Region

DAMASCUS — The Damascus neighbourhood is known as “Berry Place,” but its bucolic name hides its difficult reality — it is the front line between rebels and soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad.

The area is an island in the eastern district of Jobar, where rebels hold the east and the army controls the west.

On the two streets on the edge of the regime-held portion, lined with modest one-storey homes, children play, shouting and laughing, their voices occasionally drowned out by the rumble of artillery or the crack of a sniper’s rifle.

“They [the rebels] threatened us to try to make us flee but we have stayed despite the bombings,” said Um Imad Al Masri, a woman in her forties in a black robe and turquoise headscarf.

“Despite the deaths of our neighbours, Karim, Marc, Abu Mohamed, killed in their homes by mortars, we haven’t left. Anyway, where would we go?”

The government considers Berry Place a strategic area because it provides access to the capital’s central Abbasid Square. If the rebels took the square, they could take the heart of Damascus.

So residents of Berry Place have found themselves trapped, trying to go about their lives in the crossfire.

“When the bombing starts, we tell the children to come inside, and when it calms down, they return to the street,” Masri said.

“We can’t keep them locked up,” she adds, insisting she will stay “so long as the army is here”.

For Wafic Kamshi and some of his Christian neighbours, the situation is even worse.

“I live between the army and the Free Syrian Army,” he said.

He lives just east of Berry Place, in a no-man’s-land in Jobar that nearly no one enters.

He works as a taxi driver near Abbasid Square, but rides his bicycle to work each day for fear a car could attract the snipers’ attention. Sharpshooters riddled a vehicle with bullets near Kamshi’s home, where it still lies abandoned.

Seven months ago, Kamshi was injured by a sniper while he was sitting in front of his home.

“I don’t know where the bullet was fired from, but it hit me in the back and it came out from my stomach,” he said.

After he was discharged from hospital, however, Kamshi returned to the home where he was wounded.

“In three years, I’ve gotten used to the war and the bombing doesn’t even stop me sleeping now.”

A refuge for some

But the same can’t be said for the children living in the front-line homes in Berry Place, where a tank is stationed at the entrance to the two streets.

“When the bombing starts every day, they are really afraid. And then when it calms down they give the impression that they’ve forgotten everything and they start to smile again,” said Fariza Lahham, an elegant 25-year-old dental assistant.

Jobar was built in the 1960s and was a bustling commercial district before the conflict.

Now, most of its shops are shuttered, its buildings deserted and the pavement pockmarked by shrapnel.

The fight between the regime and rebels even goes on below ground, with both sides using tunnels to attack the other.

“We used to do our shopping in Jobar Al Balad,” said Berry Place resident Bassam Zarqi, referring to a district in eastern Jobar, now under rebel control.

“We’ve had to change that and go to Abbasid Square instead,” adds the 70-year-old, sitting in front of his house with his granddaughter in his arms.

Despite the danger, for some the neighbourhood has become a refuge.

Um Mohamed fled the eastern Damascus suburb of Ain Terma because the rebel-held district was under such fierce regime bombardment.

“I was living with my cousin there. He left his house with his family when a mortar shell came in through their house,” she said.

“I decided to come here because I felt it was less dangerous than where I was coming from,” she said.

Nearby, soldiers are on patrol.

“We’re here to protect civilians and children in the Abbassid region,” one said.

“It’s a strategic position to ensure the security of all of Syria.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved changes in a law that could block amnesty for Palestinians imprisoned for murdering Israelis.

The amendment, which needs to be approved by parliament before passing into law, would give the courts power to prevent Israel’s president from granting clemency or shortening the jail term of anyone imprisoned for murder.

Ayelet Shaked of the far-right Jewish Home Party who initiated the change said it was aimed at preventing the release of Palestinian militants who killed Israelis as well as other murderers.

“The mass release of terrorists through diplomatic deals makes a mockery of the Israeli public as does shortening the prison terms of criminal murderers,” she said in a statement.

The latest round of US-led peace talks collapsed in April after Israel refused to release a fourth and last round of 26 long-term prisoners imprisoned for killing Israelis, breaching a commitment made in 2013.

Throughout the talks, Israel released 78 of the promised 104 prisoners, in a move which angered hardliners.

Zehava GAl On of the dovish Meretz Party said the amendment would tie Israel’s hands in future talks and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “capitulating to the extreme right and supporting a demagogic law”.

In 2011, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was freed from more than five years of captivity in Gaza in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinians.

