Region

BEIRUT — At least 42 children have been killed in government air strikes and shelling across Syria in the last 36 hours, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Sunday.

The Britain-based Observatory said 25 children had been killed between midnight on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, with 17 more killed between Friday and Saturday night.

The deaths came in regime shelling and air strikes across the country, though most took place in the northern province of Aleppo and northwestern Idlib, Observatory director Rami Abdul Rahman said.

Many of the deaths came in raids involving the use of explosive-packed barrel-bombs, a weapon that has been criticised by rights groups as indiscriminate.

Among the dead on Sunday were at least five children killed along with five adults in a barrel bomb attack on the town of Hobait in Idlib province, said the monitor.

In northern Aleppo province, another five children and three adults were killed in an air raid in the west of the province, it added.

In the capital Damascus, meanwhile, regime planes continued to pound the eastern rebel-held district of Jubar, where the government began a fierce offensive earlier this week to wrest back control.

The observatory said at least 15 air raids hit the district on Sunday, but there were no immediate details about casualties.

Jubar has been in insurgent hands for a year, and is considered strategic because it provides a gateway to the centre of the capital and opens onto the key rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta.

In mid-August, the army took Mleiha some 10 kilometres southeast of Damascus, and capturing Jubar would allow a two-pronged advance on Eastern Ghouta.

Rebels arrayed around the capital regularly fire mortar and rockets into Damascus.

In northern Syria, meanwhile, the observatory said it had documented the executions of 31 rebel fighters and civilians by Islamic State jihadists in the last 10 days of August.

Among those killed were rebel fighters, militants from the rival jihadist group Al Nusra Front and civilians, including a university professor executed on allegations including membership in Syria's ruling Baath Party, said the monitor.

The figure does not include hundreds of regime forces and members of the Sunni Shaitat tribe who were executed after battles with IS jihadists in Raqa and Deir Ezzor provinces.

It also does not include rebels killed in clashes with IS, which has been battling rival opposition fighters since early this year.

More than 191,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began there in March 2011, the UN says.

BEIRUT — Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers escaped their besieged outpost in the Golan Heights after a seven-hour gunbattle with Syrian rebels, Philippine officials said Sunday. Al Qaeda-linked insurgents still hold captive 44 Fijian troops.

The getaway, combined with the departure of another entrapped group of Filipino troops, marked a major step forward in a crisis that erupted on Thursday when Syrian rebels began targeting the peacekeeping forces. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the assaults on the international troops monitoring the Syrian-Israeli frontier, and has demanded the unconditional release of those still in captivity.

The crisis began after Syrian rebels overran the Quneitra crossing — located on the de facto border between Syrian- and Israeli-controlled parts of the Golan Heights — on Wednesday. A day later, insurgents from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front seized the Fijian peacekeepers and surrounded their Filipino colleagues, demanding they surrender.

The Filipinos, occupying two UN encampments, refused and fought the rebels Saturday. The first group of 35 peacekeepers was then successfully escorted out of a UN encampment in Breiqa by Irish and Filipino forces on board armoured vehicles.

The remaining 40 peacekeepers were besieged at the second encampment, called Rwihana, by more than 100 gunmen who rammed the camp’s gates with their trucks and fired mortar rounds. The Filipinos returned fire in self-defence, Philippine military officials said.

At one point, Syrian government forces fired artillery rounds from a distance to prevent the Filipino peacekeepers from being overwhelmed, said Col. Roberto Ancan, a Philippine military official who helped monitor the tense stand-off from the Philippine capital, Manila, and mobilise support for the besieged troops.

“Although they were surrounded and outnumbered, they held their ground for seven hours,” Philippine military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said, adding that there were no Filipino casualties. “We commend our soldiers for exhibiting resolve even while under heavy fire.”

As night fell and a ceasefire took hold, the 40 Filipinos fled with their weapons, travelling across the chilly hills for nearly two hours before meeting up with other UN forces, who escorted them to safety early Sunday, Philippine officials said.

“We may call it the greatest escape,” Catapang told reporters in Manila.

