Region

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia confirmed 26 more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed nearly a third of sufferers, and said 10 more people have died from the disease.

The confirmations follow Egypt’s announcement on Saturday that it had confirmed its first case of MERS in a man who had recently returned to the country from Riyadh, where he was working.

Saudi Arabia, where MERS was discovered around two years ago and which remains the country most affected, has now had 339 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 102 have been fatal.

The 143 cases announced since the start of April represent a 73 per cent jump in total infections in Saudi Arabia this month.

The new cases were announced in two statements published on the health ministry website on Saturday and Sunday.

The 10 confirmed on Saturday included seven in Jeddah, the focal point for the recent outbreak, two in the capital Riyadh and another in Mecca. Two MERS patients died.

The 16 further cases confirmed on Sunday included two in Riyadh, eight in Jeddah and another six in the northern city of Tabuk. Eight MERS sufferers died on Sunday.

The acting health minister, Adel Fakieh, said on Saturday he had designated three hospitals in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam on the Gulf coast as specialist centres for MERS treatment.

The three hospitals can accommodate 146 patients in intensive care, he said in comments carried by local press on Sunday.

Many Saudis have voiced concerns on social media about government handling of the outbreak, and last week King Abdullah sacked the health minister.

In Jeddah, some people are wearing facemasks and avoiding public gatherings, while pharmacies say sales of hand sanitisers and other hygiene products are soaring.

UNITED NATIONS — Syria maintains an ability to deploy chemical weapons, diplomats say, citing intelligence from Britain, France and the United States that could strengthen allegations Syria’s military recently used chlorine gas in its bloody civil war.

The comments reflect a growing conviction among Western capitals that President Bashar Assad has failed to come clean about Syria’s chemical weapons programme despite his promises to end it, and they insist the United States and its allies will resist calls by Assad to shut down a special international chemical disarmament mission set up to deal with Syria.

Syria denies it maintains the capacity to deploy chemical weapons, calling the allegation a US and European attempt to use their “childish” policies to blackmail Assad’s government.

But in a tacit acknowledgement of the original declaration’s incompleteness, Syria earlier this month submitted a more specific list of its chemical weapons to the international disarmament mission after discrepancies were reported by inspectors on the ground, officials said.

Under threat of US air strikes, Assad agreed with the United States and Russia in September to dispose of his chemical weapons — an arsenal that Damascus had never previously formally acknowledged — after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in August on the outskirts of the capital.

Washington and its Western allies said it was Assad’s forces who unleashed the sarin attack, the world’s worst chemical attack in a quarter-century. The government blamed the rebel side in Syria’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year.

The verification of Syria’s declaration on its poison gas arsenal and its destruction has been overseen by a joint team of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical arms watchdog.

Diplomats say Western governments have long suspected Syria did not declare all aspects of its chemical arms programme. But the envoys say they have kept silent on the issue to avoid giving Assad an excuse to curtail cooperation with the UN-OPCW mission and slow down an already delayed timetable for shipping toxins out of the country.

With more than 90 per cent of Syria’s declared chemical stockpiles now out of the country, Western officials have started to break their silence.

“We are convinced, and we have some intelligence showing, that they have not declared everything,” a senior Western diplomat told Reuters, adding that the intelligence had come from Britain, France and the United States.

When asked how much of its programme Syria has kept hidden, the diplomat said: “It’s substantial.” He offered no details.

Ambiguities and discrepancies

Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari dismissed the charge.

“These countries aren’t really reliable and their policies towards the implementation of the agreement between the Syrian government and the OPCW aren’t principled but rather childish,” he said in a mobile phone text message to Reuters.

“If they have some evidence they must share it with the OPCW rather than pretending to have secret evidence!”

Ja’afari said the three Western powers’ goal was to needlessly extend the UN-OPCW mission by “keeping the ‘chemical file’ open indefinitely so that they can keep exerting pressure and blackmailing the Syrian government”.

Another Western official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that while there was not 100 per cent certainty Syria maintains chemical weapons, the three Western powers agreed that there is a “high level of probability” that Syria deliberately under-reported the full extent of its chemical arms-related stockpiles.

