Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel warned on Sunday it would not countenance any long-term truce deal that did not answer its security needs as Gaza ceasefire talks resumed in Cairo.

Egyptian-brokered indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are taking place during a five-day lull in the fighting which is due to expire at midnight (2100 GMT) on Monday.

The aim is to broker a long-term arrangement to halt over a month of bloody fighting which erupted on July 8 and has so far claimed 1,980 Palestinian lives and 67 on the Israeli side.

But as the Israeli team landed in Cairo, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they would not agree to any proposal which did not offer a clear answer to Israel's security needs.

"The Israeli delegation in Cairo is acting with a very clear mandate to stand firmly on Israel's security needs," said Netanyahu.

"Only if there is a clear answer to Israel's security needs, only then will we agree to reach an understanding."

The talks began on Sunday afternoon at the headquarters of the Egyptian intelligence in the absence of four Gaza officials, among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad delegates, who were due to arrive in the evening.

It was the first time they had sat down since Wednesday after the negotiators returned home for consultations with their respective political masters.

Cairo airport sources said the Israeli delegation arrived mid-morning from Tel Aviv, while a Palestinian team from Ramallah flew in around the same time via Amman.

Hamas' exiled deputy leader Musa Abu Marzouk arrived from Doha.

In Gaza, although millions enjoyed a weekend free of the deadly fighting, residents are now facing other battles including the struggle to cope with a chronic water shortage.

"There's no water here and the toilets are very dirty, this is no kind of life," said Feriel Al Zaaneen who is sheltering at a UN school and hasn't been able to have a shower in over a month.

Israel, meanwhile, announced that Gaza fishermen barred from fishing since July 8 can resume their activities.

"As a sign of goodwill, Israel has allowed fishing off the Gaza Strip up to 3 nautical miles," a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

'Basic human rights' 

In Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his commitment to the Egyptian proposal.

"Our goal is to stop fighting and we are committed to the Egyptian initiative and nothing else," he said.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Palestinians would not back down from their demands, central to which is a lifting of Israel’s eight-year blockade.

“There is no way back from this. All these demands are basic human rights that do not need this battle or these negotiations,” he told AFP.

“The only way to have security is for Palestinians to feel it first and have the blockade lifted.”

But Netanyahu warned that Hamas, which he said had suffered a major military blow, would not walk away from the talks with any political success.

“If Hamas thinks it will make up for its military losses with a political achievement, it is wrong.”

With their demands seemingly irreconcilable, the Egyptian mediators have their work cut out to hammer out a deal that each side can present as some kind of achievement.

Palestinian delegation head Azzam Al Ahmad said he was optimistic that an agreement could be reached.

“We have high hopes of reaching an agreement very soon, before the end of the truce, and perhaps even, very quickly, for a permanent ceasefire,” he told AFP.

But Israeli Science Minister Yaakov Perry, a former head of the Shit Bet internal security agency who participates in Security Cabinet meetings as an observer, was less confident.

BEIRUT — Western-backed rebels in northern Syria are fighting to survive in the face of advances on their strongholds both by jihadists and government forces, analysts and regime opponents say.

The opposition has sounded the alarm, appealing indirectly to the international community to carry out air strikes on jihadist Islamic State (IS) positions in Syria, like the United States has done in Iraq.

"More than ever the rebellion is caught in a pincer movement between the regime and IS," says Karim Bitar, senior research fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations.

"There is today a real risk it will quickly run low on the oxygen it needs to survive," the Middle East specialist said.

The IS jihadists, who have spread terror in Syria and seized vast swathes of land in Iraq, launched a lightning offensive Wednesday in northern Aleppo province, until now the centre of rebel strength, in order to cut off the rebels' supply route from adjoining Turkey.

The jihadists, who punish their enemies with beheadings, crucifixions and stonings, on Saturday vowed their "determination to free the northern province [Aleppo] and chase out the rebels".

In three days, IS fighters captured 10 villages and neighbourhoods and they are nearing the key rebel-held towns of Marea and Aazaz.

Tipping point 

At the same time, the Syrian army is tightening its grip on the northern outskirts of Aleppo city, threatening to surround rebel-held neighbourhoods.

"I think the rebellion in Syria is at a sort of a tipping point now, although the Aleppo situation could take many months to develop," Aron Lund, a specialist on the Syrian rebellion told AFP.

Rebel commander Abdel Jabbar Al Oqaidi admitted: "The situation is very serious."

Oqaidi was a leader of rebel officers who launched the battle of Aleppo in summer 2012, since when the city has been split between the regime and rebels.

