Region

WASHINGTON — A Libyan militia leader pleaded not guilty in a US federal court on Saturday to a terrorism charge in the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

Ahmed Abu Khatallah was transferred to the US District Court in Washington on Saturday morning from a navy warship where he had been held since his June 15 capture by US special operations forces in Libya.

He was charged at an afternoon hearing with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists resulting in death in the attack that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi.

The September 11, 2012, attack triggered a political firestorm for President Barack Obama, with Republicans accusing his administration of misrepresenting the circumstances and of lax protection for diplomats.

The charge against Khatallah includes malicious damage to and destruction of US property by fires and explosives. It carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, the Justice Department said. The department said it intended to file additional charges shortly.

Khatallah was not shackled when he appeared before Magistrate Judge John Facciola and kept his hands behind him as he gave answers through an interpreter. He wore a dark hoodie and black trousers and had long gray hair and a gray beard.

“You conspired, that is to say, you agreed with other people, to provide material support and resources to terrorists, including yourself, knowing that that support and those resources would be used in killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility involving the use of firearms and dangerous weapons,” Facciola told the defendant.

The judge appointed a public defender and Khatallah was taken out of the courthouse in a motorcade after the 10-minute hearing. US officials did not say where he would be held.

Federal charges filed against him in July 2013 but kept under court seal until this month also included killing a person on US property and a firearms violation.

There was heightened security around the federal courthouse building, which is blocks from the US Capitol and across the street from the National Gallery of Art, prime tourist destinations in Washington. Two or three armed US marshals patrolled the perimeter of the building.

Khatallah was taken aboard the USS New York, an amphibious transport ship, after his seizure in a raid on the outskirts of Benghazi. At the time of Khatallah’s capture, a US official said he was expected to be questioned by an interrogation team at sea. The unit seeks information from suspects that might prevent future attacks.

Khatallah was in US military custody for nearly two weeks before being transferred into the American civilian court system. He was transferred to US soil by helicopter, a US official said.

“Now that Ahmed Abu Khatallah has arrived in the United States, he will face the full weight of our justice system,” said US Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement. “We will prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant’s alleged role in the attack that killed four brave Americans in Benghazi.”

Khatallah denied in a Reuters interview in October 2012 that he was a leader of Ansar Al Sharia, an Islamist group Washington accuses of carrying out the assault on the consulate.

His capture was a victory for Obama, who has been accused by Republicans of playing down the role of Al Qaeda in the Benghazi attacks for political reasons and of being slow to deliver on promises of justice.

Republicans said then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton failed to take steps to ensure the safety of American diplomatic personnel, an issue that is still resonating as Clinton considers running for US president in 2016.

Khatallah’s capture also led to Republican criticism, with some lawmakers calling for him to be taken to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for military prosecution. Obama has sought to close down the Guantanamo prison and his policy has been to try terrorism suspects caught abroad in the US justice system.

TRIPOLI — A Tunisian diplomat and a fellow embassy staffer abducted in Libya earlier this year were freed by their abductors on Sunday after months in captivity, an embassy source said.

“They have been freed and should be returning to Tunisia soon,” the source, who declined to be identified, told AFP, adding that the pair were in good health.

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.

Embassy employee Mohamed ben Sheikh was kidnapped in Tripoli on March 21 while diplomat Al Aroussi Kontassi was seized April 17.

At the time Tunis said a jihadist group was behind the abductions and was demanding the release of Libyans jailed in Tunisia for their role in a deadly “terrorist operation” that took place three years ago.

On Sunday the Tunisian embassy source said the pair were freed “thanks to negotiations” but that his government did give in to the demands of the kidnappers. 

Their abductions come 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.

BAGHDAD — The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, which spearheaded a sweeping militant assault that overran swathes of Iraq, is now claiming leadership of the world’s Muslims.

Known for its ruthless tactics and suicide bombers, ISIL has carried out frequent bombings and shootings in Iraq, and is also arguably the most capable force fighting President Bashar Assad inside Syria.

But it truly gained international attention this month, when its fighters and those from other militant groups swept through the northern city of Mosul, then overran major areas of five provinces north and west of Baghdad.

