Region

SANAA — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) chief Nasser Al Wuhayshi has pledged in a rare video appearance to pursue the war against the Western “crusaders” everywhere possible.

The video posted online shows Wuhayshi addressing scores of jihadists in a rugged terrain as he welcomes 19 militants who escaped a Sanaa prison in February.

“We will continue to raise the banner of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and our war against the crusaders will continue everywhere in the world,” he says in the video.

Al Qaeda usually uses the term crusaders to refer to Western powers, especially the ones which have intervened militarily in Muslim countries, mainly the United States, Britain and France.

In a brazen two-pronged jailbreak, AQAP militants slammed a car bomb into the eastern gate of a Sanaa prison as others attacked the guards at its main entrance.

The attack allowed 29 inmates to escape, including the 19 jihadists.

Wuhayshi vowed last August to free incarcerated members of his group.

He himself escaped in February 2006 from the political security prison in Sanaa along with 22 other members of AQAP.

He was named the group’s leader a year later.

WELLINGTON — A New Zealander with terrorism links was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen last year, Prime Minister John Key said Wednesday, with Canberra confirming that an Australian was also killed in the attack.

The man who called himself “Muslim Bin John” was born in New Zealand and had been attending “some sort of terrorist training camp” in Yemen, Key said.

“I was advised it was highly likely he was killed in the latter part of 2013 but it took some time to confirm that through DNA,” he told reporters.

The Australian newspaper said that the man died in a US Predator drone strike on five Al Qaeda militants travelling in a convoy of cars in Yemen in November.

It said he was a dual New Zealand-Australian citizen and another man, from the eastern Australian state of Queensland, was also killed. Both men were believed to be in their 20s.

Key confirmed the deaths were the result of a drone strike and said New Zealand had no prior knowledge of the operation.

He defended the use of drones, saying: “They are legitimate at certain times, where countries are trying to contend with dangerous situations and they’re trying to deal with terrorists without putting their own people in harm’s way.”

Asked if this specific drone strike was legitimate, he replied: “I suspect so yes, given that three of the people killed were well-known Al Qaeda operatives.”

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed the deaths, stressing that it had no prior knowledge of the operation in which they died.

The Australian newspaper said US officials notified their Australian counterparts about the possibility its citizens had been “collateral damage” in the strike on November 19.

The pair were not the intended targets of the strike which also killed three others, including Abu Habib Al Yemeni, who was reportedly a companion of Osama bin Laden, it said.

However, they were “foot soldiers” for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who may have been involved in kidnapping Westerners for ransom, the report said, quoting an unnamed source.

At the time, Yemeni authorities said that a drone strike in Hadramawt province killed three Al Qaeda suspects when a missile hit their vehicle.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces that erupted Wednesday when Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound was opened to Jewish visitors, an AFP correspondent said.

Security spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that Palestinians threw “stones and firecrackers” at police when they opened the walled compound’s gates.

Israeli forces responded with stun grenades, Rosenfeld said, and closed the complex to the Jewish visitors after a small number had toured the site.

An AFP correspondent at the scene said dozens of Palestinians were wounded by rubber-coated bullets and stun grenade canisters, and were staying inside the Al Aqsa Mosque out of fear they would be arrested when leaving.

The compound, in Jerusalem’s Old City, is revered as the location of the biblical Jewish temples and is considered Judaism’s holiest place.

It also houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Rosenfeld said the situation on “Temple Mount”, the Jewish term for the complex, was “calm again” and police had left the site.

He noted that in a separate incident elsewhere in Jerusalem’s Old City a security officer was lightly wounded by stones thrown by Palestinians.

Non-Muslim visits to the Al Aqsa complex are permitted and regulated by Israeli forces, but Jews are not allowed to pray at the site.

Jews are marking Passover, a seven-day holiday which in ancient times was marked by mass pilgrimage to the Temple Mount.