The Syrian and Israeli governments, along with the United States and Qatar, provided support, the Philippine military said without elaborating.

In New York, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, whose mission is to monitor a 1974 disengagement in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, reported that shortly after midnight local time, during a ceasefire agreed with the armed elements, all 40 Filipino peacekeepers left their position and “arrived in a safe location one hour later”.

With the Filipinos now safe, full attention turned to the Fijians who remain in captivity.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke with the prime minister of Fiji by telephone Sunday, and promised that the United Nations was “doing its utmost to obtain the unconditional and immediate release” of the Fijian peacekeepers, Ban’s office said.

The Fiji Times Online reported that Fiji’s military commander expressed concern that the exact locations of the Fijian peacekeepers remain unconfirmed.

Military Commander Brig. Gen. Mosese Tikoitoga also told reporters in the South Pacific island nation on Sunday that contacts on the ground in the Golan Heights have assured the military of the captured soldiers’ well-being, the report said.

He said a UN negotiation team and Fijians in Syria were working towards the peacekeepers’ release.

The Nusra Front, meanwhile, confirmed that it had seized the Fijians. In a statement posted online, the group published a photo showing what it said were the captured Fijians in their military uniforms along with 45 identification cards. The group said the men “are in a safe place and in good health, and everything they need in terms of food and medicine is given to them”.

It was unclear why the number of detained peacekeepers differed from the 44 figure provided by the United Nations.

The statement mentioned no demands or conditions for the peacekeepers’ release.

The Nusra Front accused the UN of doing nothing to help the Syrian people since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. It said the Fijians were seized in retaliation for the UN ignoring “the daily shedding of the Muslims’ blood in Syria” and even colluding with Assad’s army “to facilitate its movement to strike the vulnerable Muslims” through a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

The Nusra Front has recently seized hostages to exchange for prisoners detained in Syria and Lebanon.

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre, said the abductions also may signal an expansion of Nusra’s kidnapping operations to make up for a loss revenues from oil resources in eastern Syria and a reduction in private funding from Gulf-based sources.

“This money shortage comes amid a period of wider suffering for Nusra, as its image is being overwhelmingly trumped by the Islamic State, leading to sustained numbers of localised defections in areas of Syria,” he said.

The UN mission in the Golan Heights has 1,223 troops from six countries: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, Netherlands and the Philippines. A number of countries have withdrawn their peacekeepers due to the escalating violence.

Philippine officials said Filipino forces would remain in Golan until their mission ends in October and not withdraw prematurely.

Both Ban and the Security Council strongly condemned Saturday’s attack on the peacekeepers’ positions and the ongoing detention of the Fijian peacekeepers.

WASHINGTON — Members of a Libyan militia have taken over an annex of the US embassy in Tripoli but have not broken into the main compound where the United States evacuated all of its staff last month, US officials said on Sunday.

A YouTube video showed the breach of the vacated diplomatic facility by an armed group from the northwestern city of Misrata, with dozens of fighters seen crowding around a swimming pool and some diving in from the balcony of a nearby building.

It was not immediately known how close the annex, apparently made up of diplomatic residences, is to the embassy itself.

Libya has been rocked by the worst factional violence since the 2011 fall of Muammar Qadhafi, and a Misrata-led alliance, part of it which is Islamist-leaning, now controls the capital.

A takeover of the embassy compound could deliver another symbolic blow to Washington over its policy towards Libya, which Western governments fear is teetering towards becoming a failed state just three years after a NATO-backed war ended Qadhafi rule.

The United States evacuated its embassy in Tripoli on July 26, driving diplomats across the border into Tunisia under armed guard, amid escalating clashes between rival factions.

Security in Libya is an especially sensitive subject for the United States because of the September 11, 2012, attack on the US mission in Benghazi, in which militants killed ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republican lawmakers have kept up steady criticism of President Barack Obama over his administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack, and they have also cited Libya’s latest unrest as another example of what they see as the Democratic president’s failed policy in the volatile region.

US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones, in a message on Twitter, said the YouTube video appeared to show “a residential annex of the US mission but cannot say definitively”.