In a separate development, the Israeli government is also seeking to push through legislation which would allow for the forced medical treatment, including feeding of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.

The bill, which must pass two more readings in parliament before becoming law, came as 285 Palestinian prisoners were observing a mass hunger strike in protest against their being held without charge under a procedure called administrative detention.

Of that number, 125 have been refusing food for more than six weeks, with 65 of them being treated in hospital, the Israeli Prisons Service said on Sunday.

In a mass show of solidarity, shops, businesses and restaurants went on strike in Ramallah and El Bireh, as well as in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem on Sunday, AFP correspondents said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged Israel to either charge or release the striking prisoners without delay.

Some 5,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, nearly 200 of whom are being held in administrative detention.

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian foreign ministry on Sunday summoned Australia’s diplomatic representative after a top judicial official said Canberra would no longer refer to annexed East Jerusalem as “occupied”.

Last week, Australian Attorney General George Brandis sparked Palestinian fury by saying Canberra would not use such “judgemental language” to describe an area which was the subject of negotiations.

Israel hailed the remarks as “refreshing”, but the Palestinian leadership denounced them as “disgraceful and shocking”, with the ministry making a formal diplomatic protest on Sunday.

“The Palestinian foreign ministry summoned the Australian representative Thomas Wilson over the recent comments by the Australian attorney general asking to stop referring to East Jerusalem as occupied territories,” a ministry statement said.

Speaking to reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Foreign Minister Riyad Al Malki said he was “worried” about the remarks which contravened the position of the international community.

He demanded that Canberra “give an official clarification of its position on East Jerusalem in the next few days”.

Describing it as a “radical change in the Australian position on Palestine”, Malki said the shift was made clear in a January interview with an Israeli website given by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in which she questioned whether Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land were illegal.

Israel seized East Jerusalem during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

The Palestinians claim Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.

The international community views all Israeli construction on land seized in 1967, including the West Bank, as illegal and a major obstacle to a negotiated peace agreement.

“Palestine is a state and its capital is under occupation, something that the United Nations and all its bodies are agreed on,” Malki said.

GAZA CITY — A Palestinian fisherman in the Gaza Strip died on Sunday from Israeli gunshot wounds sustained last month, an official in the outgoing Hamas-run health ministry said.

“Fisherman Imad Shukri Salem, 52, died this morning from wounds he sustained two weeks ago,” spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP, saying troops on a naval vessel fired at him while he was fishing.

Salem sustained gunshot wounds to the chest and underwent surgery but his condition deteriorated, he said.

Nizar Aayesh, head of Gaza’s fishermen’s union, said troops had arrested three fisherman at sea on Saturday night and confiscated their boat.

Israel does not allow Gaza fishermen to venture more than six nautical miles from shore, and its naval patrol boats have been known to fire on those who broach that limit.

GAZA CITY — A United Nations envoy became the first senior international official Sunday to meet with ministers of the new Palestinian unity government in the formerly Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, assuring them of UN support.

Robert Serry’s visit came despite repeated Israeli appeals to the international community to shun the unity government, which is backed by rivals Hamas and Fateh.

The West considers the Islamic Hamas a terror group but appears to have accepted assurances by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fateh, that the new Cabinet will follow his non-violent programme.

Abbas swore in the 17-member technocrat government last week, more than a month after the collapse of a nine-month attempt by US Secretary of State John Kerry to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

The unity government replaces two separate Palestinian administrations — one in Gaza run by Hamas and the other headed by Abbas in the autonomous parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The split between the long-standing rivals broke open after Hamas overran Gaza in 2007, wresting control there from Abbas.

In addition to the UN, the United States and the European Union have also said they would give the new Cabinet a chance, provided it is committed to three rules — renouncing violence, recognising Israel and adhering to previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Serry met Sunday with four Gaza-based ministers of the new Cabinet.

“I assured them of the full support of the United Nations, which is ready to increase its considerable programme of works in Gaza, including in the priority areas of water and energy,” Serry said in a statement. He called for lifting a border blockade that has been enforced to varying degrees by Israel and Egypt since the Hamas takeover.

Mofeed Al Hassaina, the new housing minister, said the meeting was important “because it reflects the international recognition of this unity government”.

However, many difficulties lie ahead.

Abbas and his Hamas rivals haven’t worked out the next steps towards reconciliation, including who should pay the salaries of more than 40,000 government employees hired by Hamas since 2007. It also remains unclear if Hamas will accept Abbas’ demand that forces loyal to him be deployed at Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt as a way of easing the blockade.

