Region

CAIRO — Egypt will restrict sermons during the holy month of Ramadan to topics of faith and morality, the state’s top official in charge of religious affairs said Sunday, in the latest measure by the government to control mosques and limit access of opponents to them.

The announcement is yet another move by authorities to crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and limiting in the process free speech in the deeply polarised country.

Mohammed Mokhtar Gomaa said the decision should ensure that sermons during Islam’s holy month of fasting “unite people, not divide them”. He said the religious speech had been “hijacked” for political purposes, in reference to the previous government, led by Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

“The religious speech was politically driven, which affected the moral side,” he told reporters at a news conference on the first day of the observance. “Now we’re in a race against time trying to restore morals.”

Morsi was ousted last year following mass protests against him denouncing his group’s attempt to monopolise power. The military removed Morsi, and its chief, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, was elected president earlier this month.

In his campaign, Sisi stressed that religious discourse needs to be restructured, saying a free for all interpretation of religion has helped spread extremism. Islamist groups rely on mosques to recruit new members and also rally for political positions ahead of votes.

Since Morsi’s ouster, religious authorities moved to purge mosques from preachers deemed supportive of Islamists and have set guidelines for Friday sermons.

Gomaa said new regulations will also specify what the sermons will address in Ramadan, when more worshippers than usual spend time in mosques, praying and listening to religious lessons. Ramadan is the time Muslims believe God started to reveal the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad, and for believers, it is a time of reflection and worship, remembering the hardships of others and being charitable.

The ministry has also set new rules to regulate a Ramadan tradition — one where many people spend the last ten days of the month inside mosques, praying, fasting and reading the
Koran. The Brotherhood and other Islamist groups often used the retreat for recruitment.

The ministry’s website said that this year, the stay would be allowed only in central mosques under the supervision of a state-authorised cleric. The buildings will only host people who live in the immediate neighbourhood.

It was not clear how the government plans to implement the regulations.

Some 12,000 independent preachers have been barred from delivering sermons. In recent months, the ministry’s website had been posting outlines for the weekly sermons delivered each Friday. Anyone who strays from them in Egypt’s more than 100,000 mosques risks removal.

Last Friday’s sermon spoke about “rationalising consumption”, just after the president mentioned the country needed belt-tightening efforts from all Egyptians.

Gomaa said Sunday 50,000 licensed preachers will be deployed to lead late night Ramadan prayers. The ministry had already restricted preaching in mosques to state-authorised clerics.

He reiterated a ban on holding Friday prayers at thousands of small, unregulated mosques known as “zawaya”.

A number of measures have been used to crack down on the Brotherhood. It has been declared a terrorist organization and some of its members have had their assets frozen. The government has also passed a new law restricting protests.

In a separate development, a Cairo appeal court has set July 22 as the date of a retrial for a prominent Egyptian activist sentenced to 15 years in prison in absentia for organising an unauthorised protest and assaulting a policeman.

The sentencing of Alaa Abdel Fattah and 24 others was the latest blow to liberal activists at a time of rapidly eroding freedoms.

The sentence was the toughest against any of the secular activists behind the 18-day uprising that ended the reign of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It is also the first conviction of a prominent activist since Sisi took office.

BEIRUT — Up to 7,000 people, mostly rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, have been killed in infighting among rival Islamic groups in Syria across opposition-held territory in the north, an activist group said in a report Sunday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has documented 7,000 deaths as a result of the rebel-on-rebel violence since January, when infighting erupted in northern Syria. The death toll also included 650 civilians who got caught in the crossfire of the fighting between Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and its rival, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — a group which formally broke with Al Qaeda earlier this year and has in recent weeks become a major fighting force in neighbouring Iraq.

The observatory has been documenting the Syrian conflict through a network of activists inside Syria since it started in March 2011 as largely peaceful protest against Assad’s rule. It turned into an armed uprising after some opposition supporters picked up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent. It gradually became a civil war, in which more than 160,000 people have been killed, according to activists, and nearly a third of Syria’s population of 23 million has been displaced.