ISIL is led by the shadowy Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and backed by thousands of Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq, some of them Westerners, and it appears to be surpassing Al Qaeda as the world’s most dangerous jihadist group.

In a sign of the group’s confidence, it has now expanded its claim of leadership to encompass all the world’s Muslims.

In an audio recording distributed online Friday, ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammad Al Adnani declared Baghdadi “the caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere”.

“The Shura [council] of the Islamic State met and discussed this issue [of the caliphate]... The Islamic State decided to establish an Islamic caliphate and to designate a caliph for the state of the Muslims,” Adnani said.

He was referring to a system of rule last used to govern a state almost 100 years ago, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Western governments fear ISIL could eventually emulate Al Qaeda and strike overseas, but their biggest worry for now is its sweeping gains in Iraq and the likely eventual return home of foreign fighters attracted by ISIL and Baghdadi.

Among them are men like Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old Frenchman who allegedly carried out a deadly shooting on a Jewish museum in Belgium after spending a year fighting with ISIL in Syria.

12,000 foreign fighters 

The Soufan Group, a New York-based consultancy, estimates that 12,000 foreign fighters have travelled to Syria, including 3,000 from the West.

And ISIL appears to have the greatest appeal, with King’s College London professor Peter Neumann estimating around 80 per cent of Western fighters in Syria have joined the group.

Unlike other groups fighting Assad, ISIL is seen working towards an ideal Islamic emirate. And compared with Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, Al Nusra Front, it has lower entry barriers.

ISIL has also sought to appeal to non-Arabs, publishing English-language magazines, after having already released videos in English, or with English subtitles.

The jihadist group claims to have had fighters from the Britain, France, Germany and other European countries, as well as the United States, and from the Arab world and the Caucasus.

Much of the appeal also stems from Baghdadi himself — the ISIL leader is touted as a battlefield commander and tactician, a crucial distinction compared with Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri.

“Baghdadi has done an amazing amount — he has captured cities, he has mobilised huge amounts of people, he is killing ruthlessly throughout Iraq and Syria,” said Richard Barrett, a former counter-terrorism chief at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service.

“If you were a guy who wanted action, you would go with Baghdadi,” Barrett told AFP.

At the time Baghdadi took over what was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, in May 2010, his group appeared to be on the ropes, after the “surge” of US forces combined with the shifting allegiances of Sunni tribesmen to deal him a blow.

But the group has bounced back, expanding into Syria in 2013.

Baghdadi sought to merge with Al Nusra, which rejected the deal, and the two groups have operated separately since.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support for Kurdish statehood on Sunday, taking a position that appeared to clash with the US preference to keep sectarian war-torn Iraq united.

Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, seeing in the minority ethnic group a buffer against shared Arab adversaries.

The Kurds have seized on recent sectarian chaos in Iraq to expand their autonomous northern territory to include Kirkuk, which sits on vast oil deposits that could make the independent state many dream of economically viable.

But Iraqi Kurds, who have ethnic compatriots in Iran, Turkey and Syria, have hesitated to declare full independence, one reason being the feared response of neighbouring countries.

“We should... support the Kurdish aspiration for independence,” Netanyahu told Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank, after outlining what he described as the collapse of Iraq and other Middle East regions under strife between Arab Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Kurds, Netanyahu said, “are a fighting people that has proved its political commitment, political moderation, and deserves political independence”.

Washington wants Iraq’s crumbling unity restored. Last Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraqi Kurdish leaders and urged them to seek political integration with Baghdad.

GAZA — Israeli forces attacked targets in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a Hamas gunman and wounding two others after a spate of rocket launches from the Palestinian territory, officials on both sides said.

The Hamas casualties were caused by a strike that the Israeli military said targeted a group of Palestinians spotted about to fire a rocket across the border.

Palestinian medics said two other people were wounded in air strikes on at least six other Gaza targets.

The Israeli military said two rockets fired from Gaza earlier on Sunday were shot down by its Iron Dome missile interceptor defence system.

On Saturday, rockets set a factory on fire in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, wounding three people, officials said.

