Region

TRIPOLI — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew to Tripoli on Saturday to urge the warring factions fighting for control of Libya to make peace, in the highest-level visit since an armed faction took the capital in August.

Oil producer Libya is struggling with two governments and two parliaments since an armed group from the western city of Misrata seized Tripoli, setting up its own Cabinet and assembly while forcing the internationally recognised government to move to the east.

Western powers and Libya's neighbours worry that the North African country will become a failed state as former rebels who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 now fight for control and a share of the vast oil reserves.

"There is no alternative to dialogue," said the UN secretary general after arrival. "It is my conviction that all problems in Libya can be solved through dialogue. Nevertheless, we understand that the path will be long and difficult. Peace building always is."

Ban met a deputy speaker and other lawmakers from the elected parliament, the House of Representatives, which has moved to the eastern city of Tobruk, as well as Misrata members of the assembly who have boycotted the sessions.

He said he had come to support a UN-sponsored dialogue to try to end militia fighting. The talks, started in the southern city of Ghadames two weeks ago, have not taken in armed factions from Misrata or a rival militia allied to the western city of Zintan who battled Misrata forces in Tripoli for more than a month over the summer.

But diplomats hope that since Misrata members from the house are indirectly linked to the rival parliament in Tripoli, the talks will start a broader political dialogue, not just about the House of Representatives.

“We call for a political dialogue ... and welcome the mediating role the U.N. is playing,” Fathi Bashagha, a lawmaker, from the group which has boycotted the sessions of the assembly in Tobruk, told Reuters.

But in an indication of the challenge to bridge differences in a country divided along tribal and regional lines, a Misrata militia commander denounced those taking part in the Ghadames talks as criminals, according to a video circulated on social media.

‘Time not ripe’

“The time is currently not ripe for talks,” Salah Badi, one of the commanders leading the seizure of Tripoli, said in the video. Reuters could not verify its authenticity.

He said anyone who wanted to talk to the Operation Dawn, an alliance of forces which took Tripoli, should come to the front line. His force has been trying to expand to the west of Tripoli.

Libya’s weak central government and fledging national army have been no match for the well-armed factions, who both claim legitimacy for their role in the NATO-backed civil war that ended the late Qadhafi’s dictatorship.

The situation in Tripoli has been worsened by a separate battle in the main eastern city of Benghazi where pro-government forces are battling Islamist militias which have taken several army camps.

An army commander was killed on Friday, Wanis Bukhamada, army special forces commander, told Reuters. Around 130 soldiers have been killed since August, a separate army source added.

Unknown gunmen also fired rockets at the Labraq Airport east of Benghazi, which has become the main entry gate into the east since Benghazi airport was closed due to fighting in May, security sources said. Nobody was hurt.

MURSITPINAR, Turkey/BEIRUT — Kurdish forces defending Kobani urged a US-led coalition to escalate air strikes on Islamic State (IS) fighters who tightened their grip on the Syrian town at the border with Turkey on Saturday.

A group that monitors the Syrian civil war said the Kurdish forces faced inevitable defeat in Kobani if Turkey did not open its border to let through arms — something Ankara has so far appeared reluctant to do.

The US-led coalition escalated air strikes on IS in and around Kobani, also known as Ayn Al Arab, some four days ago. The main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, said in a statement the air strikes had inflicted heavy losses on IS, but had been less effective in the last two days.

A Kurdish military official, speaking to Reuters from Kobani, said street-to-street fighting was making it harder for the warplanes to target IS positions.

“We have a problem, which is the war between houses,” said Esmat Al Sheikh, head of the Kobani defence council.

“The air strikes are benefiting us, but IS is bringing tanks and artillery from the east. We didn’t see them with tanks, but yesterday we saw T-57 tanks,” he added.

While IS has been able to reinforce its fighters, the Kurds have not. IS has besieged the town to the east, south and west, meaning the Kurds’ only possible supply route is the Turkish border to the north.

The UN envoy to Syria on Friday called on Turkey to help prevent a slaughter in Kobani, asking it to let “volunteers” cross the frontier so they can reinforce the Kurdish forces defending the town that lies within sight of Turkish territory.

Turkey has yet to respond to the remarks by Staffan de Mistura, who said he feared a repeat of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia when thousands died. Kurdish leaders in Syria have asked Ankara to establish a corridor through Turkey to allow aid and military supplies to reach Kobani.