He cited examples of large batch of a sarin precursor chemical going missing in Syria and Damascus’ unverified claims to have destroyed most of its mustard gas stocks before the UN-OPCW mission arrived in the country and other anomalies.

In interviews over the last two months with Western officials with access to intelligence about Syria, Reuters learned that topics of concern include deadly nerve agent ricin, mustard gas, precursor chemicals used to make sarin, and, more recently, the use of chlorine gas in Syria.

US and British officials have also spoken of ambiguities and problems with the Syrian chemical weapons declaration. US officials warned as early as November that intelligence suggested Syria may try to hide some toxins.

Suspicions that its declaration was incomplete deepened when Syria did not report to the OPCW having sarin, which was used in the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, or the type of rockets used to deliver an estimated 300 litres of the toxin.

The senior Western diplomat said Britain, France and the United States had provided information to the OPCW months ago, including on specific undeclared chemical weapons sites. He added that the three powers had also provided Assad’s staunch ally Russia with the intelligence but “they have not reacted”.

The OPCW had no immediate comment when queried. A Russian UN mission spokesman said he had no comment, though Moscow reiterated on Friday its position that claims about the Syrian government using chemical weapons were false.

BAGHDAD — The death toll from twin jihadist bombings that struck a Shiite political rally in the Iraqi capital ahead of next week’s parliamentary election has risen to 33, officials said Saturday.

Friday’s attack by a Sunni militant group came at the height of campaigning ahead of Wednesday’s polls, the first since US troops withdrew in late 2011 and with Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki seeking re-election amid the country’s worst violence since a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian war.

A car bomb followed by a suicide attack hit the rally for the Sadiqun bloc, the political wing of the Asaib Ahel Al Haq (League of the Righteous) militia, killing 33 people and leaving more than 100 wounded, security and medical officials said.

Officials had said earlier that 28 people died.

The League of the Righteous, a Shiite militia blamed in the past for killing US soldiers and kidnapping Britons, has been linked to groups fighting mostly Sunni rebels in Syria, whose civil war has split the Middle East’s sectarian communities, particularly in multi-confessional Iraq.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed the attack, saying it was “to avenge the league’s involvement in neighbouring Syria”.

ISIL, itself fighting in Syria, made the claim in a statement on jihadist forums hours after the attack.

The attack was “in revenge for what the Safavid militias are doing in Iraq and Sham [the Levant], killing and torturing and displacing Sunnis”, it said.

It used a pejorative term for Iraq’s Shiite majority, linking it to the Safavid empire that once ruled neighbouring, predominantly Shiite Iran.

Iraq heads to the polls on Wednesday with little sign of any respite in the bloodshed, and the country still looking to rebuild after decades of conflict and sanctions.

A number of Shiite blocs are vying with Maliki for votes in his traditional heartland of central and southern Iraq.

They include Sadiqun but also the Ahrar movement, which is linked to powerful cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, and the Citizens bloc, a formerly powerful political group seen as close to Iran.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM  — Nine months of US-driven diplomacy have left Israelis and Palestinians less hopeful than ever about a comprehensive peace agreement to end their century of conflict. Although a formula may yet be found to somehow prolong the talks past an end-of-April deadline, they are on the brink of collapse and the search is already on for new ideas.

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts have exposed vast differences: On sharing Jerusalem, resolving the situation of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, and even borders, the sides seem nowhere close to agreement. And Thursday, Israel said it halted the talks in response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision a day earlier to form a unity government with the Hamas movement, which Israel and the West consider a terrorist group.

“Unfortunately, under the current conditions, it is apparently not possible to reach ‘end of conflict’ — or, in more poetic language, a peace agreement,” said dovish Cabinet member Amram Mitzna, a former general in charge of the West Bank.

Mohammed Madani, a leading member of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fateh Party, said the Palestinian leader told visiting Israeli politicians that the Palestinians “cannot continue with talks in vain”.

He said the Palestinians will press with their applications for membership as a state with various United Nations and other world bodies, a strategy aimed at entrenching the view that all the area Israel captured in the 1967 war is a foreign country and not — as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have it — “disputed territory”.

The effort by Palestinians and their supporters to engineer an economic boycott of Israel also likely will grow.

