Region

VIENNA — Iran nuclear talks entered Thursday the decisive, dangerous endgame with a final round of hardball negotiations potentially going all the way to a July 20 finish line.

The deal being sought by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany would finally ease fears of Tehran getting nuclear weapons and silence talk of war, in exchange for ending punishing sanctions on the Islamic republic.

With Sunni Islamic insurgents overrunning large parts of Iraq and Syria in chaos after years of civil war, this could help Tehran and the West normalise relations at an explosive time in the Middle East.

“In this troubled world, the chance does not often arise to reach an agreement peacefully that will meet the essential and publicly expressed needs of all sides, make the world safer, ease regional tensions and enable greater prosperity,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said this week.

In a Washington Post tribune, he warned Iran not to “squander a historic opportunity to end Iran’s economic and diplomatic isolation and improve the lives of their people”.

The P5+1 powers have proposed a “series of reasonable, verifiable and easily achievable measures that would ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and that its programme is limited to peaceful purpose,” he said.

“What will Iran choose? Despite many months of discussion, we don’t know yet.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in a video message, called the talks a “unique opportunity to make history”, saying success would allow both sides to address “common challenges” such as Iraq.

Major differences 

But with major differences apparent after five rounds of talks seeking to secure a deal by July 20 — when an interim deal from November expires — Zarif said in French daily Le Monde that some among the P5+1 were suffering from “illusions”. 

The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany want Iran to reduce drastically in scope its nuclear activities in order to render any Iranian drive to assemble a weapon all but impossible.

This would include in particular Iran slashing its capacities to enrich uranium, a process that produces nuclear fuel but also, at high purities, the core of a nuclear weapon.

In itself, that would represent a concession to Iran, which is defying six UN Security Council resolutions ordering it cease all enrichment.

But Iran insists it has made too many advances in uranium enrichment to turn the clock back. It rejects any need to cut its number of centrifuges and says it even needs to expand their number to fuel a fleet of future nuclear power plants — facilities that it would be decades away from having.

Demands that Iran’s programme be “radically curbed” rest on a “gross misrepresentation of the steps, time and dangers of a dash for the bomb”, Zarif said.

He said Iran “will not abandon or make a mockery of our technological advances or our scientists”.

Iranian negotiator Majid Takhte Ravanchi said Iran “will not accept definitive restrictions” on its nuclear programme.

“If [the other side] have a maximalist position... there will be no deal,” he said.

Extra time?  

In theory, the July 20 deadline could be extended by up to another six months, and many analysts believe this is already being discussed.

But US President Barack Obama, facing mid-term elections in November and Republican accusations of weakness, is wary of doing anything that could be construed as giving Iran more time to get closer to having the bomb.

This is the long-standing accusation of Israel, the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state which — together with Washington — has not ruled out military action on the Islamic republic.

But Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association believes that Washington should not shy away from pushing back the deadline if Iran is “negotiating in good faith”.

“The alternative to no deal is far worse for the international community,” she told AFP.

CAIRO — Five men died in Cairo in separate incidents involving a bomb blast and protester clashes with security forces on Thursday, the first anniversary of the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, security sources said.

Thousands of Egyptians opposed to the army’s ouster of Morsi last year joined rare protests in cities and towns around the country, witnesses said. Previous protests had much lower turnout after a new law required official approval.

Security was tight in Cairo as armoured personnel carriers blocked off the city’s central Tahrir Square to head off any possible protests there.

Since Morsi’s ouster, his Muslim Brotherhood group was labelled a terrorist organisation and thousands of Islamists have been jailed on accusations of terrorism and violence while militant Islamists have stepped up attacks on security forces.

“On July 3, Egyptians will revolt, marking the beginning of the end of the coup, marching from all towns and cities across Egypt to liberty squares in all provinces,” an alliance of Morsi’s supporters said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Three of Thursday’s victims died in clashes that broke out in Cairo between protesters and security forces, security sources said. Unrest was reported both from the upscale district of Mohandiseen and poor areas such as Haram and Materiya

Earlier in the day, two men were killed in a bomb blast in a flat in Kerdasa, a western district of the capital where around 10 policemen were killed in an Islamist mob attack last summer. Security sources said they believed one of the victims was involved in that police killing.

