Region

CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced 10 supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death in absentia on Saturday but postponed the sentencing of its leader and other senior members, judicial sources said.

Those sentenced were convicted on charges including inciting violence and blocking a major road north of Cairo during protests after the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July.

All 10 were assumed to be in hiding amid a state crackdown on the group since Morsi’s ouster. One of those sentenced was Abdul Rahman Al Barr, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, the movement’s executive board.

Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, a well-known Salafi preacher who fled to Qatar after Morsi was toppled, was also sentenced in absentia.

Death sentence recommendations in Egypt are passed on to the country’s grand mufti, the highest religious authority, for his review. The court can ignore his opinion and its rulings can be appealed.

Judge Hassan Fareed said the verdict for the remaining defendants would be announced at a hearing on July 5.

Those 38 defendants include the Islamist movement’s General Guide Mohamed Badie and senior member Mohamed El-Beltagy, along with former ministers from Morsi’s government.

Al Barr, a Muslim scholar, was nominated by the Brotherhood for the influential position of grand mufti, the country’s top cleric, during Morsi’s year in office.

Defendants protest

“Down with the military court!” shouted the defendants in the courtroom.

Speaking from the cage where defendants are held in Egyptian courtrooms, Beltagy yelled condemnations against the judiciary, which he said was serving Egypt’s militarised state.

He was given a one-year prison sentence in April for insulting the judiciary, the first sentence handed to a leader of the organisation since it was outlawed.

Egypt’s biggest political force until last year, the Brotherhood has been driven underground and declared a terrorist organisation.

Badie was among 683 people sentenced to death in April.

Hundreds of Brotherhood supporters and members of the security forces have been killed since Morsi’s ouster and thousands detained by security forces.

Secular activists are also in jail. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said last month 16 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt.

The military-backed government in place since Morsi’s ouster accuses the Brotherhood of turning to violence. The group denies that accusation.

Critics of the judiciary say it is a tool in a state crackdown against dissent.

Courts have recently sentenced hundreds of the accused, often after brief hearings where scant evidence is offered by the prosecution, rights groups say.

Activists also protest the stiff penalties on defendants seen as holding views opposed to the government, compared to sentences for members of the security forces convicted of crimes.

A Cairo appeals court on Saturday cancelled a prison sentence against a police officer convicted in connection with the deaths of 39 people last year during political violence, judicial sources said.

It was not immediately clear if the officer would be released from jail pending a new investigation by the prosecutor’s office ordered by the judge.

CAIRO — Egypt has banned unauthorised preachers from giving sermons or teaching Islam in mosques and other public places, according to a decree on Saturday marking a further step in official efforts to curb Islamist influence.

The decree issued by interim president Adli Mansour’s office also threatened fines and jail for freelance imams, especially if they wore clerical garments associated with the respected Al Azhar centre of Sunni learning in Cairo.

Selected employees of the religious endowments ministry will be empowered by the justice ministry to arrest anyone caught violating the decree, it added.

“No preacher will mount a minbar next Friday without a permit,” the ministry said on its Facebook page, referring to the traditional raised pulpit in a mosque. The decision was taken to “preserve national security,” it said.

The military-backed government sees mosques as recruiting grounds for Islamist parties and has moved to bring them under tighter control since the army toppled President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last July.

It said in April it had licensed more than 17,000 state-approved clerics to give Friday sermons to stop mosques from falling “into the hands of extremists”. It also disclosed it had removed 12,000 unapproved preachers.

Many Egyptians pray at small neighbourhood mosques beyond the control of the state, where outsiders can easily move in to take over and preach their brand of Islam.

Fines and jail

The Muslim Brotherhood, until last year Egypt’s best-organised movement, has been driven underground, with most of its leaders in jail or in hiding. It denies any involvement in lethal attacks on security forces since Morsi’s overthrow.

According to the decree, “only designated specialists at the ministry of religious endowments and authorised preachers from Al Azhar shall be permitted to practice public preaching and religious lessons in mosques or similar public places”.

Only Al Azhar officials and graduates as well preachers from the ministry or the grand mufti’s office will be allowed to wear the trademark “turban” — a red hat with a white cloth band — and robes that designate an Al Azhar cleric, it said.

Unauthorised preachers face fines jail terms up to a year and fines up to 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($7,000). Wearing or denigrating Al Azhar garments in any way will carry similar penalties, it added.

