Region

BAGHDAD — Residents say militants affiliated with the extremist Islamic State group have kidnapped dozens of men from a Sunni village north of Baghdad, The Associated Press reported.

The militants took some 50 men from Tal Ali village, around 240 kilometres north of Baghdad, on Thursday, residents said. The men were loaded onto trucks and driven away, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

The militants had retreated from the village the day before, fearing an attack by the Iraqi army. When they left, residents set fire to an Islamic State flag.

The Islamic State group spearheaded an offensive in June, seizing vast swaths of northern Iraq. The group has published grisly photos of the mass killing of captives in areas under its control in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Meanwhile, a car bomb killed 12 people and wounded 30 in Baghdad’s mainly Shiite Muslim Kadhimiya neighbourhood on Thursday evening, police said, according to Reuters.

The explosion was the fourth attack in Shiite districts of the capital in two weeks.

“Cars are set ablaze...this place has been targeted several times as it’s very crowded,” a policeman near the blast scene said. He said the bomb detonated near shops and restaurants.

DAHANIYA, Palestinian Territories — Standing in front of the crumbling control tower of Gaza’s devastated airport, one-time air traffic controller Anis Arafat dreams of the day planes will land and take off here again.

Re-opening this airport, closed since 2001, and ending Gaza’s isolation is a key demand of the Islamist Hamas movement and was at the heart of the 50-day Gaza-Israel conflict that ended with a ceasefire last week.

Once a symbol of Palestinian hopes for statehood, the Yasser Arafat or Dahaniya international airport has become a constant reminder that Gaza is largely cut off from the outside world.

“The first place I worked after I finished my studies was the airport, it was the home that welcomed me and my colleagues. We lived as one family,” said 37-year-old Arafat, who worked at the airport for two years before it closed.

Looking out over what remains of the facility and its torn-up tarmac after years of bombardment and neglect, Arafat shook his head.

“There was grass and gardens and roses and beautiful things. The window of my office was here,” he said, visiting for the first time in a decade.

“Honestly, they were good days.”

The opening of air and seaports will be a major talking point when Egyptian-mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, resume after a month-long pause.

For employees like Wassim Al Akhras, who worked in the control tower with Arafat, the reopening of the airport can’t come soon enough.

“When you see this building, and you see the ruins of Yasser Arafat International Airport, it brings tears to your eyes,” he said.

‘Symbol of sovereignty’ 

He said he was proud to work in a “symbol of sovereignty” for the Palestinians.

Close by, a young shepherd guided his small flock through the bombed-out interior of the arrivals hall and young men from the nearby town of Rafah picked through the debris for scrap metal to sell.

The airport was built with funding from the international community and symbolically inaugurated in 1998 by then-US president Bill Clinton and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Its opening came four years after the Oslo accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians, when the sides were in peace talks.

Flights run by Palestinian Airlines — at the time equipped with three passenger aircraft — left for Amman and Cairo, and during the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca planes ferried Palestinians to Saudi Arabia.

Israeli forces hit the airport’s radar tower in 2001 during the second Intifada, when Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza launched an uprising against the Israeli occupation, forcing it to stop work.

Further strikes reduced the airport’s other buildings to rubble, with fierce fighting near the site in 2006 after Gaza fighters snatched Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid near the adjacent Kerem Shalom frontier crossing.

The same year saw Israel begin its blockade of Gaza and residents have since faced deepening isolation. Crossings into Israel are very difficult and Gazans also face severe restrictions at the single crossing with Egypt at Rafah.

The deputy transport minister in Gaza, Yasser Al Shenti, said the airport was of more than just symbolic value, making life easier for Gazans.

“It meant that most citizens of the Gaza Strip who used the airport were able to fly directly... with no need to wait or travel across the Rafah crossing to Cairo.”

The reopening of the airport is a “main demand” for the Palestinian delegation due to hold talks in Cairo, Shenti said.

Economic boost 

But even if an agreement to reopen it is reached, the airport’s reconstruction would be impossible without construction materials, he added.

Israel limits the entry of such goods into the enclave because it says fighters use them to build tunnels and fortifications.

As well as the Gazans themselves, the opening of the airport would give their goods a chance to reach outside markets — in a major potential boost for the territory’s battered economy.

