Region

THE HAGUE — The last of Syria’s declared chemical agents have been shipped from the war-torn country after months of delays and are en route for destruction at sea, the world’s chemical watchdog said on Monday.

“As we speak, the ship [carrying the last chemicals] has just left the port [of Latakia],” Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told journalists in The Hague where the OPCW is based.

“Removing the stockpile of precursor and other chemicals has been a fundamental condition in the programme to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons,” Uzumcu said.

The Dutch head of the joint OPCW-UN mission, Sigrid Kaag, hailed the end of “the most operationally challenging task” in the international efforts to destroy Damascus’ chemical arsenal.

Syria had previously shipped out 92 per cent of 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.

But Damascus delayed shipping the remaining 8 per cent of the stockpile from another site, citing security concerns over transporting it to the port of Latakia.

“While a major chapter in our endeavours closes today, OPCW’s work in Syria will continue,” Uzumcu said.

“We hope to conclude soon the clarification of certain aspects of the Syrian declaration and commence the destruction of certain structures that were used as chemical-weapons production facilities.”

The Syrian foreign ministry confirmed in a statement that “the final cargo of chemical agents has today been taken outside Syrian territory”.

The ministry hailed the success of the mission and called on the international community to pressure Damascus’ archfoe Israel to sign up to international agreements on weapons of mass destruction.

Kaag said technical experts from secretariat of The Hague, the joint mission and the Syrian authorities would continue to investigate “the completeness of Syria’s initial declaration to the OPCW”.

“Any state party when they accede to the chemical weapons convention... we look at anomalies, we look at discrepancies in cooperation,” Kaag told AFP.

“The most important thing is that the materials are out. They will be destroyed safely and securely... out of harm’s way, and they can also no longer fall in the wrong hands.”

Chlorine questions 

Syria was supposed to hand over its chemical arsenal so the international community could destroy it by the end of June, but it has been widely acknowledged it would pass that deadline.

“While the June 30 deadline, as already was stated a few weeks ago, will not be met... the materials are out of country and the bulk of Syria’s declared chemical weapons programme is no more,” said Kaag.

The deal was reached after the US threatened to carry out air strikes against President Bashar Assad’s regime after a sarin nerve gas attack in a rebel-held suburb in Damascus killed around 1,400 people.

A Danish ship will now take the chemicals to Italy’s port of Gioia Tauro where they will be transferred to the US ship Cape Ray for destruction at sea. Some are also due to be destroyed in the US, Britain and Finland.

OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan told AFP that the Danish vessel would arrive in Italy “within a week”. Uzumcu confirmed that once they have been transferred to the US vessel it could take up to 60 days to destroy them.

“Within the next four months most chemicals will be destroyed,” he said, adding that Damascus’ cooperation has been “commensurate with the requirements” of the deal.

His words contrast with news from week an OPCW investigation team, which last week said chemical agents such as chlorine, which Syria was not obliged to hand over, have recently been used “in a systematic manner in a number of attacks”.

Assad’s regime and rebels have both accused the other of using chemical agents in the bloody uprising that began in March 2011.

The OPCW team was attacked on May 27 while probing an alleged chlorine attack, but managed to obtain evidence the chemical had been used as a weapon.

France and the US have also alleged that Assad’s forces may have unleashed industrial chemicals on several rebel-held villages in recent months.

Syria did not have to declare its stockpile of chlorine — a weak toxic agent that can be turned into a weapon — under the disarmament deal as it is widely used for commercial and domestic purposes.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists including Australia’s Peter Greste to jail terms from seven to 10 years Monday in a verdict denounced internationally as “chilling” and “unjust”.

Greste and Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy each got seven years, while Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed received two sentences — one for seven years and another for three.

Eleven defendants tried in absentia, including one Dutch journalist and two British journalists, were given 10-year sentences.

The verdict provoked an international outcry and raised fears of growing media restrictions in Egypt.

“Today’s conviction is obviously a chilling and draconian sentence,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told journalists in Baghdad, a day after he visited Cairo where he urged Egyptian leaders to uphold press freedom.