A senior Kurdish militant has threatened Turkey with a new Kurdish revolt if it sticks with its current policy of non-intervention in the battle for the Syrian town of Kobani.

“[IS] is getting supplies and men, while Turkey is preventing Kobani from getting ammunition. Even with the resistance, if things stay like this, the Kurdish forces will be like a car without fuel,” said Rami Abdelrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organisation that monitors the conflict in Syria through sources on the ground.

Plumes of smoke

Turkey has been reluctant to help the Kurds defending Kobani, one of three areas of northern Syria where Kurds have established self-rule since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. The main Syrian Kurdish group has close ties to the PKK — which waged a militant campaign for Kurdish rights in Turkey and is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

Tall plumes of smoke were seen rising from Kobani on Saturday and the sound of gunfire was close to constant as battles raged into the afternoon, a Reuters journalist observing from the Turkish side of the frontier said.

After sunset, the sounds of gunfire and shelling continued. Red tracer gunfire lit up the sky in the eastern sector of the town, much of which has fallen to IS. Battles also raged at the southern and western edges of the town.

A Kurdish military official in the Syrian city of Qamishli, another area under Kurdish control, said thousands of fighters stood ready to go to Kobani were Turkey to open a corridor.

But Ghaliya Naamat, the official, said the fighters in Kobani were mainly in need of better weaponry. “Medium-range weapons is what is lacking,” she told Reuters by telephone.

“According to the news and the information in Kobani, there is no shortage in numbers. The shortage is in ammunition.”

The symbolism of US-led air strikes failing to stop IS militants from overrunning Kobani could provide an early setback to US President Barack Obama’s three-week-old air campaign against IS in Syria.

The campaign is part of a US strategy to degrade and destroy the group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, threatening to redraw the borders of the modern Middle East according to its ultra-strict vision of Islam.

If IS seizes full control of the town — which US officials acknowledge is possible in coming days — it would be able to boast that it has withstood American air power. The US-led coalition has launched 50 strikes against militant positions around the town, most of those in the last four days.

The US military conducted six air strikes against IS militants near the besieged Syrian city of Kobani on Friday and Saturday, US Central Command said.

‘We need something effective’

While much of the population has already fled Kobani, 500-700 mostly elderly people are still in the town, while 10,000-13,000 are nearby in a border area between Syria and Turkey, UN envoy De Mistura said.

The observatory said no fewer than 226 Kurdish fighters and 298 IS militants had been killed since the group launched its Kobani offensive in mid-September. It said the overall death toll including civilians was probably much higher.

IS views the main armed Kurdish group, the YPG, and its supporters as apostates due to their secular ideology.

Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister of Kobani district, told Reuters by telephone that air strikes had helped the Kurdish fighters regain some territory in the south of the city but they were not enough.

“A few days ago, ISIS attacked with a Humvee vehicle, they use mortars, cannons, tanks. We don’t need just Kalashnikovs and bullets. We need something effective since they captured many tanks and military vehicles in Iraq,” he said, calling for outside powers to send weapons.

“The supply of fighters is very good for YPG,” he added. “But fighters coming without arms, without weaponry is not going to make a critical difference.”

The Kobani crisis has sparked deadly violence in Turkey, which has a Kurdish population numbering 15 million.

Turkish Kurds have risen up since Tuesday against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which they accuse of allowing their kin to be slaughtered.

At least 33 people have been killed in three days of riots across the mainly Kurdish southeast, including two police officers shot dead in an apparent attempt to assassinate a police chief. The police chief was wounded.

The US State Department said on Friday that Ankara had agreed to support the training and equipping of moderate opposition groups in Syria — another prong of Obama’s strategy.

Ankara resents suggestions from Washington that it is not pulling its weight and wants broader joint actions that also target the forces of President Bashar Assad — whose government has tacitly welcome the air strikes against IS.

BAGHDAD  — On the western edge of Iraq's capital, Islamic State (IS) militants battle government forces and exchange mortar fire, only adding to the sense of siege in Baghdad despite air strikes by a US-led coalition.

Yet military experts say the Sunni militants of IS, who now control a large territory along the border that Iraq and Syria share, won't be able to fight through both government forces and Shiite militias now massed around the capital.

It does, however, put them in a position to wreak havoc in Iraq's biggest city, with its suicide attacks and other assaults further eroding confidence in Iraq's nascent federal government and its troops, whose soldiers already fled the IS’ initial lightning advance in June.

