Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Samih Al Qasim, a Palestinian Druze poet known across the Arab world for his nationalist writing, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, a family friend said. He was 75.

Qasim died in Safed hospital in northern Israel after suffering from cancer of the liver for the past three years, Issam Khuri, a novelist and close family friend, told AFP.

He was best known for his nationalist poetry in which he passionately defended the rights and identity of Israel's Arab minority.

Known as a "resistance poet", Qasim's poems were widely embraced across the Arab world as a symbol of steadfastness in the struggle against foreign occupation, with many translated into English and other languages.

"I have no love for you, death, nor do I fear you. But you are making a bed of a body and a blanket of my soul," he wrote last week as he was dying.

He was a contemporary of the late Mahmud Darwish, who was also born in a village in what later became northern Israel, and was widely considered one of the Arab world's greatest poets.

A long-time member of the Israeli communist party and resident of the northern village of Rameh near Safed, Qasim was arrested many times for his political beliefs.

He also worked as a journalist and was editor-in-chief of the Arab Israeli weekly, Kul Al Arab.

WASHINGTON — Friends, relatives and colleagues have paid tribute to American journalist James Foley, apparently executed by Islamic State jihadists, with his mother praising him for giving his life to expose the suffering of the Syrian people.

Condolences and shocked messages poured in after the Islamist group released a video late Tuesday showing a masked militant beheading a man resembling Foley, who has been missing since he was seized in Syria in November 2012.

"We have never been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people," Foley's mother Diane said in a Facebook message to supporters.

"We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.”

"We thank Jim for all the joy he gave us. He was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person."

A second captive, said to be US reporter Steven Sotloff, was shown alive in the video, along with a warning that his fate rests on US President Barack Obama ordering a halt to strikes against the jihadist group.

On Twitter, fellow journalists implored users not to view the graphic video of the execution, instead sharing images of Foley in the field.

Dick Costolo, Twitter's CEO, wrote: "We have been and are actively suspending accounts as we discover them related to this graphic imagery."

In the nearly five-minute video, titled "A Message to America" and distributed online by known Islamic State sources, the group declares that Foley was killed after Obama ordered air strikes against IS positions in northern Iraq.

The execution is carried out in an open desert area with no immediate signs as to whether it is in Iraq or Syria by a black-clad masked militant who speaks English with a British accent.

Thousands posted messages of sorrow on the Facebook site Free James Foley, while British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted that if true, the murder was "shocking and depraved".

The video recalled the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan in 2002.

"Our hearts go out to the family of journalist James Foley. We know the horror they are going through," said Pearl's mother Ruth, according to a tweet from the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

'Finally found his passion' 

Foley was an experienced correspondent who had covered the war in Libya before heading to Syria to follow the revolt against Bashar Assad's regime, contributing to news site GlobalPost, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and other media outlets.

He came to journalism as a second career, enrolling in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University aged 35. He had previously instructed inner-city students and taught reading and writing to prison inmates.

"He realised that the stories he wanted to tell were real stories — stories about people's lives — and he saw journalism as a vehicle for talking about what's really happening in the world," Diane Foley said in an earlier interview with the Columbia Journalism Review.

His father, John, told the same publication that before his ill-fated trip to Syria "Jim said that he finally had found his passion".

AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog hailed Foley as a "brave, independent and impartial journalist".

"Once again our profession has been shaken by a shameful and unacceptable act. Journalism was James Foley's reason to live and it should never have been his reason to die.”

"This is not only a personal tragedy, but an act of savagery."

GlobalPost co-founder and CEO Philip Balboni said: "On behalf of John and Diane Foley, and also GlobalPost, we deeply appreciate all of the messages of sympathy and support that have poured in since the news of Jim's possible execution first broke."

According to witnesses, Foley was seized in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on November 22, 2012.

Sotloff, whose kidnapping in August last year has not been widely reported, has written for several US newspapers and magazines, including Time, Foreign Policy and The Christian Science Monitor.

The White House said US intelligence was studying the video, while GlobalPost said the FBI believed it was authentic.

"If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist, and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

SANAA — Thousands of armed Shiite rebels in Yemen strengthened their positions in the capital Sanaa on Wednesday as they pressed their campaign to force the government to resign, AFP correspondents witnessed.