The Australian government said it was “shocked” by the verdict.

“We are deeply dismayed that a sentence has been imposed and appalled at the severity of it,” Canberra’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

“It is hard to credit that the court in this case could have reached this conclusion,” she added.

Al Jazeera chief Mustafa Sawaq said in Doha: “We condemn... this kind of unjust verdict. ... We are shocked.”

Greste’s brother Andrew said he was devastated.

“It is definitely not what we were expecting. I was hoping for acquittal... we will continue to fight for his freedom,” he said.

Ambassadors summoned 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was “shocked and alarmed” by the verdicts and urged a review of Egyptian laws.

“Media employees trying to carry out their work in Egypt are now confronted by an extremely difficult and dangerous environment. They should be protected not prosecuted,” she said.

In The Hague, Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said he had summoned Egypt’s ambassador and would raise the matter with his EU colleagues after Dutch journalist Rena Netjes, tried in absentia, “did not get a fair trial”.

London also said it was summoning Cairo’s envoy, and David Cameron’s spokesman said the premier was “completely appalled” by the verdicts issued in absentia against two British journalists working for Al Jazeera.

Human Rights Watch’s Joe Stork said the verdict shows “how Egypt’s judges have been caught up in the anti-Muslim Brotherhood hysteria fostered by President [Abdel Fattah] Al Sisi”.

But the foreign ministry in Cairo said Egypt’s “judiciary enjoys full independence” and stressed that the defendants “still have the right to appeal”.

Of the six defendants in custody along with Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed, four were sentenced to seven years and two were acquitted.

“They will pay for this, they will pay for this. I promise!” Fahmy shouted from the dock after hearing the verdict.

A presidency official said Sisi “legally can’t [pardon them]... a pardon can be given only after the final court ruling”.

All of the defendants had been accused of aiding the blacklisted Brotherhood and tarnishing Egypt’s reputation after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi by “spreading false news”.

Since the army ousted Morsi in July 2013, the authorities have been incensed by the Qatari network’s coverage of their deadly crackdown on his supporters.

They consider Al Jazeera to be the voice of Qatar and accuse Doha of backing the Brotherhood. The Gulf state has denounced the repression of the Islamist movement’s supporters which has killed more than 1,400 people.

‘There is no justice’ 

“All journalists should fear for themselves now that there is no justice. Politics is the master,” said defence lawyer Shaaban Saeed.

Al Jazeera says only nine of the 20 defendants are on its staff, including the two British reporters based abroad.

Sixteen defendants are Egyptians who were accused of belonging to the Brotherhood, which the authorities designated a “terrorist organisation” in December.

The four foreigners — Greste, Netjes and Britons Sue Turton and Dominic Kane — were alleged to have collaborated with and assisted their Egyptian co-defendants by providing media material, as well as editing and broadcasting it.

The authorities also say the accused journalists were operating without valid accreditation.

The defendants had denounced the trial as “unfair and political”, charging that evidence had been “fabricated”.

Prosecutors showed video from a tourism report, not even produced by Al Jazeera, and images and audio recordings in which the defendants were alleged to have falsely portrayed a “civil war”.

Greste and Fahmy were arrested in a Cairo hotel on December 29.

The award-winning Greste formerly worked with the BBC and Fahmy, the Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English who previously worked with CNN, has no known Brotherhood ties.

NOUAKCHOTT — Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz has been re-elected with an overwhelming 81.89 per cent of the vote, preliminary results showed, after his main rivals boycotted a process they rejected as a sham.

The former general, who seized power in the northwest African nation in an August 2008 coup, campaigned strongly on his success in fighting armed groups linked to Al Qaeda at home and in neighbouring Sahel nations.

Preliminary results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday indicated that Abdel Aziz was firmly ahead of anti-slavery candidate Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, who obtained just 8.67 per cent of Saturday’s ballot.

In third place was Ibrahima Moctar Sarr, with 4.44 per cent while the only female candidate in the race, Lalla Mariem Mint Moulaye Idriss took only 0.49 per cent.

