Region

BEIRUT — Government forces flushed opposition fighters from their last redoubts in northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier on Sunday, capturing two villages and restoring government control over the border crossing, activists and state media said.

The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar Assad. The counter-offensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of bitter recent setbacks in Syria’s more than three-year-old civil war.

Islamic rebel factions launched their surprise assault in Latakia in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string of villages in the lush, mountainous terrain. The military, nervous about an incursion in a bastion of government support, dispatched reinforcements to blunt the rebel advance and eventually turn the tide.

On Sunday, after months of bloody clashes, army troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite military group Hizbollah seized the seaside hamlet of Samra before also taking the village of Kassab and its adjacent border crossing, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He said there were minor clashes still taking place west of Kassab, a predominantly Armenian Christian village whose residents fled after the rebels seized control.

The Syrian army command issued a statement saying that it “restored security and stability to Kassab”. It also said the operation “smashes the illusions” of the rebels securing a sea port in Samra or a buffer zone along the border to use as “a base for launching terrorist acts against the Syrian people”.

The government refers to those trying to topple Assad as “terrorists”.

Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV, which has a reporter embedded with Syrian troops, broadcast live footage from Kassab that showed a blown-out stone building with a smoldering wooden staircase. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms milled in the streets, and the rocky hills typical of the area could be seen in the background.

Engineering units were clearing mines and dismantling booby traps in Kassab, Syria’s pro-government Al Ikhbariya TV said.

The government made dislodging rebels from Latakia a priority for strategic as well as symbolic areas. The coastal province is a stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and losing control of even a portion of it was an embarrassment to the government.

Now in its fourth year, Syria’s conflict has spilled far beyond the country’s borders to shake the foundations of the Middle East.

Last week, an Al Qaeda breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which holds much of northern and eastern Syria, overran huge swaths of neighbouring Iraq and captured the country’s second-largest city.

In the wake of its onslaught, the jihadi group has pillaged Iraqi military bases, carting off Humvees, ammunition and other weapons. The militants have transferred some of that materiel to Syria to bolster their forces there.

The Syrian air force has not targeted Islamic State territory with the same ferocity as it has other rebel factions. But on Saturday and Sunday, government aircraft bombed facilities belonging to the extremist group in Hassakeh province bordering Iraq and in the groups’ stronghold of Raqqa province, the observatory said.

Abdurrahman said the Syrian military appeared to be wary of the Islamic State possessing high-grade military equipment. Among the places targeted by the air strikes was Shaddadi, a town just across the Syrian border from Iraq that activists say is a hub for the movement of men and equipment across the frontier.

Also Sunday, the state news agency said that some 230 prisoners were freed under a general amnesty declared by Assad following his re-election in Syria’s June 3 vote. SANA said the prisoners were released from lockups in the central cities of Homs and Hama, as well as the northeastern province of Hassakeh.

The observatory confirmed that detainees were released Sunday, although it could not provide exact numbers. The group said that more than 1,500 people — a mix of anti-government activists and common criminals — have been freed under the presidential amnesty since it was announced on June 9.

International rights groups say there are tens of thousands of anti-government activists, protesters, opposition supporters imprisoned in the country. It is not clear how many of them will be covered by the pardon.

BAGHDAD — Iraq said Sunday it had “regained the initiative” against militants who seized vast swathes of territory, as former UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi blamed the crisis on global neglect of Syria’s civil war.

Washington responded to the sweeping unrest by deploying an aircraft carrier group to the Gulf, but Iran has warned against foreign military intervention in its Shiite neighbour, voicing confidence that Baghdad can repel the onslaught.

The militants, spearheaded by the powerful Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, have overrun all of one province and chunks of three more since launching their offensive late Monday.

Security forces have generally performed poorly, with some abandoning vehicles and positions and discarding their uniforms, though they seem to be recovering from the initial onslaught and have started to regain ground.

Iraqi officers have said their forces were now starting to repel the militants, and that soldiers had recaptured two towns north of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta, said during a televised news conference on Sunday that Baghdad’s forces have “regained the initiative” and killed 279 “terrorists” in the past 24 hours.

Iraqi officials often announce large militant tolls, with no way of independent verification, and downplay their own casualties.

Officials added that security forces and tribal fighters repelled a militant assault in the strategic town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border. It provides a critical corridor for militants to access conflict-hit Syria.

Ten people were killed in militant shelling of the town, and 18 anti-government fighters also died in ensuing clashes.

Volunteer forces 

Baghdad’s embattled forces will be joined by a flood of volunteers after a call to arms from top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, but a recruitment centre for volunteers came under attack on Sunday, killing six people.

