Region

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric urged political leaders on Friday to refrain from clinging to their posts — an apparent reference to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, who has defied demands that he step aside.

Speaking through an aide who delivered a sermon after Friday prayers in the holy city of Karbala, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani said leaders should show flexibility so that political deadlocks could be broken and Iraq could confront an insurgency.

Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Sunni militants led by the hardline Islamic State swept across northern Iraq last month and seized vast swathes of territory, posing the biggest challenge to Maliki’s Shiite-led government since US forces withdrew in 2011.

Critics say Maliki is a divisive figure whose alienation of Sunnis has fuelled sectarian hatred and played into the hands of the insurgents, who have reached to within 70km of the capital Baghdad.

Sistani said it is time for politicians to think of Iraq’s interests, not their own.

“The sensitivity of this phase necessitates that all the parties concerned should have a spirit of national responsibility that requires the practice of the principle of sacrifice and self-denial and not to cling to positions and posts.”

Maliki, a Shiite, has ruled since an election in April in a caretaker capacity, dismissing demands from the Sunnis and Kurds that he step aside for a less polarising figure. Even some Shiites oppose his bid for a third term.

Despite pressure from the United States, the United Nations, Iran and Iraq’s own Shiite clergy, politicians have been unable to quickly come up with an inclusive government to hold the fragmenting country together.

Iraq’s parliament took a step towards forming a new government on Thursday, when lawmakers elected senior Kurdish lawmaker Fuad Masum as president.

The next step, choosing a prime minister, may prove far more difficult as Maliki has shown no sign he will give up his post.

Sistani’s call for flexibility could hasten his departure. He is seen as a voice of reason in the deeply divided country, and has almost mythological stature to millions of followers, members of Iraq’s Shiite majority.

The 83-year-old cleric who hardly ever appears in public last month seized his most active role in politics in decades by calling on Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni insurgency.

The insurgents, who hold territory in Iraq and Syria and have declared a “caliphate”, aim to redraw the map of the Middle East and have put Iraq’s survival as a unified state in jeopardy. The army virtually collapsed in the face of their lightning advance.

Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have become a critical line of defence against Islamic State as the militants set their sights on the capital.

US military and Iraqi security officials estimate the Islamic State has at least 3,000 fighters in Iraq, rising towards 20,000 when new recruits since last month’s advance are included.

Islamic State rules

Aside from military campaigns, Islamic State has also been purging the plains of northern Iraq of religious and ethnic minorities that have co-existed there for hundreds of years.

Insurgents have also been stamping out any influences they deem non-Islamic in Mosul, a once diverse city of 2 million that fell to the militants on June 10.

Eyewitnesses said Islamic State gunmen destroyed the tombs of two prophets on Friday. The destruction of the Jirjees and Sheet shrines came a day after militants blew up the Nabi Younes shrine, one of the city’s most well-known and thought to be the burial site of a prophet referred to in the Koran as Younes and in the Bible as Jonah.

Also on Friday, the group warned women in Mosul to wear full-face veils or risk severe punishment.

“The conditions imposed on her clothes and grooming were only to end the pretext of debauchery resulting from grooming and overdressing,” Islamic State said in a statement.

“This is not a restriction on her freedom but to prevent her from falling into humiliation and vulgarity or to be a theatre for the eyes of those who are looking.”

A cleric in Mosul told Reuters that Islamic State gunmen had shown up at his mosque and ordered him to read their warning on loudspeakers when worshippers gather.

“Anyone who is not committed to this duty and is motivated by glamour will be subject to accountability and severe punishment to protect society from harm and to maintain the necessities of religion and protect it from debauchery,” Islamic State said.

BAGHDAD — Kurdish politician Fuad Masum became the new president of Iraq Thursday, in a step towards forming a new government that visiting UN chief Ban Ki-moon said must be inclusive for the country to survive.

A June onslaught on Sunni Arab areas north and west of Baghdad led by the jihadist Islamic State group has brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, with the government struggling to assert any authority beyond its Shiite power base.

Parliament elected Masum, who served as the first prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region more than two decades ago, by an overwhelming majority of 211 votes to 17.

He had been almost guaranteed the job after Kurdish parties struck a late-night deal to support him.

Under an unofficial power-sharing deal, Iraq’s Kurds traditionally get the post of president.

The move could pave the way for a deal on the much more powerful post of prime minister.

The UN chief met current Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and stressed the need for a broad-based government to be formed as soon as possible to save the country from collapse.

