Region

GAZA — Islamist Hamas handed control of two government ministries in Gaza to members of the new Palestinian unity government on Wednesday, a further sign of reconciliation between the rival factions after the collapse of peace talks with Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in the Cabinet on Monday in a deal with Hamas that elicited a US pledge to work with and fund the new administration, setting Washington on a collision course with Israel, which has shunned it.

Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Abbas’ Fateh forces in a brief civil war in 2007. Numerous past fence-mending efforts fell through over power-sharing disputes.

The new government’s main aim is to facilitate presidential and parliamentary elections to be held within six months, after which a permanent administration is set to take over.

In Gaza, new Cabinet ministers Saleem Al Saqqa, a Gaza lawyer, and Mufeed Al Hassayna, a US-educated engineer took over from outgoing Hamas ministers respectively at the Justice department and the housing and public works ministry.

The moderate Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and depends on foreign aid, appears to have banked on Western acceptance of a 16-member Cabinet of what he described as politically unaffiliated technocrats.

Ehab Bessaiso, spokesman for the new administration, said ministers in the West Bank had already assumed their posts and only two more ministries in Gaza remained for handover in the coming days.

But he said the new Cabinet’s ability to function would be harmed by Israeli curbs on officials wishing to cross Israel to travel between the two separated Palestinian territories and called for international help to press Israel to remove the ban.

“Restrictions on movement are an attempt to undermine the work of the unity government. It was the first declared step by Israel but it is a tough one and it will affect the mission of ministers so we call on the international community to compel Israel remove these unjust measures,” Bessaiso said.

Setting a policy in line with US and European Union demands, the Western-backed Abbas said his new administration would continue to honour agreements and principles at the foundation of a peace process with Israel.

“The whole world has welcomed the new government, which includes neither Fateh nor Hamas members, and only Israel has stood against [it],” Bessaiso said.

The United Nations on Tuesday also lauded the formation of the Palestinian unity government and the European Union voiced preparedness to work with it.

Still, while no longer in government, Hamas will maintain ultimate power in Gaza. The unity government will tackle the day-to-day problems of Palestinians only. Decisions about diplomacy and security will be taken elsewhere, and no further peace negotiations are on the horizon.

Long overdue elections

Acting on the agreement with Hamas, Abbas called on the Central Elections Committee to “immediately” begin preparations for the elections. A presidential election was last held in 2005 and a parliamentary vote in 2006.

Political rifts between Hamas and Abbas’ more secular Fateh faction worsened in 2007, when Hamas ousted Fateh from the Gaza Strip, and have repeatedly scuppered any chance of holding elections.

“I hope you [election committee] coordinate with the government, which will use all its capabilities to help prepare for a fair and free general election,” Abbas said in a statement.

In an effort to regain trust among Gaza residents and the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al Hamdallah asked his Cabinet members to enable a gradual return of government employees in Gaza to their jobs. In 2007, Abbas’ administration ordered them to boycott Hamas control of their offices.

The roughly 20,000 government employees appointed by Hamas since 2007 will now be vetted by a committee before they can be added to the new government’s payroll. Meanwhile, 20,000 Hamas security men will have their posts reviewed by an Egyptian-led Arab security committee.

AMMAN — Jordanians and truck drivers who were stuck at the Libyan-Egyptian border on Wednesday passed the Salloum border crossing into Egypt and are on their way to the Kingdom, the Foreign Ministry said. 

The ministry’s spokesperson, Sabah Al Rafie, said on Wednesday that the Egyptian authorities issued an exceptional decision to allow two Jordanian families to pass through the Salloum border with Libya. 

She explained that the Jordanian embassy in Cairo provided the necessary documents to facilitate their entry. 

Al Rafie also called truck drivers to avoid the Libyan-Egyptian borders, citing the current state of insecurity there.

TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya — Gunmen in Libya shot dead a Swiss national working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), fired a grenade at the prime minister’s office and tried to kill a renegade general in a series of attacks on Wednesday.

