Region

WASHINGTON — Veteran Middle East diplomat Martin Indyk resigned Friday as the chief US negotiator between the Israelis and Palestinians in a further sign of the collapse of the peace process.

Less than a year after Secretary of State John Kerry tapped the high-profile envoy to guide a major US push for a peace deal, Indyk quit to return to a senior position at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Kerry hailed Indyk’s “indefatigable efforts and creativity” on the peace process, which the top US diplomat insisted was not dead.

“He’ll continue to work for peace, and as we’ve all said many times, the United States remains committed not just to the cause of peace, but to resuming the process when the parties find a path back to serious negotiations,” Kerry said in a statement.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said that Kerry and Indyk agreed it was “an appropriate time” for the diplomat to return to Brookings due to the suspension in negotiations.

Indyk, who was born in Britain and raised in Australia, formerly worked for the main pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and took US citizenship in 1993 as he joined the administration of then-president Bill Clinton.

Indyk served twice as US ambassador to Israel — from 1995-1997 and 2000-2001 — and played a key role in Clinton’s failed efforts to broker a Middle East peace settlement, including at the Camp David summit between then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Kerry put a top priority on reviving Middle East diplomacy and coaxed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table last July.

But in April, Israel made a surprise announcement of plans for 700 new settlements and refused to free a last batch of Palestinian prisoners after earlier releases. Abbas in turn sought Palestinian membership in 15 UN conventions.

Israel voiced anger after an unnamed US official — widely believed to be Indyk — was quoted by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as blaming Israel for the breakdown in talks and saying that Netanyahu “did not move more than an inch”.

No more ‘urgency’ for peace 

Asked about the controversial remarks attributed to him, Indyk told a forum last month that Israel’s settlement announcements in the midst of releasing prisoners had a “dramatically damaging impact on the negotiations”.

Indyk, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy he helped found in 1985, complained that the Israelis and Palestinians did not “feel the pressing need to make the gut-wrenching compromises necessary to achieve peace”.

“It is safe to say that if we the US are the only party that has a sense of urgency, these negotiations will not succeed,” Indyk said.

In a sign of the bleak hopes, Harf, the State Department deputy spokeswoman, said Kerry was not immediately planning to appoint a new permanent Middle East negotiator.

Indyk’s acting replacement will be Frank Lowenstein, a longtime aide to Kerry who has served as deputy special envoy.

Lowenstein was an adviser to Kerry on his failed 2004 presidential bid and later worked for him in the Senate. He is the son of Allard Lowenstein, the slain former congressman and civil rights champion.

Amid the peace process at a standstill, violence has ticked up. Israel has staged a vast crackdown on Hamas after the abduction of three Israeli settler teenagers.

GAZA CITY — An Israeli air strike on a car in the Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians Friday, medics said, hours after a bomb exploded near troops manning Israel’s security fence.

The violence comes a day after Israel accused two men it said belong to Hamas of kidnapping three Israeli settler teenagers in the occupied West Bank a fortnight ago.

Israel responded to the abduction by staging a vast crackdown on the West Bank network of Hamas, which governed Gaza until a recent Palestinian unity deal was struck, and has arrested hundreds of its Islamist foe’s members.

“The remains of two martyrs killed in an Israeli raid on a car were taken to the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza,” health services spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP.

He named them as Osama Al Hassumi, 29, and Mohammed Fasih, 24.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying the pair were involved in rocket attacks on Israel over the past week.

Late Friday, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired five rockets at Israel, without causing casualties or damage, a military spokeswoman said.

Two projectiles were destroyed in flight by the “Iron Dome” anti-missile defence system, she added.

And early Saturday, Israel conducted four air raids on Gaza, two targeting “sites of terrorist activities” and the others hitting arms depots and production facilities, a military spokesman said in a statement.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon had said in a statement Israel “will react firmly to any fire at its territory and to any attack targeting Israeli civilians or soldiers, as we did today”.

Earlier Friday, five Palestinians in Gaza were wounded by Israeli tank fire in response to the detonation of the border bomb.

Qudra said they were hurt when the tanks targeted “two mosque minarets” east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

An 11-year-old boy was seriously wounded, he said.

The Israeli military said “an explosive device was activated against [army] forces operating adjacent to the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip”, causing no injuries.

