Region

CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi pledged “retribution” after two police officers were killed defusing bombs outside his Cairo palace Monday, almost a year after he overthrew his predecessor.

An Islamist militant group, one of several that have carried out attacks since president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster on July 3 last year, warned several days ago that it had planted bombs near the east Cairo palace.

It was not immediately clear whether Sisi, who was the defence minister when he toppled Morsi and then won a May presidential election, was in the Ittihadiya palace at the time.

Sisi pledged “retribution” in a prerecorded speech aired on Monday evening to mark the anniversary of mass protests against Morsi last year, that prompted the military led by Sisi to oust him three days later.

The interior ministry said a colonel was killed and several other policemen wounded when a bomb they were trying to defuse went off.

Almost an hour later, as policemen cordoned off the area and tried to defuse a second bomb, it too detonated, killing a lieutenant colonel and wounding several other officers.

A paramedic’s hand was blown off by the blast and blood spattered over a nearby white police van.

A disposal robot moved a third bomb to the middle of the street, where sappers safely defused it.

Attacks by militants have killed almost 500 police and soldiers since Morsi’s overthrow and incarceration, according to the government.

Last Wednesday, five small bombs went off in Cairo metro stations, wounding five people, followed by two bombs on Saturday in a telecommunication tower that killed a watchman’s wife and daughter.

The number of attacks has fallen in recent months after police killed or arrested dozens of suspected militants.

But a brazen statement by a militant group saying it had planted bombs near the palace suggested the militants still have the ability to strike heavily guarded installations.

“God has allowed our heroic soldiers to penetrate the fortifications of the mass murderer’s lair in Ittihadiya palace” to plant bombs, the Ajnad Misr militant group said on Friday, referring to Sisi.

‘Retribution’

In his speech, Sisi vowed the militants would be punished.

“Today, we lost new martyrs. I pledge before God and their families, the state will get just and speedy retribution,” Sisi said.

The militant group — which the interior ministry had claimed had been defeated — said it had not set off the bombs to avoid civilian casualties and warned passersby to stay away from the palace.

Sisi, whom Morsi had appointed as defence minister during his single turbulent year in power, has pledged to crack down on the militants.

He won the May election with 97 per cent of the vote against a weak leftist candidate on a platform of providing strong to restore stability.

He was the de facto leader even before his election victory, and the Islamists blame him for a brutal crackdown that has killed at least 1,400 people in street clashes since Morsi’s overthrow.

The authorities have blamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood for militant attacks, a charge the group denies, and designated it a terrorist organisation in December.

The Islamists say they renounced violence decades ago and are committed to peaceful protest.

A Brotherhood-led coalition, the Anti-Coup Alliance, said on Monday it would hold a “day of rage” on
July 3, the anniversary of Morsi’s overthrow.

The Islamists have held near daily rallies that have grown ever smaller amid the relentless police crackdown.

At least 16,000 Islamists and suspected allies have been arrested, with about 200 sentenced to death in speedy mass trials.

They include Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie. Morsi himself faces several trials on charges which could see him sentenced to death if convicted.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The bodies of three missing Israeli settler teenagers were found in the occupied West Bank on Monday and Israel vowed to punish Hamas, the Palestinian group it accuses of abducting and killing them.

“They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by beasts,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after the military discovered the remains of the Jewish seminary students who disappeared on June 12.

“Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay,” he said.

Netanyahu convened a session of his Security Cabinet that could decide on stronger military moves against the Islamist group, which has neither confirmed nor denied Israel’s allegations.

At the square in Tel Aviv where Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, scores of Israelis lit memorial candles for the teenagers, a day after thousands attended a prayer vigil for them at the same spot.

Hamas has been rocked by the arrest of dozens of its activists in an Israeli military sweep in the West Bank over the past three weeks during a search for the teenagers that Israel said was also aimed at weakening the movement. 

Up to six Palestinians died as a result of the Israeli operation, local residents said.

The kidnapping, near a settlement in the West Bank, appalled Israelis who rallied behind the youngsters’ families.

“On behalf of the people of Israel, I wish to tell their dear families ... our hearts are bleeding, the entire nation is weeping with you,” Netanyahu said in the statement.