"It's not plausible at this point to envision ISIL taking control of Baghdad, but they can make Baghdad so miserable that it would threaten the legitimacy of the central government," said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert with RAND Corporation and former Department of Defence policy maker, using another acronym for IS.

The siege fears in Baghdad stem from recent gains made by IS in the so-called Baghdad Belt — the final stretch between Anbar province, where the group gained ground in Janaury, and Baghdad. The group has had a presence in the Baghdad Belt since spring, Iraqi officials say, but recent advances have sparked new worries.

Last week, IS fighters seized the towns of Hit and neighbouring Kubaisa, sending Iraqi soldiers fleeing and leaving a nearby military base with its stockpile of weapons at risk of capture. 

The US-led coalition recently launched two air strikes northwest of Hit, US Central Command said Saturday.

Government forces still control most of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, but the city is vulnerable.

Perhaps most worrying, IS fighters now battle Iraqi forces in Abu Ghraib, the town home to the infamous prison of the same name that’s only 29 kilometres from the Green Zone, the fortified international zone protecting Baghdad-based embassies and government offices.

A senior military official in Anbar told The Associated Press on Saturday that government helicopters fire on targets daily in Abu Ghraib, though the town remains in the hands of security forces.

To the south of Baghdad, security forces fight to hold onto the town of Jurf Al Sukr, and to the north, one Sunni tribe has held onto the town of Duluiyah despite an IS‘ onslaught. However, IS fighters have taken over a number of towns in Diyala province, east of Baghdad.

Yet authorities believe an assault to take Baghdad remains unlikely. An Iraqi military and intelligence official each told the AP that as many as 60,000 government security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, are currently in position outside the city along the Baghdad Belt. A plot by the IS  to enter Baghdad in September through the Shiite Al Kazimiyah neighbourhood was foiled, the officials added.

Iraqi officials say that at least 1 million men make up the military and police forces in the country, though US officials say that figure is grossly exaggerated. According to one senior US military official, who spoke anonymously as he’s not authorised to brief the media, the Iraqi military had strength of about 205,000 soldiers in January. Today, that number is under 125,000 men, he said.

Both the US and Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to journalists.

Since that initial September assault, Baghdad largely has been spared and remained relatively calm, considering the intense sectarian bloodshed residents saw in 2006 and 2007 after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Still, many remain worried.

“It’s scary,” said Maha Ismail, who recently visited one of Baghdad’s new shopping malls. “But we have seen a lot worse than this so we are gathering despite all the warnings.”

A US counterterrorism official who spoke to the AP said Baghdad would remain a target for IS attacks, though seizing it outright would be nearly impossible.

“Attacking Baghdad is probably still in [its] playbook but its leaders must know they would face overwhelming odds in striking the city,” the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to journalists.

IS says it has a foothold inside Baghdad, having claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in the city, particularly in the Sadr City neighbourhood — a Shiite stronghold. In August, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Shiite mosque in New Baghdad, and another in the Shiite-majority district of Utaifiya in Baghdad, which together killed 26 people.

Yet analysts, like Brennan from the RAND Corporation, say capturing Baghdad remains beyond the IS’ ability. At its worst, the group might “start pressing into the western areas of Baghdad, going into the Sunni areas of Baghdad and pressing up against the Tigris [River] — if not controlling it, then at least testing the control of the central government,” he said.

At a recent news conference, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby also said Baghdad is protected.

“Air strikes around the city, particularly to the south and to the southeast of the city, we believe, have been effective in blunting” the IS, he said.

Beyond the US-coordinated air strikes and the massing of Iraqi troops, the country’s religious and ethnic lines likely will staunch any advance by the Sunni militants of the IS. From Baghdad further south, Iraq’s population is overwhelmingly Shiite and the lands there are home to some of its most important shrines.

Already, Shiite militias back up government forces in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq — their flags and symbols provocatively displayed across the capital. Such militias, like Iran-supported Asaib Ahl Al Haq and Moqtada Al Sadr’s Mehdi Army, “are battle tested,” said David L. Phillips, the director of the Peace-building and Rights Programme at Columbia University. Challenging them likely would become a bloody slog for the IS, he said.

“The militias are not bound by rules of war,” he added. “They and [the IS] share one thing in common: Neither is bound by the Geneva Conventions.”

BARAWE, Somalia — Somalia’s president said on Saturday he would halt charcoal exports from Barawe, a port town recaptured from an Islamist group who UN investigators said had benefitted from the illegal trade.