US President Barack Obama said he was “looking at all the options” to halt the offensive that has brought militants within 80 kilometres of Baghdad’s city limits, but ruled out any return of American troops to combat in Iraq.

Washington has, however, ordered an aircraft carrier group into the Gulf in response.

Obama has been under mounting fire from his Republican opponents over the swift collapse of Iraq’s security forces, which Washington spent billions of dollars training and equipping before withdrawing its own troops in late 2011.

Iran warned Sunday that “any foreign military intervention in Iraq” would only complicate the crisis, voicing confidence that Baghdad “has the capacity and necessary preparations for the fight against terrorism”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday Iraq had not asked for its help.

But in surprise comments he added that Iran may “think about” cooperating with its archfoe the United States to fight the militants in Iraq, despite the lack of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington for more than three decades.

Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican critic of the American president, also called for direct engagement with Tehran, warning that the unrest in Iraq would give extremists a staging area for “the next 9/11”.

‘Syria conflict to blame’ 

Brahimi, the former UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, told AFP the international community’s neglect of the conflict in Syria had precipitated the Iraq crisis.

“It is a well-known rule: A conflict of this kind [in Syria] cannot stay confined within the borders of one country,” said Brahimi, who resigned as UN-Arab League representative to Syria in May.

As Iraqi troops began to drive back the militants, they found grisly scenes, amid reports of summary executions of Iraqi security forces members the militants captured.

Troops found the burned bodies of 12 policemen as they recaptured the town of Ishaqi in Salaheddin province, a police colonel and a doctor said.

Photos posted online were also said to show militants summarily executing dozens of captured members of the security forces in the province.

The situation on the ground has been further complicated as forces from the autonomous Kurdish region have made territorial advances.

A senior official said Sunday that Kurdish peshmerga forces had taken control of one of two official border crossings with Syria earlier in the week.

Kurdish forces have also seized the disputed ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk and surrounding areas, as well as other territory.

Amid the confusion, Iraq launched an air strike on a convoy of Kurdish forces Saturday night near Khanaqin, one area of eastern Iraq where Kurds have moved in, killing six people.

It was not immediately clear if the Kurdish troops were targeted specifically, or it was mistaken identity.

Although violence has eased in Baghdad, apparently as militants concentrate their efforts elsewhere, the capital has not been spared, with a Sunday afternoon bombing killing nine people.

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities seized Sunday two retail outlets owned by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has faced a relentless crackdown since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year.

The businesses targeted were the Seoudi supermarket chain and Zad department store, respectively owned by Abdel Rahman Seoudi and Khairat Al Shater — both leaders of the blacklisted Brotherhood.

“Security forces are implementing the law,” Cairo’s police chief, Brigadier General Ali Al Demerdash, said in relation to the moves.

“A committee formed in accordance with a court ruling decided to seize Zad, which is owned by Khairat Al Shater, and Seoudi, which is owned by Abdel Rahman Seoudi, because the two leaders are financing the Muslim Brotherhood,” he told reporters.

A court in September banned the Muslim Brotherhood from operating and ordered its assets seized. It also prohibited any institution branching out from or belonging to the Islamist movement.

Shater, the Brotherhood’s number two who headed its financial affairs, is behind bars and on trial for a range of charges, some of them punishable by death.

He was arrested along with Brotherhood chief Mohamed Badie following the ouster of Morsi in July 2013.

Seoudi is a wealthy businessman but little is known about his role in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The movement, which swept all elections since the fall of strongman Hosni Mubarak up to the election of Morsi in June 2012, was blacklisted in December as a “terrorist group” by the military-installed authorities.

RIYADH — Newspapers in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia on Sunday blamed Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki for unrest sweeping his country, saying his “sectarian” polices are taking Iraq to a “devastating civil war”.

Militants spearheaded by powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined by supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, have since Monday overrun a large chunk of northern and north-central Iraq.

“Policies of sectarianism and monopolisation of power that have been followed by Maliki... have led Iraq to the brink of a devastating civil war,” Alriyadh newspaper wrote.

Relations between Riyadh and Iran-backed Maliki have been strained. In March, Maliki accused the kingdom and neighbouring Qatar of supporting terrorism, a charge that drew harsh criticism from Riyadh.

“It is inevitable that a new political leadership enjoying a broad national consensus should be sought if [Iraq] wants to avoid sliding into a war similar to the one raging in neighbouring Syria,” Alriyadh said.

Iraqis should be wary of “the fire of sectarianism that would burn everyone”, the daily said.