“Over the weekend, the Israel Defence Forces attacked multiple targets in response to firing at Israel from the Gaza Strip,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in public remarks to his Cabinet on Sunday. “We are ready to expand this operation, if necessary.”

Palestinian officials said targets hit in the Israeli air strikes belonged to Hamas’ armed wing — the Izz el-Deen Al Qassam Brigades — Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees.

Hamas, an Islamist movement that seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, signed a reconciliation deal with him in April under which a unity government was formed on June 2.

Since the beginning of June, militants in the Gaza Strip have fired at least 62 rockets at Israel in attacks that have caused few injuries, the Israeli military said.

In Gaza, Israeli air strikes have totalled more than 80 this month and killed three fighters and wounded more than a dozen other people, Palestinian officials said.

CAIRO — Egypt will restrict sermons during the holy month of Ramadan to topics of faith and morality, the state’s top official in charge of religious affairs said Sunday, in the latest measure by the government to control mosques and limit access of opponents to them.

The announcement is yet another move by authorities to crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and limiting in the process free speech in the deeply polarised country.

Mohammed Mokhtar Gomaa said the decision should ensure that sermons during Islam’s holy month of fasting “unite people, not divide them”. He said the religious speech had been “hijacked” for political purposes, in reference to the previous government, led by Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

“The religious speech was politically driven, which affected the moral side,” he told reporters at a news conference on the first day of the observance. “Now we’re in a race against time trying to restore morals.”

Morsi was ousted last year following mass protests against him denouncing his group’s attempt to monopolise power. The military removed Morsi, and its chief, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, was elected president earlier this month.

In his campaign, Sisi stressed that religious discourse needs to be restructured, saying a free for all interpretation of religion has helped spread extremism. Islamist groups rely on mosques to recruit new members and also rally for political positions ahead of votes.

Since Morsi’s ouster, religious authorities moved to purge mosques from preachers deemed supportive of Islamists and have set guidelines for Friday sermons.

Gomaa said new regulations will also specify what the sermons will address in Ramadan, when more worshippers than usual spend time in mosques, praying and listening to religious lessons. Ramadan is the time Muslims believe God started to reveal the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad, and for believers, it is a time of reflection and worship, remembering the hardships of others and being charitable.

The ministry has also set new rules to regulate a Ramadan tradition — one where many people spend the last ten days of the month inside mosques, praying, fasting and reading the
Koran. The Brotherhood and other Islamist groups often used the retreat for recruitment.

The ministry’s website said that this year, the stay would be allowed only in central mosques under the supervision of a state-authorised cleric. The buildings will only host people who live in the immediate neighbourhood.

It was not clear how the government plans to implement the regulations.

Some 12,000 independent preachers have been barred from delivering sermons. In recent months, the ministry’s website had been posting outlines for the weekly sermons delivered each Friday. Anyone who strays from them in Egypt’s more than 100,000 mosques risks removal.

Last Friday’s sermon spoke about “rationalising consumption”, just after the president mentioned the country needed belt-tightening efforts from all Egyptians.

Gomaa said Sunday 50,000 licensed preachers will be deployed to lead late night Ramadan prayers. The ministry had already restricted preaching in mosques to state-authorised clerics.

He reiterated a ban on holding Friday prayers at thousands of small, unregulated mosques known as “zawaya”.

A number of measures have been used to crack down on the Brotherhood. It has been declared a terrorist organization and some of its members have had their assets frozen. The government has also passed a new law restricting protests.

In a separate development, a Cairo appeal court has set July 22 as the date of a retrial for a prominent Egyptian activist sentenced to 15 years in prison in absentia for organising an unauthorised protest and assaulting a policeman.

The sentencing of Alaa Abdel Fattah and 24 others was the latest blow to liberal activists at a time of rapidly eroding freedoms.

The sentence was the toughest against any of the secular activists behind the 18-day uprising that ended the reign of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It is also the first conviction of a prominent activist since Sisi took office.

