Region

RIYADH/WASHINGTON  — Saudi Arabia has reported five new deaths from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) respiratory virus, bringing the death toll in the world’s worst-hit country to 168.

In its latest tally, issued on Saturday, the health ministry said the total number of infections in the kingdom from the coronavirus since it first appeared in 2012 now stood at 529 people.

Among the latest fatalities were two men aged 67 and 55 and an 80-year-old woman in Jeddah, the port city where a spate of cases among staff at King Fahd Hospital last month led to the dismissal of its director and the health minister.

In addition, a 71-year-old man and another aged 77 died in Riyadh and Medina respectively, the ministry website reported.

Other nations including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and the United States have also recorded cases, mostly in people who had been to the kingdom.

The World Health Organisation carried out a five-day inspection visit to Saudi Arabia this month and pinpointed breaches in its recommended infection prevention measures as being partly responsible for the spike in hospital infections.

MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that appeared in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, 9 per cent of whom died.

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

Meanwhile, an Illinois man has contracted the MERS respiratory virus after coming into contact with the first case of the mysterious Middle East pathogen in the United States, become the third infected person.

It was during an ongoing investigation on the first case of MERS coronavirus in the United States that officials identified the new case, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday.

“CDC officials explained that these laboratory test results are preliminary and suggest that the Illinois resident probably got the virus from the Indiana patient and the person’s body developed anti-bodies to fight the virus,” the agency said in a statement.

It said the Illinois resident, who has not recently travelled outside the United States, met twice with the Indiana patient before he was identified as the first known case of MERS in the United States.

As part of the investigation, health officials have tested people who came into contact with the Indiana resident.

The identities of the MERS patients have not been released.

The Illinois resident was first tested for MERS on May 5, and those test results were negative. But a blood sample tested positive on Friday, showing he has anti-bodies to MERS.

“This latest development does not change CDC’s current recommendations to prevent the spread of MERS-CoV,” said David Swerdlow, who is leading the agency’s MERS response.

“It’s possible that as the investigation continues, others may also test positive for MERS-CoV infection but not get sick.”

The United States has previously announced two confirmed cases of MERS, which originated in Saudi Arabia and has since spread to more than a dozen countries.

The first patient, who fell ill in April, has been discharged from a hospital in Indiana.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The number of Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank could grow by as much as 50 per cent by 2019, Israel’s ultra-nationalist construction minister said on Friday.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of their future state, and blamed settlement expansions for the breakdown last month of US-mediated peace talks with Israel — a position supported in part by Washington, but rejected by the Israelis.

Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a member of the hardline Jewish Home Party in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition government, said the negotiations on Palestinian statehood were in their “dying throes” and predicted the settler population would spiral.

“I think that in five years there will be 550,000 or 600,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, rather than 400,000 [now],” he told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM, using a biblical term for the West Bank, which many Israelis see as a religious birthright and security bulwark.

Most world powers deem the Israeli settlements illegal.

Ariel put the number of Israelis in East Jerusalem at between 300,000 and 350,000. Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas which, along with the Gaza Strip, Israel occupied in a 1967 war.

During the nine months of failed peacemaking, Ariel published tenders for settlement construction which were cited by the United States as having contributed to the impasse by convincing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Netanyahu was not serious about reaching an accord.

US officials have also faulted Abbas for unilaterally signing 15 conventions meant to advance Palestinian independence and for entering a unity pact with Islamist Hamas rivals who control Gaza and spurn coexistence with Israel.

Netanyahu has said he would be willing to make way for a future Palestine in the West Bank, though Israel wants to annex swathes of settlements and keep East Jerusalem.

The Jewish Home opposes Palestinian statehood altogether, raising speculation in Israel that Netanyahu, in the unlikely event of a diplomatic breakthrough, would eject the party from his coalition.

Hosting US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel in Jerusalem on Friday, Netanyahu put the onus for the deadlock on Abbas.