And so will concerns that a third Palestinian uprising will erupt. This week, Fateh’s military wing issued a call for “armed resistance until the liberation of all Palestine” — language not heard from that quarter for years.

Some Israelis, like powerful Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, call for a punitive annexation of parts of the West Bank, which seems a hollow threat but inflames tempers further.

Israel’s more moderate political parties can be expected to try to topple Netanyahu, either forcing new elections or organising an alternative majority in the Knesset which would be more forthcoming with the Palestinians. It’s not inconceivable, given that they control almost half of the body, Israel’s right-wing is divided and the angst in the country is strong.

Beneath the surface there is a powerful force at work: A growing current in Israel says that one way or another, the country must separate itself from the Palestinians with a real border. If not, the occupied territories and Israel will eventually come to be seen as one entity, with 12 million people, half of whom are Arabs — hardly the Zionist vision of a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, the situation is messy: Some of the Arabs under Israel’s control, in pre-1967 Israel, have citizenship, while those in the West Bank — whose land and entry points and water resources are controlled by Israel — do not. Even though the West Bank is formally not in Israel, the country builds settlements there and their residents vote in Israeli elections. The settlers can freely enter and leave the West Bank, while Palestinians cannot. The situation seems unsustainable, and is starting to draw comparisons to apartheid-era South Africa even in Israel itself.

Here are some directions the discourse may take:

Partial settlement — with Old City thrown in?

Mitzna and a host of others, including former minister Yossi Beilin, architect of the 1990s accords establishing the Palestinian Authority, call for an interim arrangement in which the Palestinians would get statehood on most but not all the land they seek. They would get nothing on the refugees, but would not have to renounce any further claims either.

The Palestinians fear that freed of what Israelis call the “demographic danger”, Israel’s motivation to ever cede anything further will vanish.

“The state with provisional borders is a trick that we... will never accept,” Fateh official Tawfik Tirawi said. “From our experience with Israel, the provisional turns into final.”

Israel would have to present serious enticements to overcome such objections.

“We need to propose such a generous offer that the world will say to the Palestinians, ‘You cannot reject this’,” veteran commentator Ehud Yaari said.

Such an enticement might be a new arrangement in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, a key issue which to date has been tethered to the final settlement idea. It might instead agree even within an interim deal to joint custody of the area with its Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites, possibly with the inclusion other Muslim countries and outside powers — a sort of Vatican of the Holy Land. That would be a big symbolic prize — even if it still leaves open the question of the rest of East Jerusalem, adjacent to the ancient area, which the Palestinians also seek as a capital.

“It might be a very interesting way to deal with the matter,” Beilin said. “The question is whether there is a government in Israel that is ready to think this way.”

Unilateral pullout — with military occupation?

There are plenty of Israelis who cannot envision a peace deal of any kind yet still fear the demographic issue enough to want a pullout.

Ariel Sharon, prime minister from 2001-2006, was a longtime hawk but eventually concluded the occupation was bad for Israel. He shocked everyone by ordering all Israeli soldiers out of the Gaza Strip and evicting the almost 10,000 Jewish settlers living there. Israel thus unburdened itself of ruling Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians at a meager territorial cost.

Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke in early 2006. His successor Ehud Olmert won elections a few months later on the promise of repeating the move in the West Bank, which has some 2.5 million Palestinians.

But the West Bank — its borders formed by the armistice lines of the 1948-49 war that created Israel — is more valuable than Gaza. Its highland juts into Israel enough to leave Israel a few kilometres wide at its narrowest point, surrounds Jerusalem on three sides and is packed with biblical sites. Moreover, the Gaza pullout didn’t bring peace on that border. In 2007, the Islamic fighters of Hamas seized control there, and since then Israel has faced periodic rocket barrages and fought two mini-wars with Hamas.

But the unilateral pullout idea lives on: Set a border that would likely incorporate some West Bank land into Israel to include some settlements, and then dismantle the rest, without waiting for Palestinian agreement or recompense.

“Israel has to take its fate into its own hands [and] declare what our borders are,” said Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington. It’s needed, he said, “to preserve our identity as a democratic and Jewish state”.

