Region

RIYADH — A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced 27 people to prison for planning a series of attacks against US forces in Qatar and Kuwait, with more than half of the defendants charged on Wednesday with also trying to join forces with a group in Syria to smuggle fighters to Iraq, official media reports said.

The same court also sentenced on Tuesday two Saudi citizens to death and a third to 12 years in prison for taking part in violent protests in the eastern town of Al Awamiya, a Shiite stronghold where protests erupted in 2011 demanding greater rights from the Sunni-led monarchy.

The verdicts were announced by the official Saudi Press Agency. The state media reports did not say when the Al Qaeda-linked attacks were planned, and did not name the Syrian group with which 14 of the defendants allegedly tried to form an alliance.

The Al Qaeda-linked members on trial included 25 Saudis, a Qatari and an Afghan national. They were given varying sentences of between six months to 30 years in prison. The state news agency said the group planned to attack US troops in Qatar with grenades, rockets and mortar fire.

The US conducts missions over Iraq from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. It also has bases in Kuwait.

The cell is comprised of 41 members, 38 of which are Saudi nationals. The remaining three are from Qatar, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Verdicts for 13 people were handed down late Tuesday and another 14 were sentenced on Wednesday.

The specialised criminal court in Riyadh, created to try terrorism cases, found members of the group guilty of planning to send someone to Iraq for training on how to make car bombs to target foreign troops in Qatar and Kuwait. They were also found guilty of planning to carry out directives from Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq.

One of the group's alleged leaders, a Qatari national, received a 30-year prison sentence. Another alleged cell leader, a Saudi national, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the SPA reported. The Afghani was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered deported upon his release on charges he helped raise money for fighters in his home country.

In the case of the three Shiite Saudi nationals, the specialised criminal court said the men were guilty of chanting hostile slogans to destabilise the country, using violence during protests and helping provide cover for someone opening firing at police.

Protests briefly broke out in Al Awamiya in the Eastern Province last week after revered Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr was sentenced to death for a number of charges that largely related to his support for anti-governmental protests.

Human rights activists in Saudi Arabia have long complained that the courts often give protesters harsher sentences than those handed down to extremist fighters.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Two female Israeli soldiers were wounded on Wednesday when unidentified gunmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula fired shots and an anti-tank missile at their vehicle near the border, the army said.

The incident took place along a section of the border which lies some 60 kilometres south of the Gaza Strip, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said.

"About 2pm (1100 GMT), we had shots and an anti-tank missile fired at a vehicle that was on the border," Lerner told reporters, saying that two soldiers who were patrolling the border had sustained light-to-medium injuries.

The army confirmed the soldiers were members of the all-women Caracal battalion, which is responsible for defending the Israel-Egypt border.

Lerner said it was not immediately clear who had carried out the attack, which took place near the border community of Ezuz, and that searches were under way to ensure that none of the gunmen had managed to cross the border into Israel.

"IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is currently trying to gather intelligence to determine who carried out this activity."

The Sinai Peninsula has seen a significant increase in attacks by militants targeting Egyptian security forces and the Israeli border after the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July last year.

CAIRO — An explosion outside Cairo University wounded 10 people on Wednesday, among them police and civilians, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The blast occurred in a square outside the university at the end of the school day. Six policemen and four civilians were slightly wounded and transferred to hospitals, the statement added.

The ministry said explosives experts were sent to comb the area for additional devices. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

However, Islamist militants have carried out a series of attacks against police and soldiers, mainly in the remote but strategic Sinai region, since the army ousted president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last year after mass protests against his rule.

Cairo University was a focal point for protests against the government that succeeded Morsi until authorities tightened security with the start of the new term this month.

Egypt has cracked down on the Brotherhood and declared it a terrorist organisation, but the group says it is peaceful.

Attacks in the capital are less common than in Sinai but when they do occur, they tend to prompt questions about the effectiveness of the government's efforts to end the bloodshed that has hit tourism, a pillar of the economy.

SANAA — Sunni Al Qaeda militants and Shiite Muslim rebels have fought a bloody battle in central Yemen, tribal sources said on Wednesday, amid fears of worsening sectarian tension in the impoverished Arabian country.

Thirty Shiite rebels and 18 Sunni fighters and their tribal allies were killed in the clashes, the tribal sources told Reuters. Shiite Houthi rebels seized control of the capital Sanaa on September 21 and their forces have fanned out to Yemen's west and centre since then.

