Region

TRIPOLI — Libya’s new premier was Tuesday challenging his rival, who refuses to step down, after deadly fighting between a rogue ex-general, who claims his forces represent the army, and Islamists in their Benghazi stronghold.

Former general Khalifa Haftar has exploited the political confusion to rally support among the public, politicians and the army, analysts say, after he unleashed an offensive in the eastern city last month to purge Libya of the Islamists he brands “terrorists”.

“When the state is absent, whoever emerges will be considered the country’s last hope,” said Othman Ben Sassi, a member of the now-disbanded Transitional National Council, the political arm of the rebellion that overthrew Muammar Qadhafi’s regime in 2011.

On Monday, as clashes raged in Benghazi between militants and forces loyal to Haftar, Prime Minister Ahmed Miitig convened his ministers despite the head of the outgoing government, Abdullah Al Thani, refusing to recognise him.

Last Wednesday, Thani said he would let the judiciary decide whether he should cede power to the new cabinet, citing appeals filed by MPs against the chaotic General National Congress (GNC) vote in May that elected Miitig.

It took place days after gunmen stormed the GNC, the Islamist-dominated interim parliament, to interrupt an earlier ballot.

The supreme court is due to examine the appeal on Thursday, according to lawmakers.

Rival coup claims 

The GNC’s vice-president, liberal MP Ezzedine Al Awami, called Miitig’s installation as prime minister a “coup d’etat.”

The Islamist-backed authorities have, for their part, accused Haftar of launching a coup and denounced him as an outlaw.

The dissident general denies this, saying he has no political ambitions and insisting, after thousands of Libyans rallied behind him, that he has a mandate from the people to pursue his offensive to crush “terrorism”.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has urged Libyans to fight Haftar and his so-called National Army, labelling him an “enemy of Islam”.

Neither of the rival premiers has publicly endorsed the ex-army general’s campaign, although they have both stated their determination to combat “terrorism”, while stressing that all operations must take place within the law.

Reflecting doubts about Haftar’s real intentions, Ben Sassi said the rogue general had already been preparing his campaign before the latest political crisis erupted in Tripoli.

“The division within the ruling elite and the total absence of the state in Benghazi has given him more influence and support, allowing him to replace the state using the regular army and even the air force,” which has sided with him, he said.

Benghazi violence 

Miitig, a 42-year-old businessman from Misrata without political affiliations, is backed by the Islamists in the GNC, which liberals have largely boycotted for months.

He would be Libya’s fifth prime minister since Qadhafi was toppled and killed in the NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Miitig is due to lead the country to legislative elections on June 25, with the new parliament replacing the GNC and forming a new Cabinet.

Observers say he is backed by the Islamists in parliament, who consider him the best guarantor of their political survival ahead of this month’s vote.

“The face-off between Miitig and Al Thani illustrates the showdown between the Islamists and the liberals,” said Iyad Ben Omar, a Libyan analyst.

“Both of them are clinging to power with the elections expected to take place in just a few weeks, which proves that they are pursuing their own political agendas,” he added.

On the ground, schools and banks were shut in Benghazi Tuesday and the streets deserted after the worst fighting there since 76 people were killed in mid-May, when Haftar launched his “Operation Dignity”.

Twenty-one people were killed on Monday, with hospital officials in the port city, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising, saying at least 11 soldiers were among the dead. Another 112 people were wounded.

The number of Islamists killed was not known.

BAGHDAD — Violence across Iraq, including shelling of the conflict-hit city of Fallujah, killed 33 people Tuesday, as politicians haggle over forming a new governing coalition after April elections.

Iraq is going through its worst protracted spell of violence since it emerged from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that killed tens of thousands on 2006 and 2007, with near-daily attacks plaguing Baghdad and much of the north and west.

The worst of Tuesday’s bloodshed was concentrated in Fallujah, which has been under the control of anti-government fighters since the beginning of the year.

Shelling in the city, which lies just a short drive west of Baghdad, killed 18 people and wounded 43 others, according to Ahmed Shami, a doctor at Fallujah hospital.