Anarchy is spreading in the North African oil-producing country where turmoil and political infighting have reigned since the 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Qadhafi. A plethora of armed militias operate at will beyond state authority.

In the east outside Benghazi, ex-general Khalifa Haftar survived an assassination attempt. In Sirte, a central city where the government has little control, gunmen killed a Swiss ICRC official. And in the capital Tripoli, gunmen fired a rocket propelled grenade at the office of Prime Minister Ahmed Miitig.

“The Swiss head of a sub-delegation of the ICRC was shot dead by unknown gunmen while he was leaving a meeting in Sirte with another two ICRC members,” said Salah Uddin, spokesman for the ICRC in Libya.

Nobody was hurt when the grenade hit the kitchen on the same floor as Miitig’s office, an aide said, noting that the premier was not there at the time.

Miitig was elected by parliament last month in a chaotic vote that many lawmakers disputed. Outgoing Premier Abdullah Al Thani has refused to hand over power, saying he wants to wait for a legal ruling on whether Maiteeq’s election was legitimate.

In an attempt to reinforce his authority, Miitig took over the premier’s office on Monday night, backed by a police escort.

Hours before the attack there, a suicide bomber blew up a sports utility vehicle packed with explosives at retired general Haftar’s base in Benghazi, according to his spokesman, Mohamed Al Hejazi, and army officials.

Haftar survived but four men from his force were killed and 23 others suffered minor wounds, a medical source said.

Speaking later on television, Haftar said he had been treated with minor wounds in a hospital. “I am well,” he told Al Oula station. “There will be a strong response,” he said, without elaborating.

His campaign to rid Libya of Islamists has triggered heavy fighting in Benghazi in the past few weeks, killing dozens of people.

Qadhafi’s one-man rule and years of unrest since have left Libya with few functioning institutions and no credible army to impose state authority on former fighters and Islamist militants who often use military muscle to make demands on the state.

TEHRAN — A quarter of a century after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death, Iran remains at a crossroads in navigating its way out of economic and diplomatic troubles, against a backdrop of political infighting.

Wednesday marks 25 years of the Islamic republic without its founder, the charismatic spiritual and political leader who remains ever-present on bank notes, portraits in public offices and countless posters.

Khomeini is held in awe by the revolutionaries for toppling a US-backed dynasty, with the stated mission of ridding Iran of what he deemed Western decadence and poisonous corruption in government.

The Islamic state that was founded in 1979 on a vision of establishing a Muslim democracy lives on, but the country faces daunting challenges, analysts say, as it grapples with major economic pain.

Dina Esfandiary, an Iran expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, believes Tehran’s regional influence has taken a beating, with support for its traditional ally Syria, which is engulfed in a civil war, proving exhausting.

Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is also distancing itself, she said.

Iran’s power in the modern Middle East stemmed from its steady economic growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fruit of policies implemented by two presidents before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Accused of economic mismanagement, Ahmadinejad, who was in office from 2005 to 2013, wrenched backwards. His populist policies and distribution of Iran’s wealth took the form of cash handouts in a controversial scheme that slashed subsidies.

That practice severely weakened the economy, Tehran-based analyst Saeed Laylaz said, prior to the strengthening of a harsh sanctions regime by world powers designed to coerce Iran into curbing its disputed nuclear drive.

“With no strong economy comes no geopolitical influence,” Laylaz said.

When Khomeini died in 1989, the country was grappling with the aftermath of an eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during which Iran’s economy was isolated.

Tehran was also trying to find a role on the international stage after descending on a path hostile to Western countries, particularly the United States, aggravated by dismay at their military support for Baghdad.

Today, President Hassan Rouhani faces a similar task in mending fences with the world after eight years of Ahmadinejad’s destructive foreign policy, which drove Iran into diplomatic wilderness and close to the edge of war.

