen where the terrorists were hiding,” Aroui told reporters at the scene.

“The women came out of the kitchen firing,” he added, describing both the men and women at the house as “terrorists”.

He said one of the children, a three-year-old girl, had suffered a head injury but was in stable condition after the raid launched on the last day of campaigning for the parliamentary polls.

In addition to the six dead, two suspected militants were hospitalised.

The suspects had been preparing attacks in the southern towns of Kebili and Tozeur, the interior ministry spokesman said.

Aroui said they had also previously tried to recruit Tunisians in the northern town of Nabeul to join anti-regime fighters in Syria, travelling via neighbouring Libya.

The women killed in the raid had planned to travel to Syria themselves.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 Tunisians are reported to have gone to join the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and other extremist organisations fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Tunisian authorities fear some will return to destabilise the country.

The house was surrounded based on information extracted from two other suspected militants — including the father of the injured children — arrested earlier Thursday in Kebili for killing a private security guard.

Islamist resurgence 

Islamists suppressed under former strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have proliferated since his overthrow in 2011.

Militants have been blamed for a wave of attacks, including last year’s assassination of two leftist politicians whose murders plunged the country into a protracted political crisis.

Militants claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda’s north African affiliate have been active in Tunisia since the 2011 revolution.

Jihadists have killed dozens of soldiers and police over the past three years, especially in remote mountain areas on the Algerian border.

Tunisia announced a three-day closure from Friday of the border with politically unstable Libya for fear of possible election day attacks.

Tunisians overseas began voting on Friday.

Last Monday, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said the authorities had foiled plots to bomb factories and attack foreign missions.

Rached Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia’s moderate Islamist movement Ennahda, has said the country’s transition to democracy serves as an example of how to defeat extremists such as IS.

“The success of the Tunisian experience is in the international interest, especially in the fight against extremism and the fight against Islamic State and similar groups,” he told AFP in an interview.

Sunday’s election pits Ennahda against an array of secular groups, including Nidaa Tounes, whose leader Beji Caid Essebsi has criticised Ennahda as anti-democratic.

The vote will be followed by a presidential election on November 23.

BEIRUT — Three Lebanese soldiers were killed as the army clashed with Islamist gunmen in northern Lebanon for a second day on Saturday, using helicopters to fire rockets in the first such air attack since the war in neighbouring Syria began.

Soldiers exchanged heavy fire with the gunmen — whose exact affiliation was unclear — in the city of Tripoli in the morning and moved in on their positions in the afternoon, security sources said.

Three soldiers were wounded in a nearby incident when gunmen opened fire on an army vehicle near the northern village of Bahneen, the sources said. One soldier later died from his wounds.

An officer was killed in another attack near the town of Al Minya, also in the north, security sources said. The military used two helicopters to fire two rockets at militants in the area after the attack, security sources said.

A third soldier died from wounds sustained in fighting on Friday. At least four militants and two civilians were also killed, and about 14 soldiers wounded, the sources said.

Tripoli has seen some of the worst spillover from the three-and-a-half-year-old war in neighbouring Syria, whose border is only about 30km  north up the coast from the ancient port city. Gun battles and bombings linked to the conflict have regularly broken out.

In statements published by the National News Agency, the army leadership said: “The pursuit of terrorist gunmen in Tripoli is continuing and will not be pulled back until after the terrorists are eliminated.”

Tripoli has long been a stronghold for hardline Sunni Islamists, many of whom accuse Lebanon’s army of working with Shiite movement Hizbollah, which has sent fighters to aid Syrian President Bashar Assad, a member of the Shiite-derived Alawite minority, against majority Sunni rebels.

ISTANBUL — Suspicious envelopes containing a yellow powder were sent Friday to five Istanbul consulates of countries involved in air strikes against IS militants, including the US and Canada, prompting a security alert, officials said.

Sixteen people who had been exposed to the powder were under medical surveillance “as a precautionary measure”, the Turkish health ministry said in a statement.