In Sunday’s report, the observatory said its activists on the ground have the names of 5,641 rebels who have been killed in infighting. The names of another 1,200 dead fighters have not been confirmed. Up to 2,196 fighters who have been killed in clashes, suicide bombings and other rival attacks belonged to the Islamic State, while 2,764 were killed on the side of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and other Islamic groups fighting alongside it, the observatory also said. The remainder of the dead were members of other groups.

The two rebel factions have been engaged in deadly infighting in opposition-held territory in several provinces in northern and eastern Syria, along the border with Turkey and Iraq, including Aleppo, Raqqa, Hassakeh and the oil-rich province of Deir El Zour. The infighting over territory and strategic facilities — including oil-fields — that rebel groups captured together from government forces, has undermined the rebels’ larger goal of toppling Assad.

The Syrian leader secured a third, seven-year mandate at a presidential election earlier this month.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s army sent tanks and armoured vehicles to try to dislodge insurgents from the northern city of Tikrit on Sunday, the second day of a pushback against a Sunni militant takeover of large stretches of Iraq.

In Baghdad, which is threatened by the rebel advance, top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers scrambled to agree Cabinet nominations before parliament meets on Tuesday to try to prevent the rebel advance jeopardising Iraq’s future as a unitary state.

They are racing against time as Sunni insurgents led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda offshoot that loathes Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s Shiite-led government, consolidate their grip on the north and west.

Maliki’s political future after eight years in power will be the most contentious issue.

Troops backed by helicopter gunships began an assault on Tikrit, the birthplace of former president Saddam Hussein, on Saturday, to try to take it back from insurgents who have swept to within driving range of Baghdad.

The army sent in tanks and helicopters to battle ISIL militants near the University of Tikrit in the city’s north on Sunday, security sources said. Two witnesses said they saw a helicopter gunned down over northern Tikrit, reports not possible to immediately verify independently.

The offensive was the first major attempt by the army to retake territory after the United States sent up to 300 advisers, mostly special forces, and drones to help the government take on ISIL.

Earlier on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain Al Shahristani, one of Iraq’s most senior politicians, faulted the US for not doing enough to bolster the country’s military, just hours after Russia delivered five Sukhoi jets.

“Yes, there has been a delay from the Americans in handing over contracted arms. We told them, ‘You once did an air bridge to send arms to your ally Israel, so why don’t you give us the contracted arms in time?’” he told Al Hurra television.

US officials have disputed similar statements from Iraqi officials in the past and say they have done everything possible to ensure the country is equipped with modern weaponry.

In the latest sign of diplomatic one-upmanship over the crisis, the five Russian Sukhoi jets were delivered to Baghdad late on Saturday, which state television said “would be used in the coming days to strike ISIL terrorist groups”.

A Reuters photographer saw the jets unloaded from a transport plane at a military airport in Baghdad as Russian and Iraqi soldiers stood on the tarmac. Iraq has relied largely on helicopters to counter militants and has few aircraft that can fire advanced missiles.

Iraqi army spokesman Qassim Atta told reporters in Baghdad security forces had killed 142 “terrorists” over the last 24 hours across Iraq, including 70 in Tikrit, and said the armed forces were in control of Tikrit’s university. Both claims were impossible to immediately verify.

“Our security forces have taken complete control of the University of Tikrit and they have raised the Iraqi flag on top of the building,” Atta said.

Fighting takes its toll

Iran has also supported Iraq’s government against the onslaught. An Iranian general said on Sunday his country was ready to help Iraq fight the revolt using the same methods it deployed against rebels in Syria.

“With Syria, too, we announced we would not allow terrorists in the hire of foreign intelligence services to rule and dictate to Syrian people. We will certainly have the same approach with Iraq,” Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, deputy joint chief of staff of the armed forces and a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officer, told Iran’s Al Alam television.

On Saturday, Iraqi troops began the assault on Tikrit from the direction of Samarra to the south, where the military has drawn its line in the sand against the insurgents’ advance towards Baghdad.