Loss of the province "would mean the loss of the main source of manpower" for the rebellion, said Oqaidi.

"If IS succeeds in cutting off the rebels' supplies from Turkey... the rebellion within Syria will be isolated, which is very dangerous," said Samir Nashar, a member of the Western-backed opposition National Coalition.

The opposition has urged Western countries, led by the United States, to intervene in Syria "in the same way they are doing in Iraqi Kurdistan" against IS jihadists.

"The enemy is the same," said Nashar.

Rebel anger 

The war in Syria, which has killed more than 170,00 people, began in 2011 with the crushing of peaceful anti-regime protests, provoking an armed revolt against President Bashar Assad.

Later the conflict became more complex with the rise of powerful foreign groups such as Al Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, and the extreme jihadists of IS.

The so-called moderate Syrian rebellion was weakened by internal quarrels and by rivalry between its two main sponsors, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Despite supporting the rebels, Western powers have refused to arm them in case the weapons fell into jihadist hands.

Syrian rebels and regime opponents have not hidden their bitterness at seeing the United States strike IS in Iraq.

"There is a feeling of anger because for three years Syria has been massacring its people and committing crimes against humanity," Oqaidi said.

"The world stood there with arms folded."

Nashar warned: "The international community's hesitation to carry out strikes in Syria will push many rebels into the arms of IS."

However, analysts play down the prospects of an Iraq-style intervention in Syria.

American strategists believe "the Syrian crisis does not pose a threat to vital US interests," Bitar said.

For Aron Lund, the key question is whether US President Barack Obama's administration wants to contain IS in Iraq or destroy it completely.

"If they're going to do the latter — which they're currently not — you will at some point have to develop that type of aggressive strategy for Syria as well, and it will be hard to do without some form of air strikes."

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia and Kuwait agreed to comply with a United Nations resolution aimed at stopping financing for Islamist militant groups in Syria and Iraq after four of their nationals were named among a group blacklisted by the international body.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Friday intended to weaken the Islamic State — an Al Qaeda splinter group that has seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate — and Al Qaeda's Syrian wing, Nusra Front.

Western officials believe that wealthy Gulf Arabs, in countries that include Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have been a main source of funding for Sunni Islamist militants fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

While Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia is a main backer of the rebellion against Assad, a member of the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam and an ally of Riyadh's rival Shiite Iran, it says it is careful to direct state support to moderate groups.

Riyadh this year declared the Islamic State group and the Nusra Front terrorist organisations, imposing prison terms for giving them moral or material support, and has mobilised its clerics to preach against private donations to militants.

The Islamic State has long been blacklisted by the Security Council, while Nusra Front was added earlier this year. Both groups are designated under the UN Al Qaeda sanctions regime.

Gulf media said that two of the blacklisted men were Saudis wanted by Riyadh for links to Islamist militants, while two others were Kuwaitis, including Sheikh Hajjaj Bin Fahd Al Ajmi, a prominent cleric accused of links to Syria's Al Qaeda branch, the Nusra Front.

"Kuwait will abide by the UN Resolution 2170 and implement all its terms," Kuwait's UN Ambassador Mansour Ayyad Al Otaibi said in a statement carried by state news agency KUNA on Saturday.

The London-based Asharq Al Awsat said the two Saudis, Abdul Mohsen Abdallah Ibrahim Al Charekh and Abdelrahman Mohamad Zafir Al Jahani, were on two lists of wanted militants issued in 2009 and in 2011.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors casualties in fighting in Syria, has said that Charekh was killed near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia in March. Jahani was believed to be at large somewhere outside Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Al Mualami, also said Riyadh was "committed to implementation" of the resolution.

Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have recently tightened laws aimed at preventing citizens from involvement in foreign conflicts and instructed mosque preachers to abide by government policies during their sermons.

The Kuwaiti government last month ordered non-governmental public welfare associations to refrain from involvement in politics and shut down branches of some associations.

Kuwait's justice and Islamic affairs minister resigned in May after a senior US official said he had called for jihad in Syria and promoted the funding of terrorism.

In Saudi Arabia, Muslim Sharia courts have issued a series of verdicts jailing people for going to fight abroad or collecting funds for Islamists.

DUBAI — A Nigerian woman with cancer who died in the Emirati capital had shown signs "that may be consistent with Ebola", the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi said on Sunday.

The 35-year-old woman was travelling to India from Nigeria via Abu Dhabi to seek treatment for advanced cancer when her health deteriorated during her time in transit at Abu Dhabi's airport, the authority said in a statement according to the state WAM news agency.