Members of Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD were testing powder found in letters sent to the French, German, Belgian, US and Canadian consulates, it said.

The consulates were briefly closed during investigations into the powder.

Only one person who opened the envelope at the Canadian mission was directly exposed to the unknown substance, AFAD said.

“Six others [at the Canadian mission] were indirectly exposed,” it said, without making clear whether they had become ill.

“The envelope was sent to the laboratory to be analysed and see what the powder was... and was subjected to the necessary treatment.”

AFAD radiology experts donning white protective suits were seen carrying green bags as the police sealed off the area.

French consul general Muriel Domenach told AFP that they had received an envelope which looked like those received in the other consulates, but that it wasn’t opened.

“The tests are ongoing but we have no reason to think at this stage that it is a dangerous substance,” she said.

According to the NTV television channel, AFAD teams specialised in chemical and bacteriological risks also carried out tests at a post office in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the incident came amid mounting concerns about the growing national security threat posed by jihadists returning from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq.

Turkey has a long and porous border with Syria stretching from the Mediterranean to Iraq which has made it the main transit point for foreign rebels seeking to fight the Syrian regime.

IS fighters have moved close to Turkish soil, trying to take the mainly Kurdish town of Kobani just a few kilometres across the border with Syria.

ISTANBUL — Kurdish militants killed three Turkish soldiers in Turkey’s southeast on Saturday, the Turkish armed forces said, in a further blow to peace talks between Ankara and the insurgents.

Three members of the “separatist terrorist organisation”, a term used by the army to describe the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), shot the soldiers who were in plainclothes, the army said in a statement. The soldiers were buying electrical supplies for the military post where they served, media said.

On Friday, soldiers shot dead three PKK guerrillas after fighters from the outlawed group set fire to two vehicles and a power plant in the eastern province of Kars and shot at soldiers who returned fire.

Dozens were killed in eastern Turkey this month after riots by Kurds over what they saw as the government’s refusal to help Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in the besieged town of Kobani on Turkey’s southern border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that 200 Kurdish fighters from Iraq would be allowed to pass into Syria via Turkey to reinforce Kobani, but he has also described the main Kurdish force defending the town as a “terrorist” group.

The unrest in eastern Turkey has endangered a peace process between the government and Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the PKK, which the United States and European Union also designate a terrorist group. The PKK called a ceasefire in March last year.

Ocalan, whose call for calm has helped contain the street protests, said this week the peace talks had entered a new phase and he was upbeat over the chances of success.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out an independent state in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. They now seek autonomy and increased rights for Kurds.

Turkish planes bombed PKK targets in the southeast in mid-October in response to attacks on a military post near the Iraqi border, the Turkish army said, the first major air operation against the PKK since the launch of peace talks.

PARIS — France is moving troops towards the Libyan border within weeks and, along with US intelligence, is monitoring Al Qaeda arms shipments to Africa’s Sahel region, a top French military official said Thursday.

A French base will go up within weeks in a desert outpost 100 kilometres from the lawless Libyan border region overrun by Islamic militants, the official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak publicly on the matter.

US intelligence is helping French troops “a lot”, he said.

Earlier this month, French troops destroyed an arms convoy in northern Niger carrying three tonnes of weapons from Libya to Mali. A French drone had located and followed the convoy from southeast Libya, the top defence official said.

About 50 French troops will be permanently based in northern Niger and they could be reinforced very quickly by the French and Niger military when necessary, in order to be “able to crisscross the zone up to the border and hamper as much as possible the traffic route”, he said.

French and US drones are already operating out of Niger’s capital, Niamey.

France launched a military operation three months ago against Islamist groups, with troops and equipment sent to ex-colonies Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Mali.

Following France’s intervention to rout Islamic militants from Mali last year, the operation is aiming to counter Al Qaeda-linked militants there, and their potential ties with Nigerian militant group Boko Haram.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned last month that Libya is a “hub for terrorists”.