“We know the people of Gaza are tremendously entrepreneurial, it is a vibrant economy that has really been affected by the blockade in the last years,” said Maria-Jose Torres of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“If they were able to export textiles or goods, that would be a great opportunity for them.”

Even after the airport closed, Arafat kept working at the facility until 2004, doing training courses for the airport authority before eventually going to work for Gaza’s transport ministry.

Akhras stopped going to work when the airport closed in 2001 and as he drove away, he laughed about what he had been doing since.

“I have been waiting for the airport to reopen.”

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State John Kerry met for over two hours Wednesday with Palestinian negotiators for "constructive" talks on future relations with Israel, a US official said.

The talks come just days after Israel announced its biggest grab of Palestinian land since the 1980s, and as a new showdown looms at the United Nations with the increasingly frustrated Palestinians planning to push a resolution setting a three-year deadline to end the Israeli occupation.

It was Kerry's first face-to-face talks with Palestinian negotiators since Washington found itself sidelined from the Gaza ceasefire talks in July, when the top US diplomat failed to broker a truce in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

"Kerry met with Saeb Erekat and Majid Faraj for about two hours this afternoon," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

"It was a constructive conversation that covered a range of issues, including Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian relations and recent developments in the region," she said, adding they had agreed to talk again in coming weeks.

Kerry had also spoken Tuesday by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he expressed his concerns about new Israeli plans to confiscate some 400 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank for settlement building.

The US has called on Israel to reverse the decision.

Kerry's high-profile bid to hammer out a full peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed spectacularly amid bitter recriminations in April, despite more than a year of shuttle diplomacy.

State Department officials told AFP the Palestinians had requested Wednesday's meeting "to brief the secretary on current Palestinian plans on the way forward and next steps in Gaza”.

More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip, nearly 70 per cent of them civilians, which ended last week with an open-ended ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian groups, brokered by Egypt.

The two sides are supposed to meet soon in Cairo for negotiations on a long-term truce, but no date has been announced yet for the start of the talks.

The Palestinians now intend to seek a UN Security Council resolution setting a three-year deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

But the resolution will likely be voted down by a veto from the US which has long opposed unilateral moves by the Palestinians to seek statehood.

CAIRO — Egypt suffered a massive power outage that halted parts of the Cairo subway, took TV stations off the air and ground much of the country to a halt for several hours Thursday, as officials offered no clear explanation for how the country suddenly lost 50 per cent of its power generation.

The blackout comes barely three months after Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, a former army chief, was elected president on promises to restore order after three years of turmoil following the 2011 uprising that toppled long-ruling autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The government's inability to pay for enough imported fuel, debts to foreign oil companies, and old and poorly maintained equipment have all contributed to a monthslong power crisis in which rolling blackouts have plunged entire neighborhoods into darkness for several hours a day.

The government had recently promised to end the blackouts by the end of the year, partially blaming the outages on saboteurs. Over the past week there had been a noticeable reduction in the power cuts, coinciding with slightly cooler temperatures after a scorching August.

But the mass outage on Friday was far more severe and wide-ranging than any of the previous cuts.

Egypt's Electricity Minister Mohammed Shaker described Thursday's blackout as a rare event caused by a technical failure which occurs every 15 years and said authorities hoped to restore power within hours. Earlier, officials claimed that the outage was a result of an experiment in redistributing electricity, saying a technical failure during the "maneuver" caused the blackout.

Two senior security and electricity officials told The Associated Press that the crisis erupted when one of the country's main power generating stations, Al Kuraymat in southern Cairo, went out of service either because of human error or technical failure. That led to the collapse of the rest of the main power stations, since Egypt's stations are all connected in one network.

The sudden power outage at 6:00am Cairo time (0300 GMT) caused paralysis in many areas across the country, including southern provinces. Widespread frustration led TV commentators to urge Egypt's prime minister to sack the electricity minister. Others blamed the event on a plot by Islamists in the ranks of the ministry, something officials ruled out.

As army chief, Sisi led the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last year amid massive protests against his yearlong rule. The protests against Morsi were in part fueled by the decline in living standards following the 2011 uprising as the economy cratered and security deteriorated.

The minister told Egypt's official news agency MENA that the country lost nearly half of its capacity Thursday and suffered a sudden drop from at least 20,000 MW to 11,000 MW. He stressed that the outage was not linked to a fuel shortage.

