Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel must tackle anti-Arab hate crime with an “iron fist”, a top minister said on Monday as Israeli forces confirmed arresting seven minors over racist graffiti and spitting at a priest.

The Israeli authorities are facing mounting pressure to rein in a spiralling wave of so-called “price tag” hate crimes by Jewish extremists targeting Arab Israelis and Palestinians, with new racist vandalism attacks being reported on an almost daily basis.

And commentators have warned that a continued failure to tackle the phenomenon could end up triggering a violent backlash.

“We must strive to be a state... that fights to the end against racism, against violence and against xenophobia,” Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said at a memorial day ceremony for fallen soldiers and those killed in terror attacks.

“A state that must fight with an iron fist against the terror which is wrongly called ‘price tag’ — an ugly phenomenon which has no connection to Jewish values and morals, and whose aim is to harm Arabs only because they are Arabs,” he said.

His remarks came as Israeli forces said they had arrested seven Jewish minors over racist acts and vandalism.

Four are suspected of spraying racist graffiti at a building site by an Arab village near Jerusalem, and another three were picked up for spitting at a priest by Jerusalem’s Old City and for carrying flags scrawled with the words “revenge” and “price tag”.

Price tag is the euphemism for nationally motivated hate crimes by Jewish extremists which predominantly target Palestinian property, but have also included attacks on other non-Jews as well as leftwing Israelis or the security forces.

Racist graffiti in Hebrew 

Such attacks, which tend to involve vandalism and trademark racist graffiti in Hebrew, began sporadically in the West Bank several years ago with settlers seeking to exact a “price” for state moves against illegal settlement outposts.

But since then, they have spread into Israel. Despite hundreds of arrests, hardly anyone has been prosecuted, raising questions about the government’s willingness to tackle the problem.

“Burning mosques and churches, desecrating holy books and cemeteries and damaging Arabs’ cars have become common phenomena on both sides of the Green Line,” said an editorial in Haaretz newspaper by Hussein Abu Hussein, a senior figure in the rights group Adalah.

During the first and second Palestinian uprisings (1987-1993, 2000-2005), a single stone thrown at an Israeli bus would see Israel’s Shin Bet security services and police investigators acting rapidly to round up, arrest and prosecute those involved, often within hours, he wrote.

“The Arab public — particularly the youth — suspiciously wonders on social media why law enforcement’s resourcefulness and speed disappear when it comes to Jewish terror. Why doesn’t the Shin Bet get involved? Is it because the victims are Arab?” he wrote.

Ongoing indifference by the Israel authorities could spark “a religious war” with people taking the law into their own hands to protect their holy places, and could easily end in violence if one of the perpetrators were to be caught in the act of desecrating a mosque, he warned.

Last week, the US State Department for the first time included mention of price tag attacks in its global report on terror, saying such incidents were “largely unprosecuted”.

On Sunday, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said she would back the idea of defining such acts as “terrorism”.

KUWAIT CITY — Two Kuwaiti lawmakers resigned on Sunday, bringing to five the number of MPs who have quit in protest at the parliament’s refusal to question the prime minister on corruption allegations.

MP Ali Al Rashed, a former parliament speaker, and MP Safa Al Hashem, the only female lawmaker in the 50-member house, said they resigned because the situation in the Gulf state has reached a “deadlock”.

“Today, the situation has reached a deadlock. The deviation in the use of monitoring and legislation powers in parliament has led to killing the questioning tool and silencing MPs,” the two lawmakers said in their resignation letter.

On Wednesday, opposition MPs Riyadh Al Adasani, Abdulkarim Al Kundari and Hussein Al Mutairi resigned after the pro-government parliament rejected their demand to question the prime minister over allegations he gave cash handouts to lawmakers.

The three MPs blamed Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah, a senior member of the ruling family, for deteriorating public services in the oil-rich Gulf state and took him to task for the temporary closure of two newspapers, claiming the move was aimed at stifling freedoms.

Parliament speaker Marzouk Al Ghanem, speaking in an interview with Al Rai television on Saturday night, said the resignations were a coordinated conspiracy to “dismantle institutions in the country”, including an attempt to force the dissolving of parliament.

Ghanem also said that a number of other MPs are under tremendous pressure to resign and expected that more would quit.