The shelling, which hit a market, municipal offices and in the vicinity of the hospital itself, struck at around midday, said an AFP journalist in the city.

Fallujah has been out of government hands for months, with militants holding sway. The army has regularly shelled the city, and attempted multiple ground offensives in a bid to re-take it.

The army insists it is targeting militant hideouts, but residents and human rights groups say civilians are bearing the brunt of the shelling.

Human Rights Watch also said last month that authorities have likely violated the laws of war by targeting Fallujah hospital.

The crisis in the desert province of Anbar, which borders Syria and of which Fallujah is a part, began in late December when security forces dismantled a longstanding protest camp maintained by the province’s mainly Sunni Arab population to vent grievances against the government.

Militants subsequently seized parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and all of Fallujah, the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

They have held all of Fallujah since, and protracted battles have continued in Ramadi.

Meanwhile, attacks in and around Baghdad killed nine people, security and medical officials said.

Five killed in Iskandiriya

In Iskandiriya, militants killed five people — two with guns and three with knives — along a main road in the town before fleeing the scene. It was not clear why the victims were targeted.

The town lies in a confessionally mixed area south of Baghdad dubbed the “Triangle of Death” for its brutal violence during the peak of the sectarian war.

In the capital itself, a civil servant was shot dead, while separate attacks on Baghdad’s northern outskirts killed three people.

Further north, attacks in Salaheddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces killed six people, four of them policemen, officials said.

Figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government in Baghdad showed more than 900 people were killed last month.

An AFP tally puts the death toll so far this year at more than 4,000.

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.

The bloodshed comes with political leaders jostling over forming a new government following April 30 elections that left incumbent premier Nouri Al Maliki in pole position to retain his post despite vocal opposition.

DAMASCUS — Syrians voted on Tuesday in an election expected to deliver an overwhelming victory for President Bashar Assad but which his opponents have dismissed as a charade in the midst of Syria’s devastating civil war.

Rebel fighters, the political opposition in exile, Western powers and Gulf Arabs say no credible vote can be held in a country where swathes of territory are outside state control and millions have been displaced by conflict.

State television showed long queues of people waiting to vote at polling stations in areas under state control, as well as crowds waving flags and portraits of the president. Assad, looking relaxed and wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie, voted at a central Damascus polling station with his wife Asma.

For many Syrians politics took second place to the overriding yearning for stability after three years of war which have killed more than 160,000 people.

“We hope for security and stability,” said Hussam Al Din al Aws, an Arabic teacher who was the first person to vote at a polling station at a Damascus secondary school. Asked who would win, he responded: “God willing, President Bashar Assad.”

Islamist insurgents battling to overthrow the 48-year-old president, who has ruled Syria since succeeding his father 14 years ago, dismissed the vote as “illegitimate”.

But the Islamic Front and allied groups pledged not to target polling stations and urged other rebels to do the same.

Damascus residents said mortar shells struck residential areas in the capital on Tuesday, most likely fired from rebel suburbs. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Assad is running against two relatively unknown challengers who were approved by a parliament packed with his supporters, the first time in half a century that Syrians have been offered a choice of candidates.

But neither of Assad’s rivals, former minister Hassan Al Nouri or parliamentarian Maher Hajjar, enjoys much support.

“It’s a tragic farce”, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “The Syrians in a zone controlled by the Syrian government have a choice of Bashar or Bashar. This man has been described by the UN secretary general as a criminal,” he told France 2 television.

‘National duty’

But for many Syrians exhausted by war, particularly the minority Alawite, Christian and Druze communities, the Alawite president offers a bulwark against radical Sunni Muslim insurgents and the promise — however remote — of some form of stability.

At the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, thousands of people stood in the sun in a tightly packed queue to vote at a polling station set up for Syrians inside Lebanon — despite warnings from the government in Beirut that any refugees who crossed back into Syria would lose their refugee status.

All those who spoke to Reuters said they planned to vote for Assad, giving him a third seven-year term.

“I came and made the decision to do this for the sake of myself and my country,” said Ghada Makki, 43. “It is a national duty to vote so that we overcome the crisis happening in Syria.”

