Region

VIENNA — The UN nuclear watchdog has received an explanation from Iran about the development of detonators that can help set off an atomic explosive device, and has asked for further clarification, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

How Iran responds to the UN agency’s questions about so-called Exploding Bridge Wire (EBW) detonators is seen as an important test of its willingness to cooperate fully with a long-stalled probe into suspected atomic bomb research.

Iran says allegations of such activity are baseless, but has offered to help clear up the issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based UN body.

The United States says Iran’s readiness to tackle the IAEA’s concerns will be central to the success of efforts to reach a broader diplomatic accord to end the decade-old nuclear dispute, which Tehran and major global powers aim to sign by late July.

Iran provided information to the IAEA about the fast-functioning detonators, which it says are for civilian use, in late April, the sources said.

They said the IAEA had asked Iran follow-up questions, but they did not give details of these and there was no immediate comment from the IAEA or Iran.

“Answering questions about EBW is significant — assuming the answers are substantive and sincere — because it gets to the heart of one of the sticky issues involving allegations of past nuclear work of a possible military dimension,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank.

Iran wants an end to sanctions that are hurting its oil-dependent economy. After years of an increasingly hostile standoff with the West, last year’s election of the pragmatist Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president paved the way for a thaw.

Iran and the IAEA agreed in November on a step-by-step process to address allegations that Tehran may be seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. The Islamic Republic says its nuclear programme is a peaceful energy project.

As one of seven measures to be implemented by May 15, Iran agreed to provide information on the EBW detonators.

The mere fact that Iran agreed to address the issue was seen as a breakthrough as the IAEA has tried for years, mostly in vain, to investigate allegations that Iran may have worked on designing a nuclear warhead.

It was, however, one of the least difficult issues that were detailed in a landmark IAEA report in late 2011 that provided a trove of intelligence information pointing to past activities in Iran relevant to nuclear weapon development.

Western diplomats and experts caution that Iran must still do more to address concerns about what the IAEA calls the possible military dimensions of its nuclear programme.

Iran and the IAEA have yet to agree on new measures to be implemented after May 15, the diplomatic source said.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia announced seven more deaths from the MERS coronavirus Saturday, as the World Health Organisation prepared for an emergency meeting over worries about the spread of the disease.

The Middle East Respiratory System coronavirus has now killed 133 people and infected 473 in the kingdom since it first appeared in 2012, accounting for the bulk of cases registered across the globe.

In its most recent tally, which was updated to midday on Friday, the Saudi health ministry said three men aged 94, 51 and 42 had died from the disease in the western region of Jeddah.

It added a 74-year-old man had died in the city of Taef, while a woman, 71, and two men aged 81 and 25 respectively, had died in the capital Riyadh.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that broke out in Asia in 2003, infecting 8,273 people and killing nearly 800 of them.

Like SARS, it appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering coughing, breathing difficulties and a temperature, but MERS differs in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Experts are struggling to understand the disease and there are currently no vaccines or anti-viral treatments for MERS.

The announcement of the latest fatalities in Saudi Arabia came the day after the WHO said it would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the spread of the virus.

The UN health agency’s emergency committee has already met four times to discuss the mysterious coronavirus since it surfaced in 2012.

“The increase in the number of cases in different countries raises a number of questions,” spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva on Friday, without giving further details of the aim of the new talks.

MERS cases have also been reported in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even the United States, with most involving people who had travelled to Saudi Arabia or worked there, often as medical staff.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel’s best known writer, Amos Oz, says that Israelis behind a wave of hate crimes against Muslims and Christians are “Hebrew neo-Nazis,” Haaretz newspaper reported on its website Saturday.

It quoted the award-winning author as saying terms such as “price tag”, widely used to describe attacks on Palestinians and others by Jewish extremists, are sanitised euphemisms.

They are “sweet names for a monster that needs to be called what it is: Hebrew neo-Nazi groups”, Haaretz quoted Oz as telling guests Friday at an event marking his 75th birthday.

He said there was a difference between perpetrators of such events in Israel and elsewhere.

“Our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the support of numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who give them what is in my view pseudo-religious justification,” Haaretz quoted him as saying.

Earlier Friday, vandals spray painted anti-Christian graffiti on a Jerusalem church, despite security forces stepping up security around religious sites ahead of a visit by Pope Francis later this month.

“Price tag... King David for the Jews... Jesus is garbage” was written in Hebrew on the wall of St George’s Romanian Orthodox Church near an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood.

Israeli forces also said “Death to Arabs” was found written on a house in the Old City in East Jerusalem, and swastikas were scrawled on the wall of a West Jerusalem apartment.