The rebels have been fighting an off-conflict with government troops in the northern mountains for the past decade but analysts warned their bid for a greater share of power in a promised new federal Yemen was creating a potentially explosive situation.

The Zaidi Shiites are the minority community in mainly Sunni Yemen but they form the majority in the northern highlands, including the Sanaa region.

Rebel activists used cranes to build walls around protest camps across the capital, where protest leaders have given the government a deadline of Friday to meet their demands.

In a bid to stem the crisis, President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi called for dialogue with the rebels and invited representatives to join a "unity government".

But the protests, fuelled by a steep increase in petrol prices, are increasing in momentum with demonstrators showing no signs of backing down.

Rebel commander Abdulmalik Al Houthi said on Sunday that the authorities must address protesters' grievances by the end of the week or additional forms of "legitimate action" would take place.

On Wednesday, men armed with Kalashnikovs manned checkpoints around the protest camps, while Yemeni military aircraft circled in the skies of the capital.

On the ground, there was little visible sign of a police or military presence near the makeshift protest sites.

"Our actions are peaceful but if the activists are attacked we will cut the hand of the aggressor," said Abu Ali Al Asdi, a spokesman for the demonstrators.

"The resignation of the government is a popular demand and we are against all forms of corruption," he told AFP at a protest camp in west Sanaa.

There was also tension in the south of the capital where hundreds of armed men had built a vast encampment close to the main road linking Sanaa to the south.

"The government will fall on Saturday," declared Mohamed Al Hojari, an armed rebel stationed on the edge of the camp, where vehicles continued to bring protesters.

Concerned by the gravity of the situation, President Hadi held a meeting with representatives from political parties, the army, and civil bodies who agreed the rebels latest actions were "unacceptable", his adviser Fares Al Saqqaf said.

A delegation is due to meet the rebels' leader Huthi in his northern fiefdom on Thursday when they will deliver a letter "inviting dialogue and encouraging them to join a unity government".

Yemen has been locked in a protracted transition since longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced from power in February 2012 following a deadly uprising the previous year.

The Zaidi rebels, known as Huthis from the name of their leading family, are strongly opposed to the government's plans for a six-region federation, demanding a single region for the northern highlands and a bigger share of power in the federal government.

"The Houthis are capitalising on widespread frustration with the government and the recent rise in fuel prices to rally support and extract political concessions," said April Longley Alley, a Yemen specialist with the International Crisis Group.

"What is happening now appears to be increasingly dangerous political bargaining as part of the Houthis' bid to become a dominant political force in the north and in the national government," she said.

The rebels control Saada province in the far north and parts of several neighbouring provinces.

Rebel forces reached the outskirts of Sanaa in July after seizing the city of Amran to its north, although they later agreed to pull back.

TRIPOLI — Regular thuds from rival militias' battles near Tripoli airport set the rhythm of daily life for the Libyan capital's residents, busy coping with power cuts and petrol shortages.

Noise from the clashes between the nationalists and Islamists' heavy weaponry may swell or soften from one day to another but never stops.

The only visible sign is a column of black smoke rising from a fuel depot to the south of Tripoli ever since shooting set it alight at the end of July.

The battlefield is inaccessible to independent media, the toll is impossible to verify and the outcome uncertain.

Fighters from Misrata, east of Tripoli, and their Islamist allies claim to be making progress towards the airport, 30 kilometres south of the city, after seizing a strategic bridge and an old Libyan army base.

Their opponents, nationalist militiamen from Zintan in western Libya, say that they still hold the airport, closed since July 13, and have kept open their supply lines to the west of the capital.

The direct collateral victims of the fighting are people living in Tripoli's southern neighbourhoods, who have fled in large numbers.

A thousand families have sought refuge in Tarhuna and 700 more in Bani Walid, officials in the two towns southeast of Tripoli say.

For other people in the capital, the clashes just add to the difficulty of getting through each day.

"Power cuts last nine hours a day and we are never warned about them," complains 60-year-old Ali Tajuri, a resident of eastern Tripoli.

"The cuts weren't so bad during the revolt against Muammar Qadhafi," the long-time dictator overthrown in 2011, said the worker for a foreign company.

The power outages have disrupted life in the capital, where many shops are shut, civil servants have abandoned their posts and public services are practically at a standstill.