“Iraq is facing an existential threat but it can be overcome by the formation of a thoroughly inclusive government,” he said at a joint news conference with Maliki.

“It is critical that all political leaders fulfil their responsibilities to ensure that the government formation process falls within the constitutional timetable,” he said.

The Shiite premier has accused mainstream politicians from the Sunni Arab minority of condoning the IS offensive and of “dancing in the blood” of the onslaught’s victims.

But many retort it was Maliki’s own brand of sectarian politics that brought the country to the brink of collapse, and he now faces intense domestic and foreign pressure to step aside.

He was also criticised over the army’s poor performance in the face of the lightning offensive launched in second city Mosul on June 9.

Prison convoy attacked 

Insurgents launched a spectacular pre-dawn assault Thursday on a convoy transferring inmates convicted of terrorism charges in Taji, only 25km north of Baghdad.

According to police and medical sources, at least 60 people died in the attack, which saw militants ram a security convoy with a suicide car bomb before detonating other bombs and raking it with gunfire.

Nearly all of the 60 prisoners believed to be on the bus died.

It was not immediately clear how many attackers died nor how the prisoners they were apparently trying to free were killed.

Human rights watchdogs have accused retreating Iraqi troops of having executed more than 250 prisoners since June 9 in an apparent bid to prevent them from joining the ranks of advancing IS fighters.

But Ban’s speech focused on Iraq’s “struggle against terrorism” and condemned the IS offensive, which has forced more than 600,000 people from their homes in a matter of weeks.

The past week saw IS spark a new international outcry with an ultimatum that purged Mosul of its centuries-old Christian community.

Despite the billions of dollars spent on training and equipment by the United States during its eight-year occupation, Iraq’s million-strong army completely folded when the insurgents attacked last month.

They have since received the support of thousands of Shiite volunteers and some foreign military assistance but the government has so far proved unable to claw back any lost ground.

Maliki has complained the world is not doing enough to help him tackle IS, an Al Qaeda off-shoot which appears to be outgrowing the network founded by Osama Bin Laden.

As the premier met the head of the US Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, in Baghdad Thursday, his defence minister was in Moscow with a wish list of military equipment.

LONDON — UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos expressed deep concern Thursday about the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, warning that it was “almost impossible” for Palestinians to shelter from Israeli air strikes.

“The reality in Gaza is, it doesn’t matter how hard Israel tries to minimise harm, this is an extremely overcrowded stretch of land,” Amos told BBC radio.

“Forty-four per cent of that land has been declared a no-go zone by the Israeli army so there aren’t that many places for people to go.”

She described “people crowded into a sliver of land, almost impossible for them to move”.

More than 750 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in 17 days of conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that three quarters of those killed were civilians and one third of those were children — the equivalent of one child killed each hour over the previous two days.

“The trauma that they are experiencing is terrible, and one child killed every hour in the past two days — each and every one of us should sit up and take notice of this,” said Amos.

The British peer, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, added her call for a ceasefire to end this “devastating situation”.

“No one is denying the right of Israel to defend itself but there are huge concerns about the impact this is having on ordinary people on the ground,” she said.

Situated on the Mediterranean coast, flanking Israel and Egypt, the Gaza Strip is home to 1.7 million Palestinians who live in an area stretching just 362 square kilometres, making it one of the most densely-populated territories on the planet.

GAZA CITY — Fifteen Palestinians were killed Thursday when an Israeli shell slammed into a UN-run school where hundreds of civilians had taken refuge, sending the death toll in Gaza soaring to 777 despite world efforts to broker a ceasefire.

The strike hit a school sheltering some of the 100,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes in search of a safe haven after weeks of deadly fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.

The shell crashed down in the middle of the courtyard where people had set up camp, leaving the ground covered in bloodstains.

Gaza’s emergency services said 15 people had been killed and more than 200 injured in the school strike, sending the Palestinian death toll from 17 days of fighting to 777.

Meanwhile in Cairo, US Secretary of State John Kerry sought to further regional efforts to broker an end to the bloodshed, reaching out to Turkey and Qatar, both allies of Hamas.

The US diplomat is seeking to garner support for an Egyptian-drafted proposal, with an official saying he had spoken to his counterparts in Doha and Ankara in the hope they would use their influence to encourage Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan.

Hamas has so far refused all ceasefire efforts, with its exiled leader Khaled Mishaal vowing late Wednesday there would be no end to the fighting without an end to Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza.

