Region

TRIPOLI — Pakistani sea captain Mirza Noman Baig knew he was trapped when dozens of fighters armed with rifles boarded his tanker just off a rebel-held port on Libya’s coast.

A militia from the country’s restive east forced his crew to load oil onto Baig’s vessel, the Morning Glory, and demanded they escape the navy before the ship was stormed by US special forces on March 16, according to his account of events.

After their two-week journey, the 38-year-old captain and his crew are now being held at a police facility in a southern area of the Libyan capital.

Authorities plan to send them home after concluding an investigation into the attempted sale of the oil by the rebel militia, who are campaigning for a greater share of petroleum wealth and more eastern autonomy.

“We were in a hostage situation. We had no choice but to follow the orders [of the rebels],” Baig said, in his first interview since docking at Es Sider Port, one of three oil export terminals captured by anti-government gunmen.

The tanker saga reflects growing turmoil in OPEC oil producer Libya, where the government is unable to stop militias who helped oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but refuse to disarm and now seize oil facilities at will.

Baig said the ship’s owner, which changed last month, had told him to load oil in Libya after crossing the Suez Canal without informing him that his destination was a rebel port.

“We were drifting away 48km off [the coast]. The pilot [of the port escort boat] came onboard, and the security people came onboard,” he said.

“We cannot do anything. They had guns,” he said. Shipping data confirmed the Morning Glory had circled for days near Es Sider before docking.

“The owner just told me [to go to Libya] but he didn’t tell me how the situation was, is this the central part or I don’t know. I don’t know what the situation is in that area,” he said, standing in front of a small cell where he is being held with five other crew members sleeping in white bunk beds.

He said up to 35 armed rebels had boarded the ship when docking at the port. The rebels have denied that they forced the crew to act at gunpoint.

When the ship left Es Sider after loading crude, and with only three rebels onboard, Baig was told to travel away from the Libyan coast, he said. However, the tanker ran into a firefight with Libyan naval forces before moving into Cypriot waters, according to government officials.

According to Baig, when he asked the militiamen or the owner where the ship was heading, “They said they would tell us later.”

Nearby, other crew members were having lunch — rice and meat — on the floor in their cells while he spoke.

With his captors busy, he called his wife in Lahore with the ship’s satellite phone. She alerted various governments, he said. He also called the police in Cyprus and NATO forces, after which US Navy SEALs stormed the ship late at night.

The US commandos later handcuffed the three rebels and escorted the tanker back to Tripoli, where it is moored, Libyan officials said.

He said the owner kept saying the final sale of the oil would be arranged, but Baig asserted: “I was telling them that I am not interested. I want my crew to go home. We don’t want anything, we don’t want any of the oil. You trapped us on this.”

Going home

Libya’s attorney general has issued orders to release and expel the 21 crew members, who come from Pakistan, India, Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Syria and other countries, but so far they remain stuck in a nondescript, one-storey detention facility.

Reuters was allowed to speak to the crew on the condition they would not discuss the investigation.

Interrupted only by occasional visits from embassy staff, the crew have time to pray in front of their cells, which are open. A gate locks them into the wing where they are staying.

“People treat us very nicely. We get three meals a day,” Baig said. “As far as we are here we don’t have any problem but we are just waiting to go home because we are passing from this very tough time.”

But his crew was still waiting to get back their personal belongings such as clothes, laptops, cash and shipping documents such as seaman’s books needed to continue their careers.

“We need those documents. They are very important to us,” he said.

A Sri Lankan crew member said: “We want our clothes. This I am wearing for days,” pointing to his orange jumpsuit.

Baig said the crew had not been paid for two months.

“A few crew members, they don’t have a single dollar in their pockets,” he said. “When they go to their countries they don’t have money to go from the airport to go home.”

DOHA — A Qatari court on Thursday condemned a US couple from Los Angeles to three years in prison for causing the death of their adopted eight-year-old daughter.

Matthew and Grace Huang were arrested in January 2013 after their daughter Gloria from an orphanage in Ghana died and were accused of causing her death in order to sell her organs.