“One of the things we have found, unfortunately, is that our Palestinian neighbours are moving ahead in a pact with Hamas. The United States has designated Hamas rightly as a terrorist organisation,” he said.

“I think the Palestinians have to make a simple choice — a pact with Hamas, or peace with Israel. But they cannot have both.”

RIYADH — Health authorities in Saudi Arabia have reported three more fatalities from the MERS respiratory virus, taking the death toll in the world’s worst-hit country to 163.

The health ministry website also revealed on Saturday that 520 cases have been recorded in the country since Middle East Respiratory Syndrome first appeared in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

It said three women died on Friday, including one in Riyadh, 48, and a 67-year-old in the western city of Taif.

A third woman died in Jeddah, the port city where a spate of cases among staff at King Fahd Hospital last month sparked public panic and the dismissal of its director and the health minister.

Other nations including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and the United States have also recorded cases, mostly in people who had been to the desert kingdom.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation said its emergency committee, which includes global medical and policy experts, had flagged mounting concerns about the potentially fatal virus.

The WHO called on countries to improve infection prevention and control, collect more data on MERS and to be vigilant in preventing it from spreading to vulnerable countries, notably in Africa.

But it has so far stopped short of declaring an international health emergency, which would have far-reaching implications such as travel and trade restrictions on affected countries.

A WHO team carried out a five-day inspection visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this month and pinpointed breaches in its recommended infection prevention measures as being partly responsible for the spike in hospital infections.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that appeared in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, 9 per cent of whom died.

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

CHICAGO — Scientists leading the fight against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) say the next critical front will be understanding how the virus behaves in people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it.

Establishing that may be critical to stopping the spread of MERS, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012 and has so far infected more than 500 patients in Saudi Arabia alone. It kills about 30 per cent of those who are infected.

It is becoming increasingly clear that people can be infected with MERS without developing severe respiratory disease, said Dr David Swerdlow, who heads the MERS response team at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

“You don’t have to be in the intensive care unit with pneumonia to have a case of MERS,” Swerdlow told Reuters. “We assume they are less infectious [to others], but we don’t know.”

The CDC has a team in Saudi Arabia studying whether such mild cases are still capable of spreading the virus. Swerdlow is overseeing their work from Atlanta.

They plan to test the family members of people with mild MERS, even if these relatives don’t have any symptoms, to help determine whether the virus can spread within a household.

Cases of the disease, which causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, have nearly tripled in the past month and a half, and the virus is moving out of the Arabian Peninsula as infected individuals travel from the region.

Since late April, the first two cases of MERS have been reported on US soil. Dutch officials reported their first two cases this week. Infections have also turned up in Britain, Greece, France, Italy, Malaysia and elsewhere.

Since MERS is an entirely new virus, there are no drugs to treat it and no vaccines capable of preventing its spread. It is a close cousin of the virus that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which killed around 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002.

Because MERS patients can have “mild and unusual symptoms”, the World Health Organisation advises healthcare workers to apply standard infection control precautions for all patients, regardless of their diagnosis, at all times.

“Asymptomatic carriers of diseases can represent a major route for a pathogen to spread,” said Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre.

“Just think of Typhoid Mary,” he said, referring to the asymptomatic cook who spread typhoid fever to dozens of people in the early 20th century.

Not even a cough

Milder symptoms played a role in the second US case of MERS, a man who started having body aches on a journey from Jeddah on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast to the United States.

It took the patient more than a week before he sought help in an emergency department in Orlando, Florida. Once he arrived, he waited nearly 12 hours in the ER before staff recognised a MERS link and placed him in an isolation room. The patient did not have signs of a respiratory infection, not even a cough.

Dr Kevin Sherin, director of the Florida Department of Health for Orange County, believes that made it less likely that he could spread the infection. Hospital workers have tested negative, but the health department and the CDC are still checking on hundreds of people who might have been in contact with the patient.

A CDC study published earlier this week looked at some of the first cases of MERS that occurred in Jordan in 2012.