Jones, now based in Malta, said, however, that the embassy compound “is now being safeguarded and has not been ransacked”.

The US government believes the main embassy compound is still intact and has not been seized, a US official in Washington told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Misrata-led groups refuse to recognise Libya’s central government and elected parliament, which have moved to the remote eastern city of Tobruk.

The Misrata forces have set up an alternative parliament which is assembling a rival government headed by Omar Al Hasi, an Islamist.

Hasi called on Saturday for diplomatic missions to return to Tripoli, saying foreigners would be protected.

The North African oil producer appears at risk of splitting or even sliding into civil war as political divisions and fighting among former rebels who helped topple Qadhafi have created uncertainty and chaos.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces broke through to the jihadist-besieged Shiite town of Amerli Sunday, where thousands of people have been trapped for more than two months with dwindling food and water supplies.

It is the biggest offensive success for the Iraqi government since militants led by the Sunni Islamic State (IS) jihadist group overran large areas of five provinces in June, sweeping security forces aside.

The breakthrough came as America carried out limited strikes in the area, the first time it has expanded its more than three-week air campaign against militants outside of Iraq's north.

Aircraft from several countries also dropped humanitarian aid to Amerli.

The mainly Shiite Turkmen residents of the town in Salaheddin province were running desperately short of food and water, and endangered both because of their Shiite faith, which jihadists consider heresy, and their resistance to the militants, which has drawn harsh retribution elsewhere.

UN Iraq envoy Nickolay Mladenov had warned that they faced a "massacre" by the besieging militants.

"Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege," Iraqi security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta told AFP, an account confirmed by a local official and a fighter from the town.

"It is a very important success," Atta later said on state television, adding that there was still fighting in the area.

The operation was launched on Saturday after days of preparations in which Iraqi security forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish fighters deployed for the assault and Iraqi aircraft carried out strikes against militants.

US expands air campaign

The government's reliance on the thousands of Shiite militiamen involved in the operation poses serious dangers for Iraq, risking entrenching groups with a history of brutal sectarian killings.

The United States announced that it carried out three air strikes in the Amerli area, expanding its air campaign outside the far north for the first time, while Australian, British, French and US aircraft dropped relief supplies for the town.

"At the request of the government of Iraq, the United States military today airdropped humanitarian aid to the town of Amerli," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.

"The United States air force delivered this aid alongside aircraft from Australia, France and the United Kingdom, who also dropped much needed supplies."

The aid drops came alongside “coordinated air strikes against nearby [IS] terrorists in order to support this humanitarian assistance operation”, he added.

The American strikes were at least indirectly in support of an operation involving militia forces that previously fought against US troops in Iraq.

“The operations will be limited in their scope and duration as necessary to address this emerging humanitarian crisis and protect the civilians trapped in Amerli,” Kirby said.

US Central Command said the US supplies dropped included around 47,775 litres of drinking water and 7,000 pre-packaged meals.

Three American air strikes near Amerli, which happened early on Sunday Iraq time, destroyed five IS vehicles and a checkpoint, bringing the total number of US strikes since August 8 to nearly 120.

Western aid for Amerli was slow in coming, however, with the burden of flying supplies and launching strikes in the area largely falling to Iraq’s fledging air forces.

“The US military will continue to assess the effectiveness of these operations and work with the Department of State, the US Agency for International Development, as well as international partners including the government of Iraq, the United Nations, and non-government organisations to provide humanitarian assistance in Iraq as needed,” Kirby said.

Source of power 

The US military also launched air strikes Saturday on IS forces near Iraq’s largest dam, north of the militant-held northern city of Mosul, the Pentagon said.

Kurdish forces retook the dam after briefly losing it to the jihadists earlier this month, securing the source of much of the power and irrigation water for the region around Iraq’s second city.

The jihadist Islamic State and its allies control swathes of both northern and western Iraq and neighbouring northeastern Syria where their rule has witnessed a spate of atrocities that have shocked the world.

Washington has said that operations in Syria will be needed to defeat IS, but has so far ruled out any cooperation with the Damascus regime against the jihadists.