The UN Security Council forbade charcoal exports from Somalia in 2012 in a bid to cut off Al Shabab’s funding, but the group largely ignored the ban.

A report seen by Reuters on Friday, the UN Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring group wrote that the militants earned tens of millions dollars in the past year from charcoal exports using the southern Ports of Barawe and Kismayu.

The Al Qaeda-affiliated group wants to impose its strict version of Islamic law on the Horn of Africa nation and has carried out attacks on neighbouring countries such as Kenya.

“Somalia had banned charcoal exports and we also sent a letter to the UN Security Council urging them to do something about the countries which import charcoal from Somalia,” President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told journalists and residents.

He was speaking during his first trip to Barawe since a force of African Union peacekeepers and Somali army drove out Al Shabab on Sunday. The president arrived by helicopter.

“We urge you to participate in peacemaking and confront anyone who causes chaos,” said the president, who is trying to rebuild a nation that has been shattered by more than two decades of conflict and chaos.

Barawe was Al Shabab’s last major coastal stronghold. Al Shabab lost control of Kismayu in 2012 and it has been under the control of Kenya’s contingent in the African Union AMISOM force since then.

The UN monitors said that, between June 2013 and January 2014, charcoal was mainly exported from Kismayu and Barawe, and since January shipments were primarily made from Kismayu where port operations are supervised by the Ras Kamboni militia and the Kenyan army, which has denied allegations it aided exports.

Charcoal was mainly shipped to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait, the UN monitors said.

Losing control of Barawe and the killing last month of Al Shabab’s leader, Ahmed Godane, are big blows to the Islamist group, but Somali officials and Western diplomats say the group has proved adaptable to setbacks, turning to guerrilla tactics.

After controlling Mogadishu and much of the country for several years, it has lost ground but remained a potent fighting force even after being driven out of Mogadishu, the federal capital, in 2011. It has staged frequent bomb and gun attacks.

Last year, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, that left at least 67 dead.

“We want to pardon and rehabilitate those who surrender from Al Shabab. We shall eliminate the terrorists from Somalia,” the president, referring to an amnesty for Al Shabab members announced early last month after Godane’s death.

BAGHDAD — A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital killed 38 people in Shiite areas Saturday, authorities said, after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province.

The attacks come as Iraq faces its greatest challenge since the 2011 withdraw of US troops, as militants from the Islamic State (IS) group now hold vast swaths of the country and neighbouring Syria.

Police officials said the first bombing happened Saturday night when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad’s northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28.

The second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in Shula district in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18, police said. The blast damaged several shops and cars.

Also in Shula, police said a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed 18 people and wounded dozens others.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures for the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief journalists.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, yet Sunni insurgents frequently target Shiite population they deem as being heretics. That includes the IS, which now holds a third of the country in its sway. After a lightening offensive earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the US military said Saturday it launched an air strike north of the town of Tal Afar, hitting a small IS fighting unit and destroying an armed vehicle. It said two other air strikes northwest of Hit in Anbar province targeted two small militant units.

The US military also said it conducted multiple airdrops Friday near the northern town of Beiji to resupply Iraqi security forces operating there. The airdrops delivered food and water, as well as 16,000 pounds of ammunition, the military said.

Also Saturday, the governor of Iraq’s Salahuddin province said IS militants killed Raad Al Azzawi, who was a cameraman for Iraq’s Salahuddin Television. Governor Raed Ibrahim said militants killed Al Azzawi on Friday in the city of Tikrit. Ibrahim said he wasn’t able to provide any further details.

IS has beheaded a number of journalists in Syria, saying the killings are in retaliation to US-led coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria.

Reporters Without Borders said last month that the militants had threatened to kill Al Azzawi, a father of three, for refusing to join the Sunni militant group. The media watchdog said Al Azzawi was abducted on September 7.

Also in Tikrit, an attempted attack on the Camp Speicher military base was foiled after soldiers killed four suspected IS militants, authorities said. Two officials at the camp said the four men — one of them identified as an Indonesian national — attempted to break through the gates of the camp in a suicide attack with a truck loaded with explosives. They were unable to break through, the officials said, and guards killed the four men. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to brief journalists.

Camp Speicher is an air base that previously served as a US military facility.

TEHRAN — One of Iran's top nuclear negotiators signalled on Friday that talks with world powers could be extended beyond November's deadline, given big barriers standing in the way of a deal.