Shaker apologised to Egyptians, saying "we vow to exert all effort and God willing this will not happen again”. He added that authorities were investigating the outage, saying anyone found to have been at fault would be held accountable.

Local TV networks showed metro stations packed with commuters after trains stopped due to the electricity cut. The spokesman for the city's metro system, Ahmed Abdel Hadi, said the trains connecting Cairo's southern suburbs to downtown were halted.

Hours later he said trains had resumed normal operations. By sundown, authorities said they had restored 75 per cent of the lost power.

Egypt's mobile service providers Mobinil and Vodafone said thousands of towers went out of service, disrupting communications across the country. Khaled Hegazi of Vodafone said 2,000 towers were out of service across the country, as 85 per cent of the company's towers depend on electricity.

In southern Egypt, governors set up operation rooms to receive citizens' complaints and follow up on the crisis.

According to officials in the central and southern provinces of Assiut, Minya and Sohag, hospitals suffered during the outages, which left dialysis machines, X-ray machines and operation rooms out of service.

After power was restored in many of the southern cities, the operation rooms were flooded with complaints from citizens that their electronic devices, such as refrigerators, washing machines and TV sets, were damaged, officials said.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.

GENEVA — Iran and the United States met in Geneva for bilateral talks on Thursday as international diplomacy intensifies to end a decade-old dispute over Tehran's atomic activities by a new deadline in late November.

The office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton confirmed Iran and six world powers would hold their first negotiating round since they failed to meet a July 20 target date for an agreement in New York on September 18.

The deadline was extended until November 24 after six months of talks because wide gaps persisted over the future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment programme, which can have both civilian and military applications.

The six powers — the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain — aim to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for phasing out sanctions that have severely hurt its oil-dependent economy.

The election last year of President Hassan Rouhani, widely seen as a pragmatist, raised hopes of a settlement of the stand-off after years of tension and fears of a new Middle East war, and an interim accord was reached between Iran and the six powers in Geneva late last year.

But Western diplomats say the sides remain far apart on what a final deal should look like — especially on the issue of how many enrichment centrifuges Iran can operate — and that a successful outcome in the negotiations is far from guaranteed.

Western countries suspect Iran's programme is aimed at seeking the capability to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran says it is a peaceful project to generate electricity.

Thursday's meeting in Geneva between senior Iranian and US officials was the second time they held talks in the Swiss city in the past month.

US sanctions pressure

State news agency IRNA and a US official confirmed the discussions were under way.

"I believe we are still not in a position to judge whether or not we can reach a deal before the deadline of November 24, but we are trying our best and are hopeful and optimistic," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told France 24 on Wednesday after talks with French officials in Paris this week.

"The good news is that both sides are serious enough to come to a deal by the deadline," Araqchi said. One of Iran's chief negotiators, he took part in the Geneva talks on Thursday.

The United States last week penalised a number of Iranian and other foreign companies, banks and airlines for violating sanctions against Tehran, saying it was sending a signal that there should be no evasion of sanctions while talks continue.

Rouhani said on Saturday the sanctions were against the spirit of negotiations, but added he was not pessimistic about the viability of the talks.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman were in the US delegation at the Geneva talks, which will last for two days, the US State Department said in a statement.

Araqchi told France 24 he believed a compromise was "quite possible" on Iran's enrichment centrifuge capacity. "If the other side avoids excessive demands then I believe a compromise is possible," he said.

Although the United States is part of the six-power negotiating track, any workable deal will likely have to be based on a bilateral agreement between Washington and Tehran. The United States cut off ties with Iran during a hostage crisis shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

High-level bilateral meetings between the United States and Iran, virtually unthinkable in years past, have become almost routine on the sidelines of the nuclear talks.

Ashton's office also confirmed that Iran and France, Britain and Germany would meet in Vienna on September 11. Ashton is the coordinator of contacts with Iran on behalf of the six powers.

AINKAWA, Iraq — Hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq's northern Kurdish region are facing an "education emergency" after being forced from their homes, with hundreds of schools used to shelter displaced families.

The Kurdish regional government says schools will open as planned next Wednesday but, on top of the huge challenge of educating those who have been displaced, there are major concerns about where those now living in schools will be moved.

"It is a major disaster for children," said Brenda Haiplik, an education expert from the UN children's agency, UNICEF.