It has, however, attempted to enlist the support of long-time foe Tehran, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Writing in The New York Times, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged “a united response led by the United States and the broadest possible coalition of nations” to combat IS.

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged that Washington has no strategy yet to tackle IS, which has declared an Islamic “caliphate” in the territory under its control in Iraq and Syria.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel announced Sunday it will expropriate 400 hectares of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, angering the Palestinians and alarming Israeli peace campaigners.

The move to seize the land, in the Bethlehem area in the south of the territory, is the biggest of its kind in three decades, Peace Now said.

"On the instructions of the political echelon... 4,000 dunams at Gevaot [settlement] is declared as state land," said the army department charged with administering civil affairs in occupied territory, laying down a 45-day period for any appeal.

It said the move stemmed from political decisions taken after the June killing of three Israeli settlers snatched from a roadside in the same area, known to Israelis as the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

Israel has named three Palestinians from the southern West Bank city of Hebron as being behind the murders.

The Etzion settlements council welcomed Sunday's announcement and said it was the prelude to the expansion of the current Gevaot settlement.

It "paves the way for the new city of Gevaot", it said in a statement.

“The goal of the murderers of those three youths was to sow fear among us, to disrupt our daily lives and to call into doubt our right to the land,” it said. “Our response is to strengthen settlement.”

The existing settlement of Gevaot consists of only 10 families.

Haaretz newspaper said construction at the site had been on the agenda since 2000 and last year the government invited bids for the building of 1,000 new homes there.

In an angry reaction to the announcement, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called for diplomatic action against Israel.

“The Israeli government is committing various crimes against the Palestinian people and their occupied land,” he told AFP.

“The international community should hold Israel accountable as soon as possible for its crimes and raids against our people in Gaza and the ongoing Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of constant settlement expansion on land the Palestinians claim for a future state is deemed illegal by the European Union and an “obstacle to peace” by the United States and staunchly opposed by both.

However, Israel announced no new development during its 50-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip when it was focused on combatting cross-border rocket fire and growing disquiet in the international community over the high death toll of Palestinian civilians.

“Today’s announcement clearly represents Israel’s deliberate intent to wipe out any Palestinian presence on the land and to wilfully impose a de facto one-state solution,” senior Palestine Liberation official Hanan Ashrawi said.

Some 550,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, territory that Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

One-state solution 

“As far as we know, this declaration is unprecedented in its scope since the 1980s and can dramatically change the reality in the Gush Etzion and the Bethlehem areas,” Peace Now said.

“Peace Now views this declaration as proof that Prime Minister Netanyahu does not aspire for a new ‘Diplomatic Horizon’, but rather he continues to put obstacles to the two-state vision and promote a one-state solution.

“By declaring another 4,000 dunams as state land, the Israeli government stabs [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and the moderate Palestinian forces in the back, proving again that violence delivers Israeli concessions while non-violence results in settlement expansion,” it said.

Peace Now official Hagit Ofran told AFP that the legal basis for such land confiscation goes back to an 1858 ruling by the region’s Ottoman rulers.

“We are afraid that Netanyahu will carry out a lot of expansion because of the pressure he fells from his right wing and the feeling that the [Gaza] war did not end up with many successes,” he said.

KIRKUK, Iraq — Iraqi security forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish fighters launched a major operation Saturday to break the more than two-month jihadist siege of a Shiite Turkmen-majority town, officials said.

The operation has been in the works for days, with Iraqi aircraft carrying out strikes and forces massing for the drive towards Amerli, which has been besieged since militants led by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group launched a major offensive in June.

Residents face major shortages of food and water, and are in danger both because of their Shiite faith, which jihadists consider heresy, and their resistance to the militants, which has drawn harsh retribution elsewhere.

Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Al Zaidi said the operation to free Amerli from the jihadists has been launched with support from Iraqi aircraft, vowing that "we will be victorious over them".

Karim Al Nuri, spokesman for the Badr Organisation militia, said thousands of its fighters were taking part alongside civilian volunteers and security forces.