BEIRUT — Up to 7,000 people, mostly rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, have been killed in infighting among rival Islamic groups in Syria across opposition-held territory in the north, an activist group said in a report Sunday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has documented 7,000 deaths as a result of the rebel-on-rebel violence since January, when infighting erupted in northern Syria. The death toll also included 650 civilians who got caught in the crossfire of the fighting between Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and its rival, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — a group which formally broke with Al Qaeda earlier this year and has in recent weeks become a major fighting force in neighbouring Iraq.

The observatory has been documenting the Syrian conflict through a network of activists inside Syria since it started in March 2011 as largely peaceful protest against Assad’s rule. It turned into an armed uprising after some opposition supporters picked up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent. It gradually became a civil war, in which more than 160,000 people have been killed, according to activists, and nearly a third of Syria’s population of 23 million has been displaced.

In Sunday’s report, the observatory said its activists on the ground have the names of 5,641 rebels who have been killed in infighting. The names of another 1,200 dead fighters have not been confirmed. Up to 2,196 fighters who have been killed in clashes, suicide bombings and other rival attacks belonged to the Islamic State, while 2,764 were killed on the side of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and other Islamic groups fighting alongside it, the observatory also said. The remainder of the dead were members of other groups.

The two rebel factions have been engaged in deadly infighting in opposition-held territory in several provinces in northern and eastern Syria, along the border with Turkey and Iraq, including Aleppo, Raqqa, Hassakeh and the oil-rich province of Deir El Zour. The infighting over territory and strategic facilities — including oil-fields — that rebel groups captured together from government forces, has undermined the rebels’ larger goal of toppling Assad.

The Syrian leader secured a third, seven-year mandate at a presidential election earlier this month.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s army sent tanks and armoured vehicles to try to dislodge insurgents from the northern city of Tikrit on Sunday, the second day of a pushback against a Sunni militant takeover of large stretches of Iraq.

In Baghdad, which is threatened by the rebel advance, top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers scrambled to agree Cabinet nominations before parliament meets on Tuesday to try to prevent the rebel advance jeopardising Iraq’s future as a unitary state.

They are racing against time as Sunni insurgents led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda offshoot that loathes Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s Shiite-led government, consolidate their grip on the north and west.

Maliki’s political future after eight years in power will be the most contentious issue.

Troops backed by helicopter gunships began an assault on Tikrit, the birthplace of former president Saddam Hussein, on Saturday, to try to take it back from insurgents who have swept to within driving range of Baghdad.

The army sent in tanks and helicopters to battle ISIL militants near the University of Tikrit in the city’s north on Sunday, security sources said. Two witnesses said they saw a helicopter gunned down over northern Tikrit, reports not possible to immediately verify independently.

The offensive was the first major attempt by the army to retake territory after the United States sent up to 300 advisers, mostly special forces, and drones to help the government take on ISIL.

Earlier on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain Al Shahristani, one of Iraq’s most senior politicians, faulted the US for not doing enough to bolster the country’s military, just hours after Russia delivered five Sukhoi jets.

“Yes, there has been a delay from the Americans in handing over contracted arms. We told them, ‘You once did an air bridge to send arms to your ally Israel, so why don’t you give us the contracted arms in time?’” he told Al Hurra television.

US officials have disputed similar statements from Iraqi officials in the past and say they have done everything possible to ensure the country is equipped with modern weaponry.

In the latest sign of diplomatic one-upmanship over the crisis, the five Russian Sukhoi jets were delivered to Baghdad late on Saturday, which state television said “would be used in the coming days to strike ISIL terrorist groups”.

A Reuters photographer saw the jets unloaded from a transport plane at a military airport in Baghdad as Russian and Iraqi soldiers stood on the tarmac. Iraq has relied largely on helicopters to counter militants and has few aircraft that can fire advanced missiles.

Iraqi army spokesman Qassim Atta told reporters in Baghdad security forces had killed 142 “terrorists” over the last 24 hours across Iraq, including 70 in Tikrit, and said the armed forces were in control of Tikrit’s university. Both claims were impossible to immediately verify.

“Our security forces have taken complete control of the University of Tikrit and they have raised the Iraqi flag on top of the building,” Atta said.