Rouhani says the solution to Iran’s woes lies in bolstering a stagnant economy, which is struggling with double-digit unemployment and inflation, by resolving the decade-long nuclear standoff and proving to the world that Tehran’s atomic programme is peaceful.

“Inflation has steadily slowed down and Rouhani’s technocratic government is... tackling the task at hand. But he will need to secure significant sanctions relief for his policies to work,” Esfandiary said.

Iran’s self-declared moderate president must also overcome domestic critics of reconciliation with the West and those who view any sort of compromise on what Tehran says are its nuclear rights as a red line.

In addition to navigating frictions within the multifaceted political system, Rouhani is also treading a fine path in implementing a promise of more social freedom, which helped him win the presidency last summer.

While Khomeini rejected the technical means of Western civilisation, Khamenei has warned against the “invasion” of Western cultural values, which he says pose a threat to those of the Islamic republic.

BEIRUT — US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Lebanon’s politicians on Wednesday to overcome their “deeply troubling” stalemate and elect a new president to help respond to the damaging fallout of civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Kerry, on a brief visit to Beirut, also announced more aid to help Lebanon and other countries in the region struggling to cope with millions of Syrian refugees.

“Lebanon’s security for years has been of paramount concern to the United States, and that is why I have to say that the current political stalemate here in Lebanon is deeply troubling,” he said after meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam.

Lebanon has been without a president since May 25, when Michel Sleiman’s six-year term expired. Attempts by politicians to pick a successor have foundered on longstanding divisions exacerbated by tensions over the Syrian war.

Political rifts have been accompanied by sectarian violence including bombs, gunbattles and rocket fire. Salam’s government also faces widening budget deficits and a growing strain on services such as electricity, water, health and education from more than 1 million Syrian refugees in a country of 4 million.

“Lebanon needs and Lebanon deserves to have a fully empowered, fully functioning, complete government. We hope the Lebanese parliament will select a president quickly,” Kerry said.

The presidency, allocated to the Maronite Christian community under Lebanon’s sectarian division of power, is one of the three main political offices alongside the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the parliamentary speaker, a Shiite Muslim.

The war in Syria has split Lebanon’s Christians just as it has divided Muslims. Shiite Hizbollah — a powerful militant group and political force in Lebanon — has sent fighters to reinforce Assad, a fellow ally of Shiite Iran, while some Lebanese Sunnis have joined Syria’s mainly Sunni rebels.

Aid for refugees

Kerry announced more than $290 million in additional aid for UN agencies and non-governmental organisations working with the nearly 3 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

Some $51 million of the funds, the largest chunk of the aid, will go to helping Lebanon which hosts the highest concentration of refugees as a percentage of population in the world.

Unlike some of Syria’s other neighbours, Lebanon does not have formal refugee camps, leaving many families to find refuge within host communities.

More than $35 million of the additional funds will go to helping refugees in Jordan, $15 million to Turkey and the same amount to Iraq, while $4.5 million will support Egypt, the State Department said.

The power of the presidency, once the leading political office in Lebanon, was eroded under the accord which ended Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, handing greater influence to the government and prime minister.

A State Department official had said earlier that Kerry would renew a commitment by the United States to develop the capabilities of the Lebanese army to secure its borders and restore calm in parts of the country.

Lebanon has only two neighbours: Israel, with which it remains formally in a state of war, and Syria, where the conflict between President Bashar Assad and rebels is now in its fourth year.

Kerry visited Lebanon a day after Syria held a presidential election widely expected to deliver a sweeping victory for Assad and a third seven-year term in office. Syrian officials have already described the predicted victory as vindication of Assad’s three-year campaign against those fighting to oust him.

“With respect to the elections that took place, the so-called elections, the elections are non-elections, the elections are a great big zero,” Kerry said.

“They are meaningless, and they are meaningless because you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have the ability to vote, where they don’t have the ability to contest the election, and they have no choice.”