Initially, only two people in that outbreak were thought to have MERS. When CDC disease detectives used more sensitive tests that looked for MERS antibodies among hospital workers, they found another seven people had contracted MERS and survived it.

That suggests there may be people with mild cases “that can serve as a way for the virus to spread to other individuals, which makes it a lot harder to control,” Adalja said.

Scientists are especially concerned because a lot of recent cases of MERS are among people who did not have contact with animals such as camels or bats that are believed to be reservoirs for the virus.

“If they don’t have animal contact, where do they pick it up? Potentially, asymptomatic cases,” said Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s election commission said Saturday the results from last month’s general election would finally be released within days as nationwide attacks pushed this year’s death toll to more than 3,500.

The Independent High Electoral Commission said delays in the count after the April 30 vote were because of a litany of complaints, and said provisional results — which are subject to further challenge — would be published on either Sunday or Monday.

Although results have not been released, political parties have nevertheless sought to build alliances in a bid to get a head-start on government formation, with incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Maliki seeking a third term.

Maliki’s critics accuse him of consolidating power and blame him for a marked deterioration in security in recent months.

Nevertheless, Maliki’s political party is still expected to win the most seats in parliament, despite probably falling short of a majority on his own.

Attacks in and around Baghdad and north Iraq killed seven people on Saturday, pushing the 2014 death toll to more than 3,500, according to an AFP tally.

Four people died in a roadside bombing in a market area of the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, officials said.

Separate bombings in Latifiyah south of the capital, and in Salaheddin province in the north, killed two soldiers, and a civil servant was shot dead in Baghdad itself.

On Friday, shelling killed four people in the militant-held city of Fallujah a short drive west of Baghdad, where troops have gone on the offensive without making much apparent headway.

BEIRUT — Syria’s army pressed a counter-offensive against rebels in the south of the country Saturday, firing a surface-to-surface missile and carrying out numerous air strikes in the area, a monitoring group said.

The violence comes a day after the army launched a massive bid to reclaim strategic positions in the west of Daraa province seized by rebels in recent weeks, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

State media has also reported the launching of an offensive against rebels in Daraa.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the area is important because it is located near the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and also because Daraa is near Damascus.

“The army wants to take back hills seized by rebels in recent weeks, that link together Daraa and Quneitra provinces,” said Abdel Rahman.

“The army’s counter-offensive, against rebels and the [jihadist] Al Nusra Front, has been extremely fierce. On Friday, the army fired 100 rockets and carried out 15 air strikes. On Saturday, the air raids and shelling have been continuous, and the army also fired a surface-to-surface missile against Sahem” village, he told AFP.

The Britain-based observatory said the air raids had caused an unknown number of casualties, while fighting between troops and rebels killed six Al Nusra jihadists.

Elsewhere in Syria, the air force carried out 12 air strikes against Mleiha east of Damascus, as it pushed a monthlong bid to take back the besieged, rebel-held enclave, said the observatory.

The army also cut off the only checkpoint leading out of Moadamiyet Al Sham, a formerly besieged rebel town that made a truce late last year with the regime, said the observatory and activists on the ground.

Abu Malek, a medical volunteer in Moadamiyet Al Sham, said the army was demanding that “all civilians from Daraya leave Moadamiyet Al Sham”.

Abdel Rahman confirmed the report.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war, and nearly half the population forced to flee their homes.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's state security arrested on Saturday opposition leader and ex-premier Sadiq Al Mahdi, his secretary said, after he reportedly accused a counter-insurgency unit of rape and other abuses of civilians in Darfur.

"At 8:45pm (1745 GMT) a number of state security officers came to the home of imam Sadiq Al Mahdi with a warrant, and they arrested him," his secretary, Mohammed Zaki, told AFP.

Zaki had no further details about the arrest, which makes Mahdi one of the highest-profile figures to be detained in Sudan in recent years.

The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) has the right to detain people for more than four months without judicial review.