Galal Mora, secretary general of the Nour Party, an Islamist group that backed the army’s removal of Morsi, told Reuters the group approved of the law and urged respect for it.

The religious endowments ministry has been keeping a close eye on authorised imams as well. The state news agency MENA reported on Saturday that it had removed three government appointed imams from their positions in Minya province.

Accused of mixing religion and politics, the men will be switched to administrative jobs and be banned from giving Friday sermons, it said.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s worldwide website, which still operates despite the clampdown on the movement in Egypt, protested against the removal of the three imams.

DAMASCUS — Two days after Syria’s presidential election, there are signs of anxiety among those who boycotted the vote — and who don’t have the ink stain on their finger that would show they played their part in Bashar Assad’s victory.

Assad won Tuesday’s election with nearly 89 per cent support, according to officials, triggering celebrations in some government-controlled parts of Syria where voting took place.

Authorities said 73 per cent of eligible Syrians cast their votes — a remarkably high figure in a country devastated by a conflict which drove 3 million people to flee abroad — dipping their finger in permanent ink to show they had taken part.

“Let’s see whose finger has no ink,” the host of a local radio show said on Thursday, playing half-jokingly on fears that those who did not vote could face consequences.

On election day, some people tried to find an alternative to the official polling station ink. “Can’t we use regular ink from the stationery store?” asked a young man who didn’t want to vote but feared he could be arrested for boycotting the election.

“Are they going to flag down me at checkpoints and ask for my army papers?” he said, referring to his mandatory military service which he has postponed by purposely failing the final two parts of his university engineering course.

Another Damascene, who works in a health club, said he stayed at home with his wife for 48 hours to avoid punishment for not voting. “And I don’t know if I should go into work later today. What if they all have ink on their finger and they ask how come I don’t?” he said.

He said that when family and friends called him on election day to ask if he had voted, he lied and said he had.

“I don’t want any headache, especially not on the phone. Those who know how much I oppose Assad already know that I didn’t go, and those who don’t know can keep their illusions,” he said.

“I haven’t been able to do anything for the rebels, because I live here and everything is under tight control and I worry about my family. So on election day, not voting was the least I could do,” he added.

‘Obituary of the conspiracy’

Assad’s international allies, including Iran, Russia and the Lebanese militant group and political movement Hizbollah, all praised the election.

“The election of Bashar Assad is the obituary of the conspiracy which aimed at destroying [Syria],” Mohammad Raad, leader of Hizbollah’s parliamentary bloc, was quoted as saying by Hizbollah’s Al Manar television.

Russia said a team of parliamentary observers from countries mostly sympathetic to Assad had found the poll fair, free and transparent, and criticised nations that denounced the vote.

The European Union said the election had been illegitimate and undermined efforts to find a solution to a civil war which has killed 160,000 people, while US Secretary of State John Kerry described the vote as a “great big zero”.

Yasin Aktay, head of the foreign affairs department of Turkey’s ruling AK Party, said elections in Syria and Egypt — where former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi got 96.9 per cent of votes in a low turnout — were both “a complete comedy”.

“In Syria, there was an election without ballot boxes, nobody could see where they put the ballot boxes. In Egypt there was an election without voters,” Aktay said.

Many Syrians voting this week appeared to be motivated less by politics and more by a yearning for stability.

For minority Alawite, Christian and Druze communities, the Alawite president offers a defence against Islamist insurgents and the promise — however remote — of a return to stability.

The official figures also suggest that many majority Sunni Muslims turned out to vote for Assad, whether out of weariness with the conflict or fear of retribution if they did not vote.

Many of Assad’s opponents also ended up voting.

“We live here, and we have to perform in this theatre,” said a mother of military-age sons. “If voting means we stay off the radar and no one bothers us, no one bothers my kids, then it’s worth it. Besides, it’s not as if my vote made a difference anyway. He was going to win no matter.” she said.

“Having the ink mark matters. I feel I did the right thing,” she said, showing her inked index finger.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel unveiled plans for 3,200 settler housing units Thursday in retaliation for the formation of a Palestinian unity government backed by Hamas and the international community, raising the Palestinians’ ire.

Tenders for nearly 1,500 new settlement units and plans to advance some 1,800 others were issued just 72 hours after the new Palestinian government was sworn in, ending seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Both Washington and Brussels as well as other Western states have shown support for the Palestinian line-up, but Israel says it will boycott what it denounces as a “government of terror”.

