Region

CAIRO — An Egyptian militant group claimed responsibility for bomb blasts outside the presidential palace in Cairo that killed two senior police officers and wounded 10 other people, taunting authorities that it was able to strike even the most secure locations in a campaign of violence against police and the military.

The attack outside the Ittihadiya palace, where newly elected President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi holds office, raised alarm among officials Tuesday over the security breach. Militants were able to carry out the attack despite multiple closed-circuit security cameras in the area and warnings from the militant group that it planted bombs at the palace.

Even worse, the deaths of the police officers came when they were trying to defuse the explosives, raising questions about the efficiency and preparedness of the force to deal with such a threat.

Egyptian militants have carried out scores of attacks, mainly targeting security forces, in retaliation for the fierce crackdown on Islamists since Sisi — then the army chief — ousted President Mohamed Morsi almost exactly one year ago. The government says 250 policemen have been killed since August last year in targeted attacks.

In a strongly worded statement, a coalition led by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood called for mass street protests on the one-year anniversary of his ouster on Thursday, warning it will be a day of “monumental anger”, and urging its supporters to rally in 35 mosques in Cairo ahead of street rallies.

Hundreds of Morsi supporters have been killed and thousands arrested in the crackdown. The government accuses the Brotherhood of orchestrating the militant attacks. The group, which refuses to recognise the new government, denies the charges, and it and its allies accuse the government of staging the attacks to lay the blame on Morsi supporters.

Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, which has claimed previous attacks on police, said it carried out Monday’s bombing at the palace in a statement that evening. It said it set a trap for guards at the Ittihadiya palace using new explosive devices that cannot be detected by ordinary equipment.

The group said its experts spent months studying police procedures for handling explosives in order to develop the bombs.

It said targeting the Ittihadiya palace was to “show that the less important government headquarters and personnel are much easier to reach”.

On Tuesday, Sisi met with his security chiefs to come up with a comprehensive strategy to “meet security challenges”, his spokesman Ihab Badawi said. They also discussed upgrading security capabilities, including training in police academies in Egypt and abroad to raise awareness about the dangers of the job and the use of new technology in investigation and evidence collection, Bedawy said.

The most recent attack carried out by Ajnad Misr was in late April, when it killed Brig. Gen. Ahmed Zaki, a commander in the riot police, by detonating a bomb under his car.

In apparent response to the Islamist call for protests Thursday, four members of the Brotherhood-led coalition were arrested. Among them was Nasr Abdel-Salam, the acting head of the Islamist Construction and Development Party, the political arm of the Gamaa Islamiyah, a former militant group that waged an anti-government insurgency in 1990s before joining the political arena in 2011. The group’s leader is currently on the run and is wanted in Egypt for trial on charges of inciting violence.

Also among those arrested was prominent Islamist politician Magdy Hussein, a Morsi ally.

In a statement Tuesday, the pro-Morsi coalition known as the National Alliance for the Defence of Legitimacy, said the new arrests are an attempt by the government to drag the group towards “direct confrontation.”

The group renewed its calls for protests on Thursday calling them “an important and different station”.

BEIRUT — The Al Qaeda breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured a key Syrian town near the Iraq border from other rebels on Tuesday and advanced towards a stronghold of its main jihadi rivals, an activist group said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Boukamal fell to the militants early Tuesday following days of battles between the group and other factions led by the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Activists in the area could not immediately be reached and calls to Boukamal and nearby areas were not going through.

The observatory, which has a network of activists around Syria, said the group brought in reinforcements from Iraq during the fighting.

The latest victory by the jihadi group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, came two days after it declared the establishment of a transnational Islamic caliphate.

The group says its Islamic state stretches from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala northeast of Baghdad, and has called on all Muslims worldwide to pledge allegiance to it.

The Observatory said ISIL released more than 100 detainees it was holding in the northern Syrian town of Al Bab after the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, issued an amnesty on the occasion of establishing the self-styled caliphate.

Last week, beleaguered Nusra Front fighters defected and joined their rivals in Boukamal — effectively handing over the town to the powerful group, which controls the Iraqi side of the crossing.