With both sides speaking of wide gaps in what limits should be placed on Iran's nuclear programme, the next round of talks will take place in Vienna on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, quoted by the Fars and ISNA news agencies, said there was already an acceptance that a November 24 deadline could be missed.

"Time passes quickly, we are not still disappointed but if we cannot get a good enough result from this round of talks, it is obvious that we will not reach an agreement by November 24," he said.

"Everything is possible even to extend the talks," he added, noting that Iran "expected some progress" during discussions on the issue in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.

Next week's Vienna round will centre on the two biggest areas of contention, Iran's enrichment of uranium and the lifting of US, European and UN sanctions imposed on Iran in recent years, Araqchi said.

"The two sides of the negotiations are serious," he added.

The IAEA disclosed in September that Iran had failed to meet an August 25 deadline to provide information on five points meant to allay fears it was developing nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

MANAMA — Four opposition groups including the largest, Al Wefaq, will boycott a parliamentary election scheduled for November in Bahrain to protest what they described as a vote where the results would be "fully controlled by the ruling authority".

Wefaq, which has strong links to Bahrain's Shiite majority, confirmed on Saturday the opposition would not take part in the poll because the elected parliament will not have enough power and because voting districts favour the Sunni minority.

"Any elections process without a peaceful transfer of power within a system of constitutional monarchy, which is the current situation, will be unilaterally run and based on an unfair electoral system," the opposition groups said in a statement.

Information Minister Samira Rajab did not respond directly to the charge when contacted by Reuters, but referred to her statement on state media on Friday in which she said that all segments of Bahraini society were able to take part in the poll.

She said in the remarks carried by Bahrain News Agency that groups which boycotted elections continued to take part in politics in other ways, such as through municipal councils.

"They tend to raise the banner of a boycott in an attempt to open the door to foreign interference in our domestic affairs," she was quoted as saying by BNA.

The opposition also accused the authorities of using immigration to change the country's sectarian balance in order to boost support for the Sunni Al Khalifa ruling family, a charge the government has always denied.

Wefaq in May threatened to boycott the election, which has been set for November 22, but continued to take part in sporadic reconciliation talks with the government.

Bahrain has been shaken by persistent unrest since mostly Shiite Muslim demonstrators, who complain of political marginalisation, took to the streets in February 2011 to call for greater democracy.

Stalled reconciliation talks between the Al Khalifa and the Shiite opposition were revived early this year but later appeared to stall following prosecutions of Wefaq officials on a variety of charges.

In July the government went to court to try to suspend Wefaq's activities, saying it had broken both the law and its own statutes, a move the group's leader Sheikh Ali Salman described as an attempt to force it to take part in the coming election. A verdict has not yet been reached.

Bahrain, an ally of fellow Sunni monarchy Saudi Arabia and home to the US Fifth Fleet, accuses Shiite Gulf power Iran of stirring its unrest and says it has made many reforms since 2011. Iran denies those charges.

Shiite activists say members of the majority sect are subjected to systematic political and economic discrimination, a charge the government denies.

LUEBECK, Germany — It has been a year since the ship went down, and still the memories torment the Syrian refugee:

The father flailing in choppy seas grabbing a life jacket away from his little son;

The silence after the drowning children stopped screaming;

Young girls, face down in the water, long hair floating around their heads;

The dead baby he nearly bumped into as he swam for his life.

"Again and again, I relive those hours in the ocean after our ship sank," says Mohammad Suleimane, 25. He has to fold himself — pressing his skinny arms hard against his lap — to stop the shaking.

The young barber from Damascus was the only one of 13 family members to survive when his boat sank, killing more than 200 refugees a year ago Saturday, an anniversary that comes as Europe faces a new wave of migrants making the perilous crossing from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The path to Europe is the world's most dangerous "irregular" migration route, according to the International Organisation for Migration. At least 22,000 people have died on that journey since 2000, it says, including at least 3,072 in the first nine months of this year. Those are only the ones it knows about; the true number, it says, is much higher.

Despite the dangers, the number of refugees risking the journey is growing, as war, poverty and environmental crisis drive people from places such as Syria, Gaza, Eritrea and Sudan. The most common route is through Libya, and then onto smugglers' boats to cross 300 kilometres of the Mediterranean to the nearest piece of Europe — the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Suleimane followed that route. His family flew from Damascus to Cairo, then paid a smuggler to take them on a minibus to Benghazi, Libya. A few months later they had saved up $2,000 for Suleimane's trip, and he joined several hundred other Syrians in a desert hideout, waiting for the right moment to set off.