"Education is life-saving. After a child has been to hell and back, education gives him or her an opportunity to go forward. Without that, the future is dim."

The United Nations says up to 1.8 million Iraqis have been displaced since January, with around 850,000 seeking refuge in autonomous, three-province Kurdistan.

Swathes of Iraq have been seized by militants since the beginning of the year, especially in a major jihadist-led offensive launched in June, causing widespread displacement of people desperate to escape the unrest.

With unsanitary camps scattered across the north overflowing with Iraqis who fled their homes, thousands of families have sought refuge in schools.

In Dohuk, the worst-affected Kurdish province, more than 600 schools are now home to displaced families.

"We are facing an education emergency" that affects the displaced, the more than 200,000 Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region and local children alike, Haiplik told AFP.

The Kurdistan region's education minister, Pishtiwan Sadiq, said that school for local residents will begin as planned everywhere except in Dohuk, where the UN says 64 per cent of the north's displaced are located.

"And as soon as housing is provided [for displaced families], we are ready to cover their educational needs," Sadiq told AFP.

'Education is everything' 

But he admitted the authorities are struggling to find shelter for the displaced.

"The Kurdistan government doesn't have the infrastructure to give shelter to the displaced. And assistance from the international community is very slow," he said.

With the deadline for the start of the academic year looming, schools in the region's capital Erbil were still home to thousands of displaced people, with up to four families sharing a single classroom.

"We don't know what our future holds," said Noel Jamil, whose family of 11 shared a room with three other families at a school in Ainkawa, a suburb of Erbil.

Jamil, who works as a schoolteacher and whose family was forced to leave the town of Qaraqosh several weeks earlier, said: "If school starts, we will have to leave here and go to a camp, or somewhere else, perhaps. We don't know where we will go.”

"We also don't know when our children will get the chance to go back to class," said Jamil.

Ahlam Kamel, a 45-year-old mother of four girls living in a tent in the playground of the school, echoed Jamil's concerns.

"Education is everything to us, it is the guarantee of my children's future... I can't put into words just how much we are suffering," Kamel said, as her 12-year-old daughter Siba wept quietly.

'Tip of the iceberg' 

UNICEF's Haiplik said the complexity of the humanitarian crisis, as well as funding shortfalls, make it hard to see just how the dual challenges of starting school next week and reintegrating all the displaced children into school can be met.

"I hope some schools do reopen in time, but there is a lot of work to do," Haiplik said, adding that the UN is working with the local authorities on alternatives such as schools in pre-fabricated buildings near camps.

"But there are a lot of protection issues involved... It takes a lot of coordination and the funding needs are massive," she said.

Similar issues affect children in central and southern Iraq, said Haiplik, and ongoing fighting across the country means that an unknown number of children are stuck in more violent areas that are impossible to reach.

"It just breaks our hearts," said Haiplik. "We are aware that the crisis in Dohuk and other areas... is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a horrific situation."

SUVA, Fiji — Fiji's army chief on Thursday dismissed as "sick" a suggestion the Pacific nation's Muslim minority will face a backlash if 45 UN peacekeepers taken hostage by Islamic rebels in the Golan Heights are harmed.

Brigadier General Mosese Tikoitoga also defended the action of his troops in surrendering to Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front rebels, even though a contingent of 75 Filipino peacekeepers who defied an order to lay down their weapons all escaped unscathed.

Tikoitoga, speaking to reporters in Suva just hours after the UN Security Council demanded the Fijians' immediate release, said the location of the Blue Helmets was still unknown.

He also revealed that talks with their captors had hit a "lull" but said specialised UN negotiators flown in from New York to deal with the crisis had told him this was normal in a hostage situation.

"They [the rebels] do not establish contact so that they can regain the initiative on negotiations," he said.

"But these are [just] tactics they use and I hope that we will resume discussions soon, and we can get them back on the line."

The Islamic fighters have made at least three demands, including that the Al Nusra Front be removed from the UN's list of terrorist organisations.

Former Fiji prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka told Radio New Zealand on Wednesday that Fiji's Muslim community, which numbers about 60,000 in an overall population of 900,000, could face retaliation if the islanders serving with the UN were harmed.

"If anything should happen to the 45 then the unsuspecting, and probably undeserving people who will bear the brunt of the feelings of the people could be the Muslim civil society and community in Fiji," he said.