The news drew a furious reaction from the Palestinians, who pledged to seek an anti-settlement resolution at the UN Security Council for the first time in more than three years.

Of the 1,454 tenders, 400 housing units are to be built in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and the rest in the occupied West Bank in what Housing Minister Uri Ariel described as “a fitting Zionist response to the establishment of the Palestinian government of terror”.

“I believe these tenders are just the beginning,” he added, his remarks becoming reality hours later when an Israeli official confirmed the government had moved to unblock plans for another 1,800 units.

“The political echelon has ordered the Civil Administration to advance 1,800 new units,” he told AFP, referring to a defence ministry unit responsible for West Bank planning issues.

Walla news website said the order, which relates to construction in 10 settlements, had come directly from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had given the green light for plans “that he had ordered frozen some three months ago”.

An Israeli government official said the tenders were for construction in areas “that will remain part of Israel in any peace agreement” but there was no comment on the subsequent announcement of plans to advance another 1,800 new housing units.

‘Grave violation’ 

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the Palestinians would seek UN intervention to bring Israel to account for its new settlement expansion drive.

“The executive committee of the PLO views this latest escalation with the utmost of seriousness and will counter it by addressing both the UN Security Council and the General Assembly as the proper way of curbing this grave violation and ensuring accountability,” she said.

The last time the PLO sought a Security Council resolution against the settlements was in February 2011, but the move — which was widely supported — was blocked by a US veto.

Another senior official told AFP the leadership was considering an appeal to the international justice system.

“The Palestinian leadership is looking seriously into going to international courts against settlement activity,” he said.

The option of legal action against Israeli settlement building at the International Criminal Court in The Hague opened up after the Palestinians won observer state status at the United Nations in 2012.

Although they agreed to freeze any such initiative during the US-led peace talks, the negotiations process collapsed in late April, with Washington acknowledging persistent settlement expansion played a major part.

“It is time to hold Israel accountable in front of international organisations,” chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP.

“Those who fear the international courts should stop their war crimes against the Palestinian people, first and foremost of which is settlement activity.”

A worrying sign 

Nimr Hammad, political adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, demanded the United States take “serious steps” against Israel’s government.

“Netanyahu is a liar and is not interested in the two-state solution,” he told AFP, saying the Israeli leader wanted “to push the Palestinians into one of two options: Either a confrontation, or... to go to the United Nations”.

Erekat said the new tenders were “a clear sign that Israel is moving towards a major escalation, such as new settlement construction, the annexation of occupied territory and forcible transfer”.

Since Monday, several hardline Israeli ministers have demanded that Israel respond to the new Palestinian government by annexing large swathes of the West Bank.

SAMARRA, Iraq — Militants launched a major attack on the Iraqi city of Samarra Thursday and occupied several neighbourhoods, sparking house-to-house fighting and helicopter strikes in which dozens of people were reportedly killed.

Security forces ultimately regained control of the militant-held areas, a senior army officer said, but the attack was yet another example of the long reach of militants in Iraq.

On Thursday morning, militants travelling in dozens of vehicles, some mounted with anti-aircraft guns, attacked a major checkpoint on the southeast side of Samarra, killing the security forces guarding it and burning their vehicles, witnesses said.

They then took control of several areas of the city, located north of Baghdad, according to witnesses, who reported seeing the bodies of both security forces and gunmen in the streets.

The assault sparked heavy fighting, and a police officer said reinforcements including members of Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces were dispatched to Samarra to combat the militants.

At one point, an AFP journalist saw helicopters firing into the city.

Staff Lieutenant General Sabah Al Fatlawi said on Thursday night that security forces and tribal fighters were able to regain control of the city.

“We have completely dismissed the armed groups from Samarra and we are now pursuing them outside the city,” Fatlawi said.

“We were able to kill 80 [militants] in strikes and attacks and clashes, from house to house and one street to another,” he said.

A police colonel and a doctor said that 12 police were killed in the violence.

Militants also attacked the home of Science and Technology Minister Abdulkarim Al Samarraie in the Khadra area of Samarra, killing three of his guards, police and a doctor said.

In other violence on Thursday, bombings in the Baghdad area killed three people, while four more were shot dead with silenced weapons in the northern city of Mosul, security and medical officials said.