His parents and siblings couldn't afford their own passage yet, but with him were 12 aunts, uncles and cousins — including Ali and Duaa, who weeks earlier had married in a joyous wedding filled with laughter and dancing.

Suleimane had bought a new pair of jeans for that wedding — and when the group set off he was wearing them again.

When the ship went down, he swam as others sank. He swam for hours, until a Maltese boat plucked him from the sea. He was sent to prison with the other survivors.

Suleimane was transferred to a Maltese refugee camp within a week, and says he bought a forged German ID in the name of Daniel Fischer for 180 euros ($230). With it, he got to Milan, where he paid traffickers 350 euros to drive him on back roads across the Alps to Munich, Germany.

From there, he boarded a train to Berlin, and was taken in by relatives who have been living in Germany for decades.

He was still wearing his jeans, and would continue to for months — frayed mementos of joy and tragedy. They were the only palpable memory he had of happier times, even as they reminded him of the horror as well.

In Berlin, Suleimane withdrew into himself, hardly ever talking. Worried, his cousin took him to two psychologists. One wrote in his evaluation that the young man was "suicidal, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and should under no circumstances be separated from his relatives."

But Germany, facing a steep surge in asylum applications, has strict rules — and did exactly that.

Suleimane was prescribed antidepressants and sent to a refugee centre in Luebeck, three hours north of Berlin on the Baltic Sea.

At the centre, Suleimane smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and barely eats. His big brown eyes are set deep in his gaunt face. He is obsessed with the sea, and spends days gazing out at the Baltic, haunted by his memories.

He fled Syria to escape the civil war, after being drafted to fight for President Bashar Assad's army. Sometimes he thinks, "it may have been better to simply die in Syria".

The memories of home are so strong that in his mind he can smell the lamb shawarma and taste the sweet baklava.

Suleimane, who shares a wooden cabin with five or six other refugees, spends hours lying in bed and staring at the TV, even though he barely understands German.

Recently, a glimmer of light entered Suleimane's life. His parents, little brother and five little sisters made it to Germany, traveling the same perilous route that he took a year ago. An Italian ship rescued them from their rickety boat.

Now Suleimane is slowly gathering the will to move on. He hopes to win his asylum case, maybe open up a barbershop in Berlin.

Recently, he folded the jeans and put them away in the back of his closet.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is boxed in by its promise to limit US military engagement against Islamic State (IS) group extremists, making it tough to agree to Turkey's condition for joining the fight in neighbouring Syria.

Turkey and other US allies want the US to create a “no-fly zone” inside Syrian territory. Doing so would mean embracing one of two options President Barack Obama has long resisted: Cooperating with Syrian President Bashar Assad's government or taking out its air defences, action tantamount to war.

Air strikes alone might not prevent Islamic militants from carrying out a massacre at a Kurdish border town now under attack, but for now the US isn't steering a new course in its expanded, one-month counterterrorism effort in Iraq and Syria.

Demands are rising for the creation of a secure buffer on the Syrian side of its frontier with Turkey as the US and its coalition members plead with the Turks to prevent the fall of Kobani, where the United Nations is warning of mass casualties. A "safe zone" would require Americans and their partners to protect ground territory and patrol the skies, meaning it would have to enforce a no-fly area.

Turkey is demanding such a step for a variety of reasons. A buffer might stem the flow of refugees into Turkish territory. It also could provide Syrian opposition fighters with a staging ground for their rebellion to oust Assad — something that Turkey wants to see happen. The US, wary of the implications, wants the focus to remain on defeating IS militants who've captured large areas of northern Syria and Iraq.

Yet some of America's closest partners and Obama's fiercest foreign policy critics at home are sympathetic to Turkey's request.

France issued a statement this week announcing its support. The Republican head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee believes Arab countries would shoulder the load. Even Secretary of State John Kerry is describing a no-fly zone as worth examining.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has shown little enthusiasm for the idea. American leaders are open to discussing a safe zone, Hagel said this week, but creating one isn't "actively being considered".

"When it comes to the so-called buffer zone, no-fly zone, they've proposed these for some time," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday. "We are not considering the implementation of this option at this time."