"It was noted at the time of resuscitation that she had shown signs that may be consistent with Ebola virus infection, although her existing medical condition provided an adequate medical explanation," WAM quoted the statement as saying.

The Health Authority said that all of the patient's contacts, including her husband who had been sitting next to her on the plane and the five medics who tried to resuscitate her "are in isolation pending the result of Ebola testing on the patient. They are all well with no symptoms".

WAM cited the health ministry as saying that there was no risk to the public and that neither the passengers on the plane from Nigeria nor those in the airport were at risk.

GAZA CITY — Feriel Al Zaaneen hasn't had a shower in more than a month. Like thousands of Palestinians, she doesn't have enough water to wash, adding to the miseries of life in war-battered Gaza.

In searing summer heat, where temperatures can reach 34^OC, Feriel is one of more than 218,000 refugees sheltering in 87 UN-run schools from a conflict that has killed at least 1,980 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side since July 8.

"There's no water here and the toilets are very dirty, this is no kind of life," she said.

Zaaneen, her children and grandchildren, some 50 people, fled the Israeli bombardment of their homes.

She says she faces a daily struggle to get water, a precious resource in the Hamas-controlled enclave which has been under Israeli blockade since 2006.

The UN says that 365,000 Palestinians are still displaced in Gaza, like 37-year-old Faten Al Masri, who has to wash her children with bottles of drinking water.

As she sprinkles cold water on her two-year-old daughter, the toddler screams, her skin covered in angry red blotches.

"All my children got sick here because of the dirt and the lack of hygiene, they've all got skin infections and scabs," Faten said.

"There is no water in the bathrooms, and they were so dirty that we couldn't even go inside," she said.

"I have been bathing my sons every three days here in the classroom with bottles of water."

No privacy 

She herself has not taken a shower since arriving at the school two weeks ago.

"Some people use water bottles inside the class, but I can't bring myself to do it. It would feel like I was taking a shower in the street if I did that. Anyone could open the door and come in, there's no privacy," she said.

"I feel really bad. Not being able to shower makes me feel restricted and anxious," she said.

Muntaha Al Kafarna, a mother of nine who has been living in a small tent she set up in the courtyard of the same school, near the toilets, managed to shower at a nearby hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

"The water was cold, and there wasn't very much of it, but I didn't have any other solution," she said.

"People are fighting here in the school to use the toilets, my sons wet themselves before their turn comes," she said.

She points to her children, stood around her. She bends down and inspects the fair hair of her one-year-old son, picking out a louse.

"My sons have caught lice and nits because they can't shower here," she said.

"I wish a missile would hit us, me and my children. Dying is better than this life," she said in despair.

Water crisis 

Her husband Hazem agreed.

"It's not really living," he said, his chin pocked with red spots he says were caused by poor hygiene in the school.

Ashraf Al Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in Gaza, says skin diseases, rashes and itchiness have been reported in shelters housing refugees.

Among the children, there have been "many cases of chronic diarrhoea" and "several cases of meningitis reported", he added.

Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), says there are water shortages not only in shelters for the displaced but across the entire enclave.

"Because of the Israeli bombardment of the infrastructure, there is a lack of water across the Gaza Strip," he said.

Most residents suffered water shortages even before the war, but now Monzer Shoblak, an official from the local water board, said war damage meant that Gaza was pumping 50 per cent less water.

Shoblak's water authority declared Gaza a "water and environmental disaster area".

The territory's only power station was knocked out by Israeli shelling during the conflict, practically stopping the provision of drinking water, he said.

Samar Al Masbah, 27, who lives in Al Zahra City southwest of Gaza City, said water to his home had been cut off around 10 days ago.

"When the water comes, the electricity cuts, so the water doesn't get to the tanks on the roof because it needs a motor to push it up," she said.

SYDNEY — Australia will offer to resettle some 4,400 people fleeing violence in Iraq and Syria, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday, adding the places had been freed up by success in stopping asylum-seeker boats.

Boat arrivals have all but dried up since Australia said it would refuse resettlement to any refugees arriving on unauthorised vessels, sending them instead to Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the Pacific.

"The government's policies under Operation Sovereign Borders have not only saved lives at sea, but also allowed more places to be returned to our humanitarian programme for the world's most desperate and vulnerable people," he said.

The minister said a minimum of 2,200 places would be for Iraqis, including ethnic and religious minorities fleeing the violence in the north of the country.