Series of bombs 

Another explosive device detonated on Thursday in a car in the northeastern district of Abbassiya and three homemade bombs went off near police cars in the central district of Imbaba without causing injuries, the sources added.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts. Cairo has been hit by a spate of small explosions in recent days and two police officers were killed on Monday trying to defuse bombs planted near the presidential palace.

Last week, a series of makeshift bombs exploded at Cairo metro stations, the first in the capital since Sisi was sworn in as president.

Following Morsi’s overthrow last July, security services launched a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood politicians, activists and street protesters, jailing thousands and killing hundreds in clashes and raids.

Since then, some radical Islamist groups have repeatedly targeted police and soldiers in the capital and elsewhere, mostly by planting makeshift bombs.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt has declared a terrorist organisation, denies any link to the violence.

The authorities’ security dragnet has expanded over the past year to include secular and liberal activists, including many who played leading roles in a 2011 popular revolt that ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.

A law passed after Morsi’s fall has sharply restricted the right to protest. Last month, around 23 activists were arrested over a rally in Cairo against the new law.

Rights concerns 

Western governments and rights groups have voiced concern for freedom of expression in Egypt and the security clamp-down has dimmed hopes for democratic evolution in Egypt that had soared after the anti-Mubarak uprising three years ago.

Amnesty International condemned Egypt’s human rights record in a statement on Thursday, saying torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions had increased since Morsi’s political demise.

“Egypt’s notorious state security forces — currently known as National Security — are back and operating at full capacity, employing the same methods of torture and other ill-treatment used during the darkest hours of the Mubarak era,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa programme.

The government of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who led the army ouster of Morsi, says it is committed to a democratic transition and the rule of law following the 2011 uprising.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel beefed up its forces along its frontier with the Gaza Strip and launched air strikes against Hamas targets there on Thursday in response to persistent Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel also faced a second day of violent Palestinian protests in Jerusalem after the discovery of the body of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy on Wednesday in a forest near the city.

Israeli forces are investigating the possibility that he was the victim of a revenge killing over the deaths of three Jewish teenagers, whose abduction on June 12 Israel has blamed on Islamist Hamas fighters in the occupied West Bank.

Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said troops were taking up “defence positions” in Israeli communities that have been struck by the rockets from Gaza. He did not comment on the scale of the deployment.

It is the first time since the border began to heat up in mid-June — in tandem with an Israeli military sweep and search for the three abducted Israeli youths in the West Bank — that Israel has announced troop movements near the Gaza Strip.

“We are moving and we have moved forces,” Lerner said in a conference call with foreign journalists. “Everything we are doing is to de-escalate the situation but on the other hand to be prepared if they don’t de-escalate.”

Israel has “no interest in deepening the conflict with Gaza — the absolute opposite is true”, he added.

Abu Ubaida, spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, Ezzeldine Al Qassam Brigades, accused Israel of breaching a ceasefire brokered after a 2012 eight-day cross-border war, and said the group would respond according to developments on the ground.

“Our people know well how to exact a heavy price from the enemy,” Ubaida said at a news conference in Gaza.

Funeral 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security Cabinet for a fourth time since Monday, an official said, as tension remained high in Jerusalem in anticipation of the funeral of the Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

No time has been set for the burial, an event that will stir strong emotions among Palestinians and could trigger further confrontation.

Police clashed with a few dozen stone-throwing Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhood Shuafat, but the violence was on a much smaller scale than on Wednesday.

The military said Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had fired 20 projectiles into Israel on Thursday and that rockets struck two homes in the southern town of Sderot, causing no casualties.

Israel launched air strikes against at least three Hamas training facilities in Gaza, residents said, adding that 15 people had been injured.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay condemned both Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday for the latest flare-up of violence across the Gaza border and also Abu Khdeir’s killing.

“From a human rights point of view, I utterly condemn these rocket attacks and more especially I condemn Israel’s excessive acts of retaliation,” Pillay told journalists in Vienna.

The Palestinian youth Abu Khdeir was last seen alive being bundled into a van on Wednesday near his home in the Arab neighbourhood of Shuafat in Jerusalem, a day after the burials of the Jewish teenagers, who were abducted on June 12.