Al Qaeda in Yemen's Twitter page said it fought the rebels with light weapons and demolished their homes in the city of Radda in Al Bayda province over the course of several hours on Tuesday, an account confirmed by local tribesmen.

The statement did not mention any casualties on its side, which the tribal sources put at 18 among the militants and tribal gunmen fighting along with the group.

In a separate incident, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for an attack on an army checkpoint elsewhere in Al Bayda province which killed five soldiers, the fighters and security sources said.

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

The northern-based Shiite Houthi 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.

Houthi forces have since advanced into central Yemen and taken 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.

The United Nations Security Council in February authorised UN sanctions against anyone who obstructs Yemen's political transition or commits human rights violations and recently said it was ready to blacklist specific individuals.

Diplomats said UN experts were preparing reports for the council's Yemen sanctions committee on five people: former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to step down in 2012 after mass street protests, his son and three Houthi leaders.

"We're looking to move ahead with sanctions on at least three individuals," said a senior council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. Anyone designated by the council would be subject to a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo.

GAZA/RAMALLAH, West Bank — The first torrential downpour of an approaching winter has already soaked the Gaza Strip, compounding the misery of thousands of Palestinians who scrambled to patch homes wrecked by the summer war with Israel.

While Palestinian officials rejoiced at $5.4 billion pledged at an international aid conference last week towards reconstruction and shoring up their budget, many in Gaza fear that, as was the case after past wars with Israel, not all the money will materialise.

No one disputes the need is urgent: the United Nations says 18,000 dwellings were destroyed or damaged in 50 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian fighters, and 108,000 people are homeless in a long impoverished, isolated territory.

The flow of building material and other aid will largely depend on whether the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) that exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank extends its writ to Gaza, now run by the Hamas Islamist group shunned by many countries as a designated terrorist group.

But despite a Palestinian unity deal in April, Hamas and its political rivals still bicker. Local businessmen say a mechanism agreed by the United Nations, Israel and the Palestinians for construction materials to move from the West Bank across Israeli territory to Gaza remains vague and plagued by red tape.

Any help could not come soon enough for Samir Hassanein, 37. A gaping hole in his damaged home exposes his sitting room to the elements, despite desperate efforts to shield it with plastic sheeting and bricks.

His neighbourhood of Shejaiya was shredded by Israeli artillery fire on July 20. For almost two months, Hassanein and his family have stayed on; he was eager not to stray far and miss delegations from the UN and charity organisations to register his house for repair funds that have yet to come.

“They must build our houses for us — we can’t live like this. They should have begun building long ago. We’re not ready for winter and now we’re drowning in the rain,” he told Reuters.

Israel heavily bombarded and partially invaded Gaza, a small coastal enclave with a 1.8 million population, while Hamas peppered Israeli cities with rocket fire during seven weeks of combat. It killed over 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 70 Israelis, almost all of them soldiers.

Densely populated border areas like Shejaiya were almost completely razed when Israel took them over and destroyed tunnels there which Gaza fighters used to attack into its territory.

Since the aid conference in the Egyptian capital Cairo concluded on October 12, only 75 truckloads of building materials have entered Gaza through Israel — on one day last week.

Gaza economic analyst Maher Al Tabbaa said the amount is under a fifth of the daily import volume required if war damage is to be repaired in three to five years.

Despite the formation of a Palestinian unity government of technocrats in June, an enduring schism between Hamas, which led the Palestinian war effort, and the moderate Fateh Party in the West Bank casts doubt on whether the traffic flow will improve.

Hamas — which unlike Fateh rejects negotiations to achieve a Palestinian state in territories Israel captured in a 1967 war  — seized Gaza from the Fateh-led PA in a brief civil war in 2007. Hamas had won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006, a year after Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza.

Israel has imposed a strict blockade on Gaza since the Hamas takeover, saying it seeks to restrict goods that could be used in weapons production and underground tunnels. But this has worsened economic hardship in the dilapidated, arid territory, where more than half of the population receive UN food aid.

An agreement last month for Hamas to hand over control of border crossings to its Western-supported Palestinian rivals might allay Israeli and donor fears that the group could siphon off or profit from reconstruction aid.

“The money pledged represented a ray of hope and if... the crossings were opened and there were an honest implementation of the reconciliation between Fateh and Hamas, international donors would be encouraged to give more money because what had been pledged was not enough,” economic analyst Al Tabbaa said.