The court also ordered the couple to pay a fine of 15,000 riyals (4,100) each and to be deported after serving their sentence.

But reading the verdict, the judge did not specify the exact charges for which the Huangs were convicted.

The couple who say the child had an eating disorder called on US President Barack Obama, who visits neighbouring Saudi Arabia on Friday, to intervene in the case.

They have two weeks to appeal.

“We have just been wrongfully convicted and we feel as if we are being kidnapped by the Qatar judicial system,” Matthew Huang said in a statement read to reporters outside the court.

“This verdict is wrong and appears to be nothing more than an effort to save face,” he said.

“We are calling on United States President Obama to call the head of state in Qatar and explain to him why American families adopt high-needs children,” said Huang.

He said the ruling must be “overturned immediately and we should be allowed to go home”.

Defence lawyer Eric Woltz said the case was left in confusion and the charge unclear.

“The judge literally read a couple of sentences. There wasn’t much explanations given. There’s still a lot of confusion as to how this is happening,” he said.

“As far as we know they’ve not been ordered to go back to prison but we also were not told that they are not going back to prison,” said Woltz.

“So they’re very scared and we’re just waiting for a word from the court.”

The lawyer said the couple “came to the court thinking that they would be declared innocent. Matt and Grace even had plane tickets already paid for.

“They thought they were gonna go home and be with their sons.”

The couple of Asian origin were released in November pending trial, but the court had denied their request to leave the country to join their other two adopted children in the United States.

The public prosecutor had pushed for the death penalty for the Huangs.

Huangs ‘misunderstood’

Both adoption and multiracial families are rare in Qatar, a conservative Gulf Arab emirate.

The family’s supporters maintain Qatari authorities misunderstood the Huangs’ situation and found it suspicious.

The “Free Grace and Matt” website said police accuse the couple of having adopted the children “in order to harvest their organs, or perhaps to perform medical experiments on them”.

Gloria, their daughter, had “an eating disorder, a legacy of her impoverished childhood in Ghana, in which she would sometimes fast, binge-eat or steal food,” the website says.

The Huangs moved to Qatar in 2012 for Matthew, an engineer, to work on infrastructure projects linked to the 2022 football World Cup.

Their supporters describe them as a loving family and say they have collected supporting testimony from people who knew them in Qatar, which authorities declined to accept.

RIYADH — The appointment of Prince Muqrin as deputy crown prince sets up the former intelligence chief as next in line to the throne of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, once Crown Prince Salman succeeds King Abdullah.

The youngest son of Saudi Arabia’s founder, the prince is an affable former airforce captain, diplomats say, and is a close friend of his nephew Prince Bandar, the current spy chief, with whom he served in the military.

An ally of King Abdullah, Prince Muqrin, whom the Saudi embassy in Washington said was born in 1945, has pledged to continue King Abdullah’s gradual social and economic reforms.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a member of the Saudi ruling family, which sees itself as locked in a region-wide struggle with Tehran for control of the Middle East, he is seen as hawkish on Shiite Iran.

A 2008 US diplomatic cable from the Riyadh embassy, released by WikiLeaks, cited him as being in favour of much stronger sanctions against Iran. In another cable from the following year, he was quoted by diplomats as warning that the Shiite crescent was “becoming a full moon”.

In February 2013 he was named as second deputy prime minister, a position that has in the past been seen as crown-prince-in-waiting.

Before Thursday’s announcement it had been unclear whether Prince Salman would name his half-brother as crown prince or choose his youngest full-brother and former interior minister, Prince Ahmed.

At stake is the future direction of the world’s top oil exporter, a country that exerts continuing influence over the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims through its guardianship of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.

‘Open minded’

A 2009 US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks described Prince Muqrin as having the confidence of the king, who had “given him the lead on Saudi efforts to resolve conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan” and sent him to build ties with Syria.