After Hebrew graffiti reading “Death to Arabs and Christians and to everyone who hates Israel” was daubed on its Notre Dame complex in Jerusalem on Monday, the Roman Catholic Church demanded Israeli action.

“The bishops are very concerned about the lack of security and lack of responsiveness from the political sector, and fear an escalation of violence,” the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said.

The attacks on Christian property come amid a rise in anti-Arab property crimes. Israeli ministers held an emergency meeting Wednesday, pledging to enforce harsh measures against perpetrators.

Although Israeli forces have made scores of arrests, there have been nearly no successful prosecutions for such attacks, and the government has come up under mounting pressure to authorise the Shin Bet internal security agency to step in.

The Pope’s visit to the region is scheduled to begin in Jordan on May 24.

SANAA — Yemeni security forces were on high alert Saturday for more Al Qaeda reprisals over an offensive against them, after militants killed five presidential guards and ambushed the defence minister’s convoy.

The interior ministry said security in Sanaa had been boosted, particularly around government installations and embassies.

It said new checkpoints had been set up around the city to “block all terrorist acts” and that security forces were working “around the clock... to preserve security in the capital”.

There were also fears of reprisals in the central province of Baida, one of three where the army has been pursuing an offensive against jihadists since April 29.

On Friday, suspected Al Qaeda militants attacked the presidential palace, killing five guards and triggering a fierce gunfight as they hit back because of the government offensive.

President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi was not in the palace when gunmen attacked a checkpoint outside the compound, a security source told AFP.

Hadi, whose government has stepped up its war on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — a merger between the network’s Saudi and Yemeni branches — uses the palace only for meetings.

Sanaa has been on alert for days, and tensions rose after the army said troops had entered Azzan, a jihadist bastion in southern Shabwa province, prompting the United States to close its Sanaa embassy on Thursday.

That night, security forces killed Al Qaeda commander Shayef Mohammed Said al-Shabwani, one of AQAP’s most wanted leaders suspected of masterminding the abduction of Western diplomats, in a firefight near the presidential palace.

On Friday, Defence Minister Mohamed Nasser Ahmad and two senior security officers escaped unscathed when gunmen ambushed their convoy as they returned from a tour of the south.

Ahmad has vowed to crush Al Qaeda in Yemen, and on Friday told troops in Shabwa and Abyan that the offensive will continue until “the last criminal and evil” militant is killed.

Also on Friday, the US State Department said that two US embassy officers shot dead two armed civilians who tried to kidnap them last month in Sanaa, and were removed from Yemen shortly afterwards.

The New York Times said a lieutenant colonel with the elite US Joint Special Operations Command and a Central Intelligence Agency officer were involved in the April 24 shooting.

At the time, Yemen’s defence ministry indicated a foreigner had shot dead two gunmen who had tried to abduct him.

AQAP is regarded by Washington as Al Qaeda’s most dangerous franchise and has been linked to failed terror plots in the United States.

Yemen’s army says its offensive against AQAP strongholds in the contiguous provinces of Shabwa, Abyan and Baida has inflicted heavy losses on the jihadists.

On Monday, the interior ministry warned that “huge losses” in jihadist ranks “will push Al Qaeda to commit hysterical and desperate acts”.

Officials said Saturday the situation was relatively calm in Shabwa and Abyan, but state news agency Saba reported without giving details that “seven terrorists” had been killed in the two provinces.

A tribal source said that as government forces close in on AQAP strongholds in Shabwa and Abyan, the militants had taken refuge in Al-Kur, a mountainous area linking them and Baida.

TUNIS — Censure motions against two Tunisian ministers accused of promoting “normalisation” with Israel were withdrawn late Friday, just before deputies in the Islamist-dominated parliament were to vote on them.

The motions were filed last month against Tourism Minister Amel Karboul and Deputy Interior Minister for Security Ridha Sfar, with documents purporting to show that the latter gave written authorisation for Israeli tourists to enter Tunisia earlier this year.

Karboul was also accused of receiving an Israeli delegation.

It is an open secret that Israelis have been visiting Tunisia for years on the quiet.

And the parliamentary debate came just a week ahead of an annual pilgrimage that draws Jews from around the world to Tunisia’s ancient Ghriba synagogue.

A vote had been expected in the evening but “the two motions of censure have been withdrawn”, assembly president Mustapha Ben Jaafar announced to the assembled deputies.

“It was not our intention to attack the ministers. We wished to say that the normalisation of ties with Israel is a red line,” explained centrist deputy Iyed Dahmani, an avid supporter of the motions just hours earlier.