Some Damascus residents reported only a trickle of voters at polling stations in the centre of the city, but an activist who contacted people in Damascus and the Druze province of Suweida said the numbers of people voting was “scary”.

“Lots of people have gone to vote and I’m not talking about the shabbiha,” he said, referring to pro-Assad militia.

An hour before voting was due to end at 7pm (1600 GMT), state media said polling stations would stay open until midnight because of what officials said was heavy voter turnout.

Foreign Minister Walid Al Mouallem, draped in a Syrian flag as he voted, dismissed the foreign criticism. “No one in this world can impose their will on the Syrian people,” he said. “Today the path to a political solution begins”.

‘Political message’

Information Minister Omran Zoabi, speaking on the eve of the vote, told Reuters the scale of the turnout would deliver a political message to Assad’s foes.

“The armed terrorist groups have increased their threats because they fear [a high level of] participation,” he said, referring to the rebels.

“If these terrorist groups had any popularity it would be enough to ensure the failure of the election,” he said. “But they realise they have no popularity, so they want to affect the level of participation so they can say the turnout was low.”

Tens of thousands of Syrian expatriates and refugees cast their ballots last week in an early round of voting, although the number was just a fraction of the nearly three million refugees and other Syrians living abroad.

The election took place three years after protests first broke out in Syria, calling for democratic reform in a country dominated since 1970 by the Assad family. Authorities responded with force and the uprising descended into civil war.

Assad’s forces, backed by allies including Iran and Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah, have consolidated their control in central Syria but the insurgents and foreign jihadi fighters hold broad expanses of northern and eastern Syria.

Peace talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition National Coalition, which the opposition said must be based on the principle of Assad stepping aside in favour of a transitional government, collapsed in February.

Since then Assad’s forces and Hizbollah fighters have seized back control of former rebel strongholds on the Lebanese border, cutting off supply lines for weapons and fighters, and the last rebels have retreated from the centre of the city of Homs.

The withdrawal from Homs has focused attention on the northern city of Aleppo, formerly Syria’s commercial hub, where fighting has escalated in the last few weeks.

Rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas of Aleppo killed 50 people over the weekend, while barrel bombs dropped by army helicopters on rebel-held areas of Aleppo have killed nearly 2,000 people this year, a monitoring group said.

State media said on Monday that a car bomb killed at least 10 people in Homs province.

TUNIS — A group of Tunisians has filed a lawsuit against President Moncef Marzouki accusing him of referring to his own people as “ignorant”, a judicial source said on Monday.

“Last week, we received a defamation complaint against President Moncef Marzouki signed by around 80 people,” said the source, requesting anonymity.

One plaintiff, Moez Ali, told AFP that they had accused Marzouki of “treating Tunisians as ignorant at an official ceremony and in front of foreign ambassadors”.

The case was filed with a court in Tunis three days after Marzouki’s speech on May 26 to mark Africa Day, which marks the founding of the Organisation of African Unity, precursor of the African Union.

“I always laugh when I hear Tunisians say, when they’re going to Senegal or Burkina Faso, that they are leaving for Africa,” Marzouki said in his speech, published on the presidency’s official Facebook page.

“I laugh because I consider that these comments reflect their deep ignorance of the fact that this term ‘Ifriguia’, which gave its name to the African continent, is an Amazigh [Berber] word signifying northwest Tunisia,” he said.

The text of the lawsuit, which AFP saw a copy of, charged that Marzouki’s remarks were “defamatory... and constituted an insult to others”.

Ali said it was “unacceptable” that the president, who represents the Tunisian people, “allows himself to describe them as ignorant, especially in front of foreign guests”.

He said 206 plaintiffs were party to the lawsuit, to which Marzouki’s office has not yet responded.

SANAA — Yemeni warplanes bombed Shiite Houthi rebels on Tuesday, residents and local officials said, ending a brief ceasefire after at least 120 were killed in a flare-up of the northern rebellion.

Ahmed Al Bekry, deputy governor of Omran province, said earlier that 100 rebels and about 20 government soldiers had died on Monday in fighting and in air strikes on Houthi positions.