Hamas blames the West Bank-based unity government for not assuming responsibility for the two border crossings yet and ferrying in building supplies.

But at the same time, Hamas’ official magazine boasted on Sunday that fighters were working “like bees in their hives” to rebuild their tunnels, a major consumer of concrete and steel.

Palestinian officials have put the cost of physical rebuilding at $4 billion. But donors allotted only around $2.7 billion towards it, and the other half of its pledges for the cash-strapped PA budget.

The economic picture in the West Bank is also depressed.

Between 2007 and 2011, growth soared at an annual average 8 per cent. But a steep drop in donor support, especially from Arab neighbours, and the devastation in Gaza will lead to a slump in 2014 to 0.5 per cent in the West Bank and a contraction of 15 per cent in Gaza, the World Bank forecast last month.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said last week that while Gaza’s need was immediate and plans were ready, work could not begin in earnest on pledges alone. “It was our previous experience in Sharm El Sheikh in 2009 that most of the money did not come,” he said, referring to an Egyptian-led conference after a December 2008 — January 2009 Gaza war.

Donors have backed Palestinian efforts to build an economy capable of statehood in the West Bank despite Israeli restrictions on the free movement of goods and people there, and hope the unity pact will help buoy Gaza’s shattered fortunes.

“Until now this progress has been limited more or less to the West Bank. Now I think the time has come to extend this work to Gaza. We are aware of the obstacles, including political and economic constraints, but this will not prevent us from supporting the PA,” European Union regional representative John Gatt-Rutter said last week.

While the EU has remained one of the PA’s most reliable donors, Palestinians may face acute funding problems if they make good on a pledge, given the breakdown in peace talks in April, to seek full statehood at the UN Security Council soon.

Palestinian sources say the United States, has threatened to dock the roughly $500 million it gives annually to the West Bank government’s budget and security forces.

Israel would likely also withhold the $100 million in customs duties it shifts monthly to the Palestinian Authority, a sum that makes up about a third of the PA’s revenue.

Red tape

Analysts and officials have also cast doubt on the efficiency of a mechanism to monitor and license Palestinian construction companies agreed by the PA, UN and Israel.

They say Gazans whose homes were damaged or destroyed will register with the United Nations, which will then transfer their claims to Israel for approval of the required amount of construction material. The Palestinian private sector will then apply to import the allotted building materials, which if approved, will be funded in installments.

Companies must also maintain round-the-clock cameras on their storage to prove fighters have no access — a tall order in Gaza, where there are only six hours of electricity per day after Israeli shells knocked out the main power plant.

Ibrahim Barhum, head of the Palestinian Coordinating Council for the Private Sector, attended the Cairo conference and urged participants to cut back bureaucracy in the way of aid.

“The people of Gaza are in a tragic situation and winter has begun,” he said. “We’re talking three to 10 years, and this is something the people of Gaza won’t accept and can’t bear.”

TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya's internationally recognised government said on Tuesday that its forces are getting ready to retake the capital, after Islamist-allied militias from the western city of Misrata took over Tripoli in August.

Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni's government said in a statement Tuesday that it gave orders to the government forces to "advance towards Tripoli to liberate it" and to free it from the grip of the militias. It urged youths in different neighbourhoods "to join ranks with the forces" to liberate themselves and their city. It also urged its civilian supporters to abstain from revenge attacks, and to hand over any captured militiamen to the army forces.

The militias that took over Tripoli, operating under the umbrella banner of Libyan Dawn, took control of ministries and state institutions, revived an outgoing parliament and set up their own rival government. Meanwhile, the elected Libyan parliament and Thinni's beleaguered government have been forced to operate from the distant coastal city of Tobruk. Thousands of families have been displaced from the capital and most diplomats have fled, while the airport — the centrepiece of multiple battles — has been largely destroyed.

The government’s imminent operation in Tripoli, comes on the heels of raging battles south and west of Tripoli that have devastated some neighbouring towns and villages. The village of Kikla, about 80 kilometres southwest of Tripoli, has been the centre of more than two weeks of fighting. Almost all of Kikla’s 30,000 residents have fled.

Libya has been witnessing its worst spasm of violence since the downfall of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi in the 2011 civil war.