The national electricity company warned on Monday of a "risk of a general power cut unless network maintenance is carried out in the east of the country".

Queues for petrol 

"Four hours of waiting then he nips in front of me," moans a driver outside a petrol station in the heart of the capital.

The two young men quickly come to blows and police monitoring the petrol station struggle to separate them.

The whole queue slams the government, powerless amid the chaos and which has decamped with parliament to Tobruk, 1,600 kilometres east of Tripoli, for security reasons.

Eventually, each driver fills up with petrol and has the car logbook stamped to prevent profiteering, though the black market is nevertheless flourishing.

"I filled up for 7 dinars ($6.6, 4.3 euros at the official rate) and that costs 55 to 70 dinars ($44 to $56, 33.7 to 42.8 euros) on the black market," says taxi driver Ahmed Al Huni, who often uses petrol touts to avoid the long queues.

Millions of litres of petrol went up in smoke when the southern Tripoli fuel depot caught fire and the distribution company has been supplying Tripoli from small tankers docked at the port.

But it is clearly not enough. Many Tripoli petrol stations are shut down and the rest open only when a fresh delivery arrives.

The scarcity of petrol is affecting prices generally, like at the Tripoli fish market, where customers are bargaining more than usual and buying less, say stallholders.

The situation is similar at the Bab Tajura market, where seasonal fruits and vegetables are plentiful.

However, the capital's residents are carrying on with their lives and still throng the waterfront cafes and roundabouts in the evening.

Nor have all foreign workers fled. Gad, an Egyptian who runs a laundry in Tripoli's Italianate centre, reckons he is "safer staying here than taking the road to Egypt".

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas' armed wing in Gaza, appears to have narrowly survived a fifth attempt to assassinate him, allowing the mastermind of the six-week war on Israel to pursue the conflict from his network of tunnels.

Badly hurt in repeated attacks over the past decade, Deif is believed to spend most of his time underground, overseeing the winding tunnels that have been painstakingly built over the past six years, and were used to burrow into and attack Israel.

Following Hamas rocket fire late on Tuesday, marking the end of a 10-day ceasefire, Israeli fighter planes bombed a house in northern Gaza, killing Deif's wife, his seven-month-old son and three other people. Deif was not there, according to Hamas, but his current whereabouts were not clear.

Hamas's military wing said it would "make an important announcement" later on Wednesday, but did not mention Deif.

The assassination attempt was the clearest signal yet that Israel regards him as the chief architect of the war, with the militant leader repeatedly catching his powerful enemy off-guard with surprise attacks that have caused heavy casualties.

Only last week, Israel openly threatened to track him down and kill him, having also announced that they had destroyed all of the 30 or so tunnels he had built from Gaza into Israel.

Deif's command position gives him an influential voice in the Islamist movement and whether it pursues war or truce. Yet after three decades of fighting Israel, he is still said to prefer his military role to any political ambitions.

Few people know what Deif, believed to be in his 50s, looks like today, after so many attempts to kill him. Despite having once been a stage actor, past images of him are scarce.

Rare video footage recorded in 2002 caught Deif covered in blood, sitting upright, dazed as a man tries to drag him away from the mangled wreckage of a car that had been hit by a missile from an Israeli helicopter. That was the first of five attempts to kill him, including Tuesday night's attack.

Hamas does not comment on Deif's health. It says only that he has been in command of its military wing since the 1990s.

Some Israeli reports say he is missing an eye, limbs and is confined to a wheelchair. An Israeli minister said last month that Deif had been in hiding in his own tunnels for years.

Nonetheless, Israeli intelligence officers are clear that he is playing a major operational role in the war. His tactics have led to one of the highest death tolls for Israeli forces, with 64 soldiers killed in the conflict, more than six times the number killed in its previous invasion of Gaza in early 2009.

Israel says it has killed hundreds of Hamas fighters and destroyed the concrete-lined tunnels, although Hamas took Reuters to see one of the tunnels this week.

"Deif pushed the tunnel concept," said Hamza Abu Shanab, a Gaza-based expert on Islamist groups. A Hamas source, who has known Deif since the 1990s, said Deif has been at the heart of developments inside the armed wing since 1994.

Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, concurred. "Mohammed Deif has been in a position of power the entire time," he said. "Some may not have noticed it because he has been hiding in the shadows."