Security forces killed 40 militants south of Mosul and one inside the city, officials said.

The assault in Samarra came as a standoff between anti-government fighters and security forces in Iraq’s Anbar province, west of Baghdad, entered its sixth month.

The city of Fallujah, just a short drive from Baghdad, and some parts of provincial capital Ramadi, farther west, have been outside government control since early January.

Medical supplies to Fallujah 

On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it delivered medical supplies to Fallujah, the first time it was able to enter the city since January.

“The situation is very worrying,” said Patricia Guiote, head of the Red Cross sub-delegation in Baghdad and leader of the five-member team that delivered the supplies to Fallujah.

“People are enduring a severe shortage of food, water and healthcare. Services at the hospital, which is the only facility still able to provide treatment for the injured and the sick, have been seriously affected by the fighting.”

The ICRC said the team delivering the supplies found “immense needs and a situation that is extremely dire”.

“People in the city are living through a terrible ordeal.”

Upwards of 350 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in months of conflict in Fallujah, according to Dr Ahmed Shami at the city’s hospital.

Violence in Iraq is running at its highest levels since 2006-2007, the height of the country’s Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that was sparked by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and left tens of thousands dead.

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

And over 4,000 have been killed so far this year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

Officials blame external factors for the rise in bloodshed, particularly the civil war in neighbouring Syria, and insist wide-ranging operations against militants are having an impact.

But the violence continues unabated, with analysts and diplomats saying the Shiite-led government needs to do more to reach out to the disaffected Sunni Arab minority to reduce support for militancy.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia will test camels in the kingdom for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), its agriculture minister was quoted as saying, a day after a Saudi study reinforced a long-suspected link between the animals and human cases of the deadly virus.

There have been 691 confirmed cases of MERS, including 284 deaths, in Saudi Arabia since it was identified two years ago, and many scientists have said for months that camels are the most likely source of transmission from animals to humans.

A case study published on Wednesday of a Saudi man who died from the disease last year appeared to back that up, scientists said.

Agriculture Minister Fahad Balghunaim said a programme to register and number livestock including camels had begun last year and would be accelerated, the Arab News English-language daily reported.

He said all camel livestock would be tested for MERS and the Saudi Wildlife Authority would also take samples from wild camels roaming freely in the desert to establish the level of infection from MERS in the wider animal population.

Imported camels would also be tested for MERS and quarantined, Arab News reported him as saying. A spokesman for the agriculture ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the issue.

Although the link between camels and MERS was first identified last year, the agriculture ministry had taken no action by as late as last month.

At Riyadh’s main camel market, one of the largest in the kingdom, traders, breeders, handlers and even veterinary doctors said they were unaware of any connection between their animals and MERS, and said they had not been contacted by officials.

A Reuters Special Report last month cited Western scientists saying Saudi Arabia appeared reluctant to collaborate with some specialist laboratories around the world offering to help investigate the possible source of MERS and explore how it spreads.

The Saudi acting health minister responded to that article saying the kingdom was working with international health organisations and would continue to do so.

The MERS virus, which can cause fever, coughing, shortness of breath and pneumonia, is also thought to be spreading from human to human.

GENEVA — The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it was temporarily freezing its operations in Libya to assess the security situation after a Swiss staffer was killed by gunmen.

“We are freezing movement [of personnel] for the time being to analyse the situation so we can adapt our operations,” ICRC spokesman David-Pierre Marquet told AFP, stressing there were no plans to permanently halt operations in Libya.

The announcement came a day after Michael Greub, a 42-year-old Swiss citizen heading the ICRC’s office in Libya’s third city Misrata, was killed by gunmen in Sirte, some 200 kilometres further along the coast.

Greub had been leaving a meeting with two colleagues when the attackers shot at their vehicle at “point-blank” range, ICRC spokesman Wolde Saugeron said Wednesday.

Greub’s two colleagues emerged unscathed from the attack.

“They were very lucky,” Marquet said, stressing that the security situation in the country was of deep concern.

Greub’s death came just a week after a local 23-year-old Red Cross employee was murdered in Benghazi, he pointed out.

“If our aid workers’ lives are in danger, we have to try to adapt our structure, our way of working” to protect them, he said.

The ICRC counts some 30 expatriate staff members and around 150 local staff in Libya.

The organisation will surely reduce its footprint somewhat following its evaluation, Marquet said, adding that the aim was to complete the review quickly so operations could resume.