“The force responded with tank fire towards lookout posts used to guide the attack,” it said.

An army spokeswoman said Israeli forces near the border have been targeted by nine explosive devices since the beginning of the year.

Israel names suspects 

While there has been no recent rise in roadside explosions near Gaza, there has been a noticeable uptick in Palestinian rocket fire in recent weeks, leading to air strikes by Israel.

Palestinian medics said the air raids struck near the home of Ismail Haniyeh, former Hamas premier who stepped down on June 2 when Gaza and the West Bank set up a unity government.

Israel has put Hamas under intense pressure since the June 12 disappearance of the three Israeli teens.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the international community to press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to end his reconciliation with Hamas, citing the alleged kidnapping as proof the movement’s “terrorist” activities make it an unsuitable political partner.

On Thursday, Israel accused Marwan Kawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh, two men it said belong to Hamas, of the abduction.

Hamas dismissed that as a front for Israel’s “failure” to find them.

Israel has provided no proof of Hamas involvement in the youths’ disappearance, and the movement has said it has no information on the incident.

Five Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli security forces’ sweeping operations to find the teenagers and more than 400 arrested, mostly Hamas members. Troops have also raided some 2,100 buildings in the West Bank, a military spokesman said.

Several hundred Arab israelis demonstrated on Friday in the northern Israeli area of Umm Al Fahm against the measures, public television said.

The protesters blocked off a road and threw rocks at police, who used tear gas and sound bombs to disperse them, without making any arrests.

The broadcaster said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party, accused the demonstrators of voicing support for the kidnapping of the Israelis and proposed they should be treated “like terrorists”.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi government forces backed by helicopter gunships began an offensive on Saturday to retake the northern city of Tikrit from Sunni Islamist militants while party leaders pursued talks that could end Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s divisive rule.

Politicians in Baghdad and world powers warn that unless security forces recover cities lost to the jihadi insurgents in tandem with a rapid formation of a government that can bring Iraq’s estranged communities together, the country could rip apart along sectarian lines and menace the wider Middle East.

On the battlefield, Iraqi troops were trying to advance on Tikrit from the direction of Samarra to the south that has become the military’s line in the sand against a militant advance southwards towards Baghdad.

Iraqi special forces already have snipers inside Tikrit University who were dropped by air there in a bold operation on Thursday. 

Helicopter gunships fired at targets in Tikrit on Saturday and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters abandoned Tikrit’s governorate building, security sources said. More government troops had been air-dropped in a pocket just north of the city.

Iraqi military spokesman Qassim Atta told reporters in Baghdad on Saturday that 29 “terrorists” were killed on Friday in Tikrit and that militant commanders were struggling because “their morale has started to collapse”.

However, the militants were showing resilience and enjoyed the backing of some local Sunni tribes, as well as former ruling Baathists from the era of late Sunni leader Saddam Hussein — whose hometown was Tikrit — alienated from Maliki’s government.

In other parts of the country, such as Jurf Al Sakhar, 85km south of Baghdad, militants from ISIL — the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — were on the offensive.

Three police sources said at least 60 ISIL fighters had been killed along with more than 15 Iraqi security force members when the militant group launched a major attack on an army camp just east of Jurf Al Sakhar, firing mortars and RPG rounds.

“The ISIL terrorists fired many mortars at the camp and then started their offensive. They managed to break into the camp but could not hold their positions due to army helicopters cover,” a police colonel said.

Since early June, the radical ISIL has overrun most majority Sunni areas in the north and west of Iraq, capturing the biggest northern city Mosul and fanning southwards.

ISIL vows to re-create a medievAl style caliphate erasing borders from the Mediterranean to the Gulf and they deem all Shiites to be heretics deserving death. They boast of executing scores of Shiite government soldiers captured in Tikrit.

Grand Ayatollah’s political intervention

In a stunning political intervention on Friday that could mean the demise of Maliki’s eight-year tenure, powerful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani urged political blocs to agree on the next premier, parliament speaker and president before a newly elected legislature meets in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Saudi King Abdullah pledged in talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry to use his influence to encourage Sunni Muslims to join a new, more inclusive Iraqi government to better combat Islamist insurgents, a senior US official said on Saturday.