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Bashar Assad has been re-elected Syria’s president with 88.7 per cent of the vote after a poll labelled a farce by rebels fighting to overthrow him, whose outcome was never in doubt.

The other candidates in Tuesday’s vote — Hassan Al Nuri and Maher Al Hajjar — won 4.3 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Al Lahham said.

“Congratulations to the Syrian people for their choice and decision,” he said. “Syria has its leader and its captain, who will lead the ship to the shore of safety and security.”

But Omar Abu Leyla, a rebel spokesman in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, said “the Syrian people have made their decision, and will continue in their revolution, whatever the cost.

“After three years, it is impossible to go back, until we get our demands, which were freedom and justice,” he told AFP via the Internet.

Minutes after the announcement, state television showed people taking to the streets in Damascus to celebrate. Many chanted, some with the Syrian flag wrapped around their shoulders.

Celebratory shots fired by Assad supporters killed at least three people in the capital and wounded dozens more, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The election was held only in the roughly 40 per cent of Syrian territory controlled by the regime, and among expatriates.

An official said turnout reached 73.42 per cent, or 11.6 million people out of 15.8 million called on to vote.

Pro-government newspaper Al Watan said millions had voted, “defying terrorism and its mortars, rockets, car bombs and suicide attackers, to prove the legitimacy” of Assad for a third seven-year term.

However, opposition activists were quick to claim people had voted out of fear not conviction.

Earlier, Assad “thanked all the Syrians who turned out en masse to vote”.

The US said it was a “disgrace” to hold an election in the midst of a three-year-old war that has killed more than 162,000 people and driven millions from their homes.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Beirut on Wednesday, described the vote as a “great big zero”, and urged Assad allies Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s militant group Hizbollah to end the war.

With millions having fled their homes and the country, Kerry announced $290 million in humanitarian aid for Syria and countries hosting refugees.

“The conflict is the same, the terror is the same, the killing is the same.”

But opposition activists have criticised Washington for failing to take decisive action over the conflict, despite its repeated calls for Assad to step down.

And in a swipe against the administration, former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told CNN he had retired last month after almost three years working with the opposition because he could no longer defend US policy.

“We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat,” Ford said.

He was alluding to jihadists in rebel-held areas, whose presence has made Washington reticent to arm moderate rebels.

But Ford said moderates “need to get the tools they must have to change the balance on the ground, at least in some localities.”

He also said rebels are now not just fighting the regime, but also jihadists.

Meanwhile, Assad ally Moscow, which welcomed the election as a step towards a political solution, called for the speedy appointment of a new UN envoy.

Lakhdar Brahimi, who brokered two rounds of abortive peace talks between Damascus and the opposition this year, stepped down on Saturday saying his mediation had reached stalemate.

He had infuriated Damascus by criticising Tuesday’s election as an obstacle to his peace efforts.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin, who has just taken over the Security Council’s chairmanship, said it would be “fundamentally flawed” to ignore the need for a quick successor to Brahimi to relaunch peace efforts.

“We believe that, after just two five-day rounds of talks, to say that things are so stalemated that there is no need to continue those negotiations, this is not to us entirely persuasive.”

Moscow, which sent observers to monitor the election, has infuriated the West by four times vetoing draft Security Council resolutions in defence of its Damascus ally.

For his part, Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth tweeted: “Syria scrapes bottom in quest for legitimacy pulling in election observers from N(orth) Korea, Iran, Russia and Zimbabwe.”

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations on Tuesday welcomed the formation of a new Palestinian unity government that came about thanks to a reconciliation deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ and Hamas Islamists.

“The secretary-general welcomes, on the basis of assurances provided both publicly and to the United Nations, the announcement on June 2 by President Mahmoud Abbas of the formation of a government of national consensus headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“The secretary general [Ban Ki-moon] takes note of the renewed assurances yesterday by President Abbas that the government will continue to abide by those commitments of recognition of Israel, non-violence and adherence to previous agreements,” he said.