Labour Party lawmaker Omer Bar Lev said Israel should “evacuate settlements from beyond those borders. ... As far as I am concerned let them establish a state there”.

But what about the rocket threat? Israel may decide to keep the military in place even on the “Palestinian” side of the border, figuring a military occupation is quickly reversible should the risk equation change.

The settler lobby would reject a withdrawal and kick up a fuss that would bring turmoil for a time. As for the Palestinians, they sharply oppose a unilateral Israeli drawing of the border — but they would be happy to see settlers go, and would need to give nothing in return.

One state?

If there is no separation, the logical long-term default seems to be a single state of Israelis and Palestinians, in which neither has superior rights. Most Israelis dismiss this as not plausible — but history may not ask Israel its view.

How long can Israelis continue to insist that beyond the 1967 lines — which they hardly themselves respect, considering the settlement construction — there must be a different regime than in Israel proper, one in which Palestinians are denied full democratic rights, unlike their brethren within the country’s official borders?

Even many Israelis now see a single democratic state as inevitable. Some are leftists who always disliked the nationalism inherent in establishing a Jewish state; others cannot bring themselves to abandon the land, often for religious reasons; and then there are others who have simply despaired of a way out.

Abbas alluded to this in a meeting several days ago with Israeli lawmakers, threatening to “hand over the keys” of the Palestinians’ autonomy government, saddle Israel with direct control of millions of Palestinians, and let it fend for itself.

“The only realistic solutions are the two states or one state,” Tirawi said. “If Israel keeps building in our land, the Palestinian Authority would collapse and then we are going to end up with one state for two peoples. And I think this has become the more realistic.”

RAMALLAH — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signalled on Saturday that he remains committed to troubled US-backed peace talks, saying that any unity government agreed with the Islamic group Hamas would recognise Israel.

Abbas’ comments appeared aimed at soothing Western concerns about the unity deal he reached on Wednesday with Hamas, an Islamist faction sworn to Israel’s destruction and designated by Washington as a terrorist organisation.

Israel suspended peace negotiations with Abbas after the reconciliation pact, and the United States said it would reconsider annual aid to the Palestinians worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The government would be under my command and my policy,” Abbas told senior leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation at his presidential headquarters in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

“Its purview will be what happens domestically. I recognise Israel and it would recognise Israel. I reject violence and terrorism,” he said.

The deal between Hamas and Abbas’ Fateh Party envisions agreement on a government of independent technocrats within five weeks and holding elections at least six months later.

Hamas’ continued opposition to Israel did not necessarily contradict Abbas, as both sides have agreed that the unity government will not include Hamas members and will instead be made up of independent technocrats.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters: “The recognition of Israel by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is not new. What is important is that Hamas did not and will never recognise Israel.”

Abbas seeks a Palestinian state in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Hamas, which seized control of Gaza from Abbas’ secular Fateh in 2007, retains thousands of fighters and an arsenal of rockets. It has fought repeated battles with Israel since it took control of the enclave.

A senior US official said on Thursday that a unity government could call into question some $500 million in their annual security and budget aid to Abbas.

A future Palestinian government must “unambiguously and explicitly commit to non-violence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between the parties,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Willing to extend talks

Abbas on Saturday added that he was still ready to extend stalled peace talks with Israel, as long as it met long-standing demands to free prisoners and halt building on occupied land.

Commentators said the discussions had already hit a brick wall and the United States had been struggling to extend the talks beyond an original April 29 deadline for a peace accord.

Abbas, for the first time since the suspension, said he was open to re-starting the talks and pushing on beyond the deadline. There was no immediate response from Israeli negotiators.

“How can we restart the talks? There’s no obstacle to us restarting the talks but the 30 prisoners need to be released,” Abbas said.

“On the table we will present our map, for three months we’ll discuss our map. In that period, until the map is agreed upon, all settlement activity must cease completely,” he told the officials, who were gathered for a two-day conference to assess the Palestinian strategy for achieving statehood.

Talks had veered towards collapse after Israel failed to release a final group of Palestinian prisoners it had promised to free in March, and after Abbas signed several international treaties, which Israel said was a unilateral move towards statehood.