The bodies of Gil-Ad Shaer and US-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, were found in a field near Hebron, a militant stronghold and the hometown of two Hamas members identified by Israel as the kidnappers and still at large, security officials said.

Abbas criticised

The teens had apparently been shot soon after having been abducted while hitchhiking, the officials said.

“They were under a pile of rocks, in an open field,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman.

Israeli media said the break in the case came after the relatives of the alleged abductors were interrogated. A large number of troops gathered at the spot — in the general area where the teenagers disappeared — to recover the bodies.

Netanyahu seized on the abduction to demand Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas abrogate a reconciliation deal he reached with Hamas, his long-time rival, in April that led to a unity Palestinian government on June 2.

In tandem with the search over the past 18 days, Israeli forces have raided Palestinian towns and villages, detaining Hamas activists and closing the group’s institutions.

Abbas condemned the abduction and pledged the cooperation of his security forces, drawing criticism from Hamas and undercutting his popularity among Palestinians angered by what they saw as his collusion with Israel.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi troops battled to dislodge an Al Qaeda splinter group from the city of Tikrit on Monday after its leader was declared caliph of a new Islamic state in lands seized this month across a swathe of Iraq and Syria.

Alarming regional and world powers, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed universal authority, declaring its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was now caliph of the Muslim world — a mediaeval title last widely recognised in the Ottoman sultan deposed 90 years ago after World War I.

“He is the imam and caliph for Muslims everywhere,” group spokesman Abu Muhammad Al Adnani said in an online statement on Sunday, using titles that carry religious and civil power.

The move, at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, follows a three-week drive for territory by ISIL militants and allies among Iraqi’s Sunni Muslim minority. The caliphate aims to erase colonial-era borders and defy the US- and Iranian-backed government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in Baghdad.

It also poses a direct challenge to the global leadership of Al Qaeda, which disowned ISIL, and to conservative Gulf Arab Sunni rulers, who already view the group as a security threat.

The Iraqi government has appealed for international help and has accused Sunni neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia, of having fostered Islamist militancy in Syria and Iraq. Iraqi army spokesman Qassim Atta said declaring a caliphate could backfire by showing that Baghdadi’s group posed a risk to other nations:

“This declaration is a message by Islamic State not only to Iraq or Syria but to the region and the world. The message is that Islamic State has become a threat to all countries,” he said. “I believe all countries, once they read the declaration, will change their attitudes because it orders everybody to be loyal to it.”

The fighting in Iraq, the second biggest oil producer in Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has contributed to a rise in analysts’ forecasts for the global price of crude, a Reuters poll found. The consensus view of the average 2014 price of a barrel of Brent rose more than $2 to $108 in the course of the past month.

Tikrit battle

Fighters from the group overran the Iraqi city of Mosul on June 10 and have advanced towards Baghdad, prompting the dispatch of US military advisers. In Syria, ISIL has captured territory in the north and east, along the desert frontier with Iraq.

Maliki’s government, with the help of Shiite sectarian militias, has managed to stop the militants short of the capital but has been unable to take back cities its forces abandoned.

The army attempted last week to take back Tikrit but was unable to seize the city, 160km north of Baghdad. Helicopters hit ISIL positions overnight. On the southern outskirts, a battle raged into Monday, residents said.

Tikrit was the home city of Saddam Hussein, whose overthrow by US forces in 2003 ended a long history of domination by Sunnis over what is today a Shiite majority in Iraq.

The fighting has started to draw in international support for Baghdad, two and a half years after US troops pulled out.

Armed and trained by the United States, Iraq’s armed forces crumbled in the face of the ISIL onslaught and have struggled to bring heavier weaponry to bear. Only two aircraft — turboprop Cessna Caravans normally used as short-range passenger and cargo carriers — are capable of firing the powerful Hellfire missile.

The US is flying armed and unarmed aircraft in Iraq’s airspace but says it has not engaged in fighting.

Russia has sent its first warplanes to Baghdad, filling an order for five second-hand Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets. The government said they will be operational within a few days.

In Fallujah, where ISIL fighters have been in control for six months just west of Baghdad, a bank accountant who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution said the announcement of the caliphate was a “step backward”: “It will only turn the government even more hostile to us,” he said. “This will isolate us further from the rest of the world.”