Washington’s announcement that it would work with the new Palestinian government has set the United States on a new collision course with Israel, which has shunned the new Cabinet in the Palestinian territories.

Setting a policy in line with US and European Union demands, the Western-backed Palestinian leader Abbas said his administration would continue to honour agreements and principles at the foundation of a peace process with Israel.

Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Abbas’ Fateh forces in a brief civil war in 2007. 

Numerous reconciliation efforts, largely brokered by Egypt, have failed over power sharing.

“The United Nations stands ready to lend its full support to the newly formed government in its effort to reunite the West Bank and Gaza,” Dujarric said.

He added that UN chief Ban “counts on a constructive approach by regional stakeholders, and hopes the international community will not relent in its support to the development of Palestinian economy and Israeli-Palestinian peace”.

President Barack Obama’s administration said on Monday it plans to work with and fund the new Palestinian unity government, and Israel immediately voiced its disappointment with the decision also criticised by some US lawmakers.

The European Union has also expressed a willingness to work with the new Palestinian government. 

TRIPOLI — Libya’s new premier was Tuesday challenging his rival, who refuses to step down, after deadly fighting between a rogue ex-general, who claims his forces represent the army, and Islamists in their Benghazi stronghold.

Former general Khalifa Haftar has exploited the political confusion to rally support among the public, politicians and the army, analysts say, after he unleashed an offensive in the eastern city last month to purge Libya of the Islamists he brands “terrorists”.

“When the state is absent, whoever emerges will be considered the country’s last hope,” said Othman Ben Sassi, a member of the now-disbanded Transitional National Council, the political arm of the rebellion that overthrew Muammar Qadhafi’s regime in 2011.

On Monday, as clashes raged in Benghazi between militants and forces loyal to Haftar, Prime Minister Ahmed Miitig convened his ministers despite the head of the outgoing government, Abdullah Al Thani, refusing to recognise him.

Last Wednesday, Thani said he would let the judiciary decide whether he should cede power to the new cabinet, citing appeals filed by MPs against the chaotic General National Congress (GNC) vote in May that elected Miitig.

It took place days after gunmen stormed the GNC, the Islamist-dominated interim parliament, to interrupt an earlier ballot.

The supreme court is due to examine the appeal on Thursday, according to lawmakers.

Rival coup claims 

The GNC’s vice-president, liberal MP Ezzedine Al Awami, called Miitig’s installation as prime minister a “coup d’etat.”

The Islamist-backed authorities have, for their part, accused Haftar of launching a coup and denounced him as an outlaw.

The dissident general denies this, saying he has no political ambitions and insisting, after thousands of Libyans rallied behind him, that he has a mandate from the people to pursue his offensive to crush “terrorism”.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has urged Libyans to fight Haftar and his so-called National Army, labelling him an “enemy of Islam”.

Neither of the rival premiers has publicly endorsed the ex-army general’s campaign, although they have both stated their determination to combat “terrorism”, while stressing that all operations must take place within the law.

Reflecting doubts about Haftar’s real intentions, Ben Sassi said the rogue general had already been preparing his campaign before the latest political crisis erupted in Tripoli.

“The division within the ruling elite and the total absence of the state in Benghazi has given him more influence and support, allowing him to replace the state using the regular army and even the air force,” which has sided with him, he said.

Benghazi violence 

Miitig, a 42-year-old businessman from Misrata without political affiliations, is backed by the Islamists in the GNC, which liberals have largely boycotted for months.

He would be Libya’s fifth prime minister since Qadhafi was toppled and killed in the NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Miitig is due to lead the country to legislative elections on June 25, with the new parliament replacing the GNC and forming a new Cabinet.

Observers say he is backed by the Islamists in parliament, who consider him the best guarantor of their political survival ahead of this month’s vote.

“The face-off between Miitig and Al Thani illustrates the showdown between the Islamists and the liberals,” said Iyad Ben Omar, a Libyan analyst.