Khuzaa under fire 

There was no let-up to the violence in Gaza, however, with most of Thursday’s 82 victims killed in and around Khuzaa, a flashpoint area east of Khan Younis which has been the site of intensive fighting since Tuesday.

Gaza’s health ministry issued a call for international protection for civilians in the area, with the Red Cross saying anyone leaving home was being targeted by Israeli fire.

On Wednesday, the Red Cross and Palestinian ambulances managed to evacuate 150 people from the area following negotiations with both sides, and another convoy of 10 ambulances pulled out another eight bodies and 92 wounded on Thursday, the ICRC said.

But the biggest single strike was at the school in the north, where the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it had been trying to coordinate with the army over the evacuation of civilians, without success.

Although UNRWA did not immediately give its own toll, spokesman Chris Gunness said there were “multiple dead and injured” after an Israeli tank shell hit a UN school being used as a shelter.

AFP’s correspondent saw nine bodies, including that of a year-old baby and his mother at a nearby morgue.

“We’ve spent much of the day trying to negotiate or to coordinate a window so that civilians, including our staff, could leave,” Gunness said.

“That was never granted... and the consequences of that appear to be tragic.”

With the schoolyard now deserted, a few sheep and goats could be seen wandering around looking for their owners who had all been evacuated to a nearby hospital, an AFP correspondent said.

In response, the Israeli army pledged to open an investigation.

“First of all, we need to investigate what happened there,” General Micky Edelstein, commander of the army’s Gaza division told reporters.

But the army also accused militant groups of deliberately firing from densely populated areas, saying they were “using civilian infrastructure and international symbols as human shields”.

It also suggested the casualties may have been caused by “several rockets launched by Hamas [which] landed in the Beit Hanun area.”

A heavy civilian toll 

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has said more than 80 per cent of the casualties so far have been civilians, and a quarter of them children, triggering growing international alarm over the civilian body count.

“We are gravely concerned by the ongoing heavy level of civilian causalities,” British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said at a press conference in Jerusalem before flying to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

Meanwhile, US airlines on Thursday lifted a two-day ban on flights to Israel, with other international airlines expected to follow suit.

The ban was put in place on Tuesday after a rocket hit a house very close to the runways, with Hamas hailing the suspension of Tel Aviv flights as a “great victory”.

So far, 32 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died in the fighting, one of whom was a Thai farm labourer who was killed when a rocket struck the greenhouse where he was working in southern Israel.

Bangkok has demanded Israel “immediately” relocate 4,000 Thai nationals working in the Gaza periphery.

MOSCOW — Russia has begun supplying military helicopters and fighter jets to Iraq, a report said Thursday, as Iraq’s defence minister visited Moscow to press for equipment to thwart a jihadist offensive.

“A number of contracts with Iraq have entered into force and are being fulfilled,” the Interfax news agency quoted a source in Russia’s defence export establishment as saying.

Deliveries of Mi-35 helicopter gunships and Su-25 fighters that provide close air support for ground troops have begun, added the source.

Iraq also has contracts for Mi-28 attack helicopters and mobile Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air and anti-aircraft artillery systems.

Russia’s ambassador to Baghdad, Ilya Mogunov, had previously said he believed up to 10 Sukhoi fighter jets would be delivered by the end of the summer.

Russia and Iraq in 2012 signed contracts worth $4.2 billion (3.1 billion euros) to supply 36 of the Mi-28 attack helicopters and 48 of the Pantsir units, according to Russian Technologies (RosTec) which controls their producers.

Later it signed contracts for six Mi-35 helicopters and Su-25 fighters.

Iraq’s Defence Minister Saadun Al Dulaimi was in Moscow on Thursday on a visit officials said was aimed at stepping up military cooperation with Russia.

At a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, Dulaimi said Iraqi-Russian cooperation had a rich history and “today we need to strengthen and develop it” given Iraq’s struggle against militants, Russian news agencies reported.

Shoigu said the “military-technical cooperation between our countries is developing successfully” and that “we stand by you in the struggle against terrorism”.

The Russian defence industry source told Interfax that given the increased tensions following the downing of a Malaysian passenger jet over a rebel-controlled area in Ukraine, Washington may pressure Baghdad to cancel its orders for Russian weaponry.

Despite the billions of dollars spent on training and equipment by the United States during its eight-year occupation, Iraq’s million-strong army completely folded when insurgents attacked last month.

Within days, the Islamic State jihadist group and allied Sunni factions conquered Iraq’s second city of Mosul and large swathes of the north and west.