ISIL has used alliances with other, less radical Sunni armed groups and tribal fighters who are disillusioned with Maliki. Members Saddam’s secular Baath Party have also fought in the revolt.

Isolating allies

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said he expected the declaration would alienate ISIL’s allies: “The strategic goal of the Baathists’ is the capture of Baghdad, not the establishment of the caliphate.

“ISIL’s pronouncement will most likely intensify the intra-jihadist struggle and widen the split between ISIL and its insurgent Sunni allies in Iraq,” he said.

The term caliph indicates a successor to the Prophet Mohammad, with temporal authority over all Muslims.

Traditionally it denotes a political and military leader with religious elements. Rival claims to the succession lie at the root of the 7th century schism between Sunnis and Shiites.

Following Turkey’s defeat in World War I and the carving up of its Middle East empire by Britain and France, new Turkish nationalist rulers in 1924 formally abolished the caliphate that Ottoman sultans had held for nearly five centuries.

For many militant Islamists, who see a decline in religious observance and divisions among Muslims as causing many problems, the restoration of the caliphate has been an important goal.

According to the mid-20th century Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb, whose ideas later helped form those of Al Qaeda, in order to bring about a new caliphate, at least one state must revive Islamic rule — a role Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden thought in the 1990s might be filled by Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Since the Ottoman collapse, Sunni Islam has lacked an internationally recognised clerical hierarchy. Senior figures generally hold authority within a single country. Among the most prominent of these is the Grand Mufti of Egypt, whose spokesman dismissed the new caliphate in Iraq and Syria as an “illusion”.

“ISIL’s announcement of what they called the Islamic caliphate is merely a response to the chaos which has happened in Iraq as a direct result of the inflammation of sectarian conflict in the entire region,” Ibrahim Negm said in Cairo.

ISIL has followed Al Qaeda’s hardline ideology, viewing Shiites as heretics, but has alienated Bin Laden’s successor Ayman Al Zawahiri and other Islamists with its extreme violence.

ISIL’s declaration could isolate allies in Iraq and lead to in-fighting. Such internal conflicts among rebel groups in Syria has killed around 7,000 people there this year and complicated the three-year uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, another ally of Shiite Tehran.

The group crucified eight rival rebel fighters in Syria, a monitoring group said on Sunday. And in the Syrian city of Raqqa, controlled by ISIL, militants held a parade to celebrate the declaration of the caliphate.

ISIL posted pictures online on Sunday of people waving black flags from cars and holding guns in the air, the SITE monitoring service said.

Some analysts say the group is a threat to frontiers and is stirring regional violence while others say it exaggerates its reach and support through sophisticated media campaigns.

ISIL also released a video called “Breaking of the Borders”, promoting its destruction of a frontier crossing between the northern province of Al Hasakah in Syria and Nineveh province in Iraq, said SITE, which tracks militant websites.

ANKARA/WASHINGTON — Iran is wrestling with a complex array of historic alliances and enmities as it tries to develop a coherent response to the swift advance of hostile Sunni Muslim militants in neighbouring Iraq.

Despairing of its protege Nouri Al Maliki, Tehran’s Shiite clerical establishment has sent mixed messages on working with the Iraqi prime minister’s other sponsor, the United States, with which it shares a goal of averting the country’s break-up.

After decades competing with Washington’s Sunni Arab allies for influence, it hopes for relief from US sanctions by cutting a deal on its nuclear programme in the next few weeks and wants to avoid its defence of non-Sunni forces in Baghdad, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere fuelling a sectarian regional war.

“For Iran always, national interests have priority over religious divides,” said a senior official close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Our main concern now is to safeguard the Iranian nation’s interests.”

While steadfast in condemnation of the Sunni militants who vow to massacre Shiites as heretics, Iran’s leadership has been at pains to stress a desire for coexistence with other sects — now a key element of its criticism of Shiite premier Maliki.

“We have so far supported Maliki,” the official said. “But as his failure to form an inclusive government has led to a chaos in Iraq, our support will be conditional and limited.”

US President Barack Obama has urged Maliki to embrace the Sunni minority that lost influence when US troops overthrew Saddam Hussein — whom Washington had quietly backed against revolutionary Tehran in the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Yet Tehran and Washington now seem unable to agree on how to achieve their shared aim of defeating the militants, pacifying moderate Sunnis and stabilising Iraq, even if each has signalled that coordination with the other would help to map out a plan.