The observatory said Al Qaeda breakaway group is advancing towards the town of Shuheil, northwest of Boukamal, a Nusra Front stronghold believed to be the hometown of its leader, a Syrian known as Abu Muhammed Al Golani. As fighting between rival groups intensified later Tuesday, thousands of Shuheil’s inhabitants were seen fleeing the town, the Observatory said.

Up to 7,000 people, the majority of them fighters, have been killed in the rebel-on-rebel violence across the opposition-held territory in northern and eastern Syria since January, according to the observatory’s tally, which is compiled by its activists on the ground.

ISIL has acted with brutal efficiency in territory under its control in Iraq and in Syria, fighting its armed rivals for control of strategic facilities, including oilfields. It also intimidates civilians, captures those who dare to speak up against it, and executes its armed rivals.

In the northern Aleppo province, it has been holding 133 boys from the predominantly Kurdish town of Ayn Al Arab, according to a statement Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The New York-based group demanded the militants immediately release the boys, aged 13 to 14.

The group had abducted 153 children on May 29 as they were returning home from their exams in the city of Aleppo, HRW said. To reach Aleppo, Syria’s largest city located about 110 kilometres north of Ayn Al Arab, the bus carrying the children had to drive across territory controlled by the ISIL.

Five boys escaped their captors, and 15 others were released on Saturday in exchange for three of the group’s militants held by Kurdish rebels, the watchdog said in the statement, which was based on interviews with fathers of three abducted children and three officials from the ruling Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Ayn Al Arab.

MODI’IN, Israel — Tens of thousands of mourners joined in an outpouring of national grief on Tuesday at the burial of the three Israeli teenagers whose kidnapping and killing Israel blamed on the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

In his eulogy at the cemetery in the centre of the country, President Shimon Peres, a usually dovish elder statesman, echoed official vows to punish Hamas.

“I know that the murderers will be found. Israel will act with a heavy hand until terror is uprooted,” he said at the ceremony in Modi’in, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israel bombed dozens of sites in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, wounding two Palestinians, as it struck at Hamas a day after finding the bodies of the three youths in the occupied West Bank, not far from where they went missing while hitchhiking on June 12.

After the funeral, Israel’s Security Cabinet convened for a second time in as many days. Officials said ministers were split on Monday on the scope of any further action in the coastal enclave or in the West Bank. The United States and regional power-broker Egypt urged restraint.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged Hamas would pay for the slayings and reiterated before Tuesday’s meeting that Israel “must strike hard at Hamas people and infrastructure in the West Bank” and would weigh further attacks to prevent rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel.

Netanyahu vowed to strike at anyone involved in the kidnappings. “We will get them, even if it takes time,” he said.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said “Hamas’ leaders and members should know that the blood of whoever dares strike at the citizens of Israel is forfeit. They should know that we will pursue them wherever they are and hit them hard.”

Just before the funeral, a recording of a furtive cellphone call one of the abducted teens made to a police emergency number was broadcast on Israeli television stations.

“They’ve kidnapped me,” the youngster said. Shouted orders in Arabic-accented Hebrew — “head down, head down” — and the sound of what appeared to be muffled gunfire followed before the call ended.

Attacks on Gaza

The military said aircraft attacked 34 targets in Gaza, mostly belonging to Hamas, but did not link the strikes to the abductions. The military cited 18 Palestinian rockets launched against Israel from Gaza in the past two days.

Palestinian medics said two people were slightly wounded.

The Islamist group has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the disappearance of the students nor in the cross-border rocket salvoes from Gaza.

Two more rockets fired from Gaza struck inside Israel on Tuesday evening, causing no casualties, the military said.

At Monday’s security Cabinet meeting, the army proposed “considered and moderate actions” against militants in the West Bank, officials said. Any sustained campaign there could undermine US-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the Cabinet did not agree on a future course of action at that session, officials said.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri warned Israel against going too far.

“The response of the resistance has been limited, and Netanyahu must not test Hamas’ patience,” said Abu Zuhri, whose group’s arsenal includes rockets that can reach Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu seized on the abduction to demand Abbas annul a reconciliation deal he reached with Hamas, his long-time rival, in April that led to a unity Palestinian government on June 2.