Abu Khdeir’s family said police, who have stepped up patrols in the city, told them the body would be released in the predawn hours of Friday.

A security spokeswoman gave no details of the investigation, other than to say a forensic examination was still under way. She declined to say when the body would be handed over.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Jewish settlers of killing the teenager, spoke by telephone with the youth’s father on Thursday.

“Mohammed is one of the martyrs of this great people,” Abbas said, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Netanyahu has called the killing a “loathsome murder” and has urged all sides not to take the law into their own hands.

The killing of Abu Khdeir also drew international condemnation and the United States urged Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to “take all necessary steps to prevent an atmosphere of revenge and retribution”.

BAGHDAD — The leader of Iraq’s Kurdish north called on lawmakers in the self-rule region’s parliament to take the necessary steps towards holding a referendum on independence, a move that would likely spell the end of a unified Iraq.

Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish territory has long been a beacon of stability and prosperity, while much of the rest of the country has been mired in violence and political turmoil. But the Sunni insurgent blitz that has engulfed Iraq in recent weeks has provided an opening to Iraq’s Kurds to seize long-disputed territory and a better chance than ever of achieving the goal of their own country.

Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told the region’s legislature in a speech Thursday to set up an electoral commission to “hurry up” and prepare for “a referendum on self-determination”.

“We will be in a better position and we will have better [political]weapons in our hands. But how we will do this?” he said. “What kind of steps there will be? For this, you have to study this issue and take steps in this direction. It is time to decide about our self-determination and not to wait for other people to decide about us.”

Barzani spoke behind closed doors. The Associated Press obtained a video and audio of the address.

The Kurdish region’s militia, known as peshmerga, has seized territory in recent weeks, including the city of Kirkuk and the surrounding oil-rich area, amid the chaos of the Sunni militant offensive, led by the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The jihadi group’s growing strength has caused jitters across the region, particularly in neighbouring Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

A US defence official said Thursday that Saudi troops are massing along its border with Iraq in response to the extremist group’s advance towards the kingdom’s frontier. The official said countries in the region are nervous about their security and are moving to protect their borders.

The official was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

In northern Iraq, the militants released 32 Turkish truck drivers who were captured when the extremists overran the city of Mosul, Turkey’s foreign minister said.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Ahmet Davutoglu said the truckers were heading towards Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and would be flown later to Turkey.

The drivers were well, although one may need special treatment, he added, without elaborating or giving any details about their release.

Militants seized the truckers June 9 in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Three days later, they took another 49 people from the Turkish consulate in the city.

Davutoglu said efforts were underway to secure the release of the Turks still in captivity.

“The critical process continues,” he said. “Our prayers and our efforts will go on for the rest of them and, God willing, we will share such good news about them too as soon as possible.”

The militants’ takeover of Mosul was the opening act of a bold offensive that has brought much of northern and western Iraq under their control. The assault has eased in recent days since encountering stiffer resistance in Shiite majority areas.

The rapid pace of the advance took the Iraqi government and international community by surprise, as the country’s military melted away in the face of the onslaught.

It also left 46 Indian nurses stranded at a hospital in the militant-held northern city of Tikrit. The nurses are safe but are being forced to move to a new area controlled by the militants, according to Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin.

He also said 40 Indian construction workers abducted two weeks ago near Mosul were still being held, but were unharmed.

Across the border in Syria, meanwhile, the Al Qaeda splinter group seized several towns and villages as well as the country’s largest oil field on Thursday as rival factions gave up the fight, Syrian activists said.

The new developments effectively expand and consolidate areas held by the group — which has shorted its name to the Islamic State — in territory straddling the border between the two conflict-ridden countries.

BEIRUT — Lebanon faces the threat of political and economic collapse as the number of refugees pouring in from Syria is set to exceed a third of the population, Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said on Thursday.

Derbas said the total was expected to hit 1.5 million by the end of the year, an excessive burden for a country of just 4 million people.

He said the influx of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war will have cost Lebanon’s already fragile economy around $7.5 billion between 2012 and 2014. Border communities hosting Syrian refugees were under particular pressure because of the increase in people willing to work for low wages.