The peace talks resumed in July after a three-year deadlock. The two sides were at odds over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, activity most countries deem illegal, and over Abbas’ refusal to accept a demand by Prime Minister Netanyahu that he recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

CAIRO — Egypt has discovered its first case of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in an Egyptian citizen who had recently returned from Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s ministry of health said on Saturday.

The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to Europe and has already caused over 90 deaths.

The patient, 27, is being treated for pneumonia at a Cairo hospital and is in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement.

The man, who is from the Nile Delta, was living in the Saudi capital Riyadh, the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia, which has been hardest-hit by the MERS virus, announced on Friday it had discovered 14 more cases in the kingdom, bringing the total number to 313.

Although the number of MERS infections worldwide is fairly small, the more than 40 per cent death rate among confirmed cases and the spread of the virus beyond the Middle East is keeping scientists and public health officials on alert.

A spokesman for the World Health Organisation in Geneva said on Friday it was “concerned” about the rising MERS numbers in Saudi Arabia urging for a speedy scientific breakthrough about the virus and its route of infection.

Saudi authorities have invited five leading international vaccine makers to collaborate with them in developing a MERS vaccine, but virology experts argue that this makes little sense in public health terms.

TUNIS — Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said in an interview with AFP Friday that, despite progress, Tunisia still has to eradicate the jihadist threat, reform the economy and hold elections.

Jomaa said ahead of a two-day visit to France beginning Monday that he wished to project a new image of the country that sparked the Arab Spring.

He sees “a new Tunisia, a peaceful Tunisia... a nascent democracy that needs all the support and solidarity our partners can provide”.

Jomaa heads an independent government that took office early this year to lead Tunisia out of a festering political crisis fuelled by jihadist violence, a stagnant economy and mistrust between the Islamist Ennahda Party — the majority in the assembly — and its opponents.

“We have shown a determination to combat terrorism and eradicate it in Tunisia,” Jomaa said.

“Previously, groups managed to infiltrate some urban areas, but now we are taking the fight to them in their strongholds,” he said.

A major military operation is under way in the Mount Chaambi area along the Algerian border, where groups allegedly linked to Al Qaeda have been entrenched since late 2012.

“The threat there is no longer what it was a few months ago, and what is happening in Chaambi now is reassuring,” he said.

His administration’s main task is to organise elections to provide Tunisia with the sustainable institutions it has been deprived since the January 2011 revolution that overthrew dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

Jomaa said he was determined to proceed with the elections this year but that they could still be delayed by organisational problems.

“We must believe it because it was a commitment that is very clear today — to help organise and create a climate conducive to holding elections before the end of the year,” Jomaa said.

“However, the schedule is very tight because of a delay on the law governing the organisation of elections.”

The National Constituent Assembly is still debating the new electoral law, article by article, and the head of the election commission said in late March that his service did not even have offices.

Jomaa said “there is always a risk of having to postpone the elections, and the longer the delay the greater the risk. It’s a question of managing the planning”.

He ruled himself out as a candidate when the legislative and presidential elections do take place.

On the economy, Jomaa admitted the need for unpopular reforms in a country where government jobs account for a third of the state budget.

He wants to reform the tax system and food and energy subsidies, costly reforms demanded by international lenders.

WASHINGTON — Top Egyptian diplomat Nabil Fahmy visits Washington this week on the highest level trip since the army ousted the Islamist government, as the US papers over democracy concerns to mend ties with a key ally.

The foreign minister will meet top US officials only days after the US administration partially lifted a freeze on its $1.5 billion in annual aid.

The freeze had been imposed when Cairo’s military-installed leaders failed to restore full democracy after toppling president Mohamed Morsi.

But the release of some 10 Apache helicopters and $650 million in other military aid to Egypt a month before closely watched presidential elections has been widely criticised by rights groups.

The organisations have said that they’re troubled by a brutal crackdown by Egyptian authorities which has seen scores of opposition leaders and journalists jailed.

‘Clear message to Cairo’ 

It is “a strong signal that the United States wants to improve, or at least start to improve, relations with Cairo despite a deteriorating human rights environment”, analyst Amy Hawthorne told a conference call.