Prince Muqrin trained as a military pilot at Cranston, a British Royal Air Force base, and is described by diplomats as outgoing and gregarious. He served for nearly 20 years as governor of Hail province before being promoted to the post of governor of Medina province in 1999.

He served as intelligence chief from 2005 to 2012, a challenging period when the kingdom put down a determined insurgency by Al Qaeda militants and sought to stave off instability from neighbouring Iraq, where Islamist armed groups were fighting US occupation.

He is an accomplished musician who plays the lute and takes an interest in astronomy, Saudis say. A Saudi journalist, Fahed Amer Al Ahmadi, told Al Arabiya television the prince spoke several languages and was very “open minded”.

The Saudi monarchy does not pass from father to eldest son but has moved along a line of brothers born to the kingdom’s founder King Abdulaziz Bin Saud.

Although Prince Muqrin is the youngest of this line, and a dozen or so of his elder brothers still live, he is one of the few sons of King Abdulaziz who has been seen as qualified to one day become king in a system that prizes experience as well as seniority.

For many years, analysts had assumed Prince Muqrin was out of the running in the kingdom’s closely watched succession process because his mother was Yemeni, rather than being from one of the main families of Najd, as the area around Riyadh is known.

That impression was strengthened in the summer of 2012 when he was suddenly replaced as head of the kingdom’s intelligence service in favour of his nephew, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.

However, diplomats said he continued to attend top-level meetings between King Abdullah and visiting foreign leaders, suggesting he remained part of the monarch’s inner circle in determining foreign policy.

Some Saudis close the family say it was Prince Muqrin who brought Prince Bandar back into the top echelons of the administration after years when Bandar disappeared from public life.

The 2009 US cable noted Prince Muqrin appeared to have been heavily involved in Saudi dealings with Yemen, and “likely has personal as well as professional reasons for being so” a reference to his Yemeni heritage.

BAGHDAD — A series of bombings targeting commercial areas of Baghdad killed 26 people as residents were heading out on the town Thursday evening in a new spasm of violence to strike the Iraqi capital, according to Iraqi officials.

The attacks happened within minutes of each other, suggesting a coordinated assault like those favoured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaida-inspired group that is behind much of the bloodshed in Iraq.

The evening’s first attack was also the deadliest.

A car bomb exploded after sunset in a commercial street in the Sunni-dominated northern neighbourhood of Azamiyah, killing 12 people and wounding 28. Thursday night is a popular time for Iraqis to go out, as the local weekend begins the following day.

Minutes later, another bomb exploded near a market in the same neighbourhood, killing seven and wounding 27.

Those blasts were followed by an explosion in a shopping street in the capital’s Aamiriyah district, killing three people and wounding 15 others. Yet another blast struck a commercial street in southwestern Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14.

Medics confirmed the casualties for all attacks. All officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but the attacks bore the hallmarks of ISIL. The extremist group frequently uses car bombs and suicide attacks to target public areas in their bid to undermine confidence in the government.

The blasts struck little more than a month before Iraqis vote in national elections scheduled for April 30, the country’s first parliamentary elections since US troops left in late 2011.

Violence has escalated in Iraq over the past year. The country last year saw its highest death toll since the worst of the country’s sectarian bloodletting began to subside in 2007, according to United Nations figures.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli troops who shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank last week used live fire, without warning, against innocent youngsters out foraging for roots, an Israeli rights group said Wednesday.

After investigating the March 19 death of 15-year-old Yussef Sami Shawamreh, B’Tselem said it had found no evidence to support the army’s version of events that troops had opened fire at youths who had “sabotaged” the West Bank security barrier.

But an army spokesman insisted troops had fired warning shots, adding that recent violence along the border with the Gaza Strip and on the Syrian frontier meant that anyone approaching the barrier was a cause for concern.

B’Tselem said the primary responsibility for the boy’s death rested with the commanders who approved the use of live fire at a site where villagers from Deir Al Asal Al Tahta are known to go out and pick wild plants on their own land.

The army told AFP after the incident that soldiers had spotted three Palestinians vandalising the barrier, saying they had verbally warned them and then fired warning shots in the air before finally shooting at their lower extremities.