“Unemployment doubled, especially among unspecialised or unskilled labour in those mostly poor areas,” he said, warning that the refugee crisis “threatens to take us to an economic, political and even security collapse”.

The turmoil next door has not only hurt Lebanon’s economy, but has aggravated sectarian tensions and fuelled violence. It currently hosts around 1.1 million registered Syrian refugees.

“We know that we are working towards having more than 1.5 million registered refugees by the end of 2014, which amounts to more than a third of the local population,” Derbas told a meeting of Lebanese ministers and international aid groups.

‘Beyond limits’

According to the United Nations, Lebanon has taken in 38 per cent of all Syrian refugees in the region, more than any other country.

“We all have our limits and we have gone beyond those limits now,” Derbas said.

More than half of the Syrians in Lebanon are children, and the vast majority are not in school. Syrian women and children are often seen begging on the streets in parts of the capital Beirut, and while some refugees have rented apartments, others are living in ad hoc shelters in car parks, garages and abandoned buildings.

The refugees have put increasing pressure on infrastructure in a country that suffers from frequent power cuts and is unable to supply all of its population with clean water.

The United Nations estimates that Lebanon will need $1.6 billion in funding to cope with the humanitarian situation this year, but so far only 23 per cent has been raised.

At the current level of funding, aid agencies will not be able to meet a target of getting 172,000 refugee children into Lebanese schools next year, said Ninette Kelley from the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR.

“We will be unable to launch a polio vaccination campaign for all children in Lebanon under five... 800,000 refugees will go without winter support,” she told the mid-year review meeting.

Syrian refugees are still registering at the rate of 100,000 per month in neighbouring countries, although the outflow has slowed somewhat in recent months, the UNHCR said on Thursday.

The new estimate is for 3.6 million Syrian refugees to be in the region by the end of 2014, against 2.9 million registered currently, it said. Apart from Lebanon, Syrians have fled across borders into Turkey, Jordan and Iraq.

GIOIA TAURO, Italy — The international operation to destroy Syrian chemical weapons entered its final phase on Wednesday, as they were transferred by workers at an Italian port from a Danish freighter to a US military ship equipped to dispose of them.

The first three containers to be transferred held a total of 20 tonnes of mustard gas. The remaining 75 contain the raw materials for Sarin nerve gas, among other things.

After three hours, with the vessels moored stern-to-stern within a wide safety zone set up around the port, 26 containers had been taken off the Ark Futura by crane and manoeuvred onto the MV Cape Ray by a vast climbing platform.

“Proud of Italy’s contribution to international security, [and] a transparent operation which is environmentally safe,” Italy’s Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti said on Twitter as the transfer began.

“For now everything is going well. We have put in a huge amount of effort... to manage the transfer operation smoothly,” he said as he watched over the delicate procedure in the port of Gioia Tauro in the southern Reggio Calabria region.

The operation is being overseen by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Safety officials in the area are constantly monitoring for the possible release of dangerous toxins into the air.

Officials at the scene said between six and seven containers were being loaded onto the Cape Ray per hour.

Once the chemical agents have been safely transferred, they will be destroyed in international waters.

It marks the culmination of a programme to rid Syria of its chemical arms stockpile that followed chemical attacks in the suburbs of Damascus on August 23 last year.

The transfer and disposal is the result of “the only positive, successful operation carried out on Syrian territory, which could open up new possibilities for disarmament and non-proliferation in the region,” Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said.

‘The poison ship’ 

Despite government reassurances that the port was used to handling class 6.1 toxic substances — those liable either to cause death or serious harm through exposure — the procedure has sparked concern among local inhabitants.

Dozens of protesters gathered in the nearby town of San Ferdinando late on Tuesday, saying they were concerned over the possible health fallout from the Ark Futura, which they have dubbed “the poison ship”.

“This is not a routine operation, it’s a military operation and we are very worried,” trade unionist Domenico Macri told AFP television.

“We have never carried out this type of operation in Gioia Tauro before. If there’s an accident, a container breaks or falls, the substances which would come out could do serious damage,” he said.

The protest group SOS Mediterraneo said destroying the weapons at sea risked having a devastating effect on Italy’s pristine beaches and sea-side communities, with a spokesman saying “securing such dangerous agents should be done on land, in absolutely secure conditions.”