He said fighting had ended on Monday evening after the sides agreed a ceasefire and the situation was calm thanks to mediation efforts by the interior minister.

No details were immediately available of casualties from Tuesday’s bombing.

Yemen has been in turmoil since 2011, when mass protests forced long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

As well as the fighting in Omran, where the Shiite tribal militia is trying to cement its control over the northern highlands, Yemen is facing a threat from Al Qaeda and a challenge from separatists in the south.

Clashes have repeatedly erupted in the past months between government troops and Houthis — named after the Shiite tribe of the leaders of the rebellion — as Sanaa struggles to restore nationwide control.

The Houthis blame elements of the Sunni Muslim Islah Party in the military and in the Omran regional administration for the fighting.

Government officials say the Houthis, who have been fighting government forces sporadically since 2004, are trying to tighten their grip on the north before next year’s election, as Yemen considers moving to a system of greater autonomy for its various regions.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia, which is grappling to contain the spread of a frequently deadly respiratory virus, announced Tuesday that a review of the illness led authorities to sharply revise upward the number of confirmed infections and deaths from the disease.

The surprise disclosure followed the unexpected firing of the kingdom’s deputy health minister, heightening concerns about the country’s ability to halt the spread of the Middle Eastern respiratory virus. He was the second senior Saudi health official to lose his job in less than two months.

A report by the official Saudi Press Agency said authorities have registered a total of 688 confirmed infections and 282 deaths as a result of MERS since the virus was first identified in 2012. Of those infected, 53 were reported to still be receiving treatment.

The Saudi health ministry’s most recent tally of cases listed 575 cases and 190 deaths, meaning that over 100 cases had previously gone unreported.

MERS belongs to a family of viruses known as coronaviruses that include both the common cold and SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed some 800 people in a global outbreak in 2003. MERS often starts with flu-like symptoms but can lead to pneumonia, breathing problems and in severe cases, kidney failure and death.

Dr Tariq Madany, who heads the country’s medical advisory council, said the revised toll was the result of a “full review” of previous cases undertaken to better understand the virus’ spread.

“The ministry is committed to providing all the data concerning the coronavirus and putting polices in place to protect public health,” the agency quoted Madany as saying. “Though the review showed confirmed cases that needed to be added, we are still witnessing a decline in the number of newly registered cases in the past few weeks.”

Acting Health Minister Adel Faqih on Monday issued an order removing his deputy, Ziad Memish, according to a brief statement on the ministry’s website. It did not give a reason for the move.

King Abdullah sacked the previous health minister in April following a spike in reported infections.

Not everyone who contracts the virus that causes MERS gets sick, while others show only mild symptoms before they recover. There is no commercially available vaccine.

Saudi Arabia has been the epicenter for the disease. The virus has since spread to other parts of the world, including the wider Middle East, and parts of Europe, Asia and the United States.

Scientists believe camels may play a role in primary infections but are unsure exactly how the disease spreads to humans. The disease can spread between people, but typically only if they are in close contact with one another. Many of those infected have been healthcare workers.

The World Health Organisation last month said MERS does not yet constitute a global health emergency despite a recent spike in infections, though it continues to monitor the spread of the virus.

CAIRO — Egypt’s top TV satirist said on Monday his show had been cancelled, amid speculation it was because his latest script poked fun at a presidential election won by the former army chief.

Bassem Youssef, known as the “Egyptian Jon Stewart”, told a news conference the Saudi-owned MBC Masr TV station had been put under more pressure “than it could handle”.

Last week’s presidential election was won easily by Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the man who, as army chief, toppled Egypt’s first freely-elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi, last year.

“The pressures have been made from the first episode and MBC Masr had fought for us as much as possible,” said Youssef.

Youssef’s predicament will raise new questions about freedom of expression in Egypt, the most populous Arab state.

His associates told Reuters that his latest show, never broadcast, had made fun of the low turnout in the presidential vote, the pro-Sisi media frenzy and women supporters dancing at polling stations.