On Wednesday, army spokesman Arye Shalicar said that, “over the past two weeks there have been numerous incidents involving explosive charges being placed along the border with Gaza and on the Syrian frontier,” with four Israeli soldiers wounded there last week.

‘Potential danger’ 

at barrier 

“In these circumstances, we consider anyone approaching the West Bank security barrier to be a potential danger,” he said, adding that military police had opened in inquest into the boy’s death.

Shawamreh’s family and witnesses insisted he had been looking for gundelia, a thistle-like plant used in cooking.

B’Tselem said the shooting occurred in an area where there is a wide breach in the barrier and where families regularly go out to forage on their own land.

“The two surviving youths... heard three or four shots as they got off the road, fired with no advance warning,” the report said.

The NGO said its findings were “markedly different” from the army’s version of events.

“The youths made no attempt at vandalism; they were crossing through a long-existing breach, and the soldiers did not carry out suspect arrest procedure, shooing at Shawamreh with no advance warning,” it said.

Troops in the area were “well aware” that over the past two years, Palestinians have been crossing the barrier at the breach “to pick gundelia on their own farmland,” B’Tselem said.

It added that the use of live fire showed a “cynical lack of concern for the life of a Palestinian teenager”.

Two days earlier, soldiers had detained four teenagers in the same spot, beating them and confiscating the plants they had picked.

“The decision to mount an armed ambush at a point in the barrier known to be crossed by youths, who pose no danger whatsoever to anyone, for the purpose of harvesting plants is highly questionable,” the report said, noting it showed “extremely faulty discretion” on the part of the commanders.

Military regulations prohibit the use of live fire at Palestinians crossing the barrier, if they pose no risk to security forces.

“The primary responsibility for the killing lies with the commanders who sent the soldiers out on armed ambush,” B’Tselem director Jessica Montell said in a statement that urged the military police to consider whether the commanders should “bear personal criminal responsibility” for Shawamreh’s death.

MISHERFEH, Syria — Syrian forces on Thursday bombarded rebel positions with artillery and warplanes in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia, trying to push back opposition fighters who over the past week made rare territorial gains in President Bashar Assad’s ancestral heartland.

Government troops have been battling for days with the rebels from several Islamic groups, including Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front, that launched the offensive in the province a week ago, seizing a number of towns, a border crossing with Turkey and — for the first time in the 3-year-old conflict — a tiny stretch of coast giving the rebels an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea.

Fierce clashes were ongoing Thursday as the army tried to wrestle back the predominantly Christian Armenian town of Kassab and nearby village of Nabaan, both seized by the rebels.

Artillery aimed at rebels in Kassab echoed across the area at the rate of one every two minutes, according to an Associated Press reporter in Misherfeh, a village nestled at the foothills of mountains overlooking Kassab.

A field commander speaking to reporters in Misherfeh said the army was making progress against the fighters.

“The army and the National Defence Forces are moving towards Kassab from Nabaan and Qastal Maaf,” said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Latakia, a mountainous and wooded region, is the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that is a minority in Syria but is a major pillar of Assad’s rule. Sunni Muslims dominate the rebel ranks fighting to oust Assad.

Government aircraft dropped several barrel bombs on a hilltop area known as Observatory 45, also seized by rebels several days ago, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that follows the conflict through activists on the ground. The Local Coordination Committees, a Syria-based opposition group that also documents the conflict, reported two government air strikes on the strategic post.

The post is key because it has a commanding view of the contested surrounding mountains and green plains below.

The rebel push into Latakia appeared to have caught Assad’s forces off guard. It came as the military was celebrating major gains near the border with Lebanon and around the capital Damascus. The military rushed in fighters from a pro-government militia and warplanes to bolster troops in the counter-offensive.

Over the past month, Assad’s forces, backed by his allies from the Lebanese Hizbollah militant group, have captured a series of rebel-held towns and villages along Syria’s border with Lebanon, squeezing the flow of rebel fighters, weapons and supplies across the frontier.