The result is that Iran, as much as the United States, is groping for a combined political and military strategy to push back the dash across northern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), three weeks after it began on June 10.

Multiple dilemmas

“Iran’s goal in Iraq is to return to the status quo ante, which is a Shiite-dominated, ideologically like-minded government whom Iran can rely upon as a junior partner,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington.

“But the big question is: does such an individual exist who is palatable to both Iran, Sunni factions, the United States?”

That is not Iran’s only dilemma.

Tehran ideally wants to block any expanded role for its US adversary in Iraq; and yet, hungry for US recognition as a regional political force, Tehran has signalled it may welcome a limited, quiet partnership with Washington in defending Baghdad.

Iran initially hoped that by helping Maliki with weapons and intelligence he would be able to contain the crisis. It urged him to form a more inclusive government to bring in Sunnis. But as the crisis has dragged on, doubts about him have grown and analysts and officials say Tehran is considering alternatives.

“We have a few names in mind and discussed our list with our allies in Iraq,” said a senior Iranian security official who stressed that any new premier should be a friend of Tehran.

Complicating the picture are occasional public divergences between the positions taken by Iranian officials.

Khamenei, echoed by security hardliners, has accused the West and its Gulf Arab allies of supporting ISIL to overthrow the Baghdad government and restore Sunni political dominance.

Other officials, however, have suggested the crisis in Iraq presents an opportunity to defuse hostility with Washington that has been bad for both countries and has favoured their mutual enemies among Sunni Islamists in Al Qaeda and other movements.

“We have common interests and common enemies,” said another senior Iranian official, speaking of the United States.

“We face similar security threats in Iraq. Without our cooperation, stability cannot be restored in the Middle East.”

Stabilising role

President Hassan Rouhani has taken a more conciliatory tone towards the “Great Satan” since his election a year ago, though he remains subordinate to Khamenei in setting foreign policy.

He has suggested cooperating with the United States in Iraq, if Washington tackles “terrorism” in the region — a swipe in part at support from US allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Sunni Islamists fighting Iranian allies in Damascus and Baghdad.

“There is this odd dynamic whereby... when it comes to Iraq, the US and Iran are allies but not friends, and the US and Saudi Arabia are friends but not allies,” said Sadjadpour.

Washington has backed the revolt against Syria’s Iranian-backed President Bashar Assad but has pulled its punches as Islamists have come to dominate rebel ranks. US officials have been pushing Riyadh to use its influence among fellow Sunnis in Iraq to persuade them to join a coalition government in Baghdad.

There is precedent for US-Iranian military cooperation. Tehran provided intelligence and political support when US forces invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2001 — only to hear president George W. Bush declare Iran to be part of an “axis of evil” with Saddam and North Korea just a few months later.

“Both the chaos in Afghanistan and in Iraq could have been avoided had Washington recognised the stabilising role Iran can play if it isn’t treated as an outcast,” Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, wrote recently.

Yet for all the possible benefits to Iran of cooperation with the West, its rulers are also anxious not to be seen as an ally of the United States, and especially not of Washington’s protege Israel, against Sunnis who outnumber Shiites two to one across the Middle East. More mixed messages can be expected.

“The removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan was in Iran’s interests but Khamenei denounced it. The removal of Saddam Hussein was in Iran’s interests but Khamenei denounced it,” said Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.

“Now you can argue that the pushback against ISIL is in Iran’s interests, but the leader will denounce it.

“Khamenei is in a challenging position because over three decades... his philosophy has been to try to partner with Sunni Arabs against the US and Israel.

“Now he is kind of being put in the opposite position, which is... inimical to the revolutionary ideology that he has been espousing all these years.”

TRIPOLI — A Tunisian diplomat and a fellow embassy staffer who were abducted in Libya returned to Tunisia on a military plane early Monday after being freed by their unknown captors.

Embassy employee Mohamed Ben Sheikh kidnapped in Tripoli on March 21 and diplomat Al Aroussi Kontassi, who was seized April 17, reunited with their families at a military barracks in a suburb of Tunis early Monday.

Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki, Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa and the head of the constituent assembly Mustapha Ben Jaafar were also present at their arrival home.