King Abdullah’s assurance marked a significant shift from Riyadh’s unwillingness to support a new government unless Maliki, a Shiite, steps aside, and reflected growing disquiet about the regional repercussions of ISIL’s rise.

“The next 72 hours are very important to come up with an agreement ... to push the political process forward,” said a lawmaker and former government official from the National Alliance, which groups all Shiite Muslim parties.

The lawmaker, who asked for anonymity due to political sensitivities, said he anticipated internal meetings by various parties and a broader session of the National Alliance including Maliki’s State of Law list to be held through the weekend. Some Sunni Muslim parties were to convene later on Saturday.

Iraqi Sunnis accuse Maliki of freezing them out of any power and repressing their community, goading armed tribes to support the insurgency led by the fundamentalist group ISIL. The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region has also said Maliki should bow out.

Sistani’s entry into the fray will make it hard for Maliki to stay on as caretaker leader as he has since a parliamentary election in April. That means he must either build a coalition to confirm himself in power for a third term or step aside.

Sistani’s message was delivered after a meeting of Shiite factions including the State of Law coalition failed to agree on a consensus candidate for prime minister.

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,” said the official from the premier’s alliance. “For the prime minister, it will go down to the wire.”

Islamists battle Islamists on border

In Syria, where ISIL controls large swathes of land, other Islamist rebel groups pursued a counteroffensive in the border town of Albu Kamal, challenging ISIL’s grip along the Iraqi-Syrian frontier.

ISIL is a more radical offshoot of Al Qaeda that has its roots in Iraq and expanded into Syria shortly after the start of the three-year insurgency against President Bashar Assad.

US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back to Iraq, where they were for eight years after invading to oust Saddam, but has sent up to 300 advisers, mostly special forces, to help the government take on ISIL.

US defence officials said on Friday that the Obama administration was flying armed aircraft over Iraq although these aimed to collect intelligence and ensure the safety of US personnel on the ground rather than attack targets.

Still, General Martin Dempsey, the top US military officer, said additional US options included going after “high-value individuals who are the leadership of ISIL” and working to protect Iraq’s “critical infrastructure”.

On Saturday, 11 people were injured when an explosion rocked a health ministry building in insurgent-held Mosul, a local health official said. City residents said the blast was caused by a drone strike but this could not be confirmed and a US official dismissed this possibility.

Residents also reported overnight rocket fire into Mosul, whose fall to ISIL on June 10 was the catalyst for a militant sweep southwards in which they also took border crossings with areas of civil war-racked Syria that they already controlled.

Struggle for share 

of power

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. Negotiations over the positions have often been drawn out: After the last election in 2010 it took nearly 10 months for Maliki to build a coalition to stay in office.

Divvying up the three posts in the four days before parliament meets, as sought by Sistani, would require leaders from each of Iraq’s three main ethnic and sectarian groups to commit to the political process and swiftly resolve their most pressing political problems, above all the fate of Maliki.

Allies of Maliki said Sistani’s call for a quick decision was not aimed at sidelining the premier but at putting pressure on all political parties not to drag out the process with typical infighting with Iraq facing disintegration. Even so, they acknowledged Sistani was not happy with Maliki’s policies.

“It is other groups telling Sistani they cannot accommodate Maliki for a third term. Sistani doesn’t want to get involved in who is the next prime minister, but there has to be progress,” said one official from Maliki’s State of Law list.

The roadmap is far from smooth. Kurds have yet to agree on a candidate for president and the Sunnis, long riven by intense rivalries and shaken by the loss of their cities to militants, are divided among themselves over the speaker’s post.

Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and outfitted by the United States at a cost of some $25 billion, largely disintegrated in the north in the face of ISIL’s offensive.

Thousands of Shiite volunteers have responded to an earlier call by Ayatollah Sistani for all Iraqis to rally behind the military to defeat the jihadist threat.

CAIRO — Gunmen killed four Egyptian policemen in the restive northern Sinai on Saturday, a security source said, with police blaming the attack on “takfiri” jihadist militants.

Militants in the Sinai Peninsula have stepped up attacks on troops and police since the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July.

A security source said the men were killed “on the road between the towns of Rafah and El Arish in north Sinai when takfiri elements forced the pickup they were driving to stop, made the four policemen get out and opened fire on them”.