Tens of thousands of Syrians fled into Lebanon since the government offensive in the Qalamoun region in Syria began in November. Most of them live in makeshift refugee settlements in the hills around the Lebanese town of Arsal, which has served as a major logistical base for the rebels.

On Thursday, Syrian warplanes struck inside Lebanon in a mountainous area near Arasal, injuring five people, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said. Syrian planes have hit several times in the same area in Lebanon since the Qalamoun offensive began.

Fighting in Syria along the Lebanon border has subsided in recent days after the fall of the last rebel stronghold in the area, Yabroud. But on Thursday, rebels and Hizbollah-backed government troops clashed near another border town, Flita, the observatory and LCC reported. They said a high ranking rebel commander and his deputy were killed in the fighting.

In Homs, Syrian official news service said a correspondent for a pro-government TV station was injured while on assignment there. SANA news agency said Nibal Ibrahim, a correspondent for Al Ikhbariya TV was shot in the leg while filming an underground tunnel used by rebels in the central city. SANA said terrorists were behind the attack on Ibrahim, a term officials use for rebels.

CAIRO — Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is assured of winning Egypt’s forthcoming presidential vote but at the cost of reviving the era of strongman rule as he faces a dilapidated economy and rising militancy.

Analysts say Field Marshal Sisi, who on Wednesday announced he was quitting the army to run for president, was certain to continue the crackdown on Islamists that started when he overthrew elected president Mohamed Morsi in July.

And, the experts say, with security issues likely to hamper Sisi from delivering on his promise of economic recovery, he could resort to repression more and more.

Sisi’s widely anticipated candidacy is being hailed by the millions of Egyptians who are weary of more than three years of turmoil since the Arab Spring overthrow of veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak.

But it is likely to further inflame Islamist protests and worry those secular activists who fear a return to rule by military men and the strong-arm tactics of the Mubarak era.

Aside from Morsi, whose year in office deeply polarised the country, every Egyptian president has been drawn from, or installed by, the army.

Dressed in army fatigues for the last time in public, Sisi promised in a televised address to bolster the precarious economy and crush the “terrorism” that has surged since Morsi’s overthrow.

Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said Sisi’s address suggested he would continue the crackdown on the Islamists that has made little headway in restoring stability.

“I didn’t hear Field Marshal Sisi say anything in the initial speech to suggest there will be a shift in the security strategy,” she said.

Since Morsi’s overthrow, his supporters have staged weekly and at times violent protests, leading to the deaths of at least 1,400 people, mostly Islamists, in clashes with police.

Militants in the same period have killed more than 200 security personnel in bombing and shooting attacks.

Encouraged by many Egyptians who view the Islamists as destructive, the authorities have arrested some 15,000 people and placed thousands on trial.

“If the crackdown goes on and people continue to be killed every week, it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to restore stability and get the economy on its feet,” Dunne said.

The unrest has battered the economy, which is propped by billions of dollars in aid from friendly Gulf Arab states.

Regime human rights abuses and Islamist militant attacks on police are not new to Egypt, having marred Mubarak’s three-decade presidency before his overthrow in a popular uprising in 2011.

But since Morsi’s ouster they have surged to unprecedented levels, Dunne said.

“Egypt is now undergoing... the worst terrorism in decades” said Dunne. “Human rights are right now in a much worse state than they were under Mubarak.”

‘No return to Mubarak’ 

Sisi overthrew Morsi after millions took to the streets demanding the resignation of the Islamist president.

Sisi’s aides said the military chief’s intention was not to replace Morsi but that he had swayed by popular demand.

Despite assurances by Sisi’s camp that the “Mubarak’s era” would not be allowed to return, the cycle of violence and arrests is likely to continue, analysts say, as both the state and the Islamist opposition are equally opposed to serious compromise.

Prolonged unrest may hamper Sisi from delivering on his promise of economic recovery, but is unlikely to greatly erode his considerable support in the short term, said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“If he can’t deliver, which he probably won’t be able to, then he will have to rely on his arsenal of repression,” Hamid said.