"The government has also committed a minimum of 2,200 places for Syrians, including those now living in desperate conditions in countries such as Lebanon," he added.

Australia accepts 13,750 people into its humanitarian refugee programme each year, and Morrison said the government would ensure that 11,000 of these places would be for people overseas in need of resettlement.

"This government has made it very clear that priority in the humanitarian programme should be for those waiting overseas and entering Australia under an orderly process," he said.

Last year, Australia took more than 1,000 people from Syria, more than 2,000 from Iraq, 2,754 from Afghanistan and just over 1,800 from Myanmar.

Morrison said while the situation was improving in Myanmar, Australia would continue to support the resettlement of its refugees, "in particular those from the many Christian ethnic minorities currently living in Malaysia and Thailand, such as the Karen and Chin".

The Refugee Action Coalition criticised the government's announcement, saying the conservative administration had cut the overall refugee intake from 20,000 to 13,750 after taking office in September 2013.

"The number of refugees the coalition [government] says they will take from Iraq is paltry and hides the fact that the government has cut the refugee intake," said spokesman Ian Rintoul. "It is phoney generosity."

He said the announcement did nothing for the more than 100 Iraqi asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

TEHRAN — Iran will reject any restraints on its nuclear operations outside the international rules set by the industry watchdog, President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday.

"We will only accept the legal controls of the IAEA within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty," the president said during a visit by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano.

"Any monitoring beyond those rules would be a precedent, against the interests of all developing countries," Rouhani said.

Amano made a one-day visit to Tehran ahead of an August 25 deadline for Iran to answer decade-old allegations of past nuclear weapons research.

He held morning talks with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif before meeting Rouhani, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported. He later also met with Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation.

As part of the implementation of the interim deal it struck with world powers last November, Iran handed the IAEA documents in April and May relating to its past research, the first time it had done so in six years.

The submissions were in response to a November 2011 IAEA report that it had intelligence that Iran had until 2003 and possibly since then conducted research into developing nuclear weapons.

Addressing these claims, long refuted by Iran, would be an important element in the comprehensive accord over Tehran's nuclear programme that Iran and world powers want to strike by November 24.

The IAEA has raised a number of questions relating to the submissions and Tehran has until August 25 to reply to these.

Amano had said in a May report that Iran showed information to the agency that "simultaneous firing of EBW (Explosive Bridge Wire detonators) was tested for a civilian application".

At a press conference on Sunday in Tehran, Amano broached the issue again, saying Iran had provided information and explanations to the IAEA on Tehran's decision, in early 2000, to develop safer detonators.

"Iran has also provided information and explanations to the [IAEA] on its work post-2007 related to the application of EBWs in the oil and gas industry which is not inconsistent with specialised industry practices," he added.

"The IAEA will need to consider all past outstanding issues, including EBWs, integrating all of them in a system and assessing the system as a whole."

'Step by step' 

Amano in his talks with Rouhani on Sunday said he hoped "cooperation will continue in this more constructive atmosphere".

"The agency's aim is to move forward step by step to resolve the outstanding issues," state television quoted him as saying.

"It has no wish to drag out the process."

Rouhani again insisted that Iran's nuclear programme was for entirely peaceful purposes only.

"Weapons of mass destruction have no place in [Iran's] defence strategy," he said.

He hoped that talks with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, known as P5+1, would "give the Iranian people and parliament the necessary confidence to continue discussions".

"Iran is serious in its negotiations with the P5+1 group and wants nothing beyond its rights, especially concerning enrichment of uranium for peaceful aims."

Rouhani said, however: "Iran's ballistic capability is not negotiable at any level", as the United States is seeking.

In a key deal with the P5+1 powers, Iran agreed in November to roll back its nuclear programme in exchange for some relief from biting international sanctions.

A new round of talks between the two sides is expected before the UN General Assembly starts on September 16.

After several months of talks, Iran and P5+1 powers decided last month to extend their self-imposed deadline of July 20 to strike an agreement until November 24.

Such an accord is aimed at easing fears once and for all that the Islamic republic might use its civilian nuclear programme to build an atomic bomb.

ISTANBUL — The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s 30-year conflict with Turkey is coming to an end, the group’s jailed leader said on Saturday, hailing the start of a new democratic process in the country.

The PKK, which for three decades fought a bloody insurgency for self-rule for Turkey’s Kurdish minority that cost 40,000 lives, launched its armed struggle on August 15, 1984.

But the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan said in a statement from his cell on the prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara that Turkey was now on the verge of “historic developments” after last week’s presidential elections.