Atta, the military spokesman, said on Saturday militants were struggling because “their morale has started to collapse”, but insurgents, backed by some local Sunni tribes, retained control of the city on Sunday.

The clashes have taken their toll on civilians. At least four people were killed, including two women, when helicopters struck a gathering of people preparing for a wedding ceremony in Al Bu Hayazi, a village east of Tikrit on Saturday evening, witnesses and relatives of the victims said.

“Families were gathering to start a wedding party and rockets started to hit houses... The wedding became a funeral after the death of innocent people. My cousin was among those killed,” Hatam Ali, a government employee working in Tikrit university, told Reuters.

The military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the incident.

On Sunday, intermittent clashes broke out from the early morning between militants and government forces in the northeastern outskirts of the town of Jurf Al Sakhar, 83km south of Baghdad.

The local government and security commanders have asked for backup from Baghdad to face what they estimate are several hundred ISIL fighters, police sources and the province’s governor said.

The militant group, which Al Qaeda
disowned this year, vows to re-create a medieaval-style caliphate erasing borders from the Mediterranean to the Gulf and they deem all Shiites to be heretics deserving death.

US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back to Iraq, where they were for eight years after invading to oust Saddam.

Across the frontier in Syria, ISIL fighters crucified eight men in the northern Aleppo province, a monitoring group said. ISIL accused them of being “Sahwa” fighters, a term it uses for rival fighters it says are controlled by Western powers.

The men were crucified in the town square of Deir Hafer in eastern Aleppo and would be left there for three days, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Parliament under pressure

Politicians are under pressure to speed up the normally sluggish process of selecting a new government to face the crisis. A parliament elected in April is due to assemble on Tuesday to begin the process.

In a statement on Sunday, the United Nations mission in Iraq urged all representatives to attend the session on Tuesday and move forward with selecting a new government.

“Faced with a national crisis, the political leaders of Iraq should put the interests of the country and its people before everything else,” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq Nickolay Mladenov said in the statement.

But the 21-seat bloc of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, said it would skip the session, arguing more time was needed to avoid the previous government’s mistakes.

Politicians from the National Alliance, parliament’s biggest bloc, said they would join the session and seek to follow the timetable for the formation, but were tight-lipped about who they would back for prime minister. A senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Adnan Mufti, said it would attend.

Under Iraq’s governing system put in place after Saddam’s overthrow, the prime minister has always been a Shiite, the largely ceremonial president a Kurd and the speaker of parliament a Sunni. None of those groups has made a clear decision about who to put forward for the posts.

It took nearly 10 months for Maliki to build a coalition to stay in office after the last election in 2010, and pressure for a quick process this time could hasten the end of his rule.

In a stunning political intervention on Friday, Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, made clear politicians could not delay the process at a moment of crisis.

Maliki, whose State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election, was positioning himself for a third term before the ISIL offensive began. His closest allies say he still aims to stay, but senior State of Law figures have said he could be replaced with a less polarising figure.

“It’s a card game and State of Law plays a poker game very well,” an official from the premier’s alliance said. “For the prime minister, it will go down to the wire.”

DAMASCUS — A car bomb exploded in a busy market in a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding dozens as Muslims went shopping a day before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, activists said.

The blast in Douma came nearly two hours after Russia’s deputy foreign minister called on the United States and Europe to take “serious” steps to combat terrorism during a visit to Damascus, warning that several Middle Eastern countries are threatened.

“Russia will not stand idle towards attempts by terrorist groups to spread terrorism in regional states,” Sergei Ryabkov told reporters, apparently referring to the rapid advance of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant across eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

Russia has been one of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s main allies since the start of an uprising against him in March 2011. Moscow has used its veto power four times at the UN Security Council to prevent international sanctions on Syria.

Both Russia and Assad’s government have portrayed the civil war in Syria as a struggle against foreign-backed “terrorists”, the word Damascus applies to all rebels fighting to end the Assad family’s four-decade reign.

The market blast in Damascus killed at least two people and wounded others who were rushed to nearby makeshift hospitals, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and amateur videos released by activists in the area.