On Thursday Mahdi, who heads the major opposition Umma party, appeared before prosecutors for questioning over the allegations he made at a press conference about the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

NISS, which has authority over the RSF, filed a criminal complaint accusing Mahdi of distorting the image of the forces, threatening public peace, undermining the prestige of the state and inciting the international community against Sudan, newspapers reported.

At a news conference in Khartoum on Wednesday, commanders of the RSF denied their force had looted, raped or committed arson.

"All the allegations against us are lies," an angry Mohammed Hamdan Dalgo, the unit's field commander, shouted.

Mahdi's detention comes as Umma and others opposition parties engage in a "national dialogue" with President Omar Bashir.

A senior opposition politician has told AFP that Umma is a main focus of the dialogue process that might lead to a new, coalition government.

The politician said Bashir is pushing for "a real change" because he realises the country is "collapsing".

The security service is resisting the dialogue process, the politician said.

A political scientist, El Shafie Mohammed El Makki, has said that even if Bashir himself is serious about reform, "not all the people in his party are for what is going on. You have to understand this".

The Bashir regime, which took power 25 years ago in an Islamist-backed coup, has faced mounting challenges since the separation of South Sudan three years ago

Inflation has soared and the Sudanese currency sank. Wars and unrest spread to about half of the country's 18 states, and internal divisions surfaced in Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP).

Repression peaked in September when thousands called for the regime's downfall after fuel price increases. Security forces are believed to have killed more than 200 protesters, many with gunshots to the head and chest, Amnesty International said.

Those demonstrations made clear the urgent need for reform, which Bashir addressed in January when he appealed for a broad national political dialogue and "renaissance" focused on peace.

Since then, in a tenuous political opening, some opposition political rallies have drawn thousands of people without interference by the security forces.

But youth activists have continued to be arrested.

Sixteen opposition parties have refused to join Bashir's dialogue unless certain conditions are met — including the abolition of laws restricting freedom.

VIENNA — Iran and world powers warned Friday they are a long way from reaching a comprehensive and potentially historic nuclear deal by a July 20 deadline following tough talks in Vienna.

Such an accord would see Iran roll back its nuclear programme in order to render it virtually impossible for Tehran to make an atomic bomb, in exchange for a lifting of all sanctions.

Failure could have calamitous consequences, sparking possible conflict — neither Israel nor Washington rules out military action — and creating a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In this fourth round of talks, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany aimed to start drafting a deal before a November interim accord expires on July 20.

But it was clear after three days of intense negotiations in a Vienna hotel that nothing had been put to paper yet.

“The gaps were too large to begin drafting the text of an accord,” Iran’s chief negotiator Abbas Araqchi told state television.

In this round “we made no tangible progress”, he said, adding that the differences were “too huge”.

A source close to the Iranian delegation was quoted by the IRNA news agency as saying that “the West has to abandon its excessive demands”.

Western diplomats were similarly downbeat, saying that Iran needed to be more prepared to budge on its positions.

“Huge gaps remain, there is really more realism needed on the other side,” one Western diplomat said. “We had expected a little more flexibility.”

“Iran still has to make some hard choices. We are concerned that progress is not being made, and that time is short,” a senior US official said. “We believe there needs to be some additional realism at this point.”

The official added, however, that both sides had been well aware that this would not be an easy process, and that they remained committed to getting an agreement.

Unusually, no date was announced for the next round, although officials said it would be some time in June.

There was also no closing press statement by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Michael Mann, a spokesman for Ashton, explained that the parties “don’t want to break things down and give a snapshot of where we are after every session”.

“We have had three days of hard work. As we have said, the negotiations are complex and detailed,” he said.

Tricky issues 

Neither side gave any indication of which particular issues were proving difficult.

Comments previously indicated that there had been some narrowing of positions on the Arak reactor, but both sides insist that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

The biggest issue — and main problem area — is the enrichment of uranium, which makes it suitable for power generation but also, when highly enriched, for a bomb.