“We were well treated [by the kidnappers]. We did not know them,” Ben Sheikh told journalists, adding that he was held in the same house as Kontassi but they did not speak to each other.

Kontassi also said they had not been mistreated but added “the conditions of our detention were very bad”.

The pair have been taken to the military hospital in Tunis to be examined by doctors.

They were freed on Sunday through “the efforts of the Tunisian authorities in collaboration with the Libyan authorities whom we thank for their cooperation”, Jomaa had said at a press conference earlier confirming that they had been freed.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi also spoke to the press saying no ransom had been paid, but declined to give details on the circumstances of their release.

He said that Tunisia’s contact was with the Libyan authorities and not with the kidnappers whose identity he did not know, though he added their motivation was “political”.

Diplomats in Tripoli say militias which fought to topple the Muammar Qadhafi regime in the 2011 uprising often carry out kidnappings to blackmail other countries into releasing Libyans they hold.

Hamdi said the abductors had demanded the release of Libyans imprisoned in Tunisia on terrorism charges, but that they would not be freed.

The abductions of the Tunisians took place during a string of attacks targeting diplomats in the Libyan capital.

Jordan’s ambassador to Libya has also been kidnapped and Portugal’s embassy was attacked by gunmen.

Libya has been awash with weapons since the end of the uprising that killed Qadhafi and has been gripped by increasing lawlessness.

WASHINGTON — Violence in Iraq could delay the delivery of American F-16 fighter jets to the Baghdad government after contractors had to be evacuated from a key air base, the Pentagon said Monday.

Although the United States is moving to expedite the delivery of weapons and ammunition to the Iraqi government as it battles Sunni extremists, volatile conditions on the ground threaten to disrupt preparations for the F-16 jets, spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.

Private contractors working on the F-16 programme at Balad Airbase were recently moved to a safer location in Baghdad because of the threat posed by advancing Sunni militants.

“They [contractors] are no longer operating in Balad. So it will have an impact. It’s too soon to tell exactly what that impact is,” Warren said.

His comments came as Iraq took delivery of a first batch of Sukhoi Su-25 fighter aircraft from Russia, but the Pentagon insisted Moscow’s move would not derail Washington’s arms sales to Baghdad.

“The Iraqi purchase of Russian military equipment does not affect the Iraqi purchase of American military equipment,” said Warren, adding: “We are continuing with our foreign military sales programme to Iraq.”

He rejected criticism from some Iraqi leaders that the United States was purposely stalling the delivery of badly needed weapons or aircraft, including the F-16s.

“We are very aware of the critical need that Iraq has for advanced weapons. We are working as quickly as possible to ensure that they receive all the foreign military sales that they have requested and that they paid for,” he said.

“We don’t believe our process is any slower and more deliberate than it needs to be.”

“However, all arms sales have to be vetted to comply with rules about safeguarding the transfer of some sensitive military technology,” he said.

“The United States has provided 400 out of 500 Hellfire missiles recently purchased by Iraq and the final 100 missiles would arrive in Baghdad with a few weeks,” he said.

And the Pentagon continues to supply Iraqi forces with small arms and ammunition that are of “immediate” use, he added.

The Defence Department plans to sell Iraq up to 24 Apache attack helicopters as well, but Baghdad has not yet paid for the choppers, according to Warren.

“The key to resolving the conflict in Iraq was not supplying Baghdad with weapons but instead forging a political settlement addressing the country’s sectarian tensions,” he said.

“The solution to this problem is an inclusive government, not firepower,” he said.

ANKARA — Turkey opposes independence for a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and wants a unity government in Baghdad to counter the threat by Islamist Sunni rebels who have seized large swathes of territory in recent weeks, Turkish officials said.

Iraqi Kurds have benefited from the recent turmoil sweeping the country by occupying territory abandoned by government forces fleeing the advance of Sunni fighters led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which took Iraq’s second city Mosul earlier this month.

Turkey has good relations with the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq but would not support moves to push for independence from Baghdad, a Turkish government official said in response to questions from Reuters on Monday.

“Turkey’s position is for the territorial integrity and political unity of Iraq, that’s it,” the official said anonymously, in order to speak more freely.

“[We] are not in favour of any independence, that would be detrimental to that unity. Nothing like that could be discussed,” the official stated, adding that Ankara is backing calls for the creation of a consensus or unity government to represent the interests of all Iraqis.