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Kurdish fighters in the battleground Syrian town of Kobani weathered an onslaught by Islamic State (IS) militants on Tuesday as they waited for promised reinforcements.

Fighting continued in Kobani but appeared to have lessened after a fierce attack by IS fighters, including suicide bombers, late on Monday, witnesses and monitors said.

IS forces based in the east of the town were exchanging fire with Kurdish militia in the west and there were reports of an explosion, probably a car bomb, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Kobani has become a crucial symbolic battleground in the war against IS, which is fighting to extend areas under its control in Iraq and Syria where it has declared an Islamic "caliphate".

Ankara announced on Monday that it would help Kurdish forces from Iraq to relieve Kobani’s beleaguered defenders  in a major shift of policy that was swiftly welcomed by Washington.

Iraqi Kurdish officials have said they will provide the training, although any forces sent will be Syrian Kurds.

A local Kurdish official, Idris Nassen, told AFP Kobani was relatively calm on Tuesday, adding that no reinforcements had yet arrived and they did not have “any idea” when they would.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that Kurdish fighters had yet to cross from Turkey to Kobani, telling NTV television “the issue is still being discussed”.

The US administration has stepped up its commitment to Kobani in recent days, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying it would be “irresponsible” and “morally very difficult” not to help.

Three C-130 cargo aircraft carried out what the US military called “multiple” successful drops of supplies early on Monday, including arms provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.

A US-led coalition has carried out more than 140 air strikes against IS targets around Kobani, but it was the first time it had delivered arms to the town’s defenders.

Coalition aircraft carried out further strikes during the night, said the Britain-based observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.

IS lost at least five of its militants to air strikes on Monday and a further 12 in ground fighting, including two suicide bombers, the monitoring group said.

Five Kurdish fighters were also killed.

The British government, which has joined coalition air strikes against IS in Iraq, said Tuesday it would deploy drones to conduct surveillance on the group in Syria.

Iraqi PM in Tehran 

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi meanwhile described IS as “a threat to the entire region” while in Tehran for talks with his Shiite ally.

IS holds towns just a few kilometres from the Iranian border, and Tehran has been a key backer of Baghdad’s efforts to hold them back.

According to a senior Iraqi Kurdish official, Iran has deployed troops on the Iraqi side of the border in the Khanaqin area northeast of Baghdad.

Iranian forces also played a role in breaking the siege of Amerli, another senior Kurdish official said.

But Abadi on Monday ruled out any foreign ground intervention to assist government forces in retaking territory lost to jihadists.

“No ground forces from any superpower, international coalition or regional power will fight here,” Abadi told reporters.

“This is my decision, it is the decision of the Iraqi government, he said.

CAIRO — As the new academic term began in Egypt, riot police were standing guard at Cairo's universities to quash any repeat of Islamist-led protests that turned campuses nationwide into battlefields.

The authorities have tightened security at leading universities across the country — the last bastions of protests backing ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after a nationwide government crackdown crushed his supporters, leaving hundreds dead and thousands jailed.

More than a dozen students were killed in the academic year that ended in April, as pro-Morsi students fought pitched battles with security forces after the Islamist was ousted in July 2013 by then-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

Universities echoed with slogans like "Sisi is a killer!" as pro-Morsi students threw rocks at teargas firing policemen.

Today, the newly painted buildings of the prestigious Sunni Al Azhar University and Cairo University are surrounded by tall metal fences, with private security guards checking students' identities as they pass through metal detectors.

The new security measures ban all partisan activities on campuses and university officials are allowed to expel disruptive students.

The academic year that started on October 11 has already got off to a violent start, with clashes in universities in Cairo and Alexandria.

One student died on Tuesday from wounds suffered in clashes with police on October 14 at Alexandria University, a health official told reporters.

Omar Abdel Wahab is the first student to have died in clashes since the new school year began.

Rights group Amnesty International said Egyptian security forces used "excessive force" in quelling protests at Alexandria University, injuring dozens of protesting students.

At least 110 students have also been arrested, many of them in pre-dawn raids at their homes last week, Human Rights Watch said.

The interior ministry said five universities saw protests a day after the new school year started, including at Al Azhar and Cairo University, where protesters destroyed metal detectors.

Fear for freedoms 

Several students AFP approached at Al Azhar refused to comment, while some at Cairo University offered only brief remarks — clearly reflecting the tension on the two campuses.