Egypt saw a breakdown in security following Mubarak’s overthrow and under an interim military regime before Morsi’s election in June 2012.

Many now view the army as the only institution that can rein in the turmoil, further pushing back the prospect of a strong civilian president who can control the military.

“It once more confirms that the military republic since 1952 is back with the same mentality; the idea of the military as the institution that defends the state,” said Andrew Hammond, a Middle East analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

ROME — US President Barack Obama will aim Friday to reassure his Saudi hosts on the strength of their alliance, frayed by Washington’s diplomatic opening towards Iran and reluctance to use force in Syria.

Obama is expected late on Friday in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the fourth and final stop of a tour this week after the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.

The White House was late to announce Obama’s stop in Riyadh, following his European tour, fuelling speculation on the motives of the US president’s second visit since his election in 2009 to Washington’s decades-old ally in the Middle East.

Dating back to the end of World War II, the relationship was founded on an agreement for Washington to defend the Gulf state in exchange for oil contracts.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is the world’s top producer and exporter of oil. In 2012, it was still the second largest exporter to the United States, after Canada.

But relations have soured, with Riyadh openly criticising US policy on regional issues, which are to be discussed at a meeting followed by dinner between King Abdullah and Obama.

At the Arab League summit in Kuwait on Tuesday, Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz accused the international community of “betraying” Syrian rebels, outgunned in their war against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

According to the Syrian opposition, Washington has imposed a veto on its allies against arming rebels with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, over fears they could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists.

And the Saudis were bitterly disappointed by Obama’s 11th-hour decision last year to back down from military action against the Syrian regime over chemical weapons attacks.

Saudi Arabia, long wary of Iran’s regional ambitions, is also sceptical of the interim nuclear deal reached by world powers and the Islamic republic in November, viewing it as a risky venture that could embolden Tehran.

The agreement would curb Iran’s controversial nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief, and is aimed at buying time to negotiate a comprehensive accord.

Regional turmoil tests ties 

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have long been rivals, with the two heavyweights vying for leadership of the region.

And with the geopolitical turmoil caused by the Arab Spring since 2011, the two Gulf neighbours have taken opposing stances on conflicts across the region.

The Saudis responded warily to Obama’s support of protests that overthrew authoritarian regimes, especially Egypt’s uprising which ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, a staunch US and Saudi ally.

The kingdom was dismayed by the partial freezing of US aid to Egypt, whose army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July — a move hailed by Saudi Arabia.

“I think actually the underlying anxiety and the sort of demand for Washington’s attention from the Gulf... comes from the fact that we are at a bit of a turning point in terms of America’s role in the region,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Middle East specialist with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

She cited the ongoing US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, after Iraq.

With Obama’s announced goal of North American energy independence in the medium-term, “a lot of people in the region, I think, are naturally asking themselves what America’s energy independence means for America’s willingness to invest in the security of energy and supply from the Gulf”, said Wittes.

Obama’s visit also comes at a time of rifts within the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council over Qatar’s alleged interference in their internal affairs and its support for Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the crisis put on hold US hopes for a summit between Obama and leaders of the six-nation GCC.

But the White House denied a formal meeting was scheduled.

It was only “something that we had contemplated some weeks back and began some preliminary consultations on”, according to National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

“While we maintain very strong and cooperative relationships with each of the GCC countries, we didn’t think that from their point of view that the time was optimal for a collective meeting,” she said.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia’s Prince Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz, a former intelligence chief in the conservative Islamic kingdom, has been appointed deputy crown prince, state television reported on Thursday, making it likely he will one day become king.

The appointment makes Prince Muqrin, the youngest son of the kingdom’s founder King Abdulaziz Al Saud, next in line to succeed King Abdullah in the world’s top oil exporter and birthplace of Islam after his half-brother Crown Prince Salman.