The front lines have since stabilised and Baghdad has already received intelligence assistance from Washington and Sukhoi warplanes from Russia and Iran.

ERBIL, Iraq — Quiet and bookish, Iraq’s president-elect Fuad Masum is different from jocular incumbent Jalal Talabani, but sharp political skills forged in the long battle for Kurdish self-determination are common to both.

Masum, an ethnic Kurd, fought a rebel war alongside childhood friend Talabani for a separate Kurdish homeland, and in 1992 became the first prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Something of a political pioneer, Masum was also the speaker of the first Iraqi parliament to be formed after the US-led invasion of 2003.

Yet diminutive and bespectacled Masum is not an obvious fighter or risk-taker.

“He’s quiet and a deep thinker, that’s his personality. He thinks before he speaks,” his brother Khodr Masum, head of Kurdistan’s Koysinjaq University, told AFP.

“He’s quiet during talks and negotiations. Courteous.”

Born in 1938 to a religious family in a village near the Kurdish town of Halabja, Masum would go onto to study Islamic Sciences at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, one of the world’s leading centres of Islamic learning.

Eventually gaining a doctorate, he came back to Iraq to teach at the University of Basra.

“He’s always reading. All different types, history, politics. He likes Arabic literature a lot,” Khodr Masum said.

Masum got his first taste of politics with the Iraqi Communist Party, before moving to join the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1964, then led by Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of current Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani.

Between 1973 and 1975 he was the party’s representative in Cairo.

But eventually the KDP would split, after Masum’s friend Talabani fell out with Barzani — the start of a long and deadly internecine feud among Iraqi Kurds.

Talabani went on to form the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and in 1976 Masum joined him as a founding member.

The pair would wage an armed struggle in the northern mountains against Saddam Hussein’s forces, an unlikely path for a soft spoken academic.

Yet his ability to fight and think has served the married father of three daughters well. His supporters hope he can bring those skills to bear on Iraq’s dangerously divided political arena.

“He listens to the opinion of others, and doesn’t force his on you,” Khodr Masum said.

“I think he’ll be successful, because he has the ability and disposition.”

ALGIERS, Algeria — An Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria’s capital disappeared from radar early Thursday over northern Mali during a rainstorm, officials said. France deployed fighter jets to search for wreckage and the country’s president said the plane most likely crashed.

The MD-83 vanished less than an hour after take-off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Air Algerie Flight 5017 was operated by Spanish airline Swiftair, which owns the plane.

“Everything allows us to believe this plane crashed in Mali,” French President Francois Hollande said in a statement after an emergency meeting in Paris with senior officials, adding the crew changed its flight path because of “particularly difficult weather conditions”.

Earlier, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters in Paris the plane “probably crashed” and no “trace of the aircraft has been found”.

Two French fighter jets are among aircraft scouring the rugged north of Mali for the plane, which was traveling from Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, to Algiers, the Algerian capital.

Hollande said “all military means we have in Mali” were being activated for the search, through the night if needed. France has considerable military means in Mali, because of its intervention in the country in January 2013 to rout Islamic extremists who were controlling the north.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, was also helping in the search, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

More than 50 French were onboard the plane along with 27 Burkina Faso nationals and passengers from a dozen other countries. The flight crew was Spanish.

Before vanishing, the pilots sent a final message to ask Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rain in the area, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said.

A resident who lives in a village in Mali about 80 kilometres southeast of the town of Gossi said he saw a plane coming down early Thursday, according to Gen. Gilbert Diendere, heading the crisis committee set up in Burkina Faso.

“We think that it is a reliable source because it corresponds to the latest radar images of the plane before it lost contact with air controllers,” Diendere said.

Radar images show the plane deviated from its route, Diendere said. Gossi is nearly 200 kilometres southwest of Gao. The vast deserts and mountains of northern Mali have been the scene of unrest by both Tuareg separatists and Islamist radicals.

The disappearance of the Air Algerie plane comes after a spate of aviation disasters. Fliers around the globe have been on edge ever since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March on its way to Beijing. Searchers have yet to find a single piece of wreckage from the jet with 239 people on board.

Last week, a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying over a war-torn section of Ukraine. The back-to-back disasters involving Boeing 777s flown by the same airline were too much of a coincidence for many fliers.

Then this week, US and European airlines started cancelling flights to Tel Aviv after a rocket landed near the city’s airport. Finally, on Wednesday, a Taiwanese plane crashed during a storm, killing 48 people.