Science student

Deif was born in Khan Younis refugee camp, according to the Hamas source. His family was poor and his father, an upholsterer, insisted the children pursue their education.

He earned a degree in science from the Islamic University in Gaza, where he studied physics, chemistry and biology. Deif also displayed an affinity for the arts, heading the university's entertainment committee and performing on stage in comedies.

He joined the then new movement Hamas during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which began in 1987, and was imprisoned by Israel in 1989, spending more than a year in jail, according to some accounts.

Rising up the ranks of Hamas, Deif has topped Israel's most wanted list for decades, held personally responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings.

Yoram Schweitzer of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies described Deif's current role as somewhere between armed forces chief-of-staff and defence minister.

"His personal outlook and experience have made him a tough rival," Schweitzer said.

In a rare audio message broadcast on July 29, Deif said Hamas would continue confronting Israel until its blockade on Gaza — which is supported by neighbouring Egypt — was lifted.

"The occupying entity will not enjoy security unless our people live in freedom and dignity," Deif said.

Despite having spoken out, Deif has no political ambitions within Hamas, according to Abu Shanab.

Hamas is a multi-headed organisation, with most decisions made jointly by the armed wing and a political leadership that is scattered in Israeli prisons, Gaza, Egypt and Qatar, where overall leader, Khaled Meshaal, has been based since breaking with his previous Iranian-backed Syrian hosts in 2012.

"The movement rules, there are no surprises inside Hamas — no one leader takes a decision," Abu Shanab said.

Yaari, the Israel-based analyst, said, however, that Hamas's armed wing is "the main force" in its decision making.

"Mohammed Deif has veto power, but he will not use it often," Yaari said, adding that Deif overruled Meshaal in accepting a previous truce that led to indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks in Egypt.

Deif's commander and mentor, according to Hamas, was Emad Akel, his predecessor as leader of its armed wing in the Gaza Strip. Akel was shot dead by Israeli troops in 1993.

Deif learned bombmaking from Yehya Ayyash, known as "The Engineer", one of the founders of Hamas' Izz el-Deen Al Qassam Brigades. Despite painstaking efforts to evade assassination, Ayyash was killed by Israel in 1996 in Gaza — by a mobile telephone rigged with explosives.

Determination — and caution — appear to be Deif's watchwords. Only last week, Israel publicly threatened to find and kill him, a threat it tried to deliver on.

"His nerves are made of cold steel," said a Hamas fighter who has served under Deif. "When [he] decides to use a place to stay, he makes no movements. He is not curious to see the street. Instead he uses others' ears and eyes."

GAZA — Hamas fighters, clad in black and armed with assault rifles, navigated the dimly lit tunnel with ease, saying they felt at home in their network of underground passages in the Gaza Strip.

A rare tour that Hamas granted to a Reuters reporter, photographer and cameraman appeared to be an attempt to dispute Israel's claim that it had demolished all of the Islamist group's border infiltration tunnels in the Gaza war.

"We are speaking to you today from inside one of those tunnels, which Israel said it had destroyed. Our men are still operating in those tunnels prepared for all options," said a masked fighter from Hamas' Izzeddine Al Qassem Brigades.

But driven, blindfolded, to the secret location in a Hamas vehicle that made a series of turns, it was impossible for the Reuters crew to tell whether it was close to the frontier or further inside the Gaza Strip in tunnels untouched by Israeli bombing. It was not clear where the tunnel led.

By Israel's own account, its ground forces focused only on destroying tunnels within 2 to 4.5km of the border, while ignoring more distant connecting passages. During the Gaza offensive, Israel's military took reporters through tunnels it discovered at the frontier.

Chatting in soft voices and laughing at times, Hamas men guided the Reuters crew through corridors less than a metre wide that are reached by descending a thin metal ladder through a tiny shaft.

"It feels just like home," their commander said. "Fighters dug these tunnels with their own hands just like they built their houses, so they live here at comfort and assurance like they do at home."

The ceiling in parts of the tunnel was high enough so we could walk through — alternately on dry, concrete floors and muddy ground — without having to bend our heads.

It was impossible to gauge the tunnel's length, but it had offshoots leading in different directions. Once inside, the sounds of traffic and Israeli drones that routinely fly over the territory of 1.8 million people could not be heard.