“Prince Muqrin is granted allegiance as deputy crown prince, a crown prince if the position becomes vacant and to be given allegiance as king of the country if both the positions of crown prince and king become vacant at the same time,” the official Saudi Press Agency said, quoting a statement from the royal court.

The announcement gives more assurance to the kingdom’s long-term succession process at a time when Riyadh sees itself as being an island of stability amid conflict and political turmoil across the Middle East.

Prince Muqrin, who trained as a fighter pilot in Britain in his youth, is seen as likely to continue the cautious economic and social reforms begun by King Abdullah, say analysts.

“He reads books. He’s into music and art. I think he is from the more moderate school of Saudi politics,” said Jamal Khashoggi, head of a television news station owned by billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

King Abdullah turned 90 last year and Crown Prince Salman is 78. Muqrin was 70 last year.

Muqrin already holds the position of second deputy prime minister, a role to which he was appointed a year ago and was traditionally but informally seen as being equivalent to crown prince in waiting.

However, there is no formal line of succession in Saudi Arabia beyond the king and crown prince and some analysts had speculated that it would pass to another member of the ruling family. The role of deputy crown prince is a new creation.

Under rules governing the succession, drawn up by King Abdullah a decade ago, a new monarch is empowered to select an heir himself from within the ruling Al Saud family, so long as an internal council agreed to his choice.

Crown Prince Salman and that family body, the Allegiance Council, have accepted Prince Muqrin as the deputy crown prince, SPA reported, indicating he will automatically become Prince Salman’s heir when King Abdullah dies.

Prince Muqrin, a graduate of the British Royal Air Force Academy and former military pilot, was born in 1943. He has also been governor of Hail and Medina provinces and a special adviser to King Abdullah.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels pressed their offensive deeper into the coastal heartland of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect on Wednesday, battling government troops backed by warplanes for control of at least two villages in the heavily wooded and mountainous terrain, activists said.

Opposition fighters from conservative and hardline Islamic groups, including Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, launched their assault Friday on the northern stretches of Latakia province near the Turkish frontier. So far, they have seized a border crossing, and gained control of an outlet to the sea for the first time since Syria’s uprising began three years ago.

While modest in terms of territory, those gains have buoyed an armed opposition movement that has suffered a series of recent setbacks on the battlefield. Over the past month, Assad’s forces, backed by his allies from the Lebanese Hizbollah militant group, have captured towns and villages along Syria’s border with Lebanon, squeezing the flow of rebel fighters and materiel across the frontier.

A Latakia-based activist who identified himself as Mohammed Abu Al Hassan said rebels were hoping that the offensive in Latakia would draw more Syrian soldiers to the area, relieving some of the pressure on harried opposition fighters elsewhere in the country.

“The thinking is to open a battle that will make the regime rush to fight,” Abu Al Hassan said via Skype. “The regime can’t imagine losing the sea [of Latakia]. They will bring reinforcements, and that will lessen the pressure [elsewhere].”

On Wednesday, rebels were battling government troops in the Latakia villages of Qastal Maaf and Nabaain, activists said. Syrian military jets were conducting air strikes around to try to push back the opposition fighters, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“So far, it’s attacks and retreats, nothing is certain,” said Abdurrahman.

Both villages are south of the Armenian Christian town of Kassab and the nearby border crossing, which rebels seized on Sunday.

The government has acknowledged the fighting in Latakia near the border with Turkey.

The rebels advanced on Qastal Maaf on Tuesday after seizing a hilltop area known as Observatory 45. Activists said the strategic post was important because it enjoys a commanding view of the surrounding mountains and green plains below.

On the coast, rebels captured a small, rocky strip known as Samra on Tuesday, according to activists.

The activist Abu Al Hassan said the area could be used by rebels to smuggle weapons. He said the shoreline there at the foot of rocky mountains was used by smugglers for decades because of its close access to Turkey and the nearby presence of deep water.

The Turkish government has allowed Syrian rebels, as well as weapons, to move with relative freedom across the frontier with Syria. Still, Samra has no port, and Syrian military aircraft would likely bomb rebels trying to use any sea passage.