Leftist deputy Faycel Jadlaoui said the decision not to vote on the motions was due to the responses of the two ministers and the fact that half of the 80 signatories to the motion had withdrawn their support.

However, the news came as a surprise to some deputies in the chamber and led to heated exchanges.

‘We do not deal 

with Israel’ 

Karboul denied receiving an Israeli delegation. She also defended her comments supporting the entry of tourists regardless of nationality, to boost a key sector of the Tunisian economy that was battered by the turbulence that followed the 2011 revolution.

And Sfar defended himself against charges of promoting normalisation with Israel, saying he merely followed procedures that have been in force for years.

“The case is purely administrative... We do not deal with Israeli papers,” Sfar said, explaining that the tourists coming from Israel had been issued with Tunisian passes, because Tunis does not recognise Israeli passports.

Sfar justified his authorising of the Israelis’ entry by the need to respond to an “international campaign” accusing Tunisia of discrimination.

Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa has tried to brush the matter aside, saying it is important the new tourism season is successful.

“Normalisation yes? Normalisation no? Let’s put these great affairs aside,” he said at the opening of an economic conference last month.

“Tourism professionals have advised that, for the tourist season to be a success, the Ghriba gathering must be a success.”

The debate came just weeks after Israeli tourists aboard an American cruise ship were denied entry.

In response, Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line announced its ships would not return to Tunisia in a potentially severe blow to a struggling economy three years after the ouster of autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

And earlier last week, Holland America Line announced that it was cancelling a port call by one of its ships on Saturday “due to ongoing issues regarding the requirements of visitor visas for some of our guests”.

While expressing disappointment that the itinerary had to be adjusted, the company said “we continue to work with local Tunisian authorities and expect that future planned calls will operate as scheduled”.

Like most other countries in the Arab world, the North African nation does not recognise Israel, primarily out of solidarity with Palestinian demands for a state of their own.

Many remember Israel’s deadly 1985 air strike on the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, then hosted by Tunisia, in which 68 people were killed. That was followed three years later by the assassination of the PLO’s number two, Abu Jihad.

But Tunisia is one of the Arab world’s most liberal countries, and still has a small Jewish population of about 1,500.

More than half are on the southern resort island of Djerba, where the Ghriba synagogue, the focus of the three-day pilgrimage that begins next Friday, is located.

RAMALLAH — A pro-Islamist newspaper was sold in the West Bank on Saturday for the first time in seven years, another sign of a Palestinian unity pact that prompted Israel to suspend peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

His Palestinian Authority (PA) permitted printers to roll out the tabloid, “Falasteen”, Arabic for Palestine, three days after Hamas Islamists in control of Gaza allowed a leading West Bank daily to be sold in their midst.

Abbas’ Fateh movement and Hamas announced a unity pact on April 23, with the stated aim of forming a joint government in five weeks, angering Israel and spurring it to shelve already faltering peace talks soon after.

Hamas rejects Israel’s existence and both Israel and United States regard the group as a terrorist organisation. It seized Gaza from Fateh forces in a brief 2007 civil war.

The Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, which Palestinians loyal to Abbas now seek, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, an independent state.

Israel occupied all three areas in the 1967 Middle East war, but withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and kept a siege on it. 

Iyad Al Qara, director general of Falesteen, said its reappearance in the West Bank was “a positive and important step towards pushing reconciliation forward”.

The newspaper was last sold in the West Bank in 2007 when ties ruptured over Hamas’ bloody seizure of control in Gaza, while Fateh retained control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Al Quds, the biggest-selling Palestinian daily in the West Bank, resumed sales in Gaza on Wednesday. The newspaper is printed in East Jerusalem and includes articles critical of a wide spectrum of political parties.

Abbas met Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal in Qatar last week in a further step to bolster the latest of a series of efforts to heal the Palestinian political rift.

Deep mistrust and enmity have derailed previous deals, with both sides struggling to reconcile Hamas’ commitment to fighting Israel with Abbas’ choice to negotiate with it.

BAGHDAD — Violence in Iraq, including the shelling of a militant-held city, a suicide bombing and shootings, killed 20 people on Saturday as officials tallied votes from last month’s parliamentary election.

The bloodshed is part of the worst protracted surge in unrest since a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian war killed tens of thousands in 2006 and 2007, sparking fears Iraq may be slipping back into all-out conflict.

Shelling in Fallujah, which has been held by anti-government fighters for more than four months, killed 11 people and wounded 20, according to Dr Ahmed Shami of the city’s main hospital.

The source of the fire was not immediately clear.

The casualties come a day after Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake areas near Fallujah, which lies just a short drive west of Baghdad, in preparation for an eventual assault.