“I thank MBC Masr for hosting us and I can’t blame it for the pressures it had been put under. It was more than it could handle,” Youssef said.

“Those who think there has not been pressure are delusional.”

MBC group spokesman Mazen Hayek said the network had nothing to do with the decision to pull the show off air. “Like Bassem said, MBC did its best to keep the programme on air.”

Asked to comment on media reports that Saudi Arabian authorities had pressured MBC to end the show, he said: “I am not in a position to confirm or deny such rumours.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars in aid after Sisi ousted Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last year, following mass protests against his rule.

The Gulf countries see the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential threat to their monarchies.

Sarcasm

Security forces have mounted a fierce crackdown against the Brotherhood, killing hundreds in street protests and jailing thousands. Secular pro-democracy activists have also been rounded up.

Asked to comment on freedom of expression in Egypt, Youssef answered with his trademark sarcasm:

“We are living in the most glorious years of democracy in Egypt, and may the tongue of the person who does not agree with that be cut off.”

Youssef rose to fame with a satirical online show after the revolt that swept autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011. His programme, later broadcast on television, has been compared to the US satirical comedy “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”.

He was pulled off the air last year while working for Egypt’s private CBC channel after he mocked Sisi. He had also taken many jabs at Morsi.

“I’m not a fighter or an opposition. I am a comic anchor, yet I have been subjected to a number of legal complaints, possibly more than anyone in history, both during and after Morsi’s time,” he said.

“We hope to live the day when we can do the show the way we want it, with no pressures.”

DAMASCUS — Syria geared up Monday for an election expected to keep Bashar Assad as president but derided as a “farce” and only staged in regime-held parts of the war-ravaged country.

Officially, 15 million people are eligible to vote in a country bled dry by the three-year conflict that flared from a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests calling for democratic reforms.

A “security plan” has reportedly been put in place in Syrian cities since Sunday, aimed at preventing possible attacks against voters and polling stations, with Tuesday’s election being held only in areas under the regime’s control.

“Military and security forces are on maximum alert to ensure the security of Syrians who wish to vote,” Al Watan, a pro-regime newspaper, reported on Monday.

More than 9,000 polling stations have been “secured” across the country, the daily said, advising voters not to be concerned about their safety on election day.

For some time, rumours have swirled that polling places in Damascus would be targeted by insurgents positioned in the nearby countryside.

Deadly violence 

On Monday, a bomb-laden truck killed at least 10 people when it exploded in Haraqi, a regime-held village in Homs province populated mainly by members of Assad’s Alawite community, state television reported.

In the divided northern city of Aleppo, at least 50 people, including nine children, were killed at the weekend in rebel mortar and rocket fire targeting regime-controlled zones, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

And in Damascus, the neighbourhoods of Qassaa and Mazzeh, as well as a security building in Bab Moussala, came under rebel mortar fire, according to the British-based monitoring group.

The Baath Party, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist for half a century, as well as other parties and religious officials tolerated by the regime have called on voters to choose Assad, who is widely expected to sweep the poll.

Rebels have urged Syrians to boycott the vote, which excludes any anti-regime candidates from running.

Information Minister Omran Al Zohbi, in a television interview on Sunday, said: “The presidential election is a genuine occasion for all Syrians to express... their personal opinion, in a totally transparent way”.

Assad faces two virtually unknown candidates in the vote, which is Syria’s first election in 50 years, with the president and his father Hafez renewing their mandates in successive referendums.

Posters glorifying Bashar Al Assad have gone up in Damascus, while some portraits showed his competitors Maher Al Hajjar and Hassan Al Nuri.

Rebels seeking Assad’s overthrow and their Western and Arab backers have watched powerless as the preparations drew to a close, after the army secured a series of military advances on the ground, especially around Homs and Damascus.

Opposition activists have branded the vote a “blood election” that is being held amid a war that is estimated to have killed 162,000 people.

‘Illegitimate’ vote 

A civil servant in Damascus told AFP that he would vote.

“I have to, because there is a voting station in the building where I work. I can’t escape,” he said.