He said the ICRC had been surprised by the attack, since “Sirte is rather calm — it’s not like Benghazi — and we received no indication that an incident like this might occur”.

Greub and his colleagues were not travelling in a marked vehicle, so it was unclear if ICRC was the intended target or if the attack was random, Marquet said.

“We’re trying to understand why this happened,” he said.

The neutral, Switzerland-based ICRC specialises in providing aid in conflict zones and overseeing respect for the Geneva conventions on warfare, such as the treatment of prisoners.

In 2012, it put a temporary freeze on operations in Misrata and the eastern city of Benghazi after unidentified gunmen attacked its Misrata compound. There were no casualties in that attack.

SANAA — Yemen’s armed forces have killed 500 Al Qaeda suspects in an assault on their southern strongholds since the end of April, the army said, even as the network killed 14 soldiers on Thursday.

On the army said, 40 soldiers have been killed and another 100 wounded in the assault in Shabwa and Abyan provinces, during which 39 militants were captured, Colonel Saeed Al Fakeih told reporters.

“We will press on with our war against Al Qaeda, especially in the regions that [militants] fled to,” he said.

The army launched the offensive against Al Qaeda in Shabwa and neighbouring Abyan in a bid to expel its forces from smaller towns and villages that escaped a previous sweep in 2012.

Troops and militia have entered a string of towns, but analysts say their advances could be the result of a tactical retreat by militants in coordination with local tribes.

The latest setback for the army came on Thursday when Al Qaeda suspects armed with automatic rifles killed 14 soldiers and a civilian in Shabwa, a security official said. Several troops were also wounded.

In Sanaa, Fakeih vowed that “the army will not stand with its arms folded” in the face of the network’s attacks.

Acknowledging that his impoverished country “lacks the means needed to fight this global network,” Fakeih urged “friends and neighbours to help Yemen in its war on terror”.

A “Friends of Yemen” meeting in London in April heard a call by British Foreign Secretary William Hague for donors to back Yemen’s efforts to give Al Qaeda “nowhere to hide”.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — a merger of the network’s Yemeni and Saudi branches — is regarded by Washington as its most dangerous franchise and has been targeted in an intensifying drone war this year.

Late on Wednesday, a drone strike killed three Al Qaeda suspects as they were travelling in a vehicle in the Wadi Abida area, east of Sanaa, tribal sources said.

The United States is the only country operating drones over Yemen, but US officials rarely acknowledge the covert operations.

Around 60 suspected jihadists were killed in a wave of strikes against suspected AQAP bases and training camps in mid-April.

The drone programme has been defended by both the White House and Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in the face of protests by human rights groups over civilian casualties.

Taking advantage of a collapse of central authority during a 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh from power, Al Qaeda seized large swathes of the south and east.

They remain deeply entrenched in Hadramawt province further east, where they have carried out a series of spectacular attacks in past months.

On May 24, dozens of Al Qaeda militants, including suicide bombers, attacked army camps and public buildings in Hadramawt valley’s main town Seiyun, killing at least 15 soldiers and police.

CAIRO — Egyptian prosecutors demanded Thursday the “maximum” penalty of 15-25 years in jail for all 20 defendants in the trial of Al Jazeera journalists accused of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.

Australian Peter Greste and two more reporters with Qatar-based Al Jazeera English are among the accused, in a trial that has triggered international outrage amid fears of growing media restrictions in Egypt.

“We request that the court, without compassion or mercy, apply the maximum penalty for the abominable crimes they have committed... Mercy for such [people] will bring the entire society close to darkness,” said prosecutor Mohamed Barakat.

“Al Jazeera is the master in the art of fraud,” Barakat told the court as he wrapped up his argument.

Of those on trial, 16 are Egyptians charged with joining the Brotherhood, which has been designated a “terrorist” organisation.

Four foreigners including Greste are charged with “spreading false news”, collaborating with and assisting the Egyptian defendants in their crimes by providing media material, editing and publishing it.

Nine of the 20 defendants are in detention, while others are being tried in absentia, including three foreign reporters who are abroad.

The Egyptians could be handed prison terms of 25 years, while the four foreigners could get 15 years, according to defence lawyer Ibrahim Abdel Wahab.

The trial is part of a relentless crackdown by the authorities installed by ex-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who won last week’s presidential election, against the Brotherhood since he ousted president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Retired field marshal Sisi has been the de facto ruler since Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president.