For the US military, creating a protected corridor in Syria safe from the IS group's ground attacks and Syria's air force raises obvious concerns. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has estimated the endeavor would require hundreds of US aircraft and cost as much as $1 billion a month to maintain, with no assurance of a change in battlefield momentum toward ending the Syrian civil war. That means US enforcement could become open-ended.

The Pentagon learned that lesson in Iraq when it established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds and another over southern Iraq to protect Shiites — both in 1991 in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Those protective zones were enforced by US air force and navy pilots for a dozen years, until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Implementing such zones in Syria would create a direct confrontation with one of the Middle East's most formidable air defences, a system bolstered in recent years by top-of-the-line Russian hardware. The Syrians possess multiple surface-to-air missiles providing overlapping coverage and thousands of anti-aircraft guns capable of engaging attacking aircraft at lower levels. Moscow infuriated Washington last year when it confirmed that it would sell to Syria its S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, considered to be the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology.

For the Obama administration, the political challenges of a “no-fly zone” may be even greater.

Given the threat to US pilots, the military would need rescue personnel stationed nearby, perhaps in Turkey or Iraq. If a US flier were shot down, a rescue team would have to put boots on the ground in Syria, which Obama has repeatedly ruled out.

Engaging in direct military action against Assad's government also would severely stretch the United States' already tenuous claims that its intervention in Syria is legal under US and international law. Many members of Congress are challenging the administration's justification for war on the basis of the Bush administration's 2001 authorisation to fight Al Qaeda. The IS group grew out of the Al Qaeda movement, but the two are now enemies. The US has no UN mandate to wage war in Syria, against rebels or the government.

To avoid these pitfalls, the US could try to reach an accommodation with Syria's government. But Obama has ruled out this step, too, even if Syrian forces are similarly battling the IS militants, because of their atrocious list of alleged human rights violations and war crimes. These include massacres of civilians and opposition forces and several chemical weapons attacks, according to Western governments and human rights groups.

Washington is searching for an alternative approach with Turkey. On Friday, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the US special envoy, and his State Department deputy Brett McGurk met in Ankara with senior Turkish officials and NATO's secretary general and discussed "where we think Turkey can contribute more, especially along the military line of effort", Harf said. She praised Turkey for agreeing to help train and equip moderate Syrian opposition forces and said US military planners would hold further talks with their Turkish counterparts next week.

Kerry, meanwhile, is headed to the Middle East for some "coalition massaging" this weekend, according to US officials. On the sidelines of a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo, he will discuss the effort against the IS group with foreign ministers from Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries pressing for more robust American action. Kerry, however, isn't preparing to present a new direction in the strategy, said the officials, who weren't authorised to speak by name on the matter and demanded anonymity.

VIENNA — A US security institute said it has located via satellite imagery a section of a sprawling Iranian military complex where it said an explosion or fire might have taken place earlier this week.

Iran's official IRNA news agency on Monday cited an Iranian defence industry body as saying that two workers were killed in a fire at an explosives factory in an eastern district of Tehran.

Iran's Defence Industries Organisation said the fire broke out on Sunday evening, IRNA said, giving no further detail.

An Iranian opposition website, Saham, described the incident as a strong explosion that took place near the Parchin military complex around 30km southeast of the capital. It did not give a source and the report could not be independently verified.

In Paris, a spokesman for an exiled Iranian opposition group said an explosion occurred late on Sunday in a chemical industry unit in Parchin that deals with the production of gunpowder and that at least four people were killed.

The dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran exposed Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak in 2002. But analysts say it has a mixed track record and a clear political agenda.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said it had obtained commercially available satellite imagery on which six buildings at Parchin appeared damaged or destroyed.

However, the images ISIS issued indicated the site of the possible blast was not the same location in Parchin where the UN nuclear agency suspects that Iran, possibly a decade ago, carried out explosives tests that could be relevant for developing a nuclear arms capability. Iran denies any such aim.

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency wants to visit this area of Parchin, but Iran has so far not granted access. Iran says Parchin is a conventional military facility and that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful. It has often accused its enemies of seeking to sabotage its atomic activities.

ISIS said its analysis of the satellite imagery from October 7 and 8 indicated an explosion could have taken place at a southern section of Parchin.

"Several signatures that coincide with those expected from an explosion site are visible here," it said on its website.

"Two buildings that were present in August 2014 are no longer there, while a third building appears to be severely damaged. In total at least six buildings appear damaged or destroyed," ISIS added.

Israel and the United States have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve a decade-old dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme. Israel is widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power.