On Monday, Israeli forces arrested five Jews suspected of intending to sacrifice a goat at the Al Aqsa Mosque complex, in a bid to reenact an ancient Passover ritual.

Jewish fringe groups have vowed to build a third Temple, but Israeli political and religious authorities have repeatedly dismissed the idea.

VIENNA/DUBAI — Iran expects to get a fifth installment this week of previously blocked overseas funds, a senior official was quoted as saying, a payment that would confirm Tehran’s compliance with an interim deal with world powers to curb its nuclear programme.

Separately, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said “tough issues” faced the Islamic republic and the six major powers in negotiating a permanent accord to resolve the decade-old nuclear dispute but that it was still possible by a late July deadline.

“If it [the negotiation process] goes on with the same trend, the final agreement could be reached within six months,” Rouhani, seen as a pragmatist, was quoted by news agency Tasnim as saying at a meeting in a southeastern province late on Tuesday.

Rouhani, whose election last year paved the way for a major thaw in ties with the West, was apparently referring to the goal of hammering out a long-term settlement before the six-month deal struck late last year expires on July 20.

“This means removal of sanctions and restoring financial relations with the rest of the world,” he said, making clear Iran’s aim to have sanctions that limit oil exports and make financial transactions difficult lifted as soon as possible.

Diplomats and experts say it will be difficult, but not impossible, to resolve the standoff over nuclear activities which Iran says are peaceful but the West fears may be aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.

Western states want Iran to significantly scale back its nuclear programme to make sure it cannot quickly make an atomic bomb. Iran has ruled out shutting any nuclear facilities.

Under the preliminary agreement that took effect on January 20, Iran will receive a total of $4.2 billion of blocked funds in eight payments over six months, if it lives up to its part of the deal designed to allay fears about its atomic aims.

It says it has already received four transfers in February and March, totalling some $2.1 billion. A fifth payment of $450 million was due on April 15, contingent on Iran having diluted half of its most sensitive stockpile of nuclear materials. Diplomats say Iran is meeting its commitments under the accord.

Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a senior member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, told the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday that the latest installment “was to be freed today”.

IAEA update expected this week

“We must look and see if it has been done. But it usually takes time for wire transfers to be completed,” Takht-Ravanchi said, noting that Iran’s central bank had no problems in accessing released funds.

The United States has estimated that Iran has a total of around $100 billion in foreign exchange assets abroad, most of which were not covered by last year’s nuclear agreement.

The head of the UN nuclear agency, Yukiya Amano, last week told Reuters that the preliminary nuclear deal between Iran and the powers — the United States, France, Russia, Germany, China and Britain — was being implemented as planned.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has inspectors on the ground in Iran, issues monthly updates on whether Iran is complying with the deal. The next report is expected this week.

Under the November 24 agreement, Iran agreed to halt its higher-grade uranium enrichment work and to dilute and convert its stockpile of uranium enriched to a fissile purity of 20 per cent.

Enriched uranium can be used to power nuclear plants, Iran’s stated goal, but also provide material for bombs if refined to a high degree, which the West fears may be the country’s ultimate ambition. Iran denies those suspicions.

The interim agreement was designed to buy time for Iran and the powers to negotiate a permanent deal. Talks got under way in February and the next meeting is due in Vienna on May 13, when the two sides say they will start drafting an agreement.

RAMADI, Iraq — Two suicide bombers blew up vehicles packed with explosives outside a government compound in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Wednesday killing five people, police and a doctor said.

The twin attacks come as Iraq’s security forces battle to win back control of Anbar province after militants overran parts of Ramadi and all of the city of Fallujah, to its east, in early January.

The bombers each attacked one of the two entrances to the compound, which includes the governor’s office, provincial council building and a military headquarters, a police lieutenant colonel and an army captain said.

The blasts killed three soldiers, a policeman and a civilian and wounded 12 other people, a doctor said.