An Arab diplomat familiar with Egyptian mediation between Israelis and the Palestinians said Cairo, echoing Washington, expected the Netanyahu government to tread carefully.

“I don’t believe Israel is ready, just yet, to change the status quo,” he told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “It can punish those who did the crime, but should not get out of control with civilians who had nothing to do with the crime.”

In the West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who a military spokeswoman said threw a grenade at soldiers attempting to detain a militant. A Palestinian witness said the 19-year-old killed by the troops was a passerby.

The men Israel has accused of carrying out the abductions are still at large.

House demolitions

Troops set off explosions late on Monday in the family homes of the alleged abductors in the West Bank town of Hebron, blowing open a doorway in one, an army spokeswoman said. The other property was on fire after the blast. Soldiers who arrested one of the suspect’s father and brothers ordered the inhabitants of the dwellings to leave before the detonations.

“This kind of act is a sin, whether you’re a Muslim or Jew. They’ve scared the kids so much,” Um Sharif, the mother of one of the alleged kidnappers, said about the damage to her home.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s new parliament broke up in chaos Tuesday, with lawmakers threatening each other or walking out despite global calls for fractious politicians to form a government needed to face a Sunni militant onslaught.

After a break called to calm soaring tempers, so many Sunni and Kurdish deputies stayed away that the quorum was lost, so a speaker could not be elected as was constitutionally required, and the session ended in disarray.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s bid for a third term has been battered by the jihadist-led offensive that has seized large chunks of five provinces, adding fuel to dissatisfaction over persistent allegations of sectarianism and monopolising power.

The latest crisis has alarmed world leaders, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and polarised Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.

The disunity quickly manifested itself in what was the opening session of a parliament elected in April, which included walkouts, threats and confusion over the constitution.

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

‘Crush heads of Kurds’

Kadhim Al Sayadi, a lawmaker in Shiite premier Maliki’s bloc, responded by threatening to “crush the heads” of the country’s autonomous Kurds, who look increasingly likely to push for independence.

That was reinforced when their leader, Massoud Barzani, told the BBC they would hold a referendum within months on independence.

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

Presiding MP Mahdi Hafez said the legislature would reconvene July 8 if political leaders are able to reach a deal on senior posts.

Under a de facto agreement, the prime minister is chosen from among Shiite Arabs, the speaker from Sunni Arabs and the president is a Kurd. All three posts are typically chosen in tandem.

End for Maliki? 

It increasingly looks as if Maliki is on the way out.

The premier faces criticism from senior leaders in all three major communities over allegations of sectarianism, sidelining partners and a marked deterioration in security that culminated in the June 9 launch of the militant offensive.

Even so, Maliki’s bloc won by far the most seats in April.

“This has become a much more competitive race for the premiership,” said Ayham Kamel, Middle East and North Africa director for the Eurasia Group consultancy.

“The broad direction here is to be more inclusive, at least when it comes to the Sunni community, and figure out a power-sharing deal.”

Though the vast majority of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority do not actively support the militants, analysts say their anger over alleged mistreatment by the Shiite-led authorities means they are less likely to cooperate with the security forces, fostering an environment in which militancy can flourish.

Kamel noted that any military successes could boost Maliki’s chances, with thousands of troops taking part in an ambitious operation aimed at retaking the city of Tikrit, which fell on June 11.

Performing better 

Iraqi forces initially wilted in the face of the onslaught but have since performed more capably, with officials touting apparent progress towards recapturing the city.

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

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.

Though that may not have significant immediate effect on the ground, it is an indicator of the group’s confidence and marks a move against Al Qaeda, from which it broke away.

Iraq has appealed for the US to carry out air strikes against the jihadists. Washington, which further bolstered security at its embassy on Monday, has so far not acceded, and said planned deliveries of F-16 fighter jets could even be delayed.

Meanwhile, Baghdad has recently purchased more than a dozen Russian warplanes to bolster its fledgling air force as it takes the fight to militants holding a string of towns and cities.

State TV quoted Maliki’s security spokesman Tuesday as saying the newly arrived Sukhoi ground attack jets, which are expected to be pressed into service as soon as possible, have already flown over Iraqi territory.