Forces from two other Shiite militias — Asaib Ahl Al Haq and powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s Saraya Al Salam forces — had also been gathering north of Amerli for the attack.

And Karim Mulla Shakur, a Kurdish political party official, said that Kurdish peshmerga fighters were also involved.

Officials have said that Washington is weighing both aid drops and air strikes to help the town.

“It could be a humanitarian operation. It could be a military operation. It could be both,” a US defence official said on condition of anonymity.

There is “no possibility of evacuating them so far”, Eliana Nabaa, spokeswoman for the UN mission in Iraq, has said of Amerli residents.

And UN Iraq envoy Nickolay Mladenov has called for an urgent effort to help Amerli, saying residents face a “possible massacre” if the town is overrun.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An international organisation involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years under current levels of restrictions to rebuild the Gaza Strip's battered and neglected housing stock following the war between Hamas and Israel.

Most of the new building would be to make up for the current housing deficit, rather than to address damage from fighting between Israel and Palestinian fighters.

The assessment by Shelter Cluster, chaired by the Norwegian Refugee Council with the participation of the UN refugee agency and the Red Cross, underscores the complexities involved in an overall reconstruction programme for the Gaza Strip, which some Palestinian officials have estimated could cost in excess of $6 billion.

It is based on the current level of goods permitted to be moved from Israel to Gaza — a level that could easily be expanded, which would shorten the time needed to address the territory's housing needs.

Any effort to rebuild Gaza will be hindered by a blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel since the Islamic group Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel has severely restricted the import of concrete and other building materials into Gaza, fearing that militants will use them to build rockets and reinforce cross-border attack tunnels.

Egypt and Norway have raised the possibility of convening a Gaza donors' conference at some point next month, but no firm arrangements have been made.

With a population of 1.8 million, Gaza is a densely populated coastal strip of urban warrens and agricultural land that still bears the scars of previous rounds of fighting.

In its report issued late Friday, Shelter Cluster said 17,000 Gaza housing units were destroyed or severely damaged during this summer's war and 5,000 units still need work after damage sustained in the previous military campaigns. In addition, it says, Gaza has a housing deficit of 75,000 units.

Shelter Cluster said its 20-year assessment is based on the capacity of the main Israel-Gaza cargo crossing to handle 100 trucks of construction materials daily.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government agency responsible for operating the crossing on whether it had future plans to ease restrictions on goods going into Gaza.

Israel and Hamas agreed on Tuesday to an open-ended truce. The ceasefire brought an immediate end to the fighting but left key issues unresolved. Hamas immediately declared victory, even though it has very little to show for the war.

While Israel agreed to loosen its long-standing blockade to allow humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials into Gaza, many of the border restrictions will remain in place. Hamas, meanwhile, rejected Israel’s demands that it disarm.

These deeper matters are only to be addressed in indirect talks in Egypt next month.

Mindful of Israel’s concerns about Hamas, Britain, France and Germany have proposed the creation of an international mechanism to monitor goods going into Gaza. The goal of the mechanism would be insure that Hamas and other groups would not divert construction materials like iron and cement into weapons or weapons manufacturing facilities.

The latest war began after three Israeli teens were killed in the West Bank by Hamas operatives in June, prompting Israel to arrest hundreds of Hamas members there. Rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli cities then escalated, and Israel launched a massive air and later ground campaign. The fighting lasted almost two months.

Egyptian mediators tried early on to get the sides to agree to a cease-fire. Several temporary truces were broken by Gaza fighters.

Over 2,100 Palestinians, most civilians, died in the war. Israel lost 71 people, all but six of them soldiers.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Saturday commuted a death sentence against the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader to life in prison, in one of many trials of Islamists since their removal from power.

Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood's supreme guide, still faces the gallows, however, after another court in southern Egypt passed a separate death sentence over deadly riots in August 2013, almost a month after the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

In Saturday's ruling, a Cairo court that had initially sentenced him to death for violent protests in the capital reduced the ruling to life in prison, on the recommendation of the mufti, the government's Islamic law expert.