Israel said the tunnel network is used by Hamas to move and store weapons and keep fighters out of sight of Israeli aircraft.

It is separate from smuggling conduits that ran under the Egypt-Gaza border. Egypt, which regards Hamas as a security threat, destroyed those tunnels before the current war.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 after a surge in Hamas rocket fire across the border. Israeli ground forces invaded on July 17 with the declared aim of destroying infiltration tunnels and left on August 5 after saying that mission had been accomplished.

Egypt is trying to finalise a long-term ceasefire after a five-day truce was extended by 24 hours into Tuesday.

On the battlefield, Hamas met Israeli forces with an array of tactics, including the use of tunnels to launch surprise attacks. Israel's military lost 64 soldiers, more than six times the number of troops killed in its previous invasion of Gaza in early 2009. Three civilians in Israel were also killed.

Israel says it has killed hundreds of Hamas fighters and destroyed more than 30 tunnels. Funeral marches were held for several members of the Qassem Brigades but there has been no official word from the group on its losses.

The Palestinian health ministry puts the Gaza death toll at 2,016 and says most were civilians in the small, densely populated coastal territory.

In the tunnel, a Hamas fighter said the group would press on with restocking its arsenal or rockets and other weaponry and shoring up its underground network.

"In peace we make preparations, and in war we use what we have readied," he said. 

GAZA — In a ward at Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital, child therapist Rabeea Hamouda is trying to elicit a response from two small brothers, Omar and Mohammed, aged three and 18 months, hoping for some words or perhaps a smile.

For seven straight minutes the children, peppered with burns and shrapnel wounds sustained in Israeli shelling that hit their home in north Gaza, stare at him blankly, emotionless.

Eventually, as Hamouda gently teases them, pretending to mix up their names and holding out a present while another counsellor sings quietly, a smile creeps across Mohammed's face and the older one, Omar, cries out his name.

"At the beginning, Omar was not responding to us at all, he was not even willing to say his name," explains Hamouda, who heads a team of 150 psychotherapists working for the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Gaza.

"Big progress has been made with these children," he says with a sense of relief and quiet accomplishment. "At the beginning they did not talk, they refused to communicate. But now, with the sixth session, we are witnessing good progress."

Omar and Mohammed are just two of the 400,000 Gazan children the United Nations estimates are in need of psychological care as a result of not just the latest war in the territory but the three previous conflicts fought with Israel since 2006.

The most recent conflagration has been the deadliest, with more than 2,000 Palestinians killed, many of them civilians and including an estimated 457 children. On the other side of the border, some 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Whether the result of Israeli air strikes, having parents or relatives killed before their eyes, hearing militants firing rockets from their own towns or themselves being wounded, the psychological trauma for Gaza's young is profound.

The symptoms range from nightmares, bed-wetting and behavioural regression to more debilitating mental anxiety, including an inability to process or verbalise experiences.

There is also deep trauma on the other side of the border, with tens of thousands of Israeli children mentally disturbed by the regular rocket fire from fighters during the monthlong war and over the seven years since Hamas seized control of Gaza.

While the conflict's destruction of buildings and livelihoods is clear to see and documented daily in television footage, the damage to minds is mostly invisible, yet can have far more damaging and longer-lasting consequences.

"The first time a child goes through a traumatic event like a war it's just deeply terrifying," said Chris Gunness, the spokesman of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has 200 psychotherapists working in up to 90 clinics in Gaza.

"The second time is terrifying-plus-one because the child remembers the worst parts of the last war as well as the impact of the current one. Then the third time is plus-plus as the compounded memories of conflict build up.

"This time, for an eight- or nine-year-old child in Gaza, it's very, very intense indeed because there is this cumulative toll of trauma from repeated conflicts since 2006."

Hamouda and his team, like other psychotherapy units working across the small territory — home to an estimated 1.8 million people, more than half of whom are aged under 18 — can barely cope with the number of patients requiring help.

The treatment is by necessity basic — an effort to draw children out, to have them paint pictures of their experiences or emotions, to get them to verbalise their circumstances.

While a lot can be achieved with such simple techniques, many more require longer-term, personalised psychological care because of the enormity of the mental damage suffered.

"First we provide wounded and traumatised children with immediate pyscho-social support and we give parents some guidance on how to deal with them," says Hamouda. Then there is home care and follow up for the more severe cases.