The crisis in the desert province erupted in late December when security forces dismantled Iraq’s main Sunni Arab anti-government protest camp just outside Ramadi, the provincial capital.

Militants subsequently seized parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, marking 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.

In other violence on Wednesday, a mortar attack on a military base at Saba Al Bur, north of Baghdad, killed two soldiers and wounded nine, while a roadside bomb at a market there killed one person and wounded five, officials said.

And in Baghdad, gunmen shot a man dead near his home in the Shaab area.

Iraq is suffering a protracted surge in violence that has claimed more than 2,600 lives this year.

The heightened unrest has been driven mainly by widespread anger among the Sunni Arab minority, who say they are mistreated by the Shiite-led government and security forces.

It has also been fuelled by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Violence in Iraq has killed at least 380 people since the beginning of the month, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

ALGIERS — Algerians weighed their options ahead of Thursday’s election, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika urging a large turnout as he eyes a fourth term, his main rival warning of fraud and others demanding a boycott.

More than 260,000 police have deployed across the country to guarantee security in the 50,000 polling booths set up to accommodate the 23 million Algerians eligible to vote in the presidential race, which is being contest by six candidates.

The ailing 77-year-old Bouteflika is widely expected to clinch a fourth term, but he faces the damaging possibility of low voter turnout, with protesters calling on Algerians to snub the poll and disrupting rallies during the election campaign.

Late on Tuesday, Bouteflika urged “all citizens to participate in the presidential election”, and saying those who abstained were choosing to “remain on the fringes of the nation”.

His message was carried by national media, with the president rarely appearing in public due to his poor health, which has even prevented him from taking to the campaign trail.

Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz insisted that “all the conditions of transparency, neutrality and security have been put in place for the success of this election”.

‘Election is a sham’ 

A coalition of opposition parties, including the Islamist Movement for the Society of Peace (MSP) and the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), have called on voters to shun an election they say is a “sham”.

Youth protest group Barakat (Enough in Arabic), founded just two months ago specifically to oppose the president’s bid for a fourth term, has described the vote as a “nonevent”.

Participation is set to be a key issue on Thursday.

Officially 74.11 per cent of the electorate voted in the 2009 presidential poll, which Bouteflika won by a landslide after changing the constitution to allow himself to run for more than two terms. But a leaked US diplomatic cable estimated the turnout at between 25 and 30 per cent.

A number of rallies were disrupted in the last week of the election campaign, some of them by Berber protesters in the traditionally restive Kabylie region backing calls for a boycott.

On Tuesday, thousands responded to the RCD’s call for a protest march in Tizi Ouzou, the Kabylie capital, demanding the promotion of the Berber language Tamazight, rejecting the election and denouncing the regime.

The protesters waved Berber flags and chanted slogans such as “ruling assassin!” and “no to the election masquerade!” the independent daily El Watan reported.

Abderezak Mokri, who heads the Movement for the Society of Peace — the Algerian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — has insisted Bouteflika could only win the election by rigging it.

Haunted by the past 

The president’s main rival, Ali Benflis, has repeatedly warned of fraud during the election campaign, describing it as his “main adversary” in Thursday’s vote.

The former prime minister ran against and was heavily defeated by Bouteflika in 2004, alleging that his adversary’s landslide victory then was rigged.

Benflis’ repeated comments about the likelihood of electoral fraud have drawn angry comments from the largely absent president, who has been represented by seven high-profile allies during the campaign.

Without naming him, Bouteflika accused his rival of inciting violence, sedition and even “terrorism via the television”, in meetings with two visiting dignitaries, including Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Marcia-Margallo.

The hostile war of words between the election front-runners has dominated the run-up to the election, with Benflis telling reporters on Tuesday that fraud was his “enemy”, saying it was “immoral and degrading, and dishonours all those who resort to it”.

He warned that he would “not keep quiet” if the election is rigged, and he said he had an “army” of people in place to monitor the poll “consisting of 60,000 people, most of them young men and women armed to the teeth with conviction.”