Tikoitoga said the Fiji military was committed to treating all citizens equally and accused Rabuka of inflaming ethnic tensions.

"It's very irresponsible and I think it's closing in on inciting violence in Fiji. We should condemn it... it only shows the sick attitude of that individual," he said.

"The RFMF [military] will look after all Fijians and we don't hold anything against any Fijians for what's happening. This is a time we should all stand together, it is not the time to start pointing fingers at each other, especially internally."

Asked why his men surrendered, Tikoitoga said they were following a direct order from the commander of the UN Disengagement Observer Force.

"At no stage in an operation would I expect any of my officers not to follow the decisions of the first commander," he said. "The Filipinos chose to do so and the Philippines government have supported them for having chosen that path.”

"We cannot criticise them for it, nor can we follow the decision they have made, we live by our own ethos of following command."

He said officers on the ground had to make a snap decision in a fraught situation.

BAGHDAD — President Barack Obama vowed Wednesday that the United States would not be intimidated by the beheading of a second American reporter but acknowledged the fight against the jihadists would take time.

Obama pledged that justice would be done to the Islamic State (IS) killers of 31-year-old reporter Steven Sotloff, wherever they hid and however long it took.

But he warned that eliminating the threat posed to the region by the group from its bases in Iraq and Syria would take time.

IS posted video footage on the Internet of Sotloff's beheading, confirmed as authentic by Washington, which sparked outrage around the world.

It said the journalist's killing, which comes on the heels of the beheading last month of another US reporter, James Foley, was in retaliation for expanded US air strikes against its fighters in Iraq over the past week.

It warned a British hostage would be next unless London backs off from its support for Washington's air campaign.

Obama said the whole world had been repulsed by the barbarism of Sotloff's murder but "we will not be intimidated".

"Those who make the mistake of harming Americans will learn that we will not forget and that our reach is long and that justice will be served," he said.

Obama said Washington was determined to halt the IS threat to the region but warned it would depend on close cooperation with partners in the region.

He has previously admitted that his administration has yet to develop a comprehensive strategy for tackling IS on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

Washington has ruled out any air strikes for now against IS fighters on the Syrian side, where they hold a large swathe of the east.

Obama has also ruled out any cooperation with the Damascus regime against IS, for fear that it would drive other Sunni rebel groups in Syria into alliance with the jihadists.

‘Despicable act’ 

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the video depicted an “absolutely disgusting, despicable act” and convened a meeting of security chiefs to discuss how to tackle the IS threat.

The masked executioner in the video spoke with a London accent and claimed to be the same man, confirmed by UK security services as a Briton, who beheaded Foley.

“I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State,” the black-clad jihadist says, wielding a combat knife.

“So just as your missiles continue to strike the necks of our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people,” he declares, before reaching round to cut his captive’s throat.

The militant condemns US air strikes against IS fighters around both Mosul Dam in the north and the Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli further south, which dates the video to the past week.

At the end of the five-minute video recording, the militant threatens another captive, identified as Briton David Cawthorne Haines.

“We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone,” he says.

Britain has maintained a media silence about the kidnapping of aid worker Haines and there were few immediate details about when or how he was abducted.

Britain has not carried out any air strikes of its own against jihadist targets in Iraq but it has made extensive reconnaissance flights in support of the US air campaign from its base in Cyprus.

In a statement, the Sotloff family, who live in Miami, said: “The family knows of this horrific tragedy and is grieving privately. There will be no public comment from the family during this difficult time.”

After Foley’s death, Sotloff’s mother Shirley had addressed a video message to IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi pleading for her son’s life, and insisting he had no influence on US policy.

‘Brave and talented’ 

Sotloff’s former employers at Time and Foreign Policy paid tribute to a man widely respected for his intrepid reporting in Syria and the wider region, including a previous stint in Libya.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the world was outraged at the apparent beheading.

“I strongly condemn all such despicable crimes and I refuse to accept that whole communities can be threatened by atrocities because of who they are or what they believe,” Ban said.

Hours after the posting of the video, the White House announced that Obama had authorised about 350 more US troops to beef up security at US diplomatic facilities and protect personnel in Baghdad.

Washington initially limited the air support it launched on August 8 to Iraqi Kurdish forces fighting the jihadists in the north.

But late last week it expanded it to Iraqi troops and Shiite militia battling to relieve trapped civilians in Amerli, helping them to break the months-long IS siege on Sunday.