Meanwhile, Israeli-Palestinian tensions have risen. Last week, Israel announced it is promoting plans for hundreds more housing  units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands it occupied in the 1967 war.

Abbas told Egyptian television station Sada Al Balad that he would respond by seeking membership for a state of Palestine in additional UN agencies. The UN General Assembly accepted a “state of Palestine” as a non-member observer in 2012, paving the way for such a state — even if it only exists in theory for now — to join international agencies and conventions.

“Israel approved new housing units [in settlements] and the entire world condemned that, including the United States,” Abbas said in the interview broadcast late Saturday. “We said we stopped condemning, now we act. There are 48 UN agencies and we will join them all if Israel doesn’t stop [building].”

BAGHDAD — A car bomb attack and a suicide blast Sunday killed 18 people at a Kurdish political party's office north of Baghdad, as at least nine others died in violence elsewhere in Iraq.

Militants have launched major operations in multiple provinces in recent days, killing scores of people and highlighting both their long reach and the weakness of Iraqi security forces.

Iraq is suffering its worst violence in years, and with none of the myriad problems that contribute to the heightened unrest headed for quick resolutions, the bloodshed is likely to continue unabated.

In Sunday's deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded near an office of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and a Kurdish Asayesh security forces building in the town of Jalawla, north of Baghdad.

As emergency workers came to the scene, a suicide bomber detonated explosives. The two blasts killed 18 people and wounded 67.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, though suicide bombings are a tactic mainly employed by Sunni Muslim militants in Iraq.

In the northern city of Mosul, where security forces have battled militants in days of heavy clashes, shelling hit three western areas, killing eight people and wounding three.

And in Sargaran, northwest of the city of Kirkuk, three roadside bombs killed a civilian and wounded three soldiers.

The violence followed a series of major operations by jihadists in recent days that have killed dozens of people.

On Saturday, militants took hundreds of hostages at Anbar University in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the last of whom were only freed in an assault by security forces that sparked hours of fighting.

And a series of blasts in Baghdad on Saturday night killed at least 25 more people.

In Mosul, heavy fighting broke out on Friday and continued into the following day. The clashes, combined with other attacks in the surrounding Nineveh province, killed more than 100 people.

And on Thursday, militants travelling in dozens of vehicles, some mounted with anti-aircraft guns, attacked the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, and occupied multiple areas.

They were only dislodged after heavy house-to-house fighting and helicopter strikes, during which officials said 12 police and dozens of militants were killed.

Violence is running at its highest levels since 2006-2007, when tens of thousands were killed in sectarian conflict between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority.

More than 900 people were killed last month, according to figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government.

So far this year, more than 4,600 people have been killed, according to AFP figures.

Officials blame external factors for the rising bloodshed, particularly the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

But analysts say widespread Sunni Arab anger with the Shiite-led government has also been a major factor.

TEHRAN — Direct talks with the United States this week on Tehran's nuclear programme hold the key to bridging gaps at a "serious phase" of negotiations and sealing a deal, a top Iranian official said Sunday.

The two countries will hold their first full-scale official direct meetings in decades on Monday and Tuesday in Geneva, with the route towards an eventual lifting of sanctions expected to be the main issue.

Abbas Araqchi, a vice foreign minister who will lead the Iranian delegation, said the tete-a-tete with the United States was essential, as the negotiations are delicately poised.

The P5+1 group of permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany have long sought to reach a settlement over Iran's nuclear programme.

But with the last round of talks in Vienna in May yielding next to no progress, there has been concern that the P5+1 process was stalling.

The announcement on Saturday of the US-Iran meetings in Geneva came as a surprise, but appeared to confirm the need for secondary steps to close big gaps between Tehran and Washington's positions.

"We have always had bilateral discussions with the United States in the margin of the P5+1 group, but since the talks have entered a serious phase, we want to have separate consultations," Araqchi said, quoted by official IRNA news agency.

"Most of the sanctions were imposed by the US, and other countries from the P5+1 group were not involved," he added, in a telling remark about how the US stance remains Iran's main concern.

US team known

The US team in Geneva will be led by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, a top White House adviser.

The two Americans were part of a small team who through months of secret talks in Oman managed to bring Iran back to the P5+1 negotiating table last year.

Araqchi welcomed Burns' presence, saying he hoped it would be "as positive during these negotiations" as previously.