BEIRUT — Rebel mortar shells pounded Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib on Monday, killing 14 people, state television said, a day after 27 people died in regime air raids on a nearby opposition-held area.

“Fourteen people were killed and more than 50 others wounded by mortars launched by the terrorists [rebels] on several areas of Idlib city,” said the state channel.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the attack, but gave a higher toll of 15 civilians, and said an unknown number of children were among the dead.

The report comes a day after at least 27 people, including two rebel fighters and four children, were killed in regime air strikes on the rebel-held area of Silqin in Idlib province, according to the observatory.

Fresh air strikes were launched on Monday in the province, according to activists who have reported an escalation of violence in the area, which is important because it borders Turkey.

Most of Idlib province is in rebel control, though the provincial capital is still firmly in government hands.

Rights groups have frequently denounced the regime’s daily air raids on opposition areas across the country, as well as the rebels’ use of mortars and rockets, for failing to discriminate between civilians and combatants.

Elsewhere in Syria, the observatory said fierce clashes raged in Albu Kamal, on the Iraq border, pitting the jihadist Islamic State (IS) against local rebels allied to Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front, a day after IS announced the establishment of a “caliphate”.

Though IS fighters were initially welcomed in Syria by some opponents seeking President Bashar Assad’s ouster, the group’s abuses and quest for hegemony quickly turned the opposition against it.

IS — formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — has been fighting Syria’s rebels since January.

Fighting has raged in Albu Kamal for several days. The town is strategic because it lies on the border with Iraq, where IS has spearheaded a Sunni militant offensive that has seen several areas in northern and western Iraq fall from government control.

On Monday, the observatory said “reinforcements redeployed to Albu Kamal to strengthen IS’ forces”.

It also said the regime air force targeted an IS position in Buseira town, also in the oil-rich Deir Ezzor province.

The regime has rarely targeted IS positions, except in recent days since the jihadist group started making gains in Iraq.

The Iraq offensive has bolstered IS’ confidence, partly because its jihadists have captured heavy weapons from fleeing Iraqi forces, including US-made armoured vehicles.

Syria’s war has killed more than 162,000 people and forced nearly half the population to flee their homes.

It began as a peaceful movement inspired by the Arab Spring demanding Assad’s ouster, but morphed into an insurgency after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent.

CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi pledged “retribution” after two police officers were killed defusing bombs outside his Cairo palace Monday, almost a year after he overthrew his predecessor.

An Islamist militant group, one of several that have carried out attacks since president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster on July 3 last year, warned several days ago that it had planted bombs near the east Cairo palace.

It was not immediately clear whether Sisi, who was the defence minister when he toppled Morsi and then won a May presidential election, was in the Ittihadiya palace at the time.

Sisi pledged “retribution” in a prerecorded speech aired on Monday evening to mark the anniversary of mass protests against Morsi last year, that prompted the military led by Sisi to oust him three days later.

The interior ministry said a colonel was killed and several other policemen wounded when a bomb they were trying to defuse went off.

Almost an hour later, as policemen cordoned off the area and tried to defuse a second bomb, it too detonated, killing a lieutenant colonel and wounding several other officers.

A paramedic’s hand was blown off by the blast and blood spattered over a nearby white police van.

A disposal robot moved a third bomb to the middle of the street, where sappers safely defused it.

Attacks by militants have killed almost 500 police and soldiers since Morsi’s overthrow and incarceration, according to the government.

Last Wednesday, five small bombs went off in Cairo metro stations, wounding five people, followed by two bombs on Saturday in a telecommunication tower that killed a watchman’s wife and daughter.

The number of attacks has fallen in recent months after police killed or arrested dozens of suspected militants.

But a brazen statement by a militant group saying it had planted bombs near the palace suggested the militants still have the ability to strike heavily guarded installations.

“God has allowed our heroic soldiers to penetrate the fortifications of the mass murderer’s lair in Ittihadiya palace” to plant bombs, the Ajnad Misr militant group said on Friday, referring to Sisi.

‘Retribution’

In his speech, Sisi vowed the militants would be punished.