Syria saw a peaceful, Arab Spring-inspired revolt break out in March 2011, demanding political change. But the movement quickly transformed into a full-blown insurgency, after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent, and has since evolved into a complex, multi-front war attracting thousands of foreign jihadists.

The election is aimed at reinforcing Assad’s position in the war, as the army backed by Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah movement and Damascus’ allies in Russia and Iran battle divided rebels who are also fighting the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Observers from countries allied to the regime — North Korea, Brazil, Russia and Iran — have arrived in Damascus to monitor the vote, state media reported.

The vote has been slammed as a “farce” by the opposition and a “parody of democracy” by the United States.

Refugees in Lebanon, which is home to more than a million fugitives from the Syrian conflict, held protests on Sunday to denounce the election.

In Jordan, where another 600,000 Syrians have taken refuge, an Arab think tank announced the results of a study which found that 78 per cent of Syrian refugees in the region believe Tuesday’s election will be “illegitimate”.

Polling stations will be open for 12 hours from 7:00am (0400 GMT) on Tuesday.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Fierce fighting between Islamists and a rogue Libyan general killed at least 18 people in Benghazi on Monday, triggering fears of an all-out war as hospitals urged citizens to donate blood.

Officials at hospitals in the eastern city, the birthplace of the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Muammar Qadhafi, said at least 11 soldiers were among the dead and that 81 people were wounded.

The government of outgoing prime minister Abdullah Al Thani said it was holding an “emergency meeting” on the violence, which residents said had eased in the afternoon.

An air force commander said the clashes erupted when three Islamist groups, including Ansar Al Sharia, attacked a base of elite forces who support the renegade general, Khalifa Haftar.

Images posted on the Internet showed army assault helicopters firing missiles at suspected Islamist targets.

The fighting was the bloodiest since 76 people were killed in mid-May when Haftar unleashed an offensive dubbed “Operation Dignity” to purge Libya of Islamists he brands “terrorists”.

It triggered panic in Benghazi, Libya’s second city where hospitals appealed to people to donate blood.

“Benghazi is suffering, people are fed up, spare them,” the head of the Benghazi Medical Centre, Doctor Leila Buigiguis, said in remarks broadcast on television.

The education ministry closed schools, forcing the postponement of scheduled final exams.

Residents cowered indoors and many shops and businesses were closed as gunfire rang out and explosions shook Benghazi, witnesses said.

They said some families were trapped in the western neighbourhood of Sidi Freij, a stronghold of Ansar Al Sharia.

Haftar spokesman Mohammad Al Hijazi called on residents in combat zones across Benghazi to evacuate.

Colonel Saad Al Werfelli, who commands the Benghazi air force base, said the jihadists “bombarded base 21 early on Monday, killing and wounding soldiers [from the elite unit] who were trapped inside”.

The air force retaliated by launching strikes on the assailants, added Werfelli, who along with the elite forces backs Haftar’s campaign against Islamists accused of repeated violence in Benghazi.

‘Enemy of Islam’ 

The latest bloodshed comes a day after Haftar’s forces launched fresh air raids on Islamists in Benghazi, with one strike targeting a meeting of Ansar Al Sharia, one of his aides said.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has urged Libyans to fight Haftar and his so-called National Army, labelling the ex-army general an “enemy of Islam”.

Authorities have denounced Haftar as an outlaw, but after thousands of Libya rallied for his support he said he has a mandate from the people to pursue his offensive to crush “terrorism”.

Since the 2011, Libya has been rocked by lawlessness with near-daily attacks blamed on radical Islamists targeting security forces in Benghazi.

The interim authorities, caught in their own power struggle, have been unable to stamp out the violence in the absence of a strong army and police force.

Ansar Al Sharia, classified as a terrorist group by the United States, was backed by the February 17 Brigades of ex-rebel leader Rafallah Al Sahati and the Libya Shield Force Islamist groups, said Werfelli.

The powerful February 17 group of ex-rebels denied any involvement in Monday’s fighting, in a statement posted on Facebook.

The group of ex-rebels is suspected of having strong ties with Ansar Al Sharia, which has threatened Haftar that he could end up like Qadhafi, killed by rebels eight months after the 2011 uprising.