"Houses can be rebuilt and some physical wounds can be healed, but the people's psychological condition needs more than money and time," he says. "It needs a big effort and persuasion, and overall it needs calm and stability."

One of Gaza's most successful trauma assistance projects is the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, launched in 1990.

Hassan Zyada, a psychologist with the project, describes the latest conflict as easily the worst since 2006, with scores of Palestinians having lost multiple family members.

"Our expectation is that more than 30 per cent of the people here in Gaza will develop a psychiatric disorder," he said.

Even health professionals are not immune. Six members of Zyada's own family were killed during the war: his mother, three brothers, a sister-in-law and a nephew. He is now receiving counselling from the clinic's chief therapist.

"It is a really traumatic loss and it is not easy for me to deal with," he said, adding that several others on the team had suffered similar experiences.

So widespread has the psychological damage become that UNRWA, which runs schools throughout the Gaza Strip, has now made psychotherapy a regular part of the curriculum.

"We are rolling out a pretty massive programme of parental and child therapy," said Gunness. "We're having to integrate this kind of therapy into our schools."

KIRKUK, Iraq — Iraqi forces battled Sunni militants along a string of fronts on Tuesday, including at Saddam Hussein's hometown Tikrit, as the United Nations readied a massive aid operation for displaced Iraqis.

Kurdish and federal forces, who wrested back control of Iraq's largest dam, fought jihadists in the country's north, buoyed by intensifying US air strikes and Western arms deliveries.

Other security forces backed by militiamen and tribesmen are also fighting jihadists in flashpoints north, west and south of Baghdad, officials said.

The counter-offensives against the militants came as the UN refugee agency said it was launching a major operation this week to help "close to half a million people" who have been displaced.

US President Barack Obama hailed the recapture of the Mosul Dam but warned Baghdad that "the wolf is at the door" and said it must move quickly to build an inclusive government.

The dam was the biggest prize yet clawed back from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group since it launched a major offensive in northern Iraq in June, sweeping aside Iraqi security forces.

"This operation demonstrates that Iraqi and Kurdish forces are capable of working together and taking the fight to [IS]," said Obama.

"If they continue to do so, they will have the strong support of the United States of America," he promised, in his clearest signal yet that the 10-day-old US air campaign was far from over.

US and other officials have repeatedly stressed that military cooperation between the Kurds and Baghdad was key to any successful counter-offensive, but their alliance remains uneasy.

"We are the ones who liberated the dam, not the peshmerga," said one of several members of the federal special forces who climbed on top of two vehicles to shout at journalists gathered at a Kurdish checkpoint.

Fresh fighting near dam 

Fighting erupted Tuesday in the area surrounding the dam and US warplanes carried out fresh strikes targeting IS, a senior officer in the Kurdish peshmerga forces told AFP.

US experts have warned a breach of the dam could result in a flood wave 20 metres tall at the city of Mosul to its south and cause flooding along the Tigris River all the way down to Baghdad.

As anti-jihadist forces tried to reclaim ground lost earlier this month in the north, the government launched an operation to recapture the city of Tikrit, further south.

“The Iraqi army and [Shiite] volunteers, backed by Iraqi helicopters, are taking part” in the operation to retake the hometown of executed former president Saddam Hussein, a high-ranking army officer told AFP.

Tikrit fell on June 11 and has since been controlled mostly by Sunni militant groups, including former members of Saddam’s ruling Baath Party.

The government, whose forces folded when jihadist-led militants swept across five provinces more than two months ago, has made Tikrit a priority but has already failed twice to retake it.

US military aircraft have carried out 35 air strikes against IS militants in Iraq over three days, destroying more than 90 targets, the Pentagon said.

Obama justified the strikes, the first US military intervention since troops withdrew in 2011, with the risk of genocide against the Yazidi minority and a threat to US personnel in the Kurdish capital of Erbil.

Washington has so far resisted growing calls in and outside Iraq to expand its air strikes beyond targets in the north.

Major UN aid operation 

Two months of violence have brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, and world powers are relieved by the departure of divisive premier Nouri Al Maliki, who stepped down last week, hoping his successor will be a unifying figure.

In the north, members of minority groups including Christians, Yazidis, Shabak and Turkmen, remain under threat of kidnap or death at the hands of the jihadists, while tens of thousands of others have fled, prompting the UN to announce the major aid operation.