“Today, we lost new martyrs. I pledge before God and their families, the state will get just and speedy retribution,” Sisi said.

The militant group — which the interior ministry had claimed had been defeated — said it had not set off the bombs to avoid civilian casualties and warned passersby to stay away from the palace.

Sisi, whom Morsi had appointed as defence minister during his single turbulent year in power, has pledged to crack down on the militants.

He won the May election with 97 per cent of the vote against a weak leftist candidate on a platform of providing strong to restore stability.

He was the de facto leader even before his election victory, and the Islamists blame him for a brutal crackdown that has killed at least 1,400 people in street clashes since Morsi’s overthrow.

The authorities have blamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood for militant attacks, a charge the group denies, and designated it a terrorist organisation in December.

The Islamists say they renounced violence decades ago and are committed to peaceful protest.

A Brotherhood-led coalition, the Anti-Coup Alliance, said on Monday it would hold a “day of rage” on
July 3, the anniversary of Morsi’s overthrow.

The Islamists have held near daily rallies that have grown ever smaller amid the relentless police crackdown.

At least 16,000 Islamists and suspected allies have been arrested, with about 200 sentenced to death in speedy mass trials.

They include Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie. Morsi himself faces several trials on charges which could see him sentenced to death if convicted.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The bodies of three missing Israeli settler teenagers were found in the occupied West Bank on Monday and Israel vowed to punish Hamas, the Palestinian group it accuses of abducting and killing them.

“They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by beasts,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after the military discovered the remains of the Jewish seminary students who disappeared on June 12.

“Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay,” he said.

Netanyahu convened a session of his Security Cabinet that could decide on stronger military moves against the Islamist group, which has neither confirmed nor denied Israel’s allegations.

At the square in Tel Aviv where Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, scores of Israelis lit memorial candles for the teenagers, a day after thousands attended a prayer vigil for them at the same spot.

Hamas has been rocked by the arrest of dozens of its activists in an Israeli military sweep in the West Bank over the past three weeks during a search for the teenagers that Israel said was also aimed at weakening the movement. 

Up to six Palestinians died as a result of the Israeli operation, local residents said.

The kidnapping, near a settlement in the West Bank, appalled Israelis who rallied behind the youngsters’ families.

“On behalf of the people of Israel, I wish to tell their dear families ... our hearts are bleeding, the entire nation is weeping with you,” Netanyahu said in the statement.

The bodies of Gil-Ad Shaer and US-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, were found in a field near Hebron, a militant stronghold and the hometown of two Hamas members identified by Israel as the kidnappers and still at large, security officials said.

Abbas criticised

The teens had apparently been shot soon after having been abducted while hitchhiking, the officials said.

“They were under a pile of rocks, in an open field,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman.

Israeli media said the break in the case came after the relatives of the alleged abductors were interrogated. A large number of troops gathered at the spot — in the general area where the teenagers disappeared — to recover the bodies.

Netanyahu seized on the abduction to demand Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas abrogate a reconciliation deal he reached with Hamas, his long-time rival, in April that led to a unity Palestinian government on June 2.

In tandem with the search over the past 18 days, Israeli forces have raided Palestinian towns and villages, detaining Hamas activists and closing the group’s institutions.

Abbas condemned the abduction and pledged the cooperation of his security forces, drawing criticism from Hamas and undercutting his popularity among Palestinians angered by what they saw as his collusion with Israel.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi troops battled to dislodge an Al Qaeda splinter group from the city of Tikrit on Monday after its leader was declared caliph of a new Islamic state in lands seized this month across a swathe of Iraq and Syria.

Alarming regional and world powers, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed universal authority, declaring its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was now caliph of the Muslim world — a mediaeval title last widely recognised in the Ottoman sultan deposed 90 years ago after World War I.

“He is the imam and caliph for Muslims everywhere,” group spokesman Abu Muhammad Al Adnani said in an online statement on Sunday, using titles that carry religious and civil power.

The move, at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, follows a three-week drive for territory by ISIL militants and allies among Iraqi’s Sunni Muslim minority. The caliphate aims to erase colonial-era borders and defy the US- and Iranian-backed government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in Baghdad.