The activists said the market was crowded as many people went shopping a day before the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and feast in the evenings.

The observatory said the explosion caused extensive damage. The observatory and an activist in the nearby suburb of Saqba who goes by the name of Abu Yazan said the Islamic State is believed to be behind the blast, because of a rivalry with other rebel groups in the area.

“Hospitals are full of wounded people,” Abu Yazan said via Skype.

Amateur videos posted by activists online showed the bloodied and burnt bodies of two dead boys on the floor of what appeared to be a makeshift hospital. Others, including children, were receiving treatment amid shrill cries of pain. Several other wounded people lay sprawled out on bloodstained white tiles.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events.

Douma, one of the most populous suburbs of Damascus, has been under rebel control for more than two years.

The Islamic State has been fighting against rival rebel factions, including Al Qaeda’s official affiliate, the Nusra Front, since January in battles that have left more than 6,000 people dead, according to the observatory.

In Damascus, Russia’s Ryabkov called for confronting terrorism by “taking integral measures against radicalism and by searching for a solution to prevent the influx of fighters from abroad,” adding that terrorism will have “catastrophic repercussions” on the entire region.

Thousands of foreign fighters, including hundreds from the former Soviet Union, are fighting against Assad’s forces in different parts of Syria, mainly on behalf of the Islamic State, which has carved out a sprawling enclave astride the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Ryabkov praised Damascus’ “responsible” decision to give up its chemical weapons, saying that doing so has boosted Syria’s security.

On Monday, Syria finished handing over to Western powers 1,300 tonnes of chemical weapons it acknowledged possessing, completing a deal reached last fall under threat of US air strikes.

Ryabkov held talks a day earlier with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Mouallem and his deputy, Faisal Mekdad.

According to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, Ryabkov congratulated Mouallem on removing “all chemical material” from the country.

Also Saturday, the observatory reported heavy clashes between several rebel factions and the Islamic Front in the eastern town of Boukamal on the border with Iraq.

Earlier last week, beleaguered Nusra Front fighters surrounded by Islamic State forces in Boukamal defected and joined the Islamic State. That effectively handed the town over to the Islamic State, which controls the Iraqi side of the crossing.

CAIRO — Two bombings on Saturday in a Cairo suburb killed a teenager and her mother, officials said, the latest in a wave of blasts to hit the Egyptian capital this week.

Militants have stepped up attacks after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and amid a deadly crackdown by authorities on his supporters.

The makeshift bombs planted in a telecommunications being built in the October 6 suburb were detonated by a mobile phone signal at around 9am (0700 GMT), a police investigator told AFP.

Medics said the watchman’s wife and 18-year-old daughter were killed.

Residents said the powerful blast rattled windows in nearby buildings.

Saturday’s explosion comes after five makeshift bombs at four Cairo metro stations on Wednesday and a sixth at a courthouse wounded six people.

The authorities have blamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood for attacks rocking the country, most of which have targeted security forces, and have blacklisted the Islamist movement as a terrorist organisation.

Since Morsi’s ouster, a crackdown on his supporters has left more than 1,400 people dead and seen at least 15,000 jailed.

Hundreds have also been sentenced to death.

An Al Qaeda-inspired jihadist group based in the Sinai Peninsula, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), has claimed some of the deadliest attacks on security forces, as well as a failed attempt to assassinate the interior minister in September.

A little-known jihadist group, Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), has also said it was behind a string of attacks on police in Cairo.

The government says the militants have killed about 500 people, most of them security personnel.

WASHINGTON — Veteran Middle East diplomat Martin Indyk resigned Friday as the chief US negotiator between the Israelis and Palestinians in a further sign of the collapse of the peace process.

Less than a year after Secretary of State John Kerry tapped the high-profile envoy to guide a major US push for a peace deal, Indyk quit to return to a senior position at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Kerry hailed Indyk’s “indefatigable efforts and creativity” on the peace process, which the top US diplomat insisted was not dead.