“Conditions remain desperate for those without access to suitable shelter, people struggling to find food and water to feed their families, and those without access to primary medical care,” said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

Meanwhile, IS supporters launched their latest social media effort, starting the hashtag “#AmessagefromISIStoUS” to mark posts on microblogging site Twitter, threatening the United States with remarks such as: “We will drown all of you in blood.”

It was hijacked by American users who retorted with jingoistic rhetoric, including one user who posted a picture of a drone firing missiles along with the message: “This drone is for you”.

IS also warned that the US “will soon disappear... at the hands of the knights of the Caliphate.”

WASHINGTON — Armed groups in Syria have an estimated several hundred portable anti-aircraft missiles that could easily be diverted to extremists and used to destroy low-flying commercial planes, according to a new report by a respected international research group. It cites the risk that the missiles could be smuggled out of Syria by terrorists.

The report was released just hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice Monday to US airlines banning all flights in Syrian airspace. The agency said armed extremists in Syria are “known to be equipped with a variety of anti-aircraft weapons which have the capability to threaten civilian aircraft.” The agency had previously warned against flights over Syria, but had not prohibited them.

Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organisation that analyses the global flow of weapons, published its findings Tuesday following last month’s lethal missile attack on a passenger jet flying over Ukraine. The report focuses on launchers and missiles known as “man-portable air defence systems”, or MANPADS, which are dangerous to planes flying at lower altitudes or ones taking off or landing.

The new report estimated that several hundred anti-aircraft missile systems are already in rebel arsenals. Mostly Russian and Chinese in origin, the weapons have been seized by Syrian opposition militias from government forces and smuggled in from nations sympathetic to the insurgents, the report said.

The most immediate danger is that anti-aircraft weapons, especially newer and sophisticated models, could easily be diverted to extremist groups operating outside Syria, it said. Porous borders and the presence in Iraq and other neighbouring countries of groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and other extremists heighten the danger that anti-aircraft weapons could spread to other trouble spots.

“In the hands of trained terrorists with global reach, even a few missiles pose a potentially catastrophic threat to commercial aviation,” wrote Matthew Schroeder, the report’s author. The analysis is based on government and media reports and video footage of anti-aircraft weapons posted online from inside Syria.

The extremist Islamic State group that has overrun much of northern and western Iraq also operates inside Syria. The militants, who have drawn fire from US drones and fighter jets, recently posted an online propaganda video showing one fighter appearing to fire an older-model, Russian-made SA-7 missile system.

Most American and other commercial airlines already have halted flights over and into Syria during the past three years of conflict between the Assad government and insurgents. Citing the threat of MANPADS strikes, the FAA warned American carriers in May 2013 to avoid Syrian airspace, a move that was heightened Monday to a total ban.

“Opposition groups have successfully shot down Syrian military aircraft using these anti-aircraft weapon systems during the course of the conflict,” the FAA said in its “notice to airmen”. The agency added that the presence of anti-aircraft weapons creates a “continuing significant potential threat to civil aviation operating in Syrian airspace”.

Russia earlier halted all of its civilian flights to Syria in April after officials in Moscow said a Russian charter plane flying from Egypt into Syrian airspace was targeted by two surface-to-air missiles but escaped damage.

The destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last month was a clear signal that civilian aircraft could be exposed to anti-aircraft missiles at both high and low altitudes, Schroeder said. “The shoot-down of Flight MH17 underscores the important of reining in the black market trade in all anti-aircraft missiles,” he said.

The Malaysian jet was struck at 33,000 feet, well beyond the range of portable anti-aircraft missiles, killing all 298 people on board. US officials said the Boeing 777 jet was struck by a long-range surface-to-air missile fired by pro-Russian separatists inside eastern Ukraine. Russia has denied any role in the attack.

Unlike larger vehicle-mounted systems, compact shoulder-fired missiles and tube launchers are difficult to track once outside of government control, and easy to dismantle and hide.

Schroeder said eight different MANPADS models have turned up in Syria. At least two varieties, the Chinese-made FN-6 and the Russian SA-24 Grinch, are newer and more sophisticated models with longer ranges than older varieties — up to 20,000 feet altitude — and are harder to repel by aircraft electronic jamming systems. A third new model spotted inside Syria has yet to be identified, Schroeder said.