It also poses a direct challenge to the global leadership of Al Qaeda, which disowned ISIL, and to conservative Gulf Arab Sunni rulers, who already view the group as a security threat.

The Iraqi government has appealed for international help and has accused Sunni neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia, of having fostered Islamist militancy in Syria and Iraq. Iraqi army spokesman Qassim Atta said declaring a caliphate could backfire by showing that Baghdadi’s group posed a risk to other nations:

“This declaration is a message by Islamic State not only to Iraq or Syria but to the region and the world. The message is that Islamic State has become a threat to all countries,” he said. “I believe all countries, once they read the declaration, will change their attitudes because it orders everybody to be loyal to it.”

The fighting in Iraq, the second biggest oil producer in Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has contributed to a rise in analysts’ forecasts for the global price of crude, a Reuters poll found. The consensus view of the average 2014 price of a barrel of Brent rose more than $2 to $108 in the course of the past month.

Tikrit battle

Fighters from the group overran the Iraqi city of Mosul on June 10 and have advanced towards Baghdad, prompting the dispatch of US military advisers. In Syria, ISIL has captured territory in the north and east, along the desert frontier with Iraq.

Maliki’s government, with the help of Shiite sectarian militias, has managed to stop the militants short of the capital but has been unable to take back cities its forces abandoned.

The army attempted last week to take back Tikrit but was unable to seize the city, 160km north of Baghdad. Helicopters hit ISIL positions overnight. On the southern outskirts, a battle raged into Monday, residents said.

Tikrit was the home city of Saddam Hussein, whose overthrow by US forces in 2003 ended a long history of domination by Sunnis over what is today a Shiite majority in Iraq.

The fighting has started to draw in international support for Baghdad, two and a half years after US troops pulled out.

Armed and trained by the United States, Iraq’s armed forces crumbled in the face of the ISIL onslaught and have struggled to bring heavier weaponry to bear. Only two aircraft — turboprop Cessna Caravans normally used as short-range passenger and cargo carriers — are capable of firing the powerful Hellfire missile.

The US is flying armed and unarmed aircraft in Iraq’s airspace but says it has not engaged in fighting.

Russia has sent its first warplanes to Baghdad, filling an order for five second-hand Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets. The government said they will be operational within a few days.

In Fallujah, where ISIL fighters have been in control for six months just west of Baghdad, a bank accountant who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution said the announcement of the caliphate was a “step backward”: “It will only turn the government even more hostile to us,” he said. “This will isolate us further from the rest of the world.”

ISIL has used alliances with other, less radical Sunni armed groups and tribal fighters who are disillusioned with Maliki. Members Saddam’s secular Baath Party have also fought in the revolt.

Isolating allies

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said he expected the declaration would alienate ISIL’s allies: “The strategic goal of the Baathists’ is the capture of Baghdad, not the establishment of the caliphate.

“ISIL’s pronouncement will most likely intensify the intra-jihadist struggle and widen the split between ISIL and its insurgent Sunni allies in Iraq,” he said.

The term caliph indicates a successor to the Prophet Mohammad, with temporal authority over all Muslims.

Traditionally it denotes a political and military leader with religious elements. Rival claims to the succession lie at the root of the 7th century schism between Sunnis and Shiites.

Following Turkey’s defeat in World War I and the carving up of its Middle East empire by Britain and France, new Turkish nationalist rulers in 1924 formally abolished the caliphate that Ottoman sultans had held for nearly five centuries.

For many militant Islamists, who see a decline in religious observance and divisions among Muslims as causing many problems, the restoration of the caliphate has been an important goal.

According to the mid-20th century Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb, whose ideas later helped form those of Al Qaeda, in order to bring about a new caliphate, at least one state must revive Islamic rule — a role Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden thought in the 1990s might be filled by Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Since the Ottoman collapse, Sunni Islam has lacked an internationally recognised clerical hierarchy. Senior figures generally hold authority within a single country. Among the most prominent of these is the Grand Mufti of Egypt, whose spokesman dismissed the new caliphate in Iraq and Syria as an “illusion”.