Fighting takes its toll

Iran has also supported Iraq’s government against the onslaught. An Iranian general said on Sunday his country was ready to help Iraq fight the revolt using the same methods it deployed against rebels in Syria.

“With Syria, too, we announced we would not allow terrorists in the hire of foreign intelligence services to rule and dictate to Syrian people. We will certainly have the same approach with Iraq,” Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, deputy joint chief of staff of the armed forces and a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officer, told Iran’s Al Alam television.

On Saturday, Iraqi troops began the assault on Tikrit from the direction of Samarra to the south, where the military has drawn its line in the sand against the insurgents’ advance towards Baghdad.

Atta, the military spokesman, said on Saturday militants were struggling because “their morale has started to collapse”, but insurgents, backed by some local Sunni tribes, retained control of the city on Sunday.

The clashes have taken their toll on civilians. At least four people were killed, including two women, when helicopters struck a gathering of people preparing for a wedding ceremony in Al Bu Hayazi, a village east of Tikrit on Saturday evening, witnesses and relatives of the victims said.

“Families were gathering to start a wedding party and rockets started to hit houses... The wedding became a funeral after the death of innocent people. My cousin was among those killed,” Hatam Ali, a government employee working in Tikrit university, told Reuters.

The military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the incident.

On Sunday, intermittent clashes broke out from the early morning between militants and government forces in the northeastern outskirts of the town of Jurf Al Sakhar, 83km south of Baghdad.

The local government and security commanders have asked for backup from Baghdad to face what they estimate are several hundred ISIL fighters, police sources and the province’s governor said.

The militant group, which Al Qaeda
disowned this year, vows to re-create a medieaval-style caliphate erasing borders from the Mediterranean to the Gulf and they deem all Shiites to be heretics deserving death.

US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back to Iraq, where they were for eight years after invading to oust Saddam.

Across the frontier in Syria, ISIL fighters crucified eight men in the northern Aleppo province, a monitoring group said. ISIL accused them of being “Sahwa” fighters, a term it uses for rival fighters it says are controlled by Western powers.

The men were crucified in the town square of Deir Hafer in eastern Aleppo and would be left there for three days, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Parliament under pressure

Politicians are under pressure to speed up the normally sluggish process of selecting a new government to face the crisis. A parliament elected in April is due to assemble on Tuesday to begin the process.

In a statement on Sunday, the United Nations mission in Iraq urged all representatives to attend the session on Tuesday and move forward with selecting a new government.

“Faced with a national crisis, the political leaders of Iraq should put the interests of the country and its people before everything else,” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq Nickolay Mladenov said in the statement.

But the 21-seat bloc of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, said it would skip the session, arguing more time was needed to avoid the previous government’s mistakes.

Politicians from the National Alliance, parliament’s biggest bloc, said they would join the session and seek to follow the timetable for the formation, but were tight-lipped about who they would back for prime minister. A senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Adnan Mufti, said it would attend.

Under Iraq’s governing system put in place after Saddam’s overthrow, the prime minister has always been a Shiite, the largely ceremonial president a Kurd and the speaker of parliament a Sunni. None of those groups has made a clear decision about who to put forward for the posts.

It took nearly 10 months for Maliki to build a coalition to stay in office after the last election in 2010, and pressure for a quick process this time could hasten the end of his rule.

In a stunning political intervention on Friday, Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, made clear politicians could not delay the process at a moment of crisis.

Maliki, whose State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election, was positioning himself for a third term before the ISIL offensive began. His closest allies say he still aims to stay, but senior State of Law figures have said he could be replaced with a less polarising figure.

“It’s a card game and State of Law plays a poker game very well,” an official from the premier’s alliance said. “For the prime minister, it will go down to the wire.”

DAMASCUS — A car bomb exploded in a busy market in a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding dozens as Muslims went shopping a day before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, activists said.

The blast in Douma came nearly two hours after Russia’s deputy foreign minister called on the United States and Europe to take “serious” steps to combat terrorism during a visit to Damascus, warning that several Middle Eastern countries are threatened.