There has been mounting speculation over the past few weeks that Ankara’s poor relations with the central Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki could lead to Turkey accepting or supporting a Kurdish breakaway from Baghdad.

Comments in the Financial Times on Saturday by Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AK Party, have been interpreted as suggesting Ankara would tolerate an independent Kurdish state if Iraq were to fall apart.

“If Iraq is divided and it is inevitable, they are our brothers... Unfortunately the situation in Iraq is not good and it looks like it is going to be divided,” Celik was quoted as saying.

However another Turkish official at the prime minister’s office last week appeared to pour cold water on the idea, telling Reuters that “the integrity of Iraq is very important to Turkey”.

Turkey has in the past been cool to efforts for greater autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan for fear of stirring up separatist feelings among its own Kurds, who fought a decades-long insurgency in which an estimated 40,000 people were killed.

Peace talks led to a ceasefire in that conflict last year.

This year, Turkey allowed Iraqi Kurds to pipe oil to export for the first time, pumping it to a Turkish port over Baghdad’s objections.

The first tankers of Kurdish oil were bought in recent weeks by Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support for Kurdish statehood on Sunday, taking a position that appeared to clash with the US preference to keep Iraq united.

The Kurds have seized on the recent sectarian chaos in Iraq to expand their autonomous northern territory to include Kirkuk, a city they consider their ancestral capital, perched on vast oil deposits that could support an independent state.

Kurdish officials say the ISIL advance has transformed Iraq, requiring a renegotiation of the settlement in place since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, under which they rule themselves but remain within Iraq in return for a fixed percentage of its overall oil revenue.

Iraq’s five million Kurds have ethnic compatriots in Iran, Syria and Turkey, and have so far hesitated to declare full independence, in part to avoid angering neighboring countries.

Turkey has in recent years pursued deeper ties with Iraqi Kurds, partnering up in the exploration and production of oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan, and signing multibillion-dollar oil and gas deals last November.

NOUAKCHOTT — Mauritania’s highest court on Sunday confirmed the victory of incumbent leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz in presidential polls and rejected an appeal calling for the results to be annulled.

“The candidate Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was elected President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in the first round of the presidential election,” the chairman of the constitutional council, Sgheyir Ould M’barek, said during an official ceremony.

The chairman added that 57-year-old Abdel Aziz had won “an absolute majority of votes cast” in the June 21 election.

Final results released by the council gave Abdel Aziz 81.94 per cent of the vote, slightly higher than the provisional figure of 81.89 per cent given by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) a week ago.

Abdel Aziz triumphed over anti-slavery candidate Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, who received 8.72 per cent of the vote.

Ould Abeid challenged the result, but his request was dismissed by the council.

None of the other three candidates in the race polled above 5 per cent.

Boidiel Ould Houmeid, the head of the moderate El Wiam Party, received 4.41 per cent of the vote, while Ibrahima Moctar Sarr, the only candidate from the black African south, received 4.43 per cent.

The only female candidate in the race, Lalla Mariem Mint Moulaye Idriss, received 0.48 per cent.

Calls from opposition groups for a boycott of the election appeared to have little effect, with the council putting turnout at 56.55 per cent, compared to 64 per cent in 2009.

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

Abdel Aziz, a former general, seized power in the northwest African nation in an August 2008 coup and won disputed elections the following year. He campaigned strongly on his success in fighting armed groups linked to Al Qaeda at home and in neighbouring Sahel nations.

Following his victory, Abdel Aziz pledged “to be the president of all Mauritanians and to guarantee the rights of all citizens”, according to a text read out by his campaign director Sidi Ould Salem on Monday.

GAZA — When Palestinians in the Gaza Strip seek some relief from the grind of life in an enclave plagued by conflict and hardship, they usually need to look no further than their sandy beaches.

But this summer, access to the cooling waters of the Mediterranean is gradually being closed off to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, due to pollution stemming from fuel shortages that have halted work at sewage treatment facilities.

Baha Al Agha of the Gaza Environment Quality Authority said about 100,000 cubic metres of untreated waste water are being pumped into the Gaza shore daily.

“Swimming is prohibited” signs have gone up at several beaches. But at one of Gaza’s most popular beaches, dozens of people, including children, splashed in the water over the weekend despite the posted warning.