One 70-year-old voter who gave his name as Brahim said the country, wracked by jihadist violence up until 2010, “had found peace”.

“That’s important and I want it to continue because peace is irreplaceable.”

Kidnappings and attacks by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were frequent when Abdel Aziz came to power, but he boasts that he has turned his nation into a regional haven of peace thanks to his reorganisation of the military and security forces.

The mainly Muslim republic, sandwiched between the west coast of Africa and the Sahara desert, is seen by Western leaders as a bulwark against Al Qaeda-linked groups.

In 2010 and 2011, Mauritanian troops carried out successful “preventative” raids on AQIM bases in neighbouring Mali, before the armed fundamentalists could carry out planned attacks on Mauritania.

Allegations of fraud

Opposition critics argue that the price of peace has been authoritarian rule and boycotted a vote they dismissed as a sham.

Main opposition parties have never accepted Abdel Aziz’s 2009 victory in an election they said was marred by massive fraud.

The National Forum for Democracy and Unity — an opposition coalition of 11 parties including a moderate Islamist-movement — rallied to denounce Abdel Aziz’s “dictatorial power” and were counting on a high abstention rate.

On Sunday, the electoral commission said turnout reached 56.46 per cent, below that of the 2009 elections when participation stood at 64 per cent.

African Union observers were satisfied with the vote.

“Overall, this election took place peacefully and in a spirit of political tolerance... I welcome the civic sense among the Mauritanians,” said the head of the AU mission, Beji Caid Essebsi, who is also Tunisia’s former prime minister.

BEIRUT — The Syrian government said Monday a series of Israeli air strikes targeting its troops in retaliation for a cross-border attack killed four people and wounded nine others, in its first comment on the overnight incident.

It said the attack was a “flagrant violation” of Syrian sovereignty, but in a departure from previous incidents when Israeli warplanes struck targets in Syria, the government did not vow retaliation.

Israel’s prime minister on Monday warned the warring parties in Syria against any attempt to heat up tensions along the disputed frontier, hours after the Israeli air force carried out a string of air strikes in Syria in response to the border attack, which killed an Israeli teenager riding in a civilian vehicle.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would respond with even tougher force if there are any further attacks.

“Last night we operated with great force against Syrian targets that acted against us, and if needed we will use additional force,” he told members of his Likud Party. “We will continue to forcefully hurt anyone who attacks us or tries to attack us.”

The Israeli military said the air raids struck nine targets in neighbouring Syria.

A statement issued by Syria’s foreign ministry said five Israeli warplanes carried out the raids, which were accompanied by mortar rounds and tank shells.

It said four people were killed and nine others wounded, adding that the attacks caused extensive damage to Syrian army positions and equipment. It did not provide further details.

The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdurrahman, said the Israeli strikes destroyed two tanks, two artillery batteries and the headquarters of Syria’s 90th brigade.

The observatory collects its information through a network of activists inside Syria.

The Israeli military said “direct hits were confirmed” on the targets, which were located near the site of Sunday’s violence in the Golan Heights and included a regional military command centre and unspecified “launching positions”.

Israel has kept a close eye on the Syrian uprising since it began in March 2011, although it has avoided backing either side. On several occasions, artillery rounds have landed on the Israeli side of the de facto border, drawing limited Israeli reprisals.

Israel also has carried out several air strikes in Syria over the past three years, primarily targeting suspected weapons shipments allegedly destined for Hizbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

The latest air raids, however, came after an Israeli civilian vehicle was struck by what the Israeli military said was an anti-tank missile fired from the Syrian side of the border as it drove in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

It was not clear whether the attack was by government troops or rebels.

A teenage Israeli boy was killed and two other people were wounded in what was the first deadly incident along the volatile Israeli-Syrian frontier since the start of the Syrian civil war.

The Israeli vehicle was delivering water in contract work for Israel’s defence ministry when it was struck.

Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. Its subsequent annexation of the area has never been recognised internationally.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli troops detained 37 Palestinians in the West Bank during the night as its arrest campaign entered its 11th day on Monday, with no sign of three teenagers thought kidnapped by Hamas.