Security forces claimed to have killed 50 militants in a series of operations around Fallujah Saturday, according to interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan, who added that they had also destroyed several insurgent hideouts.

For months, the authorities have trumpeted wide-ranging anti-militant operations, insisting they are making an impact, and have been quick to blame external factors such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria for the rise in bloodshed.

But analysts and diplomats say the Shiite-led government must also do more to reach out to the disaffected Sunni minority in order to undermine support for militancy.

And while officials have mooted an assault on Fallujah, such an operation is unlikely to occur soon, as security forces have struggled all year to regain territory in Anbar province, of which Fallujah is a part, from militants.

And they would face a major challenge to recapture the city without causing civilian casualties and significant damage to infrastructure.

The crisis in the desert province of Anbar, which shares a long border with Syria, erupted in late December when security forces dismantled a longstanding protest camp maintained by the province’s mainly Sunni Arab population to vent their grievances against the government.

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

Elsewhere Saturday, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a checkpoint in the town of Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding at least 20.

And separate shootings in the northern province of Nineveh killed two others.

HOMS, Syria — Syrians streamed back into the ruins of the Old City of Homs on Saturday, picking through the remains of their homes and trying to come to terms with the destruction.

Thousands of people walked through the devastated streets of their former neighbourhoods, some appearing shellshocked by the scale of the damage.

The influx came a day after the last rebel holdouts left the area under an evacuation deal that handed the Old City back to the government, granting it a symbolic victory.

The pullout leaves the rebels confined to a single district on the outskirts of Homs, Syria’s third city once dubbed “the capital of the revolution” against President Bashar Al Assad.

On Saturday, Homs provincial governor, Talal Al Barazi, declared the evacuated areas safe, after troops swept for explosives.

“Barazi announced that the Old City of Homs is safe and free of weapons and insurgents thanks to the sacrifices of the Syrian army,” state news agency SANA said.

Residents quickly returned to see what remained of their homes, and retrieve whatever was left behind.

Many were visibly distressed by the scale of destruction, with rubble strewn across streets and every building bearing scars from the conflict that wracked the central city once home to 1.6 million people.

Rebel forces in the Old City were under government siege for nearly two years before the deal to evacuate, and regime troops shelled the area almost daily throughout.

‘Horrible destruction’

“I promised my wife that I would bring her sewing machine, and that’s what I’m doing,” said Jamil Habib, a retired teacher aged 77.

He wept as he surveyed his house — rebels had punched large holes in the walls to allow them passage through buildings.

“The destruction is just horrible,” said 37-year-old Rima Battah, in the Hamidiyeh district of the Old City.

“My husband went to our house yesterday and found it destroyed. We came back together today to get our things,” she added, gesturing to the five large bags of possessions.

Dozens of families were doing the same, gathering whatever clothes and keepsakes could be salvaged.

Nawal Al Masri, 51, had worked in the Old City as a seamstress and returned to check on her former workshop.

“Everything is destroyed, all the sewing machines have been stolen, the fridge has been stolen, even the generator,” she said.

“I worked here for 30 years,” she added.

“There’s nothing left except one basket, in which I found a single pair of scissors.”

She said she planned to file a request for compensation from a $588,000 fund set up by the local chamber of industry.

Barazi told SANA he was forming committees of residents to assess the damage.

‘We will rebuild’ 

Some of those returning were already looking ahead to reconstruction.

“Like in Vietnam, or Japan, or Europe, we will rebuild after the war,” said Abu Rami Abaebu, a trader.

“It’s as if there had been an earthquake, but now it’s over.”

State media interviewed returning residents who expressed their gratitude to the army and Assad.

They filmed inside an Armenian church compound, part of which the rebels has used as a headquarters and field hospital.

In the courtyard, rebel graffiti remained, reading “Down with Assad,” and “the days are numbered, the end is coming”. Outside, a wall opposite had been painted with the flag of the uprising.

The evacuation deal involved the release of hostages held by rebels elsewhere in Syria, and the entry of aid to two towns under opposition siege.

A dispute over the aid delivery held up the deal, but on Friday assistance entered Nubol and Zahraa, and the final rebels left Homs.

The rebels were allowed to leave with some weapons and granted safe passage to opposition-held territory elsewhere in Homs province.

But the government has claimed the deal as a victory, less than a month before a presidential election expected to return Assad to office.

Elsewhere, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 100,000 civilians have fled the eastern province of Deir Ezzor due to fierce clashes between rival jihadist groups since the end of April.

And in Aleppo, residents have gone without water for a week after Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front cut supplies into rebel and regime-held areas of Syria’s second city, it added.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it had identified 32 new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), pushing the total number of infections in the country so far to 463.