Bouteflika’s supporters have emphasised his role in ending Algeria’s “black decade” of civil war, in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.

BAGHDAD — Iraq has closed Abu Ghraib prison, made infamous by Saddam Hussein’s regime and US forces, due to security concerns following a mass breakout last year, the justice ministry said Tuesday.

The country is suffering a protracted surge in violence that has claimed more than 2,550 lives this year, and the area west of Baghdad where the prison is located is particularly insecure.

The ministry announced online the “complete closure of Baghdad Central Prison, previously [known as] ‘Abu Ghraib,’ and the removal of the inmates in cooperation with the ministries of defence and interior”.

The statement quoted Justice Minister Hassan Shammari as saying 2,400 inmates arrested or sentenced for terrorism-related offences have been transferred to other facilities in central and northern Iraq.

“The ministry took this decision as part of precautionary measures related to the security of prisons,” Shammari said, adding that Abu Ghraib prison is “in a hot area”.

It was not immediately clear whether the closure was temporary or permanent.

The prison is located between Baghdad and the city of Fallujah, which has been held by anti-government fighters since early January.

Shelling in Fallujah on Tuesday killed five people and wounded 16, while mortar rounds and twin suicide bombings in Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, farther west, left one dead and eight wounded.

Abu Ghraib prison served as a notorious torture centre under Saddam Hussein, with an estimated 4,000 detainees perishing there.

It later became a byword for abuses by US forces following the 2003 invasion, with photographs surfacing the following year showing detainees being humiliated by American guards, igniting worldwide outrage.

And in July 2013, militants assaulted Abu Ghraib and another prison in Taji, north of Baghdad.

Officials said hundreds of inmates escaped and more than 50 prisoners and members of the security forces were killed in the assaults, which were claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a powerful jihadist group.

Iraq has been hit by a year-long surge in violence, driven principally by widespread anger among the Sunni Arab minority, who say they are mistreated by the Shiite-led government and security forces, and also fuelled by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Violence has killed more than 340 people since the beginning of the month, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Tuesday banned members of ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood from running in upcoming elections, a lawyer and state media said.

Egypt’s military-installed authorities are engaged in a deadly crackdown against the Islamist movement, which swept elections in Egypt after the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but is now blacklisted as a “terrorist group”.

A court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria ordered authorities to bar any candidacies from Brotherhood members or former members in presidential and parliamentary elections

The ruling came after a group of private citizens who have protested against the Brotherhood filed a petition calling for the ban.

“It is illogical to receive such candidacies after the government designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation,” Tareq Mahmoud, a lawyer from the group, told AFP.

“We submitted videos, photos and documents showing terrorist acts carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why it is illogical that they lead the country or represent its people in elections.”

In December, the authorities blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist group” after blaming it for a deadly bombing north of Cairo that was claimed by a jihadist group.

Former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, whose popularity has soared since he deposed Morsi last summer following massive protests, is widely expected to win the May 26-27 presidential election, which is to be followed by parliamentary polls.

Authorities have waged a brutal crackdown on the Brotherhood since Morsi’s overthrow, with Amnesty International estimating that more than 1,400 people have been killed, mostly Islamists.

More than 15,000 Islamists, mainly Brotherhood members, have been jailed, while hundreds have been sentenced to death following often speedy trials.

The 85-year-old Brotherhood, Egypt’s most well-organised opposition group during decades of dictatorship despite being banned, stepped out of the shadows after the 2011 uprising.

It won a string of polls culminating in the 2012 presidential election, when its candidate Morsi became Egypt’s first freely elected leader.

Under Mubarak’s rule, the group was banned but tolerated, and had candidates run as independents. In 2005, Brotherhood candidates won dozens of seats in parliament.

In March, Saudi Arabia declared the movement a “terrorist group”, while earlier this month Britain ordered a probe into it amid concerns of links with violent extremism.