“Things are getting worse day by day in the absence of real and quick solutions,” Agha told Reuters. He called on the Palestinian unity government formed earlier this month to act immediately “before Gaza beaches are declared a disaster area”.

Egypt’s closure of most of the estimated 1,200 cross-border smuggling tunnels run by Islamist group Hamas has virtually stopped cheap Egyptian fuel coming into Gaza.

Egypt’s military-backed government fear the tunnels are used to take weapons into the Sinai Peninsula, and accuses Hamas of backing the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas denies it helps militants in Egypt.

Israel has its own blockade on Gaza, allowing in fuel and restricted imports since Hamas took control in 2007. But the Israeli fuel costs twice as much as Egyptian imports.

Garbage piling up

Gaza residents said they had little to celebrate at the start on Sunday of the Muslim month of Ramadan — traditionally a time for worship but also for family feasts in the evening at the end of a daily daytime fast.

Garbage has been piling up on the streets, with some 75 per cent of sanitation trucks idled by the Gaza municipality’s inability to pay high fuel prices.

“Tunnels are closed, crossings are closed, there is no sea port... and now they are telling us the beaches are closed? Wouldn’t it be easier if they just let us die in peace?” asked Ali Abu Hassan, a 46-year-old taxi driver.

Driving along Gaza’s coastal road, the smell of sewage is sharp and waves hitting the beach are yellowish and brown.

Many in the Gaza Strip are also feeling the pinch of a salary dispute that could test the resilience of the new unity government formed under Hamas’s reconciliation pact with Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas.

Some 40,000 public servants hired by Hamas since it seized the Gaza Strip seven years ago from forces loyal to Abbas have not been paid in full for months due to a cash crunch caused by Egypt’s tunnel crackdown.

Hopes of receiving wages quickly under the unity government were dashed when the new administration said it must first vet the employees before paying them — a process that could take months.

Hamas-hired workers, who held a one-day strike on Thursday, are particularly resentful that Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has been paying its Gaza-based staff regularly, even though they have not reported to work since 2007.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved a $90 million socio-economic development plan for occupied East Jerusalem which focuses on increased security presence in the area, the municipality said.

“One of the main goals of the plan that was approved is to bring about a significant decline in violence by means of integrated activity to reduce gaps in infrastructure, employment, education and social welfare and by boosting enforcement and personal security,” said a statement from city hall.

The plan involves an increase in the number of security personnel as well as a greater number of security cameras.

“According to Israel police assessments, the plan will lead to a significant decline in the short- and medium-term of over 50 per cent in displays of violence,” it said.

Security figures quoted by the municipality indicate that in March and April, there were 390 incidents of stone-throwing at the security forces and vehicles in East Jerusalem, as well as dozens of cars stolen and break-ins.

“These are offences with nationalist characteristics that are not perpetrated in a similar scope in other parts of the country,” it said.

“The basic assumption for the civic aspects of the plan is the existence of a deep link between the scope and level of violence by residents of eastern Jerusalem and the standard of living in neighbourhoods in the eastern part of the city.

The plan includes improvements in infrastructure, the education system and improved social assistance, it said without saying how such objectives would be achieved.

Figures provided by the municipality said there were about 306,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, whose civil status is that of residents, not citizens. They account for 38 per cent of the city’s overall population.

Israel seized control over the Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

It refers to the entire city as its “united, undivided” capital.

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector of the city as capital of their promised state, with the city’s future one of the biggest issues of the conflict.

By choice, almost all Palestinians living in East Jerusalem hold permanent residency status, meaning they have Israeli IDs but not passports.

They are entitled to all the insurance benefits of Israeli citizens and can vote in municipal — but not national — elections.

They enjoy complete freedom of movement within the country, unlike their compatriots in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who cannot enter Israel without special permits that are hard to obtain.

The left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the move was aimed at “tightening Israeli control of East Jerusalem and strengthening the connection between the 300,000 Palestinians living there and the State of Israel”.

The action plan was put together by an inter-ministerial committee which did not make any connection between the rise in violence and the deadlock in peace moves, Haaretz said.

There are more than 200,000 Israelis living in settlement neighbourhoods in annexed East Jerusalem and the Israeli government does not see construction there as settlement building.