“He’ll continue to work for peace, and as we’ve all said many times, the United States remains committed not just to the cause of peace, but to resuming the process when the parties find a path back to serious negotiations,” Kerry said in a statement.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said that Kerry and Indyk agreed it was “an appropriate time” for the diplomat to return to Brookings due to the suspension in negotiations.

Indyk, who was born in Britain and raised in Australia, formerly worked for the main pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and took US citizenship in 1993 as he joined the administration of then-president Bill Clinton.

Indyk served twice as US ambassador to Israel — from 1995-1997 and 2000-2001 — and played a key role in Clinton’s failed efforts to broker a Middle East peace settlement, including at the Camp David summit between then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Kerry put a top priority on reviving Middle East diplomacy and coaxed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table last July.

But in April, Israel made a surprise announcement of plans for 700 new settlements and refused to free a last batch of Palestinian prisoners after earlier releases. Abbas in turn sought Palestinian membership in 15 UN conventions.

Israel voiced anger after an unnamed US official — widely believed to be Indyk — was quoted by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as blaming Israel for the breakdown in talks and saying that Netanyahu “did not move more than an inch”.

No more ‘urgency’ for peace 

Asked about the controversial remarks attributed to him, Indyk told a forum last month that Israel’s settlement announcements in the midst of releasing prisoners had a “dramatically damaging impact on the negotiations”.

Indyk, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy he helped found in 1985, complained that the Israelis and Palestinians did not “feel the pressing need to make the gut-wrenching compromises necessary to achieve peace”.

“It is safe to say that if we the US are the only party that has a sense of urgency, these negotiations will not succeed,” Indyk said.

In a sign of the bleak hopes, Harf, the State Department deputy spokeswoman, said Kerry was not immediately planning to appoint a new permanent Middle East negotiator.

Indyk’s acting replacement will be Frank Lowenstein, a longtime aide to Kerry who has served as deputy special envoy.

Lowenstein was an adviser to Kerry on his failed 2004 presidential bid and later worked for him in the Senate. He is the son of Allard Lowenstein, the slain former congressman and civil rights champion.

Amid the peace process at a standstill, violence has ticked up. Israel has staged a vast crackdown on Hamas after the abduction of three Israeli settler teenagers.

GAZA CITY — An Israeli air strike on a car in the Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians Friday, medics said, hours after a bomb exploded near troops manning Israel’s security fence.

The violence comes a day after Israel accused two men it said belong to Hamas of kidnapping three Israeli settler teenagers in the occupied West Bank a fortnight ago.

Israel responded to the abduction by staging a vast crackdown on the West Bank network of Hamas, which governed Gaza until a recent Palestinian unity deal was struck, and has arrested hundreds of its Islamist foe’s members.

“The remains of two martyrs killed in an Israeli raid on a car were taken to the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza,” health services spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP.

He named them as Osama Al Hassumi, 29, and Mohammed Fasih, 24.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying the pair were involved in rocket attacks on Israel over the past week.

Late Friday, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired five rockets at Israel, without causing casualties or damage, a military spokeswoman said.

Two projectiles were destroyed in flight by the “Iron Dome” anti-missile defence system, she added.

And early Saturday, Israel conducted four air raids on Gaza, two targeting “sites of terrorist activities” and the others hitting arms depots and production facilities, a military spokesman said in a statement.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon had said in a statement Israel “will react firmly to any fire at its territory and to any attack targeting Israeli civilians or soldiers, as we did today”.

Earlier Friday, five Palestinians in Gaza were wounded by Israeli tank fire in response to the detonation of the border bomb.

Qudra said they were hurt when the tanks targeted “two mosque minarets” east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

An 11-year-old boy was seriously wounded, he said.

The Israeli military said “an explosive device was activated against [army] forces operating adjacent to the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip”, causing no injuries.

“The force responded with tank fire towards lookout posts used to guide the attack,” it said.

An army spokeswoman said Israeli forces near the border have been targeted by nine explosive devices since the beginning of the year.

Israel names suspects 

While there has been no recent rise in roadside explosions near Gaza, there has been a noticeable uptick in Palestinian rocket fire in recent weeks, leading to air strikes by Israel.