Saudi columnist Abderrahman Al Rashed also lashed out at Maliki, accusing him of doing anything to stay in power.

“Nouri Al Maliki is worse, and more dangerous, than ISIL and Qaeda. He is a bad person that is ready to commit massacres in order to stay in power,” he wrote in Asharq Al Awsat.

He argued that ISIL is only part of the uprising that includes a “majority” of Sunni Arab tribes and former military personnel disbanded after the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam.

“The presence of ISIL could not hide the main factors in Iraq’s conflict: a third of the population are punished by the regime for sectarian” reasons, he wrote, referring to the Sunni Arab minority, mostly disgruntled since the regime changed.

Al Jazirah daily also accused Maliki’s of sectarianism.

“Maliki says he failed because of a conspiracy... This is a bad excuse, because this person is sectarian up to his neck,” it wrote.

BENGHAZI/TRIPOLI, Libya — A renegade Libyan general launched a fresh offensive on Sunday against Islamist militants in the eastern city of Benghazi, sparking some of the worst fighting in weeks in which at least four people were killed and power supplies disrupted.

Libyan authorities are struggling to restore order across the vast desert nation ahead of June 25 parliamentary election. The situation remains especially chaotic in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and cradle of the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qadhafi three years ago.

Retired general Khalifa Haftar has declared war against militants in Benghazi and several army units have joined him. The Tripoli government says he has no authority to act but its orders are routinely ignored in much of the country, especially the east, as rival militias and tribal groups vye for control.

Haftar’s troops, backed by tanks and rocket launchers, attacked several suspected camps of Islamists in western areas of Benghazi on Sunday, forcing dozens of families to flee. War planes could also be heard circling above the city.

Benghazi and much of eastern Libya suffered power outages after rockets hit a power station near the city’s airport, the state electricity firm said.

There has been speculation among analysts that Haftar has the support of neighbouring Egypt and of Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, which like the West is worried about Islamist militants exploiting the chaos in Libya.

Haftar told Saudi-owned Arabiya television that his forces were being supported by Libya’s neighbours to help secure the country’s borders, according to the channel’s website. He did not elaborate and he later issued a denial of any such support.

At a news conference held outside Benghazi, Haftar praised Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as the right man for the job. Egypt has cracked down hard on the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which Haftar on Sunday branded as an “international spy network”.

Haftar also accused Qatar of fuelling Libya’s chaos. “There is no doubt Qatar supports the militias in Libya,” he said.

Separately, he told Arabiya television Qatar was hampering the formation of a national army and police force in Libya.

Qatar has come under pressure from Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain over its backing for the Muslim Brotherhood. All three withdrew their ambassadors to Doha in March, causing an unprecedented public rift in the Gulf.

The latest fighting in Libya comes less than two weeks before a parliamentary election that ordinary citizens hope will bring an end to the chronic political infighting that has paralysed decision making since the last vote in summer 2012.

Western powers and Gulf countries fear that Islamists will turn Libya into a battlefield or transit point for fighters heading for conflict zones such as Egypt’s Sinai, Syria or sub-Saharan countries like Mali.

The security fears are particularly acute for Benghazi, home to several oil firms and the focus of Haftar’s campaign.

Haftar’s spokesman Mohamed El Hejazi said Haftar had warned the Islamists against shipping in arms via the commercial port of Derna, east of Benghazi. Derna is a focal point for Ansar Al Sharia, a militant group designated as terrorist by the United States, and other insurgents.

Haftar was once close to Qadhafi but fell out with him and then played a role in the 2011 uprising. In February, he stirred rumours of a coup by appearing in army uniform to call for a presidential committee to be formed to govern till an election.

BEIRUT — Syria has freed after 21 years in jail an ex-horse rider known to have been an equestrian rival of one of President Bashar Assad’s late brothers, reports said Sunday.

The release of Adnan Qassar is part of a wide-reaching amnesty that Assad decreed last week, and has seen some 1,500 people freed from the war-ravaged country’s prisons, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“In 1993, Adnan Qassar was one of the top horse riders in Syria and the Arab world. He won a horse race against Bassel Al Assad,” who at the time was being groomed for the presidency, said Observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman.

“Qassar was thrown in Saydnaya jail [near Damascus] for his ‘crime’,” said Abdel Rahman.

Aks Alser, a Syrian opposition activist website, also reported Qassar’s release, and said he had been accused of “possessing explosives, and of trying to assassinate Bassel Al Assad.”

Qassar was jailed “without trial,” it added.