Key leaders of the group have been based in London since the toppling of Morsi and the police crackdown.

BEIRUT/DAMASCUS — Some 400 men, including rebels and draft evaders from besieged areas of Syria’s city of Homs, who recently surrendered to the authorities, fear they may be held indefinitely, activists said Tuesday.

Evacuations from the battered districts began in February, during a UN-supervised humanitarian operation that saw some 1,400 people leave the blockaded rebel areas.

The operation was initially intended to allow women, children and the elderly to leave the areas, where people have been surviving on little more than herbs for nearly two years, but scores of men also left.

Then, some two weeks ago, another 300 men — mainly rebel fighters and draft evaders — also left the siege, including a civilian activist who identified himself as Omar.

“There was a promise that the army defectors [rebel fighters] would be released if they handed in their weapons, and they did. There was talk that we draft evaders would be released too, but till now, there is nothing,” said Omar.

He and the other men are all still being held at a former school called Al Andalus, located in Homs city.

Omar says they are being held in good conditions “but we don’t know anything about what will happen to us. We are waiting and waiting”.

Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, a UN source in Syria confirmed that 300 men “left [the siege] spontaneously, without negotiations and without a ceasefire. They are currently in Al Andalus school”.

The source also said local charities are delivering food to them.

For his part, Homs Governor Talal Al Barazi said: “Every day some 10 to 25 men leave [besieged] Old Homs and hand over their weapons. We welcome them in a hospitality centre for as long as we need to study their situation.”

“Each person has a specific case. Some stay [in Al Andalus] for two days, others for a week, and others for longer. Last Friday we cleared 54 men.”

The governor told AFP he does not know how many men in total are being held in the school.

The detainees’ fears come amid a major escalation of violence against the besieged, rebel areas. For the first time since last summer, the army entered the besieged area on Tuesday, under cover of fire.

Assault

Syria’s army launched a major ground assault on the central city of Homs on Tuesday, state television said, with troops entering rebel-held districts under government siege for nearly two years.

“The Syrian army and the [pro-regime militia] National Defence Forces [NDF] have achieved key successes in the Old City of Homs,” Syrian state television said, adding that troops were advancing in several besieged neighbourhoods in the area.

An activist on the ground and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO both confirmed the report.

“They have entered into one [besieged] area, Wadi Al Sayeh, which lies between Juret Shiyah and the Old City,” said Abu Bilal, an activist trapped inside the blockade, who spoke to AFP via the Internet.

“This is the first time the regime has entered the besieged areas since it took Khaldiyeh” in summer 2013, he added.

Activist Abu Fehmi, also trapped in the siege, said the army was “bombing very, very intensely”.

“They are bombing using all kinds of weapons,” he told AFP via the Internet.

Britain-based observatory director, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the army’s entry into the besieged areas comes a day into a major escalation by the army.

“The military operation began yesterday after NDF forces were deployed to strengthen the regime troops’ presence,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“The army managed to take control of a handful of buildings,” he said, adding that “they do not have military significance.”

Activists opposed to President Bashar Assad’s regime have long referred to Homs, Syria’s third city, as the “capital of the revolution” that broke out in March 2011.

The city initially saw some of Syria’s biggest anti-regime protests, and was one of the first areas where the opposition became militarised, but most of it is now squarely under regime control.

ERBIL, Iraq — Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region is digging a trench along its border with Syria to prevent the infiltration of militants and smuggling from the war-racked country, officials say.

“The trench is designed to prevent the infiltration of members of terrorist groups and stop smugglers,” Halkurd Mullah Ali, the spokesman for the Kurdish region’s peshmerga security ministry, told AFP.

Smugglers “began operating in these areas because the Syrian authorities lost control of them, and these areas became insecure,” Ali said.

The trench is 17 kilometres long, two metres deep and three metres wide, and is “part of an Iraqi [federal] government strategy” to protecting the country’s 600-kilometre border with Syria.