"Last year was a mess, with tear gas being fired inside the university. But now there are much fewer protests and it's much safer," said Noha Ezz Al Arab, a third-year English literature student, as she waited to pass through a metal detector at the gate of Cairo University.

Student leaders fear the new security measures could affect their overall campus activism.

"We hope the new regulations will not limit freedoms and non-partisan political activities on campuses," said Ahmed Khalaf, a member of the Cairo University Student Union.

Students also complained that the new restrictions are curbing their movement on campuses.

"They stopped me from entering, saying that engineering students are not allowed" inside Cairo University's main campus, said Hossam Khalid, whose faculty is located outside the main university grounds.

"They probably think we are terrorists."

New protests vowed 

Students backing Morsi say they are undeterred by the new security measures.

"We were expecting these measures, but they will not affect our movement and we will take extra precautions," said Youssef Salhen, spokesman for Students Against the Coup, a pro-Morsi group blamed for most of the campus violence last year.

"If our protests are not more frequent than last year, they will definitely not be less. Protests can't be stopped inside universities because universities are meeting grounds for youth, especially given the protest law."

Egypt's authorities in November 2013 adopted a law that bans all demonstrations except those authorised by the police.

Officials say the new security measures are already showing results.

"The new private security guards have done their job of maintaining security at the gates... and from their first day, they found many knives and firecrackers that were being smuggled inside," Cairo University Chairman Gaber Nassar told AFP.

Nassar, who blames Morsi's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood for campus violence, said if the new measures fail the consequences would be serious.

"It could lead to suspending the school year or even the return of police on Cairo University campus, which will jeopardise the independence of the university," he said.

Student activists say new protests cannot be ruled out given the anger among supporters of the Brotherhood.

"Pro-Brotherhood students are angry that their friends and colleagues are either imprisoned, wanted by the authorities or suspended from university. These students will continue to protest," said Khalaf of the Cairo University Student Union.

BEIRUT — An elderly Syrian took part in stoning his daughter to death for alleged adultery, in a video posted on YouTube by the Islamic State (IS) on Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the execution took place in August or September in an IS-controlled rural area in the east of the central province of Hama.

It was the latest in spate of videotaped executions that the jihadists have posted on social media as they impose their extreme version of Sharia law across a swathe of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

In the video, a bearded gunman in combat fatigues stands behind the father, who is dressed in the white robe and chequered headdress typical of the Syrian countryside.

They both face the young black-clad daughter as the gunman addresses her in the classical Arabic of the Koran.

"The punishment is the result of crimes which you committed under no duress," he says.

"You must accept the punishment of God. Do you accept the punishment of God?"

She nods her head in assent, then turns to her father and asks his forgiveness.

He refuses until the assembled IS fighters persuade him to relent.

But it makes no difference to his daughter's fate.

She is permitted to speak briefly before the stoning commences.

"I say to every woman: Preserve your honour... and I appeal to every father to pay attention to the surroundings your daughter lives in," she says.

Her father then takes a rope, and ties it round his daughter's waist before forcing her to lie down.

The IS gunman then orders punishment to begin and the father joins in stoning her to death.

The video drew condemnation from the mainstream Syrian opposition in exile.

"We condemn this horrible crime committed by IS against this woman in the Hama countryside," the National Coalition said in a statement

"This crime has nothing whatever to do with the Syrian revolution."

KHARTOUM — Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir — in power since a 1989 coup — will stand for re-election in 2015 after being retained Tuesday as leader of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), a top aide said.

Bashir, the only sitting head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court, was re-elected as both leader and presidential candidate of the NCP at a party convention, said his chief assistant, Ibrahim Ghandour.

The 70-year-old career soldier took power in an Islamist-backed coup, and there had been doubts about whether he would run again in the controversial election, slated for April.

In a March interview, Ghandour said Bashir "declared many times that he's not willing to" stand again but that the final decision was with the party.

Two knee operations over the summer also raised worries over his health.

But Bashir's name was put on the party's shortlist of five candidates and his tally in Tuesday's vote was enough to rule out further voting, Ghandour said.

The president garnered 266 out of the 396 votes cast, Ghandour said, with the remainder of the 522 advisory council members choosing not to take part.

The other four nominees were all senior NCP officials seen as close to Bashir: Ghandour himself, senior member Nafie Ali Nafie, ex-vice president Ali Osman Taha and First Vice President Bakri Hassan Saleh.