Palestinian medics said the air raids struck near the home of Ismail Haniyeh, former Hamas premier who stepped down on June 2 when Gaza and the West Bank set up a unity government.

Israel has put Hamas under intense pressure since the June 12 disappearance of the three Israeli teens.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the international community to press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to end his reconciliation with Hamas, citing the alleged kidnapping as proof the movement’s “terrorist” activities make it an unsuitable political partner.

On Thursday, Israel accused Marwan Kawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh, two men it said belong to Hamas, of the abduction.

Hamas dismissed that as a front for Israel’s “failure” to find them.

Israel has provided no proof of Hamas involvement in the youths’ disappearance, and the movement has said it has no information on the incident.

Five Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli security forces’ sweeping operations to find the teenagers and more than 400 arrested, mostly Hamas members. Troops have also raided some 2,100 buildings in the West Bank, a military spokesman said.

Several hundred Arab israelis demonstrated on Friday in the northern Israeli area of Umm Al Fahm against the measures, public television said.

The protesters blocked off a road and threw rocks at police, who used tear gas and sound bombs to disperse them, without making any arrests.

The broadcaster said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party, accused the demonstrators of voicing support for the kidnapping of the Israelis and proposed they should be treated “like terrorists”.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi government forces backed by helicopter gunships began an offensive on Saturday to retake the northern city of Tikrit from Sunni Islamist militants while party leaders pursued talks that could end Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s divisive rule.

Politicians in Baghdad and world powers warn that unless security forces recover cities lost to the jihadi insurgents in tandem with a rapid formation of a government that can bring Iraq’s estranged communities together, the country could rip apart along sectarian lines and menace the wider Middle East.

On the battlefield, Iraqi troops were trying to advance on Tikrit from the direction of Samarra to the south that has become the military’s line in the sand against a militant advance southwards towards Baghdad.

Iraqi special forces already have snipers inside Tikrit University who were dropped by air there in a bold operation on Thursday. 

Helicopter gunships fired at targets in Tikrit on Saturday and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters abandoned Tikrit’s governorate building, security sources said. More government troops had been air-dropped in a pocket just north of the city.

Iraqi military spokesman Qassim Atta told reporters in Baghdad on Saturday that 29 “terrorists” were killed on Friday in Tikrit and that militant commanders were struggling because “their morale has started to collapse”.

However, the militants were showing resilience and enjoyed the backing of some local Sunni tribes, as well as former ruling Baathists from the era of late Sunni leader Saddam Hussein — whose hometown was Tikrit — alienated from Maliki’s government.

In other parts of the country, such as Jurf Al Sakhar, 85km south of Baghdad, militants from ISIL — the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — were on the offensive.

Three police sources said at least 60 ISIL fighters had been killed along with more than 15 Iraqi security force members when the militant group launched a major attack on an army camp just east of Jurf Al Sakhar, firing mortars and RPG rounds.

“The ISIL terrorists fired many mortars at the camp and then started their offensive. They managed to break into the camp but could not hold their positions due to army helicopters cover,” a police colonel said.

Since early June, the radical ISIL has overrun most majority Sunni areas in the north and west of Iraq, capturing the biggest northern city Mosul and fanning southwards.

ISIL vows to re-create a medievAl style caliphate erasing borders from the Mediterranean to the Gulf and they deem all Shiites to be heretics deserving death. They boast of executing scores of Shiite government soldiers captured in Tikrit.

Grand Ayatollah’s political intervention

In a stunning political intervention on Friday that could mean the demise of Maliki’s eight-year tenure, powerful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani urged political blocs to agree on the next premier, parliament speaker and president before a newly elected legislature meets in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Saudi King Abdullah pledged in talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry to use his influence to encourage Sunni Muslims to join a new, more inclusive Iraqi government to better combat Islamist insurgents, a senior US official said on Saturday.

King Abdullah’s assurance marked a significant shift from Riyadh’s unwillingness to support a new government unless Maliki, a Shiite, steps aside, and reflected growing disquiet about the regional repercussions of ISIL’s rise.