“Both of them are clinging to power with the elections expected to take place in just a few weeks, which proves that they are pursuing their own political agendas,” he added.

On the ground, schools and banks were shut in Benghazi Tuesday and the streets deserted after the worst fighting there since 76 people were killed in mid-May, when Haftar launched his “Operation Dignity”.

Twenty-one people were killed on Monday, with hospital officials in the port city, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising, saying at least 11 soldiers were among the dead. Another 112 people were wounded.

The number of Islamists killed was not known.

BAGHDAD — Violence across Iraq, including shelling of the conflict-hit city of Fallujah, killed 33 people Tuesday, as politicians haggle over forming a new governing coalition after April elections.

Iraq is going through its worst protracted spell of violence since it emerged from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that killed tens of thousands on 2006 and 2007, with near-daily attacks plaguing Baghdad and much of the north and west.

The worst of Tuesday’s bloodshed was concentrated in Fallujah, which has been under the control of anti-government fighters since the beginning of the year.

Shelling in the city, which lies just a short drive west of Baghdad, killed 18 people and wounded 43 others, according to Ahmed Shami, a doctor at Fallujah hospital.

The shelling, which hit a market, municipal offices and in the vicinity of the hospital itself, struck at around midday, said an AFP journalist in the city.

Fallujah has been out of government hands for months, with militants holding sway. The army has regularly shelled the city, and attempted multiple ground offensives in a bid to re-take it.

The army insists it is targeting militant hideouts, but residents and human rights groups say civilians are bearing the brunt of the shelling.

Human Rights Watch also said last month that authorities have likely violated the laws of war by targeting Fallujah hospital.

The crisis in the desert province of Anbar, which borders Syria and of which Fallujah is a part, began in late December when security forces dismantled a longstanding protest camp maintained by the province’s mainly Sunni Arab population to vent grievances against the government.

Militants subsequently seized parts of the 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.

They have held all of Fallujah since, and protracted battles have continued in Ramadi.

Meanwhile, attacks in and around Baghdad killed nine people, security and medical officials said.

Five killed in Iskandiriya

In Iskandiriya, militants killed five people — two with guns and three with knives — along a main road in the town before fleeing the scene. It was not clear why the victims were targeted.

The town lies in a confessionally mixed area south of Baghdad dubbed the “Triangle of Death” for its brutal violence during the peak of the sectarian war.

In the capital itself, a civil servant was shot dead, while separate attacks on Baghdad’s northern outskirts killed three people.

Further north, attacks in Salaheddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces killed six people, four of them policemen, officials said.

Figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government in Baghdad showed more than 900 people were killed last month.

An AFP tally puts the death toll so far this year at more than 4,000.

Officials blame external factors for the rise in bloodshed, particularly the civil war in neighbouring Syria, and insist wide-ranging operations against militants are having an impact.

But the violence continues unabated, with analysts and diplomats saying the Shiite-led government needs to do more to reach out to the disaffected Sunni Arab minority to reduce support for militancy.

The bloodshed comes with political leaders jostling over forming a new government following April 30 elections that left incumbent premier Nouri Al Maliki in pole position to retain his post despite vocal opposition.

DAMASCUS — Syrians voted on Tuesday in an election expected to deliver an overwhelming victory for President Bashar Assad but which his opponents have dismissed as a charade in the midst of Syria’s devastating civil war.

Rebel fighters, the political opposition in exile, Western powers and Gulf Arabs say no credible vote can be held in a country where swathes of territory are outside state control and millions have been displaced by conflict.

State television showed long queues of people waiting to vote at polling stations in areas under state control, as well as crowds waving flags and portraits of the president. Assad, looking relaxed and wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie, voted at a central Damascus polling station with his wife Asma.

For many Syrians politics took second place to the overriding yearning for stability after three years of war which have killed more than 160,000 people.

“We hope for security and stability,” said Hussam Al Din al Aws, an Arabic teacher who was the first person to vote at a polling station at a Damascus secondary school. Asked who would win, he responded: “God willing, President Bashar Assad.”