The administration is “sending a clear message to Cairo that the US-Egypt security relationship, especially focused on counterterrorism and the counterterrorism campaign in the Sinai, remains critically important,” added the senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

Fahmy is due to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday, and officials are also trying to schedule talks with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and US lawmakers.

But while Kerry certified this week that Egypt had met the terms of its strategic partnership with the US and Israel, he was highly critical of the lack of democratic progress.

More than 500 people, mostly policemen and soldiers, have been killed in militant attacks since Morsi’s overthrow, according to Egyptian authorities, who have also been battling jihadists sheltering in the Sinai Peninsula.

Amnesty International says, however, that more than 1,400 people have died in the police crackdown targeting Morsi’s supporters, while more than 15,000 have been jailed.

“We remain concerned about steps that Egypt has taken in recent months that have been against democratic principles, such as media freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of individuals to protest the political arrests,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday.

Re-think in US policies 

The wave of insecurity is helping former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi ride a wave of popularity to become the frontrunner in the May 26-27 vote — leaving Washington facing the uncomfortable prospect that the man who deposed the country’s first democratically elected president could be its next leader.

“If mass killings, mass arrests and mass death sentences are not enough to make clear that freedoms are far from being ‘restored’ in Egypt, what is?” said Sarah Margon from Human Rights Watch.

Ties between the US and Egyptian militaries run deep and Kerry has long praised the Egyptian army as a stabilising force in the country as well as the volatile region.

But the political upheaval and the brutal crackdown has forced a re-think in US policies, and Kerry has harshly criticised moves such as a court issuing hundreds of death sentences against Morsi supporters.

“I think the relationship has been strained, to say the least,” a top Egyptian official said, asking not to be named, adding that there is “a need for a candid conversation about the relationship” which he said remained important to both sides.

“It’s good that after more than 30 years we take a step back and look at the relationship, where it worked and where it didn’t work.”

He acknowledged that there had been what he called “over-reactions” by some courts and the judiciary, but put his faith in Egypt’s new constitution to correct some of these excesses.

And he warned that in the wake of the Arab spring the region was facing a “critical juncture”, pointing to Libya as the “number one threat for national security in Egypt” as it was awash with weapons, and plagued by political chaos and a lack of governance.

Brookings Institution analyst Khaled Elgindy criticised, however, what he called America’s “disjointed policy” on Egypt.

“Egypt’s not transitioning to democracy, it’s transitioning to something worse than it was under Mubarak,” he told AFP, referring to long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak who was deposed by mass protests in 2011.

“We talk a good talk about liberties and democracy, but we don’t walk that walk. When push comes to shove, we side with what we perceive to be our vital interests,” he said, adding Washington had merely made “a rhetorical nod to democracy” in Egypt.

BEIRUT — Syrian government air strikes struck a vegetable market in a northern rebel-held town Thursday, killing at least 25 people and wounding scores of others, opposition activists said.

The air strikes came as another Syrian lawmaker announced his candidacy for June presidential election, state media said, a poll embattled President Bashar Assad is expected to win.

Fighter jets hit the crowded market in the Aleppo province town of Atareb early Thursday morning, killing 25 people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The group, which documents the Syrian conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said the death toll is likely to rise because many of the victims were seriously wounded.

Another activist group, the Syria-based Local Coordination Committees, said the air strikes killed 24 people. The Aleppo Media Centre activist group said the strikes killed more than 20. The discrepancy in the death toll is not unusual in the immediate aftermath of such large attacks and could not be immediately reconciled.

Atareb is located near the city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest urban centre, its former commercial hub and a major battleground in the civil war.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against Assad’s rule. It turned into a civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown. The fighting has taken increasingly sectarian overtones, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad’s government that is dominated by Alawites, a sect in Shiite Islam.

More than 150,000 people have been killed so far, activists say, and millions have been driven out of their homes.

Meanwhile Thursday, Hassan Bin Abdullah Al Nouri, a 54-year-old lawmaker and a former minister, became the second candidate to register his bid for the presidency, officials said. 

A day earlier, a lawmaker from Aleppo announced his candidacy for the June 3 vote.

Nouri was educated in the US and hails from a Sunni Muslim family in Damascus. He previously served in Assad’s government as a state minister for administrative and parliamentary affairs.