“Once these weapons are out of government control, they could end up anywhere,” Schroeder said.

The report names Sudan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as likely sources for MANPADS systems smuggled to insurgents inside Syria but cautions there still is no certainty about their origins. Rebel groups have also boasted of seizing anti-aircraft launchers and missiles from Syrian forces.

US officials have estimated the Syrian government had amassed as many as 20,000 MANPADS units before the civil war erupted in 2011.

GAZA CITY — Israel and Palestinian fighters resumed fire across the Gaza border on Tuesday, sparking panic across the war-torn enclave where residents fled for cover as Israeli aircraft struck.

A military spokeswoman told AFP that two rockets hit southern Israel during the late afternoon and early evening — several hours before a 24-hour truce was to expire — and two more were intercepted by missile defences.

Israel ordered its negotiators back from ceasefire talks in Cairo and the military said warplanes hit Gaza. They hit at least 10 targets, according to army radio.

The fighting shattered nine days of relative quiet in the skies over Gaza and cast a dark shadow over Egyptian-mediated efforts to hammer out a longer term truce.

The chief Palestinian negotiator in Cairo said on Tuesday that no progress had been made.

The Palestinian delegation presented their demands for a truce to Egyptian mediators and were awaiting Israel’s response, said the official, Azzam Al Ahmed.

“There has been no progress,” he said of Tuesday’s talks. “Matters have become more complicated.”

The renewal of Israeli strikes spread panic among Gaza residents.

An AFP reporter saw hundreds of Palestinians streaming out of Shejaiya, an eastern area of Gaza City which has been devastated by more than a month of fighting between Israel and Hamas movement.

More poured out of the Zeitun and Shaaf areas, alarmed by a series of explosions and heading to shelter in UN schools, local witnesses said.

Five Palestinians were wounded, three in the northern area of Beit Lahiya — two of them children — and two boys aged six and nine in the southern city of Rafah, the Gaza emergency services spokesman said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for firing the rockets, two of which hit near the city of Beersheva, which is home to around 200,000 Israelis.

An Israeli official said the negotiating team had been ordered back from Cairo where Egypt has been pushing for a decisive end to the Gaza bloodshed, which has killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side.

However, there was no immediate confirmation the team had left.

“The Cairo process was based on the premise of a total ceasefire,” another official told AFP. “If Hamas fires rockets, the Cairo process has no basis.”

Israel has vowed not to negotiate under fire, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned there would be “a very strong response” to any resumption of rocket attacks.

Hamas dismissed his remarks as having “no weight”.

‘Sabotaging the talks’ 

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri denied the Islamist movement had fired rockets over the border Tuesday, accusing Israel of trying to sabotage the truce talks.

“We don’t have any information about firing rockets from Gaza. The Israeli raids are intended to sabotage the negotiations in Cairo,” he told AFP.

The talks in Cairo centre on an Egyptian proposal that meets some of the Palestinian demands, such as easing Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza, but puts off debate on other thorny issues until later.

Although temporary truce agreements have brought relief to millions on both sides of the border, the drawn-out waiting and fear of an all-out resumption of fighting has tested people’s patience.

“No one here has any hope,” said Riyad Abu Sultan, a father of 10 with thick curly hair, smoking as he sat on a flimsy mattress at a UN school in Gaza.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, renewed its appeal for access to Gaza.

“Valuable time has already been lost and it is essential that human rights organisations are now able to begin the vital job of examining allegations of war crimes,” it said.

The Palestinians say agreement over a long-term arrangement in Gaza has been delayed by Israeli foot-dragging over key issues.

Israel wants Gaza demilitarised although the subject does not figure in the Egyptian proposal as seen by AFP.

Hamas shift 

Hamas had repeatedly warned it would not extend the temporary ceasefire again, pressing for immediate gains that would allow it to claim concessions from Israel after the devastating war, which began on July 8.

Egypt’s proposal calls for both sides to immediately ceasefire and includes provisions relating to opening the borders to allow for free movement of people, goods and construction materials, as well as a clause on regulating the economic crisis within the impoverished enclave.

But crucially, it postpones discussions on issues such as a port and airport for another month, until “after calm and stability returns”, along with talks over exchanging the remains of two Israeli soldiers for the release of Palestinian prisoners.