Four people died of the disease on Wednesday and five on Thursday, taking the total death toll in Saudi Arabia to 126 since MERS, a form of coronavirus, was identified two years ago, the health ministry said in a statement on its website.

The rate of infection in Saudi Arabia has surged in recent weeks after big outbreaks associated with hospitals in Jeddah and Riyadh. The total number of infections nearly doubled in April and has risen by a further 25 per cent already in May.

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday the hospital outbreaks had been partly due to "breaches" in recommended infection prevention and control measures, but added that there was no evidence of a change in the virus's ability to spread.

Scientists around the world have been searching for the animal source, or reservoir, of MERS virus infections ever since the first human cases were confirmed in September 2012.

Of the new Saudi cases, 11 were in Jeddah, 14 in the capital Riyadh, one in Najran and one in Taif. There were four new cases in Medina and one in Mecca, cities that receive large influxes of Muslim pilgrims from around the world.

Ten of them had been in contact with people who had previously been diagnosed as having MERS, the ministry said.

In humans, MERS cause coughing, fever and pneumonia. Lebanon reported its first case on Thursday. Cases have also been reported in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman, Tunisia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain.

HOMS, Syria — The last rebels were pulling out from the centre of the battleground city of Homs on Thursday, handing a symbolic victory to Syrian President Bashar Assad ahead of a controversial election.

Rebels hit back in the historic heart of Aleppo, blowing up a luxury hotel turned army position after tunnelling under the front line, which divides the main city of northern Syria.

At least 14 soldiers and pro-government militiamen were killed in the explosion and its aftermath, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Three quarters of rebel fighters have already left the Old City of Homs under the unprecedented negotiated evacuation that began Wednesday, according to figures given to AFP by provincial governor, Talal Barazi

The rest were set to withdraw on Thursday afternoon, out of a total of 1,700 people being evacuated, mostly fighters.

The pullout following an army siege of nearly two years leaves the rebels confined to a single district on the outskirts of a city that what was once a bastion of the uprising.

Barazi said negotiations were well advanced for the rebels to leave that neighbourhood too in the coming weeks.

He said the fighters and some civilians evacuated with them were being bussed out to the opposition-held town of Dar Al Kabira, 20 kilometres north of Homs.

Barazi was able to visit his former office in the Old City on Thursday for the first time in three years.

Government troops played football on the square housing Homs’ landmark clock tower, once the scene of the city’s massive anti-government protests.

A soldier climbed onto the rooftop of a house and told AFP: “This is the first time I climb up here without fearing snipers.”

“Come on, shoot me!” he called out to another soldier, who took a photograph of him.

It is not the first deal between the government and the rebels — a number of ceasefires have been agreed on the outskirts of Damascus.

But it is the first time that rebel fighters have withdrawn from an area they controlled under an accord with the government.

The government allowed the remaining rebels in Homs to pull out with their personal weapons in return for the release of 40 Alawite women and children, an Iranian woman and 30 soldiers held hostage by rebels elsewhere in Syria, a rebel spokesman said.

The Britain-based Syrian observatory monitoring group confirmed that all the hostages had been released by Thursday afternoon.

The deal also involves the distribution of aid into Nubol and Zahraa, two Shiite, pro-regime towns in Aleppo province that are under siege by the rebels.

The negotiations were overseen by the ambassador of Syria’s close ally Iran.

‘Big game’ 

Abu Wissam, one of the last rebel fighters awaiting evacuation from the city centre, bemoaned the outside interests now at play in a conflict that had begun as an Arab Spring-inspired protest movement.

“I took part in the protests from very early on. During that time, there were no international agendas controlling the protests. Everyone acted freely and spontaneously,” he told AFP via the Internet.

“But now, everyone is moved like pawns in a chess game. The evacuation is a big game that has been in the planning” for many months by regional and international powers, he said.

There have been many sieges imposed by both sides in the three-year-old conflict but that of the Old City of Homs has been by the far longest.

Some 2,200 people were killed as near daily bombardment reduced the area to ruins.

The rebel pullout comes less than a month before a controversial presidential election, described as farce by Western governments and the opposition, that is expected to return Assad to office.

On a visit to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama, opposition chief Ahmad Jarba said the vote will give Assad “a licence... to kill his own people for many years to come”.

In Aleppo, the rebel attack claimed by the massive Islamic Front alliance completely destroyed the Carlton Citadel Hotel, just across the road from the city’s UNESCO-listed Citadel, which the army had been using as a frontline position.

A rebel offensive in July 2012 when they seized large swathes of Aleppo left the Citadel and nearby hotels which once thronged with foreign tourists on the front line of the deadly conflict.