The government that took over after Morsi's overthrow cracked down on Islamists, with at least 700 pro-Morsi protesters killed in clashes with police in a single day in August 2013.

Thousands have been imprisoned, including Morsi himself, and placed on trials that resulted in death sentences for more than 200 people.

The Cairo court on Saturday sentenced seven other Brotherhood leaders to life in prison, and six who were tried in absentia to death.

Those sentenced to death in absentia have the right to retrial if they surrender themselves.

With much of its leadership behind bars or in exile, the Muslim Brotherhood has persisted in organising small and sometimes violent protests across the country.

The government has designated the group, once the country's largest political movement, as a terrorist organisation, blaming it for militant attacks that have killed scores of policemen and soldiers.

The Islamists deny involvement in the attacks, the deadliest of which have been claimed by an Al Qaeda inspired group based in the Sinai Peninsula.

JEDDAH — Gulf Arab foreign ministers met in Jeddah on Saturday but took no big step towards ending a diplomatic row that has undermined their ability collectively to influence Middle East events.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in March withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar, saying it had broken promises to them about Gulf security, which analysts connected to Doha's support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

A visit by three top Saudi princes, including Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal, to Doha on Wednesday had prompted widespread speculation in Gulf media that Saturday's meeting would result in a resolution or escalation of the rift.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al Sabah, whose country has tried to mediate in the dispute, said Saturday's meeting had led to limited progress. But he did not announce any concrete step to end the rift at a news conference after the meeting.

"What has been agreed upon today is to lay the foundation and the criteria by which implementation will follow. We will hasten in removing all unknown factors and obstacles to complete this process," he said.

"Today the six countries agreed on these grounds, next we'll follow up the implementation... All agreed that there is a commitment to implementation," he added.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are big supporters of Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar  Assad, an ally of Iran.

But Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have accused Doha of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group they have labelled a terrorist organisation and which they accuse of destabilising their close ally Egypt.

In Libya, Qatar has backed some Islamist groups, but on Tuesday the US State Department said the UAE had been involved in air strikes against Libyan Islamist groups.

In late 2011 Saudi Arabia pushed for Gulf Cooperation Council members to unite "as a single entity" in a bid to join the group of six monarchies into a united front against Iran and the instability caused by that year's Arab uprisings.

However, the GCC, which also includes Kuwait and Oman, appears more divided than at any point in its 33-year history.

UNITED NATIONS — Thirty-two Filipino United Nations peacekeepers have been evacuated after being caught up in heavy fighting on the Golan Heights while others remain under fire, the UN confirmed Saturday.

The group was part of a 72-member contingent situated in two different locations in the area.

Those remaining are currently still under fire, preventing them from being moved out, the UN said in a statement issued from its New York headquarters.

"The UN Disengagement Observer Force [UNDOF] reports that, early this morning, UN Position 69 was fired upon by armed elements," the UN said in a statement issued from its New York headquarters.

"The Mission's Force Reaction Group has been deployed to the position and all 32 Filipino personnel from this position have been extricated, and are now safe."

The statement said another position was also attacked by "armed elements" with mortar and heavy machine gun fire, and that the peacekeepers returned fire and prevented the attackers from entering.

That position "is currently under fire, preventing the personnel from moving out", it added.

There are no reported casualties among UN personnel, the statement said.

However, "we are still working towards the safe release of the detained 44 Fijian peacekeepers”, it added.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, UN soldiers said earlier that part of the encircled Filipino contingent had been brought out and that others were no longer in rebel hands but awaiting better security conditions so they could enter the Israeli-controlled part of the plateau.

In Manila, Philippines Defence Minister Voltaire Gazmin said UN peacekeepers had clashed with Syrian rebels.

Gazmin said in an SMS statement to reporters that the Filipino troops had been "extricated" from one of their two positions but added that another group of Filipino soldiers "is now under attack”.

The peacekeepers were besieged by rebels Thursday but defied demands that they give up their weapons.

Rebels, including some linked to Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al Nusra Front, also took hostage 44 Fijian peacekeepers, the UN has said.