Islamist insurgents battling to overthrow the 48-year-old president, who has ruled Syria since succeeding his father 14 years ago, dismissed the vote as “illegitimate”.

But the Islamic Front and allied groups pledged not to target polling stations and urged other rebels to do the same.

Damascus residents said mortar shells struck residential areas in the capital on Tuesday, most likely fired from rebel suburbs. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Assad is running against two relatively unknown challengers who were approved by a parliament packed with his supporters, the first time in half a century that Syrians have been offered a choice of candidates.

But neither of Assad’s rivals, former minister Hassan Al Nouri or parliamentarian Maher Hajjar, enjoys much support.

“It’s a tragic farce”, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “The Syrians in a zone controlled by the Syrian government have a choice of Bashar or Bashar. This man has been described by the UN secretary general as a criminal,” he told France 2 television.

‘National duty’

But for many Syrians exhausted by war, particularly the minority Alawite, Christian and Druze communities, the Alawite president offers a bulwark against radical Sunni Muslim insurgents and the promise — however remote — of some form of stability.

At the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, thousands of people stood in the sun in a tightly packed queue to vote at a polling station set up for Syrians inside Lebanon — despite warnings from the government in Beirut that any refugees who crossed back into Syria would lose their refugee status.

All those who spoke to Reuters said they planned to vote for Assad, giving him a third seven-year term.

“I came and made the decision to do this for the sake of myself and my country,” said Ghada Makki, 43. “It is a national duty to vote so that we overcome the crisis happening in Syria.”

Some Damascus residents reported only a trickle of voters at polling stations in the centre of the city, but an activist who contacted people in Damascus and the Druze province of Suweida said the numbers of people voting was “scary”.

“Lots of people have gone to vote and I’m not talking about the shabbiha,” he said, referring to pro-Assad militia.

An hour before voting was due to end at 7pm (1600 GMT), state media said polling stations would stay open until midnight because of what officials said was heavy voter turnout.

Foreign Minister Walid Al Mouallem, draped in a Syrian flag as he voted, dismissed the foreign criticism. “No one in this world can impose their will on the Syrian people,” he said. “Today the path to a political solution begins”.

‘Political message’

Information Minister Omran Zoabi, speaking on the eve of the vote, told Reuters the scale of the turnout would deliver a political message to Assad’s foes.

“The armed terrorist groups have increased their threats because they fear [a high level of] participation,” he said, referring to the rebels.

“If these terrorist groups had any popularity it would be enough to ensure the failure of the election,” he said. “But they realise they have no popularity, so they want to affect the level of participation so they can say the turnout was low.”

Tens of thousands of Syrian expatriates and refugees cast their ballots last week in an early round of voting, although the number was just a fraction of the nearly three million refugees and other Syrians living abroad.

The election took place three years after protests first broke out in Syria, calling for democratic reform in a country dominated since 1970 by the Assad family. Authorities responded with force and the uprising descended into civil war.

Assad’s forces, backed by allies including Iran and Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah, have consolidated their control in central Syria but the insurgents and foreign jihadi fighters hold broad expanses of northern and eastern Syria.

Peace talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition National Coalition, which the opposition said must be based on the principle of Assad stepping aside in favour of a transitional government, collapsed in February.

Since then Assad’s forces and Hizbollah fighters have seized back control of former rebel strongholds on the Lebanese border, cutting off supply lines for weapons and fighters, and the last rebels have retreated from the centre of the city of Homs.

The withdrawal from Homs has focused attention on the northern city of Aleppo, formerly Syria’s commercial hub, where fighting has escalated in the last few weeks.

Rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas of Aleppo killed 50 people over the weekend, while barrel bombs dropped by army helicopters on rebel-held areas of Aleppo have killed nearly 2,000 people this year, a monitoring group said.

State media said on Monday that a car bomb killed at least 10 people in Homs province.