Since the youths disappeared from a hitchhiking stop in the southern West Bank on June 12, Israel has been rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in a bid to find them, while also dealing a crushing blow to the Islamist movement’s West Bank network.

But with tensions rising among Palestinians over the crackdown which has seen four Palestinians killed by troops in the past week, the campaign is expected to shift focus to intelligence gathering rather than mass arrests.

“Overnight, the forces detained 37 suspects and searched 80 locations, specifically in the area north west of Hebron, Beit Awwa [southwest of Hebron] and also in [the northern city of] Jenin,” an army spokeswoman said.

So far, troops have arrested 361 people, among them 250 Hamas members and 57 who were freed during a 2011 prisoner swap deal to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier held in Gaza for five years by Hamas, the army said.

Despite the operation, there has been no claim of responsibility and no sign of the missing youngsters, although military spokesman General Motti Almoz said on Sunday that all information indicated they “are alive”.

Press reports said Operation Brother’s Keeper was nearing its end in the present format and would be refocused ahead of the start next week of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Backlash concerns 

“The defence establishment is troubled by the increase in the number of Palestinian casualties and the possibility that the confrontations will spill over into the month of Ramadan, which starts in less than a week,” wrote Haaretz defence correspondent Amos Harel.

“The IDF (army) would likely prefer to significantly reduce the size of its deployment and return to more focused intelligence gathering”, he said, indicating the military was likely to encounter problems in mustering enough evidence to put many of the detainees on trial.

Yediot Aharonot newspaper ran a similar story saying that within days the focus would be on more searches and fewer arrests.

“The IDF will focus on looking for the kidnapped teenagers in the Hebron sector and the Etzion [settlement]bloc, but arrests will be cut back significantly,” the paper said.

There was no immediate comment on the reports by the army.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the abductions and defended his security forces’ ongoing cooperation with their Israeli counterparts to try to locate the missing boys.

But there are growing signs of Palestinian frustration with their own security forces, with angry protesters hurling rocks at a Ramallah police station on Sunday, smashing the windows of two police cars.

Former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh described the clashes in the West Bank as another “Intifada”, or uprising.

“We’re not saying the Intifada will start; we’re saying it has started already in the West Bank, and no one can stop it,” Haniyeh told journalists in Gaza.

“The enemy [Israel] cannot put a stop to the escalation of the resistance.”

BAGHDAD — Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday promised “intense and sustained” US support for Iraq, but said the divided country would only survive if its leaders took urgent steps to bring it together.

Hours before Kerry arrived in Baghdad, Sunni tribes who have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq seized the only legal crossing point with Jordan, security sources said, leaving troops with no presence along the entire western frontier which includes some of the Middle East’s most important trade routes.

US President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 American advisers to Iraq but held off granting Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-led government’s request for air strikes to counter the two-week advance by Sunni militants.

Officials have meanwhile called for Iraqis to form an inclusive government. The insurgency has been fuelled largely by a sense of marginalisation and persecution among Iraq’s Sunnis.

“The support will be intense and sustained and if Iraq’s leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,” Kerry told reporters in Baghdad.

He said Maliki had “on multiple occasions affirmed his commitment to July 1” as the date to start the formation of a new government bringing in more Sunnis and Kurds to share power, a move Washington is keen to see.

Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said tribal leaders were negotiating to hand the Turabil desert border post to Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who took two main crossings with Syria in recent days and have pushed the Shiite-led government’s forces back towards Baghdad.

Iraq state television said late on Monday that the army had recaptured both the crossing with Jordan and the Al Waleed crossing with Syria. Reuters could not independently confirm reports due to security restrictions.

Ethnic Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving no government troops with no presence along Iraq’s 800kms western border.

For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Kerry said: “Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq’s leaders have to beat that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands. The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks.”

Washington, which withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011 after an occupation that followed the 2003 invasion which toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, has been struggling to help Maliki’s administration contain a Sunni insurgency led by ISIL, an al Qaeda offshoot which seized northern cities this month.