A senior US administration official said Saturday that the Geneva talks would "give us a timely opportunity to exchange views in the context of the next P5+1 round in Vienna," between June 16-20.

The talks are aimed at securing a comprehensive agreement on the Islamic republic's nuclear activities, which the West suspects is aimed at developing weapons, but which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes.

After decades of hostility, Iran and the US made the first tentative steps towards rapprochement after the election of self-declared moderate Hassan Rouhani as president last June.

Rouhani called his US counterpart Barack Obama shortly after he took office, which was followed by a meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

'Stubbornly recalcitrant'

An interim deal struck last November led the US and its partners to release $7 billion from frozen funds in return for a slowdown in Iran's controversial uranium enrichment.

But a long-term accord, ahead of a July 20 deadline, remains a long way off, experts say.

Cyrus Nasseri, a member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team when it was led by Rouhani between 2003 and 2005, told AFP the US role as "the main interlocutor" explained the need for direct talks, and said Washington had to drop its "stubbornly recalcitrant" outlook.

"It's all a matter of whether the US will be prepared to take the next step to accept a reasonable solution which will be win-win for both," with Iran allowed to maintain a uranium enrichment programme, he said.

"The US has to bite the bullet after 10 years of wrongful accusations. It has to accept Iran will at the end of day, no matter how the settlement is made, have peaceful nuclear fuel production."

Mehdi Mohammadi, a member of the nuclear negotiating team that preceded Zarif's, said Araqchi's negotiators were in a good position.

But he predicted that any deal will only be reached "in the 90th minute, when the talks would appear to be close to collapsing", using a football analogy.

DUBAI — The president of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday issued a law implementing compulsory military service for Emirati men, a move highlighting the Gulf state’s concern over turmoil in the region.

The UAE, a federation of seven emirates with a mostly expatriate population, faces no immediate threats from neighbours and has been spared militant attacks that have targeted other countries like Saudi Arabia.

Like other Gulf Arab states, the US ally has strong military ties with Western powers that say they are committed to helping the OPEC member country deter or repel any threat.

But the UAE, a big buyer of Western military hardware, has a territorial dispute with its much bigger neighbour, Iran, over three Gulf islands controlled by the Islamic republic.

It is also wary of a neighbourhood fraught with conflicts, including in Syria, Iraq and Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The state WAM news agency said President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan had issued the federal law, which was published in the official gazette. The UAE had first said in January that it would introduce the law.

“The issuing of the law comes with the goals of affirming the instilling of the values of loyalty, affiliation and sacrifice in the souls of the sons of homeland,” WAM said.

The law applies to all males between the ages of 18 and 30 and in good medical health. Men who have a high school degree or its equivalent will serve nine months, while those who do not have a high school diploma will serve for two years, WAM said.

Participation for women, who can only serve for nine months, is optional and will require the approval of their legal guardians.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates the size of the UAE armed forces at 51,000, with an army of 44,000, navy of 2,500 and air force of 4,500.

TEHRAN — Iran and the United States will hold their first bilateral talks in decades, it was announced Saturday, in a major step towards securing a comprehensive nuclear deal with the West.

The head to head discussions will take place in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said in a surprise statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.

A State Department official confirmed the meeting, noting the US delegation would be led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Undersecretary Wendy Sherman, who is responsible for Iran negotiations.

The two-day meeting is the most senior direct bilateral contact on the nuclear issue so far, with Iran to be represented at vice foreign minister level.

The discussions in Geneva are also the first between Iran and the US to fall outside the P5+1 group of leading nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany) which is pursuing talks in the quest for a landmark nuclear agreement.

Iran and the US, at odds since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis that followed, have in the past year taken tentative steps on the path to rapprochement.

President Hassan Rouhani, a self-declared moderate elected last June, spoke by telephone with his US counterpart Barack Obama shortly after taking office.

Such a step had not occurred since the revolution and would have been considered unthinkable under Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under whom relations with the West plummeted.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also briefly met Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva last year.

The apparent thaw in relations is aimed at ending decades of enmity between the countries, with an accord on Iran’s nuclear activities the apparent prize sought by the US and other world powers.

In return, Iran wants an end to wide-ranging economic sanctions imposed as punishment for pursuing its atomic programme. The sanctions have devastated its economy in recent years.

In Saturday’s announcement the foreign ministry also said two days of direct talks with Russia in Rome would immediately follow the talks with the US.

The two meetings, which immediately precede the next round of discussions between Iran and the P5+1, will be widely interpreted as an all-out diplomatic push to close glaring gaps between Tehran and the West over the Islamic republic’s disputed nuclear programme.