Assad has suggested he would seek a third, seven-year term, though he has not announced his candidacy yet.

According to a new election law, the balloting must be contested by more than one candidate. Several candidates are expected to run against Assad to give the election a veneer of legitimacy after being dismissed by the West as a farce.

Also in Damascus, a spokesman for the United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees in the Middle East said that aid workers resumed food distribution inside the Damascus camp of Yarmouk after 15 days of being prevented from entering the area. Chris Gunnes said UNRWA aid workers distributed 300 food parcels to desperate residents Thursday.

A day earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said neither side in the war has implemented a UN resolution demanding that the opposition and the Syrian government promptly allow access for humanitarian aid. Almost 3.5 million civilians in Syria have almost no access to desperately needed humanitarian aid and people are dying needlessly every day, Ban said.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel on Thursday suspended US-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians in response to President Mahmoud Abbas’ unexpected unity pact with the rival Islamist Hamas group.

The negotiations had appeared to be heading nowhere even before Wednesday’s reconciliation agreement between the Palestinian groups plunged them deeper into crisis. The United States had been struggling to extend the talks beyond an original April 29 deadline for a peace accord.

“The government of Israel will not hold negotiations with a Palestinian government that is backed by Hamas, a terror organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction,” an official statement said after a six-hour meeting.

Asked to clarify whether that meant the talks were now frozen or would be called off only after a unity government was formed, a senior Israeli official said: “They are currently suspended.”

Earlier in Washington, a US official said the United States would have to reconsider its assistance to Abbas’ aid-dependent Palestinian Authority if the Western-backed leader and Hamas formed a government, after seven years of internal bickering and unsuccessful reconciliation attempts.

The Palestinian deal envisions a unity government within five weeks and national elections six months later. Palestinian divisions widened after Hamas, which won the last general ballot in 2006, seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

In an interview with MSNBC after the six-hour Security Cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to leave open a window for a possible renewal of the talks if Abbas reversed course or reconciliation with Hamas, seen by the West as a terrorist group, fell through.

“I hope [Abbas] changes his mind,” Netanyahu said. “I will be there in the future if we have a partner that is committed to peace. Right now we have a partner that has just joined another partner committed to our destruction. No-go.”

Wasel Abu Yousef, a top Palestine Liberation Organisation official, rejected what he called “Israeli and American threats” and said a Palestinian unity government would be comprised of technocrats.

But Netanyahu, in the MSNBC interview, dismissed any notion that Hamas would not be the real power behind the bureaucrats.

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, championed by US Secretary of State John Kerry and aimed at ending decades of conflict and creating a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, began in July amid strong public scepticism in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Both sides were also at odds over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in the 1967 Middle East war, and Abbas’ refusal to accept Netanyahu’s demand he recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

Troubled talks

The next immediate steps stemming from the collapse of the talks seemed likely to be Israeli sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.

Palestinian leaders have already made clear they would seek to further their bid for nationhood via unilateral moves to join various international bodies and United Nations agencies.

The biggest threat for Israel could come in the shape of the International Criminal Court, with the Palestinians confident they could prosecute Israel there for alleged war crimes tied to the occupation of lands seized in 1967.

“Israel will respond to unilateral Palestinian action with a series of measures,” said the Israeli statement issued after the Security Cabinet meeting, without going into detail.

The talks had moved close to a breakdown earlier this month when Israel refused to carry out the last of four waves of prisoner releases, demanding that Palestinians first commit to negotiate after the April deadline.

Abbas responded by signing 15 international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war and occupations. Israel condemned the move as a unilateral step towards statehood.

Asked whether the new reconciliation moves with Hamas would incur promised US sanctions, PLO Deputy Secretary Yasser Abed Rabo told Palestinian radio it was too soon to penalise a government that had yet to be formed.

“There’s no need for the Americans to get ahead of themselves over this. What happened in Gaza in the last two days is just a first step which we welcome and want to reinforce,” he said.

“But this step shouldn’t be exaggerated, that an agreement for reconciliation has been completely reached... We need to watch the behaviour of Hamas on many details during the coming days and weeks on forming a government and other things.”