A year later when Bassel Al Assad died in a traffic accident, “Qassar was dragged out of his cell to a public square, beaten and then thrown back in jail. It took them 21 years to release him”, said Abdel Rahman.

The Assad clan has ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than 40 years.

“Qassar was not a political activist. But in Syria, no one is allowed to be better at anything than the Assads,” Abdel Rahman said.

Qassar was set free as part of a wide-reaching general amnesty that President Assad decreed last week.

So far, some 1,500 people have been set free from jails across the country, most of them from Damascus, according to the observatory.

The amnesty is unprecedented because it pledges pardon and reduce sentences for people jailed under Syria’s controversial 2012 anti-terror law, which has seen tens of thousands of people jailed over political charges.

The regime has systematically branded armed and unarmed dissidents, including journalists, of being “foreign-backed terrorists”.

“Some of those released so far are prisoners of conscience, others were in jail over criminal charges,” Abdel Rahman said.

The number of those released so far pales in comparison to the estimated total of 100,000 people imprisoned, including some 50,000 held in security buildings dotted across the country.

Rights groups say torture and ill-treatment are systematic in Syria’s jails.

CAIRO — Egyptian police arrested Saturday a fugitive Sunni scholar who had been sentenced to death in absentia in a trial involving the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, state media reported.

Abdallah Hassan Barakat, a former senior academic at the prestigious Al Azhar University, was arrested at a checkpoint in Cairo, the official MENA news agency reported.

He was travelling in a car with his son and two of his brothers.

Barakat was among 10 fugitives sentenced to death earlier this month in a case in which Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohamed Badie and 37 others, all in custody, are awaiting a verdict on July 5.

They are accused of inciting violence in which two people were killed in the Nile Delta city of Qaliub, only days after the military ousted president Mohamed Morsi last July.

Under Egyptian law, Barakat is now entitled to a retrial.

After the army ousted Morsi, Badie and thousands of the deposed president’s supporters were arrested in a police crackdown that also left more than 1,400 dead.

Hundreds have already been sentenced to death in often speedy trials.

DAMASCUS — A bomb attack targeting a weapons bazaar in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border killed 30 “terrorists” on Saturday, state television reported.

“A big explosion hits a terrorist arms market in Mayadeen, killing 30 terrorists and wounding dozens of others,” the channel reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a different account, alleging a “bomb planted in the car of an arms dealer” caused a series of blasts, as nearby munitions exploded.

“At least eight civilians were killed and 21 others were wounded,” said the Britain-based group, which distributed amateur video showing burnt corpses.

Just 80 kilometres from the Iraqi border, the town is under the control of rebel groups, including Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front, that have been fighting the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

ISIL is the same cross-border group which has spearheaded a lightning offensive in neighbouring Iraq this week that has seen militants sweep down from second city Mosul towards Baghdad.

A rebel spokesman from Syria’s Deir Ezzor province contested the state television version, and told AFP the blast was a car bomb planted by ISIL that killed at least 15 civilians in a street market.

ISIL’s fighters in Syria have been under attack by rival rebels since the start of the year.

They have been driven out of much of the northwest, but retain control of the city of Raqa up the Euphrates Valley from Deir Ezzor.

They have tried repeatedly to extend their area of control to the Iraqi border to unite their forces in the two countries.

In Deir Ezzor province, one of the main groups fighting ISIL has been Al Nusra Front, which late Friday reportedly brought five Hummers and three other vehicles captured from the Iraqi army into Syria.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Three Israeli teenagers, one of them also a US citizen, have been kidnapped in the occupied West Bank, presumably by Palestinians, the army said on Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the Palestinian Authority responsible for their well-being, but Palestinians baulked at the idea they were to blame for the disappearance inside an Israeli-controlled area of the West Bank.

The suspected abductions come as Israel piles pressure on a new Palestinian government, formed early last week under a reconciliation deal between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel’s foe, the Islamist movement Hamas.

The three, students at two Jewish seminaries, went missing late Thursday as they hitchhiked between Bethlehem and Hebron.

They have been named as Eyal Yifrah, 19, and two 16-year-olds, Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaer.

“We believe that they have indeed been kidnapped by presumed Palestinians,” a senior officer told journalists, without elaborating on who was behind the abduction.

He said the search is being carried out in coordination with security forces from the Palestinian Authority, and “tens of Palestinians” have been arrested in the process.

He added substantial reinforcements had been brought in, including special forces and an airborne brigade, to participate in the search around Hebron, in the southern West Bank.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon visited the site of the disappearance.

“Because we have no information to the contrary, we are assuming that they are still alive,” he told reporters.