“On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of our struggle, I want to state that we are on the verge of historic developments,” Ocalan said in a statement quoted by the Firat news agency, which is close to the PKK.

“This 30-year war is — through a major democratic negotiation — at the stage of coming to an end.”

“The process of democratic negotiations has a profound meaning, historically and socially,” he added.

He said that the process could become a model for solving conflicts not only in Turkey “but in the entire region”.

‘No longer a utopia’ 

Ocalan’s statement follows a meeting on Friday on Imrali between him and representatives of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).

The presidential election was won by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but the HDP’s candidate Selahattin Demirtas polled a respectable 9.8 per cent in what Ocalan said was a breakthrough for Turkish democracy.

He said that the HDP was capable of becoming the main opposition to Erdogan, and even one day replacing his ruling AK Party in government.

“With these results, the HDP, with its broadest base will be today’s democratic opposition and the future’s democratic ruling party,” Ocalan said.

The election had opened the way to clear “extreme nationalist and fascist policies” from Turkey, he said.

Ocalan said that the new period of transition was about “moving the idea of a democratic Turkey from a utopia to a reality”.

During the presidential election campaign, Demirtas tried to expand the appeal of the HDP to encompass not just Kurds but secular Turks attracted by its socialist, pro-women and pro-gay message.

Erdogan has also sought to ease tensions with the Kurdish minority by implementing reforms, notably on the use of the Kurdish language.

His government launched clandestine peace talks with Ocalan in 2012 but the talks stalled in September when the rebels accused the government of failing to deliver on reform.

Parliament last month adopted a new reform bill aimed at kick-starting the talks, which was hailed by Ocalan.

The moves come as PKK rebels and other Kurdish fighters play a lead role in combatting the advance of Islamic State (IS) militants in northern Iraq.

In his message from prison, Ocalan hailed the fighters from the PKK, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and other Kurdish fighting units who have joined forces against the IS, saying they were “resisting for the sake of our freedom”.

The PKK is still classified as a terrorist group not just by Turkey but also the United States and the European Union, complicating its role in the US-backed Kurdish actions against IS.

The PKK’s military leader Murat Karayilan, who heads the armed PKK rebels at their Kandil Mountain base in northern Iraq, called this month for a “national resistance front” between Kurdish groups to combat the jihadists.

BAGHDAD — Kurdish forces backed by US warplanes battled Saturday to retake Iraq's largest dam from Islamic State (IS) jihadist fighters, whose latest atrocity was a massacre in a Yazidi village.

Two months of violence have brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, and world powers relieved by the exit of long-time premier Nouri Al Maliki were flying aid to the displaced and arms to the Kurds.

Kurdish forces attacked the IS fighters who wrested the Mosul dam from them a week earlier, a general told AFP.

"Kurdish peshmerga, with US air support, have seized control of the eastern side of the dam" complex, Major General Abdelrahman Korini told AFP, saying several jihadists had been killed.

Buoyed by the air strikes US President Barack Obama ordered last week, the peshmerga have tried to claw back the ground they lost since the start of August.

The dam on the Tigris provides electricity to much of the region and is crucial to irrigation in vast farming areas in Nineveh province.

The recapture of Mosul dam would be one of the most significant achievements in a fightback that is also getting international material support.

A day after the European Union foreign ministers encouraged the bloc’s member countries to send arms to the Kurds, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Iraq.

Steinmeier, whose country hosts the largest Yazidi diaspora in the West, visited the autonomous region to assess the needs of the displaced and the peshmerga.

Jihadists ‘took their revenge’ 

Fear of an impending genocide against the Yazidi minority, whose faith is anathema to the Sunni Muslim extremists, was one reason Washington cited for air strikes it began on August 8.

Obama declared the Mount Sinjar siege over on Thursday, but vulnerable civilians remain in areas taken by the jihadists.

In Kocho, senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari said the jihadists “took their revenge on its inhabitants, who happened to be mostly Yazidis who did not flee their homes”.

Human rights groups and residents say IS fighters have demanded that villagers in the Sinjar area convert or leave, unleashing violent reprisals on any who refused.

A senior official of one of Iraq’s main Kurdish parties said 81 people had lost their lives in the Friday attack, while a Yazidi activist said the death toll could be even higher.

The village lies near the northwestern town of Sinjar, which the jihadists stormed on August 3 sending tens of thousands of civilians, many of them Yazidi Kurds, fleeing into the mountains to the north.

They hid there for days with little food or water.