Haftar, 71, lived in exile in the United States before returning home to command ground forces in the uprising.

Last week, he said in a statement read on a private television that he would not rest until he has purged Libya of Islamists.

“No steps backwards until the country is liberated, security and stability restored and freedom and democracy established,” he said.

But many in Libya doubt that he will have any impact on the Islamists and question his motivation.

RAMALLAH — President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a Palestinian unity government on Monday in a reconciliation deal with Hamas Islamists that led Israel to freeze US-brokered peace talks.

Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is dependent on foreign aid, appeared to be banking on Western acceptance — over Israeli objections — of a 16-member Cabinet of what he described as politically unaffiliated technocrats.

Setting a policy in line with US and European Union demands, the Western-backed leader said his administration would continue to honour agreements and principles at the foundation of a peace process with Israel.

Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Abbas’ Fateh forces in a brief civil war in 2007. 

Numerous reconciliation efforts, largely brokered by Egypt, have failed over power sharing.

“Today, and after announcing the government of national unity, we declare the end of division that caused catastrophic harm to our cause,” Abbas said, voicing sentiments widely shared by Palestinians, as ministers took the oath of office in a ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security Cabinet responded with a threat to hold Abbas and the new government accountable for any attacks against Israel, alluding to sporadic rocket fire from Gaza to which Israel has thus far responded by bombing militant strongholds in the coastal territory.

“The agreement with Hamas makes Abbas directly responsible for any terrorist activity from Gaza,” Netanyahu said in a statement summing up the ministers’ meeting.

Netanyahu urged world leaders on Sunday not to rush into recognising the Palestinian unity government, and Israel barred three Gaza-based ministers from travelling to the West Bank to be sworn in.

Ismail Haniyeh, the outgoing Palestinian prime minister in Gaza, said in a speech in the enclave that it was “a historical day” that closed a “chapter of seven years of division”.

Hamas television referred to Haniyeh as a “former prime minister”, in deference to the current West Bank-based holder of the post, Rami Al Hamdallah.

But in his address, Haniyeh spoke of pursuing “resistance by all forms”, an apparent reference to actions that include armed conflict with Israel, and he said the unity deal meant that Hamas’ militia, the Qassam Brigades, “became an army today”.

Israeli sanctions?

In the absence of Fateh forces in Gaza, Hamas will effectively retain its security grip in the territory, where in addition to the 25,000-member Qassam Brigades, the Islamist group also controls 20,000 other armed personnel.

Netanyahu’s security Cabinet, meeting in special session, vowed to hold the new government responsible “for all operations that inflict harm against Israeli security” launched from either the West Bank or Gaza.

Israel also reaffirmed its decision of a month ago to eschew diplomatic negotiations with any Palestinian government that includes Hamas, which Israel rejects as a terrorist group. Israel also vowed to seek international help to bar Hamas from participating in a coming Palestinian election.

The Israeli statement made no mention of possible economic measures though it empowered Netanyahu to impose further sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

Israel withheld some tax revenues from the Palestinians in retaliation for Abbas’ signing in April of international conventions and treaties after Netanyahu reneged on a promised release of Palestinian prisoners.

The peace talks, which began in July, had been stalled, with divisions deep over Israeli settlement building in occupied land Palestinians seek for a state and Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognise it as a Jewish state.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who spearheaded the peace efforts that Israel froze when the unity deal was signed on April 23, spoke by telephone with Abbas and voiced his concern about Hamas’ role in the government, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“[Kerry] stated that the United States would monitor the situation closely and judge any government based on its composition, policies and actions,” Psaki said.

Israel, the United States and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist group.

Abbas has been keen to assure Western donor countries he will remain the key Palestinian decision maker and that security coordination between his forces and Israel will continue.

Both Fateh and Hamas see benefits to a unity pact.

With a strict blockade imposed by neighbours Israel and Egypt, Hamas has been struggling to prop up Gaza’s economy and pay its 40,000 employees. Abbas wants to shore up his domestic support since the peace talks with Israel collapsed.