“ISIL’s announcement of what they called the Islamic caliphate is merely a response to the chaos which has happened in Iraq as a direct result of the inflammation of sectarian conflict in the entire region,” Ibrahim Negm said in Cairo.

ISIL has followed Al Qaeda’s hardline ideology, viewing Shiites as heretics, but has alienated Bin Laden’s successor Ayman Al Zawahiri and other Islamists with its extreme violence.

ISIL’s declaration could isolate allies in Iraq and lead to in-fighting. Such internal conflicts among rebel groups in Syria has killed around 7,000 people there this year and complicated the three-year uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, another ally of Shiite Tehran.

The group crucified eight rival rebel fighters in Syria, a monitoring group said on Sunday. And in the Syrian city of Raqqa, controlled by ISIL, militants held a parade to celebrate the declaration of the caliphate.

ISIL posted pictures online on Sunday of people waving black flags from cars and holding guns in the air, the SITE monitoring service said.

Some analysts say the group is a threat to frontiers and is stirring regional violence while others say it exaggerates its reach and support through sophisticated media campaigns.

ISIL also released a video called “Breaking of the Borders”, promoting its destruction of a frontier crossing between the northern province of Al Hasakah in Syria and Nineveh province in Iraq, said SITE, which tracks militant websites.

ANKARA/WASHINGTON — Iran is wrestling with a complex array of historic alliances and enmities as it tries to develop a coherent response to the swift advance of hostile Sunni Muslim militants in neighbouring Iraq.

Despairing of its protege Nouri Al Maliki, Tehran’s Shiite clerical establishment has sent mixed messages on working with the Iraqi prime minister’s other sponsor, the United States, with which it shares a goal of averting the country’s break-up.

After decades competing with Washington’s Sunni Arab allies for influence, it hopes for relief from US sanctions by cutting a deal on its nuclear programme in the next few weeks and wants to avoid its defence of non-Sunni forces in Baghdad, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere fuelling a sectarian regional war.

“For Iran always, national interests have priority over religious divides,” said a senior official close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Our main concern now is to safeguard the Iranian nation’s interests.”

While steadfast in condemnation of the Sunni militants who vow to massacre Shiites as heretics, Iran’s leadership has been at pains to stress a desire for coexistence with other sects — now a key element of its criticism of Shiite premier Maliki.

“We have so far supported Maliki,” the official said. “But as his failure to form an inclusive government has led to a chaos in Iraq, our support will be conditional and limited.”

US President Barack Obama has urged Maliki to embrace the Sunni minority that lost influence when US troops overthrew Saddam Hussein — whom Washington had quietly backed against revolutionary Tehran in the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Yet Tehran and Washington now seem unable to agree on how to achieve their shared aim of defeating the militants, pacifying moderate Sunnis and stabilising Iraq, even if each has signalled that coordination with the other would help to map out a plan.

The result is that Iran, as much as the United States, is groping for a combined political and military strategy to push back the dash across northern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), three weeks after it began on June 10.

Multiple dilemmas

“Iran’s goal in Iraq is to return to the status quo ante, which is a Shiite-dominated, ideologically like-minded government whom Iran can rely upon as a junior partner,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington.

“But the big question is: does such an individual exist who is palatable to both Iran, Sunni factions, the United States?”

That is not Iran’s only dilemma.

Tehran ideally wants to block any expanded role for its US adversary in Iraq; and yet, hungry for US recognition as a regional political force, Tehran has signalled it may welcome a limited, quiet partnership with Washington in defending Baghdad.

Iran initially hoped that by helping Maliki with weapons and intelligence he would be able to contain the crisis. It urged him to form a more inclusive government to bring in Sunnis. But as the crisis has dragged on, doubts about him have grown and analysts and officials say Tehran is considering alternatives.

“We have a few names in mind and discussed our list with our allies in Iraq,” said a senior Iranian security official who stressed that any new premier should be a friend of Tehran.

Complicating the picture are occasional public divergences between the positions taken by Iranian officials.

Khamenei, echoed by security hardliners, has accused the West and its Gulf Arab allies of supporting ISIL to overthrow the Baghdad government and restore Sunni political dominance.