Pressure on Maliki

Washington is worried Maliki and fellow Shiites who have won US-backed elections have worsened the insurgency by alienating moderate Sunnis who once fought Al Qaeda but have now joined the ISIL revolt. While Washington has been careful not to say publicly it wants Maliki to step aside, Iraqi officials say such a message was delivered behind the scenes.

There was little small talk when Kerry met Maliki, the two men seated in chairs in a room with other officials.

The meeting lasted one hour and 40 minutes, after which Kerry was escorted to his car by Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. As Kerry got in, he said: “That was good”.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Washington on Sunday of trying to regain control of the country it once occupied — a charge Kerry denied.

Iraqis are due to form a new government after an election in April. Maliki’s list won the most seats in parliament but would still require allies to secure a majority.

Senior Iraqi politicians, including at least one member of Maliki’s own ruling list, have told Reuters that the message that Washington would be open to Maliki leaving power has been delivered in diplomatic language to Iraqi leaders.

Recent meetings between Maliki and American officials have been described as tense. According to a Western diplomat briefed on the conversations by someone attending the meetings, US diplomats have informed Maliki he should accept leaving if he cannot gather a majority in parliament for a third term. US officials have contested that such a message was delivered.

A close ally of Maliki has described him as having grown bitter towards the Americans in recent days over their failure to provide strong military support.

Iran accusation

Jordanian army sources said Jordan’s troops had been put in a state of alert in recent days along the 181kms border with Iraq, redeploying in some areas as part of steps to ward off “any potential or perceived security threats”.

The Jordan border post was in the hands of Sunni tribesmen after government troops fled. An Iraqi tribal figure said there was a chance it would soon be passed to control of the militants, who seized the nearby crossing to Syria on the Damascus-Baghdad highway on Sunday.

He said he was mediating with ISIL in a “bid to spare blood and make things safer for the employees of the crossing. We are receiving positive messages from the militants.”

The need to battle the Sunni insurgency has put the United States on the same side as its enemy of 35 years, Iran, which has close ties to the Shiite parties that came to power in Baghdad after US forces toppled Saddam.

However, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei made clear on Sunday that a rapprochement would not be easy.

“We are strongly opposed to US and other intervention in Iraq,” IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. “We don’t approve of it as we believe the Iraqi government, nation and religious authorities are capable of ending the sedition.”

Some Iraqi observers in Baghdad interpreted Khamenei’s comments as a warning to the United States to stay out of the process of selecting any successor to Maliki.

RAMALLAH — Israeli troops killed two Palestinians on Sunday, Palestinian medics and a militant group said, as Israel pressed on with its crackdown on Hamas, the Islamist group it accuses of abducting three Israeli teenagers.

In a sign of growing Palestinian anger, Palestinian police loyal to Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas also came under attack — by a rock-throwing crowd that wanted them to confront Israeli troops on a raid of the de facto capital of Ramallah.

Gunfire — apparently warning shots fired by police from the balcony and windows of their station house — echoed for several minutes in the heart of Ramallah as dozens of protesters crouched or ran for cover. There were no reports of casualties.

Demonstrators taunted police with the chant of “collaborators” during the night-time Israeli operation. The windows of three police cars parked outside were smashed.

The Israeli military said soldiers entered several Palestinian cities and villages overnight, rounding up six suspected militants.

Israel has said its West Bank operation is twofold — to find Gil-Ad Shaer and US-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both aged 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, who went missing near an Israeli settlement on June 13, and to deal a substantial blow to Hamas.

The crisis has put pressure on a unity pact between Abbas and Hamas, an Islamist group sworn to Israel’s destruction. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the disappearance of the youths.

Abbas has condemned the abduction of the three Israelis, and his security forces have been helping in the search. But he has also called the Israeli sweeps “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people.

During an overnight raid in the city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers fired at stone-throwing Palestinians, killing Ahmad Famawi, 26, residents and medics said.

In Ramallah, the Islamic Jihad group said one of its members was killed by Israeli gunfire. The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident.

Low morale

A Western official who works with Palestinian security forces described their morale as low and said they were aware their effective confinement to barracks during Israel’s operations had hurt their standing among ordinary Palestinians.