Troops closed the main crossings into the Gaza Strip to prevent the teenagers from being smuggled into the territory, where the Islamist Hamas movement remains dominant despite the formation of the Palestinian unity government.

Air strikes on Gaza 

A rocket was fired from Gaza into Israel early on Saturday without causing any casualties or damage, the army said.

In response, Israel launched air strikes on southern Gaza, “hitting a site of terrorist activity and a weapons depot”, an army statement said.

Hamas said Apache gunships had fired on a training camp of its armed wing in Khan Younis and empty ground in Rafah, on the Egyptian border, without causing casualties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State John Kerry Friday, and said he holds Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the teenagers’ safety.

Kerry also telephoned Abbas, a Palestinian source said.

A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s security services, General Adnan Al Damiri, called Netanyahu’s suggestions “mad”.

Damiri said the PA had no authority over the sprawling Gush Etzion settlement bloc, which is under full Israeli control.

“Even if there was an earthquake, Netanyahu would blame the Palestinian Authority,” he told AFP.

Israel has held Abbas responsible for all violence emanating from Gaza and for West Bank security since he signed a reconciliation deal with Hamas and the new government was formed.

Another Palestinian official said the authority’s security services were “cooperating” with Israeli agencies to gather information on the teenagers’ disappearance.

A statement in Arabic attributed to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group claimed the kidnapping late on Friday.

The statement’s authenticity could not be verified, however, and it contained spelling errors.

BAGHDAD — Soldiers armed with shovels are digging in just 25 kilometres north of Baghdad as others man new checkpoints, bolstering the Iraqi capital’s defences against a militant assault.

A major militant offensive launched on Monday, spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group but also involving supporters of executed leader Saddam Hussein, has overrun a large chunk of northern and north-central Iraq.

The advance swept to within less than 100 kilometres of the capital, raising fears among residents that the city itself would be next, though militants have since been pushed back by security forces in areas farther north, making an assault on Baghdad appear less likely.

ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammed Al Adnani has vowed its fighters would press on to Baghdad and Karbala, a city southwest of the capital that is considered one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.

Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani on Friday urged Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni militants.

Trucks carrying hundreds of volunteers were among a large number of vehicles passing through the key main checkpoint north of Baghdad, as security forces carried out spot checks.

The volunteers sang patriotic songs as they were driven to a nearby training centre.

Security forces performed poorly when the militant onslaught was unleashed, but they now appear to be recovering from the initial shock and have begun to regain ground.

They are regrouping despite scenes of disarray in the early days of the offensive, when soldiers shed their uniforms for civilian clothes and abandoned weapons and other equipment.

And they have retaken areas north of the capital that were among the closest militants got to Baghdad, officers said.

Bolstered by militiamen 

Regular security forces are bolstered by militiamen in preparing to defend the capital.

“Our forces stand as one rank beside the army and the police,” said Hussein Al Tamimi, a local leader of the Sahwa militia forces, which fought alongside American troops against militants in previous years.

“Where are they?” he asked of the militants.

“We are waiting for them and looking for them. We want them to come so we can finish them.”

Dhia Ali Al Tamimi, a local tribal leader, also spoke out in support of the security forces, telling AFP that “everyone must protect the land and the state”.

“Life is completely normal in our areas and attacks by these terrorists don’t scare us,” he said.

Inside Baghdad itself, security forces have also set up new checkpoints, joining a slew of others.

Brigadier General Saad Maan has told AFP that “we put in place a new plan to protect Baghdad”.

It “consists of intensifying the deployment of forces, and increasing intelligence efforts and the use of technology such as [observation] balloons and cameras and other equipment”, Maan said.

He also said coordination between the various security forces had been increased.

Ihsan Al Shammari, a politics professor at Baghdad University, said he does not expect the militants to reach Baghdad, and that “their end will be far from the capital”.

But if they did reach Baghdad, it would devolve into street-to-street fighting, Shammari added.

Inside the capital, life is still relatively normal in the Kadhimiyah area, the city’s northernmost area and home to a revered Shiite shrine visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Kadhimiyah shop-owner Abu Khodr was defiant, saying that “standing up to terrorism is a national duty for everyone in the world, not just in Iraq”.

“We don’t fear them at all,” he said of the militants. “Do we fear the enemies of God?”

A confident army Colonel Abduljabbar Al Assadi, inspecting the new defensive positions north of Baghdad, said: “Our forces are ready for any emergency.”

Assadi said the checkpoint had already been attacked twice. In one attack, his arm was broken.

“Despite that, I refused to leave the checkpoint, and I will not abandon it,” he said.