The P5+1 and Iran meet in Vienna, between June 16-20.

Iran was also “working to arrange” other bilateral discussions with members of the P5+1 before the Vienna meeting, the foreign ministry said.

The negotiations are aimed at securing a comprehensive agreement on the Islamic republic’s disputed nuclear programme ahead of a July 20 deadline imposed under an interim deal agreed last November.

Several rounds of talks have already been held in Vienna but the latest in mid-May ended with no apparent progress on a conclusive deal.

Iran has consistently denied it is seeking nuclear weapons but wants an independent atomic energy programme.

Following the last round in Vienna, Iran urged Western powers to resist pressure from third parties not directly involved in negotiations over its nuclear activities, in a clear reference to Israel.

Israel and lawmakers in the US Congress have repeatedly warned against lowering the pressure — in the form of economic sanctions — on Iran.

Major issues between Iran and the P5+1 remain outstanding.

These reportedly include the scope of Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which if further purified could be used to trigger a nuclear explosion, and its unfinished Arak research reactor, whose by-product waste could provide an alternative route to an atomic bomb.

MECCA — Muslim pilgrims from around the world are pouring into the Holy City of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, undeterred by the spread of the MERS virus which has killed 284 people in the kingdom.

The faithful who dream of visiting Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina travel to western Saudi Arabia to perform umrah (the lesser Muslim pilgrimage throughout the year).

“We have received warnings by authorities in our country about MERS and were informed of the importance of taking precautions,” said 45-year-old Abdullah, a pilgrim from Malaysia.

Wearing a mask, Abdullah said he applies disinfectants as he enters the crowded Grand Mosque in Mecca. “God will protect me,” he said.

More pilgrims are expected to arrive with the approach of the Holy Month of Ramadan, which starts late in June, and sees hundreds of thousands descend on Mecca for umrah.

But numbers will rocket when the faithful arrive for the Hajj pilgrimage, the largest annual religious gathering worldwide, which takes place this year in October.

Local authorities in Mecca are distributing leaflets and brochures containing advice on hygiene and measures to minimise the risk of infection by the mysterious Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Tunisian pilgrim, Safia Ben Mohammed shrugged off the fears of MERS.

“I am not afraid,” she said.

“It was not easy to come here, so I couldn’t have postponed my pilgrimage,” said the 56-year-old woman, insisting she was “complying with the medical precautions”.

In a preemptive measure to avoid a potential importation of the virus, which has reached more than a dozen countries and as far afield as the United States, Tunisian authorities are advising their nationals to postpone their plans for pilgrimage this year.

The cases outside the Middle East relate to people who became ill while in the region, with some involving pilgrims travelling to Mecca.

Last year, five million pilgrims visited the kingdom for umrah and Hajj.

This year, the number of umrah pilgrims has reached 4.8 million since the start of the lunar Muslim calendar in October, according to official statistics.

Fears mounted in April when several cases of infection were registered in the western city of Jeddah after MERS had been largely confined to Eastern Province, where it first appeared in April 2012.

The port city of Jeddah, which lies 80 kilometres north of Mecca, is the main entry point for pilgrims.

But Saudi Arabia’s Hajj ministry dedicated specifically to the annual pilgrimage has not yet taken any special measures related to MERS.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that appeared in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, 9 per cent of whom died.

The coronavirus first appeared in Saudi Arabia in April 2012, and the kingdom remains the worst-hit country, accounting for the bulk of a global death toll.

MERS has now killed 284 people out of 691 infected in Saudi Arabia since it first appeared.

Camel to human jump 

The World Health Organisation has so far not advised special screening at points of entry, nor does it currently recommend any travel or trade restrictions, including for the pilgrimage.

On Friday, WHO said after a 5-day visit to neighbouring United Arab Emirates that “the preliminary result of the mission indicates that the cases in the UAE do not show evidence of sustained human-to-human infection”.

It stressed “an ongoing need to share experiences and knowledge... to better understand this emerging disease, including the role of animals in the spread” of MERS.

“There are opportunities to do joint analysis of samples from infected camels and the infected humans around them.”

Research has suggested that the virus has been quite common in camels for at least the past 20 years.

On Wednesday, researchers said they have found the first direct evidence that MERS jumps directly from camels to humans.

Like SARS, MERS appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering coughing, breathing difficulties and a temperature. But MERS differs in that it causes rapid kidney failure.