France’s strategy “reflects the changing threat”, said Francois Heisbourg, a French analyst at the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank in Paris. “That’s the cost of the success: While [French and UN troops] managed to undermine the permanent establishment of terrorists in northern Mali ... they withdraw and went to northern Niger and southern Libya.”

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — US-led air strikes in Syria were reported Thursday to have killed more than 500 jihadists in a month, as fighting raged in the embattled border town of Kobani.

An AFP correspondent across the frontier in Turkey reported fierce clashes in several parts of Kobani early Thursday, with heavy gun and mortar fire.

The town's Kurdish defenders have been holding out against an assault by the Islamic State (IS) militant group for more than a month, buoyed in recent days by a promise of Iraqi Kurd reinforcements and US air drops of weapons.

Fighter jets were again heard flying over Kobani on Thursday, the AFP reporter said, a month after the US-led coalition expanded its aerial campaign against IS in Iraq to Syria.

The air strikes have killed 553 people since their launch, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, including 464 IS fighters and 57 militants from Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front.

Thirty-two civilians have also been killed, including six children and five women, said the Britain-based observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the “vast majority” of jihadists killed in the strikes were not Syrians but foreign fighters who had joined IS and Nusra in the country.

Kurdish reinforcements 

After first focusing on Iraq, the coalition has dramatically expanded its strikes in Syria in recent days, including at Kobani which has become a crucial battleground in the fight against IS.

The jihadist group launched an offensive against the town last month, as it seeks to expand its control over large parts of Syria and Iraq where IS declared an Islamic “caliphate” earlier this year.

After initially losing ground, the Kobani Kurds have fought back hard, with the US military saying they had halted the IS advance and held most of the town.

But local officials say the exhausted fighters are in desperate need of relief and anxious for promised reinforcements from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Iraqi Kurdish lawmakers in their capital Erbil agreed on Wednesday to send their peshmerga fighters, after Turkey this week said it would allow them to travel to Kobani.

Mustafa Qader, responsible for the peshmerga, said a decision would be made in the coming days about how many to send.

He did not say when the forces would arrive in Syria, but added that “they will remain there until they are no longer needed”.

BEIRUT — A Lebanese man who arrived in Beirut from West Africa believing he may have Ebola was reassured by doctors that he is disease free but was still taken into a hospital quarantine on Thursday as a practice run to check the country's preparedness, a health official said.

The case initially raised concerns because it was announced by the health minister, Wael Abu Faour, who said earlier in the day that Lebanon had quarantined a man suspected of having Ebola. The announcement came after days of warnings by the government that the country was at a high risk of exposure to the disease.

It had also raised concerns because the man arrived from an unspecified West African country three days ago, and reported himself to hospital with what he thought were symptoms of Ebola.

But an initial interview with the man showed that he was unlikely to have contracted Ebola, said physician Pierre Abi Hanna, specialist in infectious diseases at the Rafik Hariri Hospital.

Still, he was placed under quarantine and tested, as a practice run.

"He is not a risk," said Abi Hanna. "We took it as it as a suspected case for exercise... This is a very serious issue, so it served to test our preparedness."

The hospital has set up a four-bed isolated unit to deal with contagious diseases such as Ebola.

The minister, Abu Faour, could not be reached for clarification but he later issued a statement to state-run media, saying the man was found to have tested negative for Ebola and would leave the hospital.

Thousands of Lebanese live in West African nations, including Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — countries where Ebola has killed more than 4,500 people so far.

The Lebanese government warned earlier this week that the country is at a high risk of exposure to the disease because of its large diaspora in West Africa.

Thousands of Lebanese live in West African nations, including Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — countries where Ebola has killed more than 4,500 people so far.

Also this week, Lebanon established new surveillance measures to spot suspected cases. All planes arriving from West African countries are being diverted to the same runway, where health officials are checking arriving passengers for symptoms of the disease. Lebanese nationals who don't display symptoms must still follow up with the health ministry, Abu Faour said.

Hospitals that have more than 100 beds have been asked to create isolation units, the minister added.