“The next 72 hours are very important to come up with an agreement ... to push the political process forward,” said a lawmaker and former government official from the National Alliance, which groups all Shiite Muslim parties.

The lawmaker, who asked for anonymity due to political sensitivities, said he anticipated internal meetings by various parties and a broader session of the National Alliance including Maliki’s State of Law list to be held through the weekend. Some Sunni Muslim parties were to convene later on Saturday.

Iraqi Sunnis accuse Maliki of freezing them out of any power and repressing their community, goading armed tribes to support the insurgency led by the fundamentalist group ISIL. The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region has also said Maliki should bow out.

Sistani’s entry into the fray will make it hard for Maliki to stay on as caretaker leader as he has since a parliamentary election in April. That means he must either build a coalition to confirm himself in power for a third term or step aside.

Sistani’s message was delivered after a meeting of Shiite factions including the State of Law coalition failed to agree on a consensus candidate for prime minister.

Maliki, whose State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election, was positioning himself for a third term before the ISIL offensive began. His closest allies say he still aims to stay, but senior State of Law figures have said he could be replaced with a less polarising figure.

“It’s a card game and State of Law plays a poker game very well,” said the official from the premier’s alliance. “For the prime minister, it will go down to the wire.”

Islamists battle Islamists on border

In Syria, where ISIL controls large swathes of land, other Islamist rebel groups pursued a counteroffensive in the border town of Albu Kamal, challenging ISIL’s grip along the Iraqi-Syrian frontier.

ISIL is a more radical offshoot of Al Qaeda that has its roots in Iraq and expanded into Syria shortly after the start of the three-year insurgency against President Bashar Assad.

US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back to Iraq, where they were for eight years after invading to oust Saddam, but has sent up to 300 advisers, mostly special forces, to help the government take on ISIL.

US defence officials said on Friday that the Obama administration was flying armed aircraft over Iraq although these aimed to collect intelligence and ensure the safety of US personnel on the ground rather than attack targets.

Still, General Martin Dempsey, the top US military officer, said additional US options included going after “high-value individuals who are the leadership of ISIL” and working to protect Iraq’s “critical infrastructure”.

On Saturday, 11 people were injured when an explosion rocked a health ministry building in insurgent-held Mosul, a local health official said. City residents said the blast was caused by a drone strike but this could not be confirmed and a US official dismissed this possibility.

Residents also reported overnight rocket fire into Mosul, whose fall to ISIL on June 10 was the catalyst for a militant sweep southwards in which they also took border crossings with areas of civil war-racked Syria that they already controlled.

Struggle for share 

of power

Under Iraq’s governing system put in place after Saddam’s overthrow, the prime minister has always been a Shiite, the largely ceremonial president a Kurd and the speaker of parliament a Sunni. Negotiations over the positions have often been drawn out: After the last election in 2010 it took nearly 10 months for Maliki to build a coalition to stay in office.

Divvying up the three posts in the four days before parliament meets, as sought by Sistani, would require leaders from each of Iraq’s three main ethnic and sectarian groups to commit to the political process and swiftly resolve their most pressing political problems, above all the fate of Maliki.

Allies of Maliki said Sistani’s call for a quick decision was not aimed at sidelining the premier but at putting pressure on all political parties not to drag out the process with typical infighting with Iraq facing disintegration. Even so, they acknowledged Sistani was not happy with Maliki’s policies.

“It is other groups telling Sistani they cannot accommodate Maliki for a third term. Sistani doesn’t want to get involved in who is the next prime minister, but there has to be progress,” said one official from Maliki’s State of Law list.

The roadmap is far from smooth. Kurds have yet to agree on a candidate for president and the Sunnis, long riven by intense rivalries and shaken by the loss of their cities to militants, are divided among themselves over the speaker’s post.

Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and outfitted by the United States at a cost of some $25 billion, largely disintegrated in the north in the face of ISIL’s offensive.

Thousands of Shiite volunteers have responded to an earlier call by Ayatollah Sistani for all Iraqis to rally behind the military to defeat the jihadist threat.