Multiple UN Security Council resolutions have called on Iran to suspend this process.

The world powers want to extend the time Iran would need to enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade by slashing the number of centrifuges from the current 20,000.

The Islamic republic denies wanting nuclear weapons and says that it needs to enrich for a fleet of nuclear power plants, which however it has yet to build.

Ballistic missiles 

Another issue is Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, a point that Tehran has said should not be part of the nuclear talks. Washington disagrees.

Also to be resolved is the IAEA’s long-stalled probe into alleged past “military dimensions” to its programme before 2003 and possibly since.

A Thursday deadline for Iran to clear up one small part of this — its stated need for certain detonators — passed without comment from either Iran or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The gaps between the parties are large, but not insurmountable. Negotiators on both sides expected obstacles, but if they are willing to be flexible and creative, a deal can be reached,” Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association told AFP.

“Both sides know that diplomacy remains the only viable option for reaching a win-win agreement that meets the needs of all the parties involved.”

TRIPOLI — Libya’s interim authorities on Saturday denounced an offensive launched by a rogue general in the restive eastern city of Benghazi against Islamists as a “coup” bid, a statement said.

The offensive by Khalifa Haftar against those he describes as “terrorists” is considered “an action outside state legitimacy and a coup d’etat”, the army, government and parliament said in a joint statement.

“All those who took part in this coup bid will be prosecuted,” said Nuri Abu Sahmein, the head of the General National Congress, interim parliament, reading from the joint statement on state television.

Interim Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thani, who has branded Haftar’s forces as “outlaws”, and Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Abdessalam Jadallah Al Salihin, who has denied any army involvement in the Benghazi clashes, were shown on television standing next to Sahmein.

Khalifa, a retired general, used air power to pound Islamist positions in Benghazi on Friday, in a campaign to purge Libya’s second city of “terrorists” that led to clashes in which 37 people were killed.

Haftar, who defected from the army of Muammar Qadhafi in the late 1980s, led ground forces in the NATO-backed 2011 uprising that toppled and killed the veteran dictator.

He now heads a group calling itself the “National Army”, which launched Friday’s operation to flush “terrorists” out of Benghazi, according to his spokesman Mohammed Al Hijazi.

The army says that he is being supported by tribes, officers who defected from the army as well ex-rebels who are opposed to the central government.

Earlier this year Haftar announced, in a video posted on the Internet, an “initiative” under which the interim government and parliament would be suspended.

That video sparked rumours on social media that a coup might be in the offing.

But the government, which has come in for criticism for failing to defeat lawlessness in Libya, was quick to quash the rumours and insist it was in control.

Libya has been rocked by lawlessness since the 2011 uprising, and authorities have struggled to assert their control over the vast, mostly desert country, which is awash with heavy weapons and effectively ruled by a patchwork of former rebel militias.

CARACAS — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pledged Friday to send oil and diesel to the Palestinian Authority, as part of agreements signed with its leader Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Caracas.

Venezuela, which sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, said it would provide an initial shipment of 240,000 barrels of oil, but gave no details as to how it would send them.

“Thanks to Venezuela for supporting Palestine... to break Israel’s monopoly on our economy, for your response to our needs, for your willingness to support the Palestinian people in their long struggle,” Abbas said, according to an official translation.

During the meeting, Maduro also agreed to support the Palestinian Authority’s quest to be granted observer status in three Latin American regional organisations: The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

“The Palestinian people have the right to maintain commercial relations with the world as well,” Maduro said.

During his third visit to Venezuela in five years, Abbas visited the grave of Maduro’s predecessor, longtime leader Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last year.

Abbas arrived in Caracas on Thursday after meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in London the day before, a first since the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis collapsed.

Abbas’ visit comes amid months of at times bloody protests that have rocked Venezuela since February.

Maduro has called the unrest, which has claimed at least 42 lives, a coup attempt backed by the United States, raising tensions with Washington, which has repeatedly denied the claim.