The port has stepped up security for the transfer, sealing off access roads and barring entry to any non-authorised people, while a military helicopter flew overhead as the Cape Ray arrived before dawn. OPCW inspectors boarded the Ark Futura to check the cargo before the transfer began.

Once the Cape Ray moves back out into international waters, the process to destroy the agents and materials is expected to take between 45 and 90 days.

The US vessel has been equipped with two Field Deployable Hydrolysis Systems — portable treatment plants capable of “neutralising” the most dangerous Syrian chemical agents.

The process should destroy more than 99 per cent of the chemicals, reducing the lethal agents into a sludge similar to low-level hazardous industrial waste, which will then be disposed of by private waste treatment facilities.

Syria shipped out its stockpile of chemical weapons under the terms of a UN-backed and US-Russia brokered agreement to head off Western air strikes against the regime last year.

VIENNA — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to YouTube on Wednesday to deliver a message that Iran was ready to take steps to ensure its nuclear programme remains peaceful but would not “kneel in submission” to do a deal with major powers.

As talks to resolve the long-running nuclear standoff resumed in Vienna, Zarif’s remarks, delivered in English in a slick five-minute video, appeared to be a response to a US warning that Tehran has yet to prove that its atomic ambitions are peaceful.

The statements highlighted how much work the negotiators from Iran and from the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia still have to do to meet a self-imposed deadline of July 20.

The sixth round of talks since February between Iran and the six powers formally gets under way in Vienna on Thursday morning, and on Wednesday Zarif met with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the six powers’ lead negotiator, a US official said.

Washington and some of its allies have imposed sanctions on Iran over suspicions that its nuclear programme is designed to produce weapons — a charge denied by Iran, which says it is only interested in producing electricity and other peaceful projects.

In the video, Zarif said a nuclear deal would make history, and Iran was “willing to take concrete measures to guarantee that our nuclear programme will always remain peaceful”.

But he added: “To those who continue to believe that sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table, I can only say that pressure has been tried for the past eight years, in fact for the past 35 years.

“It didn’t bring the Iranian people to kneel in submission. And it will not now, nor in the future.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague struck a similarly sober tone.

“We will not accept a deal at any price,” he said in a statement. “A deal that does not provide sufficient assurances that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon is not in the interests of the UK, the region or the international community.”

July 20 is the expiry date of an interim accord that grants Iran modest relief from economic sanctions in return for some curbs on its atomic work, but Western officials acknowledge that an extension is looking increasingly likely.

In an article in Monday’s Washington Post, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran’s “public optimism about the potential outcome of these negotiations has not been matched, to date, by the positions they have articulated behind closed doors”.

But Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Iranian media the fact that almost three weeks had been scheduled for final negotiations was “a sign the two sides are serious about driving the talks to a conclusion”.

“We’ll decide by the July 20 deadline, based on how the talks proceed, whether to extend the talks, take a pause, or even bother to continue. It is too soon to predict,” he said.

The powers want Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment programme sharply to deny it any capability to make a nuclear bomb quickly. Iran says it needs to expand its enrichment capacity to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants.

Araqchi said that “any limitation we submit to would be short-term and on a trial basis”, ISNA news agency reported.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A Palestinian teen was abducted and killed Wednesday, Palestinians said, accusing Israeli settlers of carrying out a revenge attack for the deaths of three Israeli youths. The accusation sparked clashes with Israeli forces and demands by the Palestinian president that Israel hold the killers accountable.

The latest claim stoked tensions already heightened by the deaths of the three Israeli teens, whose bodies were found this week 18 days after they were abducted in the West Bank, and a surge in fighting between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Just hours after Israel buried the three teens, relatives of Mohammed Abu Khdeir said the 17-year-old was forced into a car in a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem before it sped off. A burned body was found shortly afterward in a Jerusalem forest.

The youth’s relatives said they believed he was killed by extremist Israelis to avenge the deaths of the Israeli teenagers.

“Who else could do this? There’s no one else,” said Saed Abu Khdeir, the teen’s father. He said he had spent the day with police and given DNA samples to help identify the body, and was waiting for 100 per cent confirmation from a forensics lab.