Hamas officials have said the Palestinian people are heading towards a third Intifada, or uprising, against Israel. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki said on Friday that would not happen as long as Abbas was in charge.

Abbas’ Fateh movement, however, issued a statement on Sunday cautioning that its patience “has started to run out because of the daily crimes committed [by Israel] against our people”.

Warning that Israel was “bringing the situation towards an explosion”, the Palestinian Authority said it had launched efforts to convene an urgent session of the UN Security Council to try to end the offensive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in public remarks to his Cabinet on Sunday, said Israel had conveyed its evidence against Hamas to several countries and would soon make it public. He defended Israel’s military action in the West Bank.

“We have no intention of deliberately hurting anyone, but our forces are acting as necessary for their self-defence and, on occasion, there are fatalities or casualties on the Palestinian side,” Netanyahu said.

The military has so far searched some 1,350 sites in the West Bank and detained more than 330 Palestinians. The raids have triggered street clashes in which four Palestinians have been killed, including in Sunday’s incidents.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama has warned that extremist militants who have surged through Iraq in a lightning and brutal offensive could also destabilise other countries in the volatile region.

The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is rampaging towards the capital Baghdad in its bid to create an Islamic state that will incorporate both Iraq and Syria.

But Obama, who has ruled out putting US combat troops once again on the ground in Iraq, says he fears the militants could have an even more widespread impact, while also warning that “their extreme ideology poses a medium- and long-term threat” to the United States.

“We’re going to have to be vigilant generally. Right now the problem with ISIS is the fact that they’re destabilising the country [Iraq],” he said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS television’s “Face the Nation”.

“That could spill over into some of our allies like Jordan,” he said, adding: “They are engaged in wars in Syria where — in that vacuum that’s been created — they could amass more arms, more resources.”

ISIS is another common acronym used to describe ISIL.

Obama, who was speaking on Friday, believes, however, that Iraqis will ultimately reject the extremist Sunni group that is threatening to tear the country apart, just three years after American troops withdrew.

“The thing about an organisation like this is that typically when they control territory, because they’re so violent, because they’re so extreme — over time, the local populations reject them,” Obama said.

“We’ve seen that time and time again. We saw it during the Iraq war in places like Anbar province, where Sunni tribes suddenly turned against them because of their extreme ideology.”

Obama, who has warned that no amount of US firepower could keep Iraq together if its political leaders do not work to unite the country, cautioned: “But I think it’s important for us to recognise that ISIS is just one of a number of organisations that we have to stay focused on.

“Al Qaeda in Yemen is still very active and we’re staying focused on that.

“In North Africa, you’re seeing organisations including Boko Haram that kidnapped all those young women that is extreme and violent.

“And this is going to be a global challenge and one that the United States is going to have to address, but we’re not going to be able to address it alone.”

Republican Senator Rand Paul, a prospective 2016 presidential contender, told CNN’s “State of the Union” programme that he fears civil war will break out in Iraq.

“But there will be a civil war with feckless people on one side who are allies of Iran, and on the other side, allies of Al Qaeda,” he said.

“You have to ask yourself: Are you willing to send your son? Am I willing to send my son to retake back a city, Mosul, that they weren’t willing to defend themselves? I’m not willing to send my son into that mess.”

BEIRUT — Syrian troops backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Hizbollah on Sunday launched an assault to oust rebels from the foothills of the Qalamun Mountains north of the capital, state television said.

Elsewhere in the capital, fighters were due to withdraw “within hours” from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk following a truce struck on Saturday evening to end deadly fighting, a Palestinian official said.

Regime forces took parts of the strategic Qalamun region near the border with Lebanon in April, but some 2,000 rebel fighters withdrew to the hills from where they have launched guerrilla attacks.

Fourteen fighters from the powerful Shiite Hizbollah group have been killed in the area over the past two weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria’s state broadcaster showed footage of the troops, saying they had taken “some hills overlooking the Rankus plain and are pursuing terrorist groups who tried to infiltrate the region from Lebanon”.