CAIRO — Gunmen killed four Egyptian policemen in the restive northern Sinai on Saturday, a security source said, with police blaming the attack on “takfiri” jihadist militants.

Militants in the Sinai Peninsula have stepped up attacks on troops and police since the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July.

A security source said the men were killed “on the road between the towns of Rafah and El Arish in north Sinai when takfiri elements forced the pickup they were driving to stop, made the four policemen get out and opened fire on them”.

The policemen had been returning to their posts after the weekend, the source said, adding that the attackers fled into the desert.

Most militant attacks have hit the north of the mostly desert Sinai Peninsula, but they have also extended their reach to Cairo and the Nile Delta.

Saturday’s shooting came just hours after bombings killed two people in a Cairo suburb.

The makeshift devices in a telecommunications building under construction in the October 6 suburb were detonated by a mobile phone signal, police told AFP.

Medics said the watchman’s wife and 18-year-old daughter were killed.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Syrian rebels can help weaken jihadists fighting in Iraq, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday as Washington unveiled plans to boost Syria’s opposition with $500 million in arms and training.

The top US diplomat flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with the Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba before meeting for more than three hours with Saudi King Abdullah to discuss the widening crisis in Iraq and Syria.

King Abdullah has consistently called for greater US military support for the moderate Syrian rebels, whom the Sunni Gulf kingdom has long backed.

But amid concerns about a spillover from Iraq where Islamic militants have seized a swathe of northern territory, the king “did share with the secretary some steps the kingdom is taking to address its concerns about the threat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) extremists, a State Department official told reporters.

He refused to go into specifics, but stressed both the US and Saudi Arabia believed Iraq had to form a new government rapidly in order to confront the Sunni Islamic militant threat.

“The moderate opposition in Syria... has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against ISIL’s presence... not just in Syria, but also in Iraq,” Kerry said.

The White House said Thursday it intends to “ramp up US support to the moderate Syrian opposition” as part of a $1.5 billion initiative to bolster stability in Syria’s neighbours Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Jarba, leader of the Syrian National Coalition, welcomed the huge US boost to his forces, battling to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 ISIL ‘one entity’ 

He told Kerry that his Sunni rebels were “urging their Iraqi counterparts not to seek common cause with ISIL”, the US official said.

“ISIL is one entity,” the State Department official told reporters flying with Kerry to Ireland after the meetings in Jeddah had ended.

“So weakening ISIL on one side of the border inherently is going to weaken ISIL all over,” he said. But he stressed Kerry was not hinting that the Syrian opposition should have a role in fighting ISIL inside Iraq.

The US assistance would go to what the White House has called “appropriately vetted” members of the Syrian opposition.

Although the United States has provided some $2 billion in humanitarian aid, Obama has so far shied clear of providing heavy weapons, fearful they could fall into the hands of jihadists.

Jarba visited Washington in May to plead for arms, especially anti-aircraft missiles, to help the rebels defend themselves from air strikes and barrel bomb attacks by Assad’s regime.

The rebels have found themselves fighting on two fronts, as jihadists belonging to Al Qaeda and the ultra-hardline ISIL have flourished in the chaos.

ISIL has now triggered international alarm by capturing parts of five Iraqi provinces, pressing ambitions to set up a wider Islamic state straddling Iraq and Syria.

Washington has been increasingly concerned that the jihadists’ battlefield role on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border will play into the hands of the Assad regime.

The Saudi king has also been an outspoken critic of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, accusing him of excluding Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority.

US officials say Washington is calling on its Sunni allies to use their influence with Iraqi leaders to unite and quickly form a government, with a Tuesday deadline looming for the new parliament to meet and start the process of choosing a speaker, president and prime minister.

The State Department official said “it was not impossible” for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites to put forward their candidates for the vital positions by Tuesday.

But he also pointed out that numerous deadlines have been missed over the years, amid the tumult of Iraqi politics.

In a de-facto agreement, the presidency is usually held by a Kurd, the speaker is Sunni and the prime minister is a Shiite.