As of Wednesday evening, Israeli forces said the testing was still ongoing. Officials were also reviewing security camera footage taken from the scene. Relatives said the video showed a car nearing the youth, people stepping out and then forcing him into the vehicle as it drove away.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused extremist Jewish settlers of “killing and burning a little boy” and demanded that Israel “hold the killers accountable”.

As news of the youth’s disappearance spread, hundreds of Palestinians in East Jerusalem torched light rail train stations and hurled stones at Israeli forces, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on authorities to swiftly investigate the “reprehensible murder” and urged all sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.

In Washington, the Obama administration condemned the killing as a “heinous murder” and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

In a series of posts on Twitter, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the US was paying close attention to the investigation into the teen’s death and sent condolences to his family and the Palestinian people.

Secretary of State John Kerry called the killing “sickening” and said “there are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people”.

On Tuesday, hundreds of right-wing Jewish youths marched through occupied Jerusalem, calling for revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teens, who Israel says were abducted and killed by Hamas fighters. Israeli security forces have arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives across the West Bank.

Meanwhile, rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has intensified, and been met with Israeli air strikes.

The barrage continued Wednesday, with the military saying nine mortar shells were launched from Gaza into Israel. It said Israel responded with an air strike on one of the launch sites, scoring a “direct hit”. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The clashes in East Jerusalem continued throughout the day. At mid-afternoon, masked men holed up in a mosque in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina lobbed rocks towards Israeli security forces in the street below. Security forces responded by firing stun grenades towards the mosque.

The street was largely deserted and littered with rocks and debris, as a small fire set next to a trash bin spewed black smoke into the air. There were no reports of injuries.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said security was heightened following the clashes, with extra units dispatched and light rail service suspended because of the violence. Security forces also closed a key holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City to visitors after rock throwing there.

Israeli officials urged calm as security personnel investigated the incidents.

“Everything is being examined. There are many possibilities. There is a criminal possibility, as well as a political one,” Israel’s public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, told Israel Radio. “I am telling everyone, let us wait patiently.”

The incident elicited international condemnation, with the UN envoy, Robert Serry, calling on all sides “not to further exacerbate an already tense atmosphere”.

On Tuesday, thousands of Israelis attended the funerals of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who has dual Israel-American citizenship, whose bodies were found Monday in a field near the West Bank city of Hebron. Their disappearance gripped the country and the discovery of their bodies prompted an outpouring of grief.

Also Wednesday, Israel demolished the West Bank home of Ziad Awad, who was found guilty by a military court of killing an Israeli security officer in April. The demolition marked a return to a policy abandoned by the military in 2005. Israel sees house demolitions as a deterrent to violence, while critics charge it is a form of collective punishment.

In a separate incident, Palestinians in the West Bank town of Aqrabeh said their home was set on fire and the Hebrew words for “price tag” sprayed on the walls.

Radical Israeli settlers have been carrying out so-called “price tag” acts of vandalism in recent years to protest what they perceive as the Israeli government’s pro-Palestinian policies and in retaliation for Palestinian attacks.

The vandals have targeted mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases.

BAGHDAD — The US and UN have sharply criticised Iraqi leaders, warning time is running out after chaos in parliament despite calls for unity in the face of a Sunni militant offensive.

Political rifts were plainly on display at the opening of the new Council of Representatives, which world leaders had hoped would approve a new government to confront the jihadist-led alliance that has overrun parts of five provinces.

As Iraq struggles to make political or military progress, the head of a powerful jihadist group urged professionals to flock to help its newly proclaimed pan-Islamic state.

Baghdad on Wednesday sought to press hurriedly bought Russian warplanes into service to help break the military stalemate with insurgents whose advance has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Tuesday’s first session of parliament, since April elections, ended in chaos with so many Sunni and Kurdish deputies staying away after a break meant to soothe soaring tempers that the quorum was lost and a speaker could not be elected.

Washington quickly warned that “time is not on Iraq’s side”, with State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf calling for “extreme urgency”.

UN special envoy Nickolay Mladenov said Iraqi politicians “need to realise that it is no longer business as usual”.