The policemen had been returning to their posts after the weekend, the source said, adding that the attackers fled into the desert.

Most militant attacks have hit the north of the mostly desert Sinai Peninsula, but they have also extended their reach to Cairo and the Nile Delta.

Saturday’s shooting came just hours after bombings killed two people in a Cairo suburb.

The makeshift devices in a telecommunications building under construction in the October 6 suburb were detonated by a mobile phone signal, police told AFP.

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

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Syrian rebels can help weaken jihadists fighting in Iraq, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday as Washington unveiled plans to boost Syria’s opposition with $500 million in arms and training.

The top US diplomat flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with the Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba before meeting for more than three hours with Saudi King Abdullah to discuss the widening crisis in Iraq and Syria.

King Abdullah has consistently called for greater US military support for the moderate Syrian rebels, whom the Sunni Gulf kingdom has long backed.

But amid concerns about a spillover from Iraq where Islamic militants have seized a swathe of northern territory, the king “did share with the secretary some steps the kingdom is taking to address its concerns about the threat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) extremists, a State Department official told reporters.

He refused to go into specifics, but stressed both the US and Saudi Arabia believed Iraq had to form a new government rapidly in order to confront the Sunni Islamic militant threat.

“The moderate opposition in Syria... has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against ISIL’s presence... not just in Syria, but also in Iraq,” Kerry said.

The White House said Thursday it intends to “ramp up US support to the moderate Syrian opposition” as part of a $1.5 billion initiative to bolster stability in Syria’s neighbours Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Jarba, leader of the Syrian National Coalition, welcomed the huge US boost to his forces, battling to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 ISIL ‘one entity’ 

He told Kerry that his Sunni rebels were “urging their Iraqi counterparts not to seek common cause with ISIL”, the US official said.

“ISIL is one entity,” the State Department official told reporters flying with Kerry to Ireland after the meetings in Jeddah had ended.

“So weakening ISIL on one side of the border inherently is going to weaken ISIL all over,” he said. But he stressed Kerry was not hinting that the Syrian opposition should have a role in fighting ISIL inside Iraq.

The US assistance would go to what the White House has called “appropriately vetted” members of the Syrian opposition.

Although the United States has provided some $2 billion in humanitarian aid, Obama has so far shied clear of providing heavy weapons, fearful they could fall into the hands of jihadists.

Jarba visited Washington in May to plead for arms, especially anti-aircraft missiles, to help the rebels defend themselves from air strikes and barrel bomb attacks by Assad’s regime.

The rebels have found themselves fighting on two fronts, as jihadists belonging to Al Qaeda and the ultra-hardline ISIL have flourished in the chaos.

ISIL has now triggered international alarm by capturing parts of five Iraqi provinces, pressing ambitions to set up a wider Islamic state straddling Iraq and Syria.

Washington has been increasingly concerned that the jihadists’ battlefield role on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border will play into the hands of the Assad regime.

The Saudi king has also been an outspoken critic of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, accusing him of excluding Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority.

US officials say Washington is calling on its Sunni allies to use their influence with Iraqi leaders to unite and quickly form a government, with a Tuesday deadline looming for the new parliament to meet and start the process of choosing a speaker, president and prime minister.

The State Department official said “it was not impossible” for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites to put forward their candidates for the vital positions by Tuesday.

But he also pointed out that numerous deadlines have been missed over the years, amid the tumult of Iraqi politics.

In a de-facto agreement, the presidency is usually held by a Kurd, the speaker is Sunni and the prime minister is a Shiite.

DUBAI — Saudi King Abdullah, in a Ramadan message on Saturday, vowed to crush Islamist militants threatening the kingdom, the state news agency reported, saying the world’s top oil exporter would not tolerate “a band of terrorists”.

The remarks came two days after the monarch ordered all necessary measures to protect the country against potential “terrorist threats” resulting from turmoil in neighbouring Iraq, where Sunni Islamist militants have captured some cities from the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.

“We will not let a band of terrorists who have taken religion as a disguise behind which they hide private interests to terrorise the protected Muslims, to touch our homeland or any of its sons or its protected residents,” King Abdullah said in a message at the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

Saudi Arabia crushed Al Qaeda after the Islamist militant group began a campaign of bombings and attacks on vital installations and expatriate compounds in the kingdom.