Assistance is now arriving in the town, brought in both by Shiite militia fighters and the United Nations.

BEIRUT — DNA testing has confirmed that the body of a man who jihadists said they had beheaded was that of Lebanese soldier Ali Sayyed, his family said Tuesday.

Sayyed was captured along with more than 20 other members of the Lebanese security forces in the eastern town of Arsal last month.

"We've been informed by MP Khaled Zahraman that the DNA test confirmed that the body of the soldier recovered by the army is that of our martyr Ali," his uncle, Hussam Al Sayyed, told AFP.

Sayyed said that the MP, representing the family, had been told of the result by the army.

"We are very sad. We call for restraint and we do not want violent reactions," said the uncle, adding that Ali would be buried on Wednesday.

"Our only consolation will be to see the release of all the soldiers and members of the security forces who have been kidnapped," he said.

A video purporting to show Sayyed being beheaded by Islamic State (IS) jihadists emerged last week.

In the video, he is presented as a Lebanese soldier among those abducted on August 2 as clashes erupted in Arsal, which lies on the Syrian border.

IS and other jihadists overran the town of Arsal in clashes that began after the arrest of a Syrian accused of belonging to an extremist group.

Twenty soldiers, dozens of jihadists and 16 civilians were killed in the fighting that ended after mediation by Sunni Lebanese clerics.

After the truce, the militants, believed to be from the IS as well as Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front, withdrew from Arsal.

But they have continued to hold 15 soldiers and 14 police taken hostage during the fighting.

The militants have reportedly sought to negotiate the release of the hostages in exchange for Islamist prisoners held in Lebanese jails.

The fighting in Arsal was the most serious border incident since the conflict in Syria began in March 2011.

Families of the remaining soldiers and police hostages have blocked roads in Lebanon in a bid to pressure the government to secure the release of their relatives.

VILLACOUBLAY MILITARY BASE, France — A young French mother whose two-year-old daughter was smuggled out of the country by her father and reportedly taken to jihadist centres in Syria arrived home Wednesday after they were reunited in Turkey.

Meriam Rhaiem, 25, made headlines in March with an emotional appeal to French authorities to recognise her baby girl as "the youngest French hostage".

Mother and daughter arrived at Villacoublay air base outside Paris at 2:15am Wednesday (0015 GMT) aboard a plane chartered by the French interior ministry.

"It's a moment of great emotion with the arrival of Meriam Rhaiem and her daughter Assia, after months of waiting," said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who went out onto the tarmac to meet the plane.

He noted "the trials this young woman has endured, fighting hard for the return of her daughter who was kidnapped in circumstances which aren't clear".

He thanked the Turkish authorities for their role in the family reunion which led to "the best possible outcome".

Rhaiem, holding her child in a beige blanket and flanked by her lawyer who was also on the plane from Turkey, made no comment upon her arrival.

Rhaiem, who lives in eastern France, had said she was certain her French husband, whom she is divorcing, and who is wanted under an international arrest warrant, was in Syria where he was seeking to join jihadists.

The father was arrested last weekend with their 28-month-old daughter Assia in Turkey, where he is still being held, a French interior ministry source said.

Assia's father had failed to bring his daughter home after spending the day with her in October last year, and had left France by road bound for Turkey, from where he called his wife regularly and asked her to come and join them.

He had also said he planned to cross into Syria with their daughter to join the Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate.

Cazeneuve told French radio on Wednesday that the father "had taken this child into the theatre of jihadist operations in Syria", adding she was "in danger every day".

He paid tribute to "a brave mother [who] decided to get her child back".

According to Rhaiem's lawyer Gabriel Versini-Bullara, her husband had become radicalised after travelling to Mecca, asking her to wear the veil, criticising her for working or banning her from playing music to Assia.

Like a number of European countries, France has expressed concern over radicalised people leaving the country to fight in Iraq and Syria, with fears that they could pose a risk to domestic security on their return.

According to official estimates, around 800 French nationals or residents — including several dozen women — have travelled to Syria, returned from the conflict-ridden country or plan to go there.

France unveiled a bill in July aimed at stopping aspiring jihadists from travelling to Syria.

It includes a ban on foreign travel of up to six months for individuals suspected of radicalisation, and gives authorities powers to temporarily confiscate and invalidate their passports.