Other officials, however, have suggested the crisis in Iraq presents an opportunity to defuse hostility with Washington that has been bad for both countries and has favoured their mutual enemies among Sunni Islamists in Al Qaeda and other movements.

“We have common interests and common enemies,” said another senior Iranian official, speaking of the United States.

“We face similar security threats in Iraq. Without our cooperation, stability cannot be restored in the Middle East.”

Stabilising role

President Hassan Rouhani has taken a more conciliatory tone towards the “Great Satan” since his election a year ago, though he remains subordinate to Khamenei in setting foreign policy.

He has suggested cooperating with the United States in Iraq, if Washington tackles “terrorism” in the region — a swipe in part at support from US allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Sunni Islamists fighting Iranian allies in Damascus and Baghdad.

“There is this odd dynamic whereby... when it comes to Iraq, the US and Iran are allies but not friends, and the US and Saudi Arabia are friends but not allies,” said Sadjadpour.

Washington has backed the revolt against Syria’s Iranian-backed President Bashar Assad but has pulled its punches as Islamists have come to dominate rebel ranks. US officials have been pushing Riyadh to use its influence among fellow Sunnis in Iraq to persuade them to join a coalition government in Baghdad.

There is precedent for US-Iranian military cooperation. Tehran provided intelligence and political support when US forces invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2001 — only to hear president George W. Bush declare Iran to be part of an “axis of evil” with Saddam and North Korea just a few months later.

“Both the chaos in Afghanistan and in Iraq could have been avoided had Washington recognised the stabilising role Iran can play if it isn’t treated as an outcast,” Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, wrote recently.

Yet for all the possible benefits to Iran of cooperation with the West, its rulers are also anxious not to be seen as an ally of the United States, and especially not of Washington’s protege Israel, against Sunnis who outnumber Shiites two to one across the Middle East. More mixed messages can be expected.

“The removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan was in Iran’s interests but Khamenei denounced it. The removal of Saddam Hussein was in Iran’s interests but Khamenei denounced it,” said Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.

“Now you can argue that the pushback against ISIL is in Iran’s interests, but the leader will denounce it.

“Khamenei is in a challenging position because over three decades... his philosophy has been to try to partner with Sunni Arabs against the US and Israel.

“Now he is kind of being put in the opposite position, which is... inimical to the revolutionary ideology that he has been espousing all these years.”

TRIPOLI — A Tunisian diplomat and a fellow embassy staffer who were abducted in Libya returned to Tunisia on a military plane early Monday after being freed by their unknown captors.

Embassy employee Mohamed Ben Sheikh kidnapped in Tripoli on March 21 and diplomat Al Aroussi Kontassi, who was seized April 17, reunited with their families at a military barracks in a suburb of Tunis early Monday.

Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki, Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa and the head of the constituent assembly Mustapha Ben Jaafar were also present at their arrival home.

“We were well treated [by the kidnappers]. We did not know them,” Ben Sheikh told journalists, adding that he was held in the same house as Kontassi but they did not speak to each other.

Kontassi also said they had not been mistreated but added “the conditions of our detention were very bad”.

The pair have been taken to the military hospital in Tunis to be examined by doctors.

They were freed on Sunday through “the efforts of the Tunisian authorities in collaboration with the Libyan authorities whom we thank for their cooperation”, Jomaa had said at a press conference earlier confirming that they had been freed.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi also spoke to the press saying no ransom had been paid, but declined to give details on the circumstances of their release.

He said that Tunisia’s contact was with the Libyan authorities and not with the kidnappers whose identity he did not know, though he added their motivation was “political”.

Diplomats in Tripoli say militias which fought to topple the Muammar Qadhafi regime in the 2011 uprising often carry out kidnappings to blackmail other countries into releasing Libyans they hold.

Hamdi said the abductors had demanded the release of Libyans imprisoned in Tunisia on terrorism charges, but that they would not be freed.

The abductions of the Tunisians took place during a string of attacks targeting diplomats in the Libyan capital.

Jordan’s ambassador to Libya has also been kidnapped and Portugal’s embassy was attacked by gunmen.

Libya has been awash with weapons since the end of the uprising that killed Qadhafi and has been gripped by increasing lawlessness.