The US-allied kingdom has been rattled by a lightning advance through Iraq by Sunni militants spearheaded by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant — aided by other Sunni Muslim militants, tribal leaders and remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party — which seized swathes of the country this month.

Saudi Arabia shares an 800km  border with Iraq.

The birthplace of Islam, it sees itself as a champion of pure Sunni Muslim values and regards Shiite Iran as its main regional foe.

ADEN — Al Qaeda gunmen opened fire on an army position in Yemen’s southeast Saturday, sparking a clash that killed two soldiers and four attackers, a military official told AFP.

The dawn clash in Hadramawt province lasted an hour and left three more soldiers wounded.

The assault comes two days after suspected Al Qaeda gunmen briefly seized Sayun airport in Hadramawt in a deadly assault just as a civilian airliner was landing, before the airfield was retaken by the army.

The attack left eight soldiers, nine civilians and six jihadists dead.

Hadramawt’s rugged terrain provides hideouts for militants of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, considered by Washington as the jihadist network’s most dangerous affiliate.

Meanwhile, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi said in a speech marking this weekend’s start of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, that his country is “fighting terrorism on behalf of the whole world” and that “our vast fight against terror will continue”.

The army launched a ground offensive against Al Qaeda in late April in two southern provinces further west — Abyan and Shabwa.

The operation aims to expel the militants from smaller towns and villages in the two provinces that escaped a previous sweep in 2012.

It has “foiled the terrorists’ project to create a global training camp for them in Yemen,” state news agency Saba quoted Hadi as saying.

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

Although government forces have captured several major towns, analysts say the army’s gains may have been the result of a tactical retreat by Al Qaeda in coordination with Yemen’s powerful tribes.

CAIRO — Egypt’s military said Saturday that devices it claimed it invented to detect and cure AIDS and Hepatitis C need six more months of testing.

The army had earlier promised to reveal the technology to the public this coming Monday after making what experts dismissed as an outlandish claim last February.

At a news conference then, the head of the army’s engineering agency said the military had produced an “astonishing, miraculous scientific invention” that could detect AIDS, hepatitis and other viruses without taking blood samples and also purify the blood of those suffering from the diseases.

The claim caused uproar among scientists and the public, with many pointing out that it had not been properly verified. It was also lampooned in a famous satirical programme that has now been taken off the air.

The claim hit a sensitive nerve in Egypt, where Hepatitis C is an epidemic. Some studies estimate that up to 10 per cent of 86 million Egyptians have it, making it the country with the highest prevalence in the world.

In a press conference held in a military hospital in Cairo Saturday, a military doctor said the devices needed further tests before they could be released to the public.

“Scientific integrity mandates that I delay the start of the public release until the experimentation period is over, to allow for a follow up with patients already using it,” Egypt’s state news agency MENA quoted Maj. Gen. Gamal Al Serafy, director of the Armed Forces Medical Department, as saying.

Serafy said doctors had already started testing one of the machines, the so-called “Complete Cure Device”, on 80 Hepatitis C patients who were also being treated with medication.

Saturday’s news conference notably dropped any mention of the devices as a cure for AIDS, only referring to hepatitis.

The original claim in February raised concerns that the military’s offer of seemingly inconceivable future devices would draw Egypt back into a pattern of broken promises by successive rulers who would frequently announce grand initiatives that failed to meet expectations.

Generals working on the project and pro-military media adopted a defensive stance over the matter, insisting that the invention would be released to the public and that any criticism of it was part of a foreign plot to rob Egypt of a major scientific victory.

Serafy said the armed forces will set up a medical centre to treat the viruses in the Suez Canal province of Ismailiya to carry out the tests and declare results.

WASHINGTON — The suspected ringleader of a deadly 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi arrived in the United States on Saturday in the custody of US authorities.

Four Americans including US ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed on September 11, 2012, when gunmen stormed the US consulate, and set it on fire and a CIA outpost was also targeted, in an attack that shocked Washington and has become a highly charged political issue.

“Ahmed Abu Khatallah arrived in the District of Columbia [Washington] this morning to face prosecution for his alleged role in the September 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya,” Department of Justice spokesman William Miller said.