An officer interviewed by the channel said “the army has cut the route off to terrorist groups who try to return to the region from time to time. The operation is continuing until the whole of the Qalamun area has been cleansed.

“This land will be a cemetery for all terrorists who decide to return.”

President Bashar Assad’s regime refers to the armed opposition inside the country as “terrorists”, without distinguishing between different groups.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that “rebels hiding in the heights and in caves have been attacking army and Hizbollah positions for weeks after being pushed out of the region, which also prompted regime forces to withdraw”.

He said the rebels had launched a counterattack “and succeeded in retaking their positions and expanding their presence”.

Since the Syria conflict erupted in March 2011, more than 162,000 people have been killed and millions displaced.

Meanwhile, fighters were expected to exit the embattled Yarmouk camp in southern Damascus “within hours”, a Palestinian official told AFP in the Syrian capital on Sunday.

Anwar Abdel Hadi, political director of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Syria, said: “The armed men will pull out of the camp, checkpoints will be dismantled and rubble removed.”

The pullout is part of a truce agreed between the PLO and gunmen “with the approval of the Syrian government”, he said, adding that the fragile ceasefire went into force at 1500 GMT Saturday.

In mid-February, a truce paved the way for the withdrawal of fighters from Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, Al Nusra Front, from Yarmouk, but fighting flared again in March.

The jihadists had accused regime forces besieging Yarmouk of violating the earlier ceasefire agreement.

Once home to 150,000 Palestinians as well as Syrians, Yarmouk has been under total army siege for the past year.

NOUAKCHOTT — Counting was under way in Mauritania’s presidential election on Sunday with incumbent Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz expected to win handily after his main rivals boycotted a process they regard as a sham.

The former general, who seized power in the northwest African nation in an August 2008 coup, campaigned strongly on his success in fighting armed groups linked to Al Qaeda at home and in neighbouring Sahel nations.

Final results were due late Sunday or Monday, but a source close to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said there were early indications that Abdel Aziz was firmly ahead of anti-slavery candidate Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid.

According to the source, the president won 67 per cent of the vote in the capital Nouakchott, while Ould Abeid came in at 19 percent.

Abdel Aziz’s campaign staff said their own figures suggested the incumbent had won 80 per cent of the vote across the country, against 10 per cent for Ould Abeid.

Men and women voted separately across the country on Saturday, in accordance with the country’s Islamic law, emerging from polling booths to stain their fingers with ink to show they had voted.

One 70-year-old voter who gave his name only as Brahim said the country, wracked by jihadist violence up until 2010, “had found peace”.

“That’s important and I want it to continue because peace is irreplaceable”.

Kidnappings and attacks by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were frequent when Abdel Aziz came to power, but he boasts that he has turned his nation into a regional haven of peace thanks to his reorganisation of the military and security forces.

The mainly Muslim republic, sandwiched between the west coast of Africa and the Sahara desert, is seen by Western leaders as a bulwark against Al Qaeda-linked groups.

In 2010 and 2011, Mauritanian troops carried out successful “preventative” raids on AQIM bases in neighbouring Mali, before the armed fundamentalists could carry out planned attacks on Mauritania.

But while many voters expressed support for Abdel Aziz’s gains against militants, even his supporters were not content with security alone.

The president “has achieved a lot for Mauritania, but we ask him for more”, said Ould Bahaya Ikebra, a civil servant.

“We call on him to fight against unemployment, increase wages and lower prices,” he said.

Opposition critics argue that the price of peace has been authoritarian rule and have decided to boycott a vote they regard as a sham.

Main opposition parties have never accepted Abdel Aziz’s 2009 victory in an election they said was marred by massive fraud.

The National Forum for Democracy and Unity — an opposition coalition of 11 parties including a moderate Islamist movement — rallied to denounce Abdel Aziz’s “dictatorial power” and were counting on a high abstention rate.

But as of 5:00pm (1700 GMT) on Saturday, turnout was 46 per cent, a source close to the electoral commission told AFP — more or less consistent with previous presidential elections.