Sisi was elected president with 96.91 per cent of the vote, crushing his sole rival, the leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi.

Since Morsi’s ouster, more than 1,400 people have been killed in a police crackdown, mostly his Islamist supporters. More than 15,000 have been jailed, hundreds of them sentenced to death after speedy trials.

 ‘We are victims’ 

Greste and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, the Cairo chief of Al Jazeera English, were arrested in a hotel in the capital on December 29 after the police raided channel’s office.

The authorities have said the accused were working in Egypt without accreditation.

Greste and Fahmy were in a caged dock on Thursday along with seven co-defendants, including some students who have collaborated occasionally with the network.

Greste, Fahmy and others have regularly denounced the trial as “unfair” and political, charging that the evidence against them has been “fabricated”.

“Everything about this trial is a shame... nothing about this case makes any sense,” Fahmy said Thursday.

“We are treated worse than rapists and killers. We are victims, we are paying a political price.”

Greste and Fahmy have seen repeated requests to be released on bail rejected, while some co-defendants have often claimed to have been tortured in prison.

On Thursday, Fahmy’s lawyer Khaled Abu Bakr argued there were contradictions between the witnesses’ accounts and denounced a lack of evidence against his client.

“Being in possession of video footage and photos of anti-state protests is something natural for all journalists. If we judge Mohamed Fahmy for this, we should judge all journalists in this room,” he said.

Yousri Al Sayyid, another lawyer representing Greste and Baher Mohamed, the third detained Al Jazeera English journalist, said it was the trial, and not his clients, that harmed Egypt’s reputation abroad.

“The defendants didn’t do anything [to tarnish] Egypt’s reputation. It is this case that is [tarnishing] Egypt’s reputation,” he said.

The trial was adjourned to June 16 for the court to hear the defence team’s pleas.

The trial comes against the backdrop of strained ties between Cairo and Doha.

Egypt’s interim government, which considers Al Jazeera as the voice of Qatar, accuses Doha of backing the Brotherhood, while the Gulf state openly denounces the repression of the ousted president’s supporters.

Several Brotherhood leaders have fled to Doha following Morsi’s ouster, and some often appear on Al Jazeera talk shows.

GAZA — Employees who have been on separate payrolls of rival Palestinian governments traded blows at Gaza banks on Thursday when those hired by Hamas did not receive their wages under a new unity administration.

In an attempt to alleviate the crisis, Hamas contacted the emir of Qatar and announced he had agreed to fund the salaries.

Since Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from Fateh forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, the PA has kept paying some 70,000 public employees in the coastal enclave.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, which has faced a cash crunch since Egypt closed border smuggling tunnels, has 40,000 civil servants and security personnel on its own books. The public employees were hired by Hamas after the 2007 takeover, and have not been paid in weeks.

The inauguration on Monday of a unity government under a Fateh-Hamas reconciliation pact raised expectations among Hamas-hired servants that they would now receive their wages. Thousands joined their PA-payroll colleagues at Gaza ATMs on Thursday, hoping to withdraw their salaries.

But the Hamas employees came away empty-handed, and a spokesman for the unity government said they still had to be vetted by a committee before they could be added to the new leadership’s payroll.

Fist fights between PA and Hamas employees broke out and club-wielding Palestinian riot police pushed them away from the cash machines, which were then closed, along with Gaza bank branches, to prevent more violence, according to an interior ministry spokesman.

“You call this a reconciliation? We should all eat or no one does,” shouted one employee of the former Hamas-run government.

“Why is it our fault? Go and ask your Hamas leaders who signed the deal — why prevent us from feeding our families?” countered a PA civil servant.

Hamas deputy chief Ismail Haniyeh called the emir of Qatar who agreed to fund the salaries and help fund the government in the coming period via official channels, a statement from Haniyeh’s office said.

“[Haniyeh]... urged Qatar and Arab brothers to provide aid to the government of national unity in order to enable it to carry out its financial obligations to employees in Gaza and the West Bank and his highness accepted,” the statement read.

Palestinian officials in Gaza did not disclose the amount of aid or the period over which it would be provided.

Hamas is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.

Despite Israeli objections, the main donors to the PA, the United States and the European Union, have accepted the unity government, noting that it is comprised of politically unaffiliated technocrats and is committed to the principles of a peaceful solution with Israel.