Khatallah was scheduled to appear in court later in the day, he added.

The US State Department has identified Khatallah as a senior leader of Ansar Al Sharia, a Libyan Islamist group it brands a “terrorist” organisation responsible for a spate of attacks and assassinations.

US commandos captured Khatallah — who could face the death penalty — earlier this month in a covert raid on Libyan soil and he was transferred to the United States after being interred on a US navy vessel.

Special forces, working with FBI agents, carried out the stealth operation to seize Khatallah — whom the US has accused of being the attack ringleader — under cover of darkness and withdrew without losses. Libya accused Washington of violating its sovereignty.

The raid two weeks ago represented a victory for President Barack Obama, who has faced intense criticism over his administration’s handling of the Benghazi assault and its aftermath.

Khatallah was flown to Washington by helicopter shortly after sunrise from the navy warship the New York, where he has been held since his high-profile capture, The New York Times reported, quoting US government officials.

The suspect was being held under tight security in a federal courthouse in the US capital, the Times said.

Several charges 

US federal prosecutors have charged Khatallah with murder, carrying a weapon and offering material support to “terrorism”, according to an indictment. The first charge potentially carries the death penalty.

The charges reflect accounts from Libyan officials and witnesses who have singled out Khatallah as allegedly taking part in the assault that day.

Khatallah had been seen in public often since and gave an interview to The New York Times last year, striking a defiant tone over a strawberry frappe at a cafe in a luxury hotel in Benghazi.

But US officials have dismissed suggestions that the suspect was “hiding in plain sight” or that the operation to capture him could have been conducted much sooner.

The Benghazi attack raised questions about security at US missions worldwide and has been the subject of fierce political debate. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton faced hostile questioning before lawmakers over the issue.

Republicans alleged that the White House failed to respond decisively and then tried to hide some facts in the grisly episode.

The Obama administration, in turn, has accused critics of politicising a tragic event and says that it has divulged all the details of the episode.

GAZA — Some 40,000 public servants hired by Hamas went on strike in Gaza on Thursday in a pay dispute that could test the resilience of the new Palestinian government, formed just weeks ago under the Islamist group’s unity pact with President Mahmoud Abbas.

All government offices in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were closed as a result of the one-day strike, but hospital emergency rooms remained open and police continued to patrol the streets.

The new government, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, infuriated public workers on Hamas’ payroll by saying it would vet them before paying out salaries — a process that could take months.

The wage dispute has shown the fragility of the reconciliation agreement signed in April under which a government of technocrats was formed with the task of holding a national ballot within six months.

Earlier this month, Gaza’s public sector union suspended protests that lasted nearly a week, saying it would resume its action if its members were not promptly paid.

Hamas hired the employees after seizing the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to the Western-backed Abbas in 2007, a year after winning a Palestinian election.

“This strike is a first step and an initial warning to the unity government,” said Mohammed Seyam, the chairman of the Hamas-hired workers’ union in the Gaza Strip.

“We want to be recognised as employees of the Palestinian Authority and merged into the main salary list. If there was no response from the unity government we will escalate our protests,” he told Reuters.

Kidnappings add to pressure on unity

Apart from the salary row, the apparent abduction of three Jewish students in the West Bank, which Israel has blamed on Hamas, is also threatening the recent reconciliation between Palestinian rivals.

Officials loyal to Abbas have warned the unity deal could fail if Israeli charges against Hamas were authenticated. The group has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.

But Abbas is also facing growing resentment because his security services have been collaborating with their Israeli counterparts in the search to locate the three missing Israelis.

Activists rallied in Ramallah, the Palestinians’ political capital, demanding an end to security coordination and hurled stones at one police station.

Hamas-hired workers on strike are especially resentful because Abbas’ Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has been paying its own 70,000-strong workforce in Gaza, even though the majority of them no longer worked under Hamas rule.

Hamas itself has struggled to pay its staff in recent months due partly to a continued rigid blockade imposed on Gaza by both Israel and Egypt — one of the reasons why the group decided to sign the accord with Abbas.

At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, at least 40 patients gathered outside out-patient clinics closed by the strike.

“We support the rights of employees to receive their salaries but we also want to get medical treatment. Unless my daughter is treated the condition of her broken arm may worsen,” said Talal Awad.