It’s easy to see why fliers are jittery, but air travel is relatively safe.

There have been two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights in the last decade, excluding acts of terrorism. Travelers are much more likely to die driving to the airport than stepping on a plane. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths in the US each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on state television that 10 minutes before disappearing, it was in contact with air traffic controllers in Gao, a city under the control of the Malian government, though it has seen lingering separatist violence.

The plane had been missing for hours before the news was made public. It wasn’t immediately clear why airline or government officials didn’t release information earlier.

Ouagadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali.

Northern Mali fell under control of ethnic Tuareg separatists and then Al Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists following a military coup in 2012. A French-led intervention last year scattered the extremists, but the Tuaregs have pushed back against the authority of the Bamako-based government.

A senior French official said it seems unlikely that fighters in Mali had the kind of weaponry that could shoot down a plane.

The official, not authorised to speak publicly, said on condition of anonymity that they primarily have shoulder-fired weapons — not enough to hit a passenger plane flying at cruising altitude.

Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, said the plane was carrying 110 passengers and six crew, and left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 0117 GMT Thursday (9:17pm EDT Wednesday), but had not arrived at the scheduled time of 0510 GMT (1:10am EDT Thursday).

Swiftair said it has not been possible to make contact with the plane and was trying to ascertain what had happened. It said the crew included two pilots and four flight attendants.

Later, Swiftair said the plane was built in 1996 and has two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 PW engines. It can carry 165 passengers.

Swiftair took ownership of the plane on October 24, 2012, after it spent nearly 10 months unused in storage, according to Flightglobal’s Ascend Online Fleets, which sells and tracks information about aircraft. It has more than 37,800 hours of flight time and has made more than 32,100 take-offs and landings. The plane has had several owners over the years, including Avianca and Austral Lineas Aereas.

If confirmed as a crash, this would be the fifth one — and the second with fatalities — for Swiftair since its founding in 1986, according to the Flight Safety Foundation. The only other fatal crash for the airline came on July 28, 1998, when the two pilots died on a cargo flight to Barcelona.

Algerian aircraft were also overflying the region around Gao to try to locate wreckage, said Houaoui Zoheir, spokesman for the Algerian crisis centre. He provided no details on the type or number of aircraft.

“As long as we haven’t found the wreckage, we can’t talk of a crash,” he said. “We talk of loss of contact.”

The passengers include 51 French, 27 Burkina Faso nationals, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two Luxemburg nationals, one Swiss, one Belgium, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian, Ouedraogo said. The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots’ union.

The MD-83 is part of a series of jets built since the early 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, a US plane maker now owned by Boeing Co. The MD-80s are single-aisle planes that were a workhorse of the airline industry for short and medium-range flights for nearly two decades. As jet fuel prices spiked in recent years, airlines have rapidly being replacing the jets with newer, fuel-efficient models such as Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s.

There are 496 other MD-80s being flown by airlines around the world, according to Ascend.

“We’re aware of reports on Air Algerie Flight AH5017,” Boeing spokesman Wilson Chow said. “Our team is gathering more information.”

TUNIS — Tunisia has hit back at a deadly jihadist attack on troops by closing mosques and media outlets seen as sympathetic to extremists, raising fears of a return to the censorship of the old regime.

In the wake of a July 16 attack which left 15 soldiers dead in Mount Chaambi near the Algerian border, the authorities have laid down a “red line” against criticism of the army and police.

The government announced the immediate closure of mosques which had fallen out of the control of the religious affairs ministry.

It has also decided to shut down unlicensed media outlets which had “turned into platforms for takfiris and jihad”, referring to apostasy charges against fellow Muslims.

Hailed as the poster boy of the Arab Spring — the wave of uprisings that swept the region from 2011 — the authoritarian regime of Tunisia’s longtime president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali was toppled in a popular uprising that year.

But now with a growing challenge from jihadists, long repressed under Ben Ali, the government is facing a double challenge.

The authorities are working to restore the “prestige” and “authority” of a state weakened by the 2011 revolution.

They also aim to curb the Islamist rhetoric which has found an outlet in a media landscape that has exploded over the past three years, with many broadcasters operating unlicenced.

Rights groups are warning against curbs on liberties that were hard-won after years of Ben Ali’s dictatorship, urging a balance between anti-terror measures and freedom of information.

Reject ‘red line’ 

“The country is going through a very difficult time and politicians are under pressure,” said Rachida Ennaifer of Tunisia’s audiovisual regulatory body HAICA.