Under a de facto agreement, the premier is a Shiite Arab, the speaker Sunni Arab and the president a Kurd.

‘End blockade on Kurds’ 

Kurdish lawmaker Najiba Najib interrupted efforts to select a new speaker, calling on the government to “end the blockade” and send withheld budget funds to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Kadhim Al Sayadi, an MP in Shiite premier Nouri Al Maliki’s bloc, responded by threatening to “crush the heads” of the Kurds, whose regional leader Massud Barzani told the BBC they would hold an independence referendum within months.

Some Sunni MPs walked out at the mention of the Islamic State (IS), the jihadist group leading the anti-government offensive, and enough Sunnis and Kurds did not return after the break that the session was without a quorum.

Presiding MP Mahdi Hafez said the legislature would reconvene on July 8 if leaders were able to agree on senior posts.

Iraq has bought more than a dozen Sukhoi warplanes from Russia and has touted the arrival of the 10 it has received so far, releasing video of some of the camouflage-painted jets in flight.

Baghdad has said it aims to begin using them for combat operations on Wednesday.

At least five are Su25 ground attack jets, which will be used to try to oust Sunni Arab insurgents from a string of captured towns and cities.

Iraqi forces initially wilted before the militant onslaught but have since performed more capably, albeit with limited success in offensive operations.

However, the cost has been high. Nearly 900 security personnel were among 2,400 people killed in June, the highest figure in years, according to the United Nations.

IS calls for allegiance

Loyalists are battling militants led by the IS, which Sunday declared a “caliphate”, an Islamic form of government last seen under the Ottoman Empire, and ordered Muslims worldwide to pledge allegiance to their chief.

The announcement is an indicator of IS confidence, with its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi even calling Tuesday for skilled professionals to join the cause, and marks a move against Al Qaeda, from which the group broke away.

Also Tuesday, the Pentagon said that the nearly 500 US troops sent to Baghdad to bolster security are equipped with Apache attack helicopters and small unarmed surveillance drones.

The American security contingent will concentrate on safeguarding access to Baghdad airport and the embassy, a senior defence official who requested anonymity told AFP.

Maliki seems increasingly to be on the way out, with his bid for a third term in tatters despite his bloc winning by far the most seats in April.

He has come under fire from all three of Iraq’s major religious and ethnic communities for alleged sectarianism, sidelining partners and over a marked deterioration in security that culminated in the militant offensive erupting on June 9.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday directed a Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans to remain in US custody after his own lawyer conceded that he had no reasonable chance of being released.

A lawyer for Ahmed Abu Khattala acknowledged that it was appropriate for her client to remain behind bars at the moment, given the nature of the charge he faces and his lack of ties to the United States. But she said she had so far seen no evidence of any role by Khattala in the September 11, 2012 attacks that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

“What’s been filed has shown, quite frankly, an utter lack of evidence of Mr. Khattala’s involvement in the incident in Benghazi,” said Michelle Peterson, an assistant federal public defender, adding, “We are left to glean from press reports what the government’s evidence is”.

Khattala’s expected trial will take place alongside ongoing congressional and Justice Department investigations into the 2012 attack that killed an ambassador, and the Obama administration’s response to it shortly before the 2012 presidential election.

Prosecutors provided some new details in a court filing Tuesday night, arguing that he was part of a group of roughly 20 militants who stormed the diplomatic compound on the night of the attacks. They say he was motivated to participate in the attacks by an extremist ideology.

Abu Khattala appeared briefly in federal court in Washington, wearing a green prison jumpsuit and a long, graying beard. He listened to the proceedings through headphones as an interpreter translated the conversation into Arabic. Peterson requested that he be served a halal diet and be provided with a copy of the Quran.

Abu Khattala was captured in Libya more than two weeks ago and then brought to the United States aboard a Navy ship, where he was interrogated by federal agents. He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide support to terrorists — a crime punishable by up to life in prison — but the Justice Department has said it expects additional charges soon.

The rampage in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks has long been politically divisive. Republicans have criticised the response by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state, to the attacks. Republicans have accused the White House of misleading Americans and downplaying a terrorist attack ahead of Barack Obama’s re-election. The White House has accused Republicans of seeking political gains from the violence.