Mohsen Tawwal, a Yazidi fighter, said he saw a large number of bodies in Kocho on Friday.

“We made it into a part of Kocho village, where residents were under siege, but we were too late,” he told AFP by telephone.

“There were corpses everywhere. We only managed to get two people out alive. The rest had all been killed.”

The Pentagon announced that US drones had struck an IS convoy leaving the village on Friday after receiving reports that residents were under attack.

The outcome of the latest US strike was not immediately clear.

Thousands kidnapped, says Amnesty 

Amnesty International, which has been documenting mass abductions in the Sinjar area, says IS has kidnapped thousands of Yazidis since it launched its offensive in the region on August 3.

Members of the Christian, Turkmen and other minorities have also been affected by the violence.

In New York, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at weakening the jihadists, who control large areas of neighbouring Syria as well as of Iraq.

The resolution “calls on all member states to take national measures to suppress the flow of foreign terrorist fighters”, and threatens sanctions against anyone involved in their recruitment.

When jihadist forces began their Iraq offensive on June 9, Kurdish peshmerga forces initially fared better than retreating federal soldiers, but the US-made weaponry abandoned by government troops turned IS into an even more formidable foe.

They were able to sweep through the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad in early June, encountering little effective resistance.

Many in and outside Iraq say the Shiite-led government was partly to blame by pushing sectarian policies that have marginalised and radicalised the Sunni minority.

Outgoing premier Maliki was seen as an obstacle to any progress, and his announcement on Thursday that he was abandoning his efforts to cling to power was welcomed with a sigh of relief at home and abroad.

In another potentially game-changing development, 25 Sunni tribes in the western province of Anbar, including some that had previously been on the fence, announced on Friday that they were launching a coordinated effort to oust IS fighters.

BERLIN — The leader of Iraq’s Kurds appealed to Germany for weapons to help Kurdish fighters battling militants of the Islamic State, and said foreign powers must find a way to cut off the group’s funding.

The European Union on Friday gave a green light to EU governments to supply arms and ammunition to the Kurds if it has the consent of the government in Baghdad.

Germany has shied away from direct involvement in military conflicts for much of the post-war era and a survey conducted for Bild am Sonntag newspaper indicated that almost three quarters of Germans were against shipping weapons to the Kurds.

But Germany’s defence minister has said the government was looking into the possibility of delivering military hardware.

Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, said the Kurds needed more than the humanitarian aid that Germany began sending on Friday to support people forced to flee their homes by the Sunni militant group’s advance.

“We also expect Germany to deliver weapons and ammunition to our army so that we can fight back against the IS terrorists,” Barzani told German magazine Focus. He said they needed German training and what they lacked most were anti-tank weapons.

Proclaiming a “caliphate” straddling parts of Iraq and Syria, the radical Islamists have swept across northern Iraq in recent weeks, pushing back Kurdish regional forces, and driving tens of thousands of Christians and members of the Yazidi religious minority from their homes.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen sought to temper Kurdish expectations, saying on Friday that forces in Iraq were trained on Soviet-designed weapons that Germany did not have and could not deliver.

But Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier held out the possibility of sending more than humanitarian help. He said Barzani had made clear to him in Iraq on Saturday that Kurdish fighters did not always have the necessary equipment to defend themselves.

Speaking in the Kurdish regional capital Erbil, Steinmeier reiterated his view that Germany should go to the “the limits of what is politically and legally doable” to help the Kurds, adding each EU country had to decide itself what to contribute.

He said Germany would provide more than 24 million euros’ worth of humanitarian aid and added his visit was intended as “a signal of support and that you won’t be left alone in this difficult situation”.

In an interview with German broadcaster ARD Steinmeier said the government would “look at the Kurds’ wishes very closely when I get back to Berlin and then make a responsible decision”.

Earlier on Saturday, while in Baghdad, he had described the IS as “a terrorist murder gang” and said he feared “the last anchors of stability in Iraq could fall”.

He said the nomination of Haider Al Abadi as Iraq’s prime minister-designate this week was a “small ray of hope” as it made it more possible to form a government that represents all of Iraq’s regions and religious sects.

Barzani said foreign governments had to find a way to choke off Islamic State’s sources of funding.

“A grand alliance must drain the IS’s financial sources and prevent individuals from aligning themselves with the IS group,” he said.

“The first source of IS’ income was the oilfields in Syria. Later they stole more than $1 billion from state banks in Mosul and Tikrit. They also got financial support from several other countries and donors.”

He estimated that the IS took in $3 million every day via compulsory levies and oil theft.