“Russia will not stand idle towards attempts by terrorist groups to spread terrorism in regional states,” Sergei Ryabkov told reporters, apparently referring to the rapid advance of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant across eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

Russia has been one of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s main allies since the start of an uprising against him in March 2011. Moscow has used its veto power four times at the UN Security Council to prevent international sanctions on Syria.

Both Russia and Assad’s government have portrayed the civil war in Syria as a struggle against foreign-backed “terrorists”, the word Damascus applies to all rebels fighting to end the Assad family’s four-decade reign.

The market blast in Damascus killed at least two people and wounded others who were rushed to nearby makeshift hospitals, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and amateur videos released by activists in the area.

The activists said the market was crowded as many people went shopping a day before the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and feast in the evenings.

The observatory said the explosion caused extensive damage. The observatory and an activist in the nearby suburb of Saqba who goes by the name of Abu Yazan said the Islamic State is believed to be behind the blast, because of a rivalry with other rebel groups in the area.

“Hospitals are full of wounded people,” Abu Yazan said via Skype.

Amateur videos posted by activists online showed the bloodied and burnt bodies of two dead boys on the floor of what appeared to be a makeshift hospital. Others, including children, were receiving treatment amid shrill cries of pain. Several other wounded people lay sprawled out on bloodstained white tiles.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events.

Douma, one of the most populous suburbs of Damascus, has been under rebel control for more than two years.

The Islamic State has been fighting against rival rebel factions, including Al Qaeda’s official affiliate, the Nusra Front, since January in battles that have left more than 6,000 people dead, according to the observatory.

In Damascus, Russia’s Ryabkov called for confronting terrorism by “taking integral measures against radicalism and by searching for a solution to prevent the influx of fighters from abroad,” adding that terrorism will have “catastrophic repercussions” on the entire region.

Thousands of foreign fighters, including hundreds from the former Soviet Union, are fighting against Assad’s forces in different parts of Syria, mainly on behalf of the Islamic State, which has carved out a sprawling enclave astride the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Ryabkov praised Damascus’ “responsible” decision to give up its chemical weapons, saying that doing so has boosted Syria’s security.

On Monday, Syria finished handing over to Western powers 1,300 tonnes of chemical weapons it acknowledged possessing, completing a deal reached last fall under threat of US air strikes.

Ryabkov held talks a day earlier with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Mouallem and his deputy, Faisal Mekdad.

According to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, Ryabkov congratulated Mouallem on removing “all chemical material” from the country.

Also Saturday, the observatory reported heavy clashes between several rebel factions and the Islamic Front in the eastern town of Boukamal on the border with Iraq.

Earlier last week, beleaguered Nusra Front fighters surrounded by Islamic State forces in Boukamal defected and joined the Islamic State. That effectively handed the town over to the Islamic State, which controls the Iraqi side of the crossing.

CAIRO — Two bombings on Saturday in a Cairo suburb killed a teenager and her mother, officials said, the latest in a wave of blasts to hit the Egyptian capital this week.

Militants have stepped up attacks after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and amid a deadly crackdown by authorities on his supporters.

The makeshift bombs planted in a telecommunications being built in the October 6 suburb were detonated by a mobile phone signal at around 9am (0700 GMT), a police investigator told AFP.

Medics said the watchman’s wife and 18-year-old daughter were killed.

Residents said the powerful blast rattled windows in nearby buildings.

Saturday’s explosion comes after five makeshift bombs at four Cairo metro stations on Wednesday and a sixth at a courthouse wounded six people.

The authorities have blamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood for attacks rocking the country, most of which have targeted security forces, and have blacklisted the Islamist movement as a terrorist organisation.

Since Morsi’s ouster, a crackdown on his supporters has left more than 1,400 people dead and seen at least 15,000 jailed.

Hundreds have also been sentenced to death.

An Al Qaeda-inspired jihadist group based in the Sinai Peninsula, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), has claimed some of the deadliest attacks on security forces, as well as a failed attempt to assassinate the interior minister in September.

A little-known jihadist group, Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), has also said it was behind a string of attacks on police in Cairo.

The government says the militants have killed about 500 people, most of them security personnel.