“But the fight against terrorism should not be arbitrary or populist. If we want a state of law, we must respect the law,” she told AFP, pointing to the dilemma faced by authorities.

Ennaifer said the government’s decision to close a pirate radio and a television station was not taken in consultation with HAICA, contrary to what the authorities said.

The head of Tunisia’s journalists’ union, the SNJT, Neji Bghouri, told AFP that he rejected “any red line”.

“What does this expression mean? If in the future a journalist wants to carry out an investigation into corruption in the police or army, what will happen?” he asked.

He proposed “self-regulation” of the media, something which he admitted would need time because Tunisia’s free media was in its infancy.

His union last week hosted a meeting of several media outlets to develop a “charter” on how to cover terrorism-linked events.

On the religious front, the closure of “outlaw” mosques has also divided opinion in the North African nation.

“The decision... is wrong because it’s going to increase popular support for the terrorists,” said Mohamed Ben Salem, a senior official in the moderate Islamist movement Ennahda, the main party in parliament.

“Change the imams operating outside the law, that’s the solution,” he said.

Religious Affairs Minister Mounir Tlili hit back, saying “it isn’t easy to recover a mosque” in the face of the often “violent” reaction of its users.

But Tlili vowed not to return to the practices of the Ben Ali regime.

Some in Tunisia, fearful of the jihadist threat, shrug off concerns over the possible erosion of civil liberties.

“Stop talking to me about human rights,” Ferid Al Beji, a popular imam, or prayer leader, said on private television station Nessma, a day after the Mount Chaambi attack.

“We are fighting for our lives. Whoever talks of human rights at this time is an accomplice in terrorism,” he said.

WASHINGTON — US Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called for greater say in any deal reached between the West and Iran over the Islamic republic’s controversial nuclear programme.

With negotiations to end Iran’s years-long nuclear stand-off with the United States and other Western powers recently extended for an additional four months, until November, five senators introduced legislation that would compel President Barack Obama to bring any final deal before Congress for its approval.

Many lawmakers have been dubious about the talks that began in late January and were supposed to have reached a deal by July 20.

The West believes Tehran is seeking to build an atomic bomb, but Iran insists its efforts are purely for civilian use.

“Any final agreement of a matter of this consequence should be reviewed by this body, should come before Congress and should have the ability of Congress to provide oversight over it,” Senator Marco Rubio told the chamber.

Failure to let US lawmakers vote on any final nuclear agreement would leave the United States vulnerable to “a terrible deal” that could put Americans in danger, Rubio said.

The legislation would prevent a further extension of negotiations, reimpose any eased sanctions if Iran showed it was cheating on its commitments under any future agreement and block the deal’s implementation if a veto-proof majority of Congress disapproves of it.

Fellow sponsor Senator Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key architect of US sanctions on Iran that helped bring Tehran to the table, said he backed the negotiations and hopes they will ultimately bear fruit.

“But if and when they reach an agreement, let’s bring all the details out in the open,” Corker said.

“Let’s examine the agreement in its entirety and let’s determine that it’s in our national security interest.”

Senator Lindsey Graham said stopping Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon “is the most important foreign policy decision in generations”.

“Congress played a fundamental role in enacting sanctions against Iran and should have a say whether this agreement is strong enough to lift sanctions.”

CAIRO — Egypt said Thursday that foreign intelligence services were prime suspects in an attack last week that killed 22 soldiers near its border with restive Libya.

Unidentified militants firing rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns attacked a checkpoint in Egypt’s western desert last Saturday.

“Foreign intelligence services are likely to be behind the terrorist elements which carried out” the attack, interior ministry spokesman Hani Abdel Latif said, quoted by state news agency MENA, without naming any countries.

The attack followed repeated Egyptian warnings of a possible spillover of violence from Libya, which is awash with weapons and gripped by unrest since its 2011 uprising.

“The terrorist operations [in Egypt] are carried out by terrorist elements, mercenaries, trained in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, and recruited by foreign intelligence services,” Abdel Latif said.

He said Saturday’s attack was aimed at “shaking trust in [Egypt’s] security services and army.”

Since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Egypt has been rocked by deadly bombings and shootings.

Most of the assaults have been claimed by jihadists amid a bloody crackdown by the authorities on Morsi’s supporters.

The police crackdown has left more than 1,400 dead in street clashes, upwards of 15,000 behind bars and around 200 people sentenced to death.