The speaker said Sunday that he met Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, who has the sole authority to dissolve parliament.

“The emir reaffirmed total backing and full confidence in the national assembly ... and dissolving the assembly now is totally ruled out,” Ghanem told reporters outside parliament.

Ghanem said the emir also stressed that any attempt to destabilise the country will fail.

Under Kuwaiti law, parliament has 10 days to study the resignations. If it accepts them, by-elections must be held within two months.

DONGOLA, Sudan — Alaadeen put himself in the hands of people smugglers to take him somewhere better than impoverished eastern Sudan but he never made it.

The 22-year-old Sudanese man was among 10 illegal immigrants who died when traffickers abandoned their group of about 300 in the scorching desert on the Sudanese-Libyan border, a relative in Alaadeen’s hometown of Kassala told AFP by telephone on Sunday.

“He was looking for a better life,” said the relative who asked not to be named. “Some people with him told us that he had died.”

Alaadeen, whose full name the relative declined to reveal, was the son of a trader doing business on the Sudanese-Eritrean border near Kassala, he said.

On Sunday Al Sudani newspaper said that the young man and several other Sudanese were among the 10 victims.

The foreign ministry said the dead also included two Ethiopians, an Eritrean, and a victim whose nationality was unknown.

The relative said Alaadeen had gone with the traffickers of his own accord.

“He was taken by smugglers from the Kassala area to Khartoum before going on to Dongola,” a Nile River town about 500 kilometres northwest of the capital, he said.

Libya’s border is more than a day’s drive from there.

The desert region stretching from eastern Sudan up through Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula is a major route for African migrants seeking a better life.

Thousands of Eritreans, in particular, make the journey each year. Many head for Israel while others try to get to Europe.

“Some of them try to go through Egypt. Some of them try to go through Libya,” said a source familiar with the situation.

“They would try to cross the Mediterranean Sea via Libya.”

Sudanese officials announced the rescue of the illegal migrants on Wednesday, saying traffickers had dumped their victims in the border region’s scorching desert, where 10 died.

Sudan’s security service told Alaadeen’s family that he was among the casualties and they had found his identification, the relative said.

Sudanese and Libyan troops initially rescued about 300 hungry and thirsty survivors, but they later came across even more.

A convoy of trucks escorted by security forces from both countries delivered the migrants to safety in Dongola on Saturday after a journey of hundreds of kilometres across the desert.

Women and children were among the survivors who reached the town. Most of the victims appeared to be Ethiopian or Eritrean, but there were some Sudanese as well.

An AFP journalist in Dongola said that the migrants were still at an immigration facility in the town early Sunday.

The International Organisation for Migration told AFP that it hoped to “provide necessary assistance” to the group.

UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, has also said it “would stand ready to provide support” should the migrants be refugees.

At Alaadeen’s family home in Kassala, visitors arrived to offer condolences, and to wonder about what drove the young man away.

“I don’t understand why he did this,” said a man who knows the family. “Their economic situation is not bad.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces looking for evidence linked to a recent attack on a mosque were mobbed overnight by around 100 demonstrators at a West Bank settlement, a spokeswoman said Sunday.

As concerns grow over the spiralling number of hate crimes by Jewish extremists against Palestinians and Arab Israelis — euphemistically referred to as “price tag” attacks — the Israeli authorities are coming under increasing pressure to tackle the phenomenon.

“Our forces were attacked by about 100 residents, some of whom threw stones,” security spokeswoman Luba Samri said of the incident at Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank, a bastion of hardline settlers.

She said Israeli forces went to the settlement to search the house of a couple suspected of involvement in an April 18 attack on a mosque in Umm Al Fahm in northern Israel, in which racist graffiti was written on the walls and the front door was set alight.

Four Yitzhar settlers, including the couple, were arrested last week in connection with the attack after CCTV footage reportedly captured one of their cars at the scene.

Israeli forces said the married woman was released to house arrest on Friday while her husband was due in court on Sunday. The other two were released without charge.

Over the past week, vandals sprayed racist graffiti over another mosque in northern Israel and also targeted an ancient Christian church on the Sea of Galilee, damaging crosses and threatening clergy.

A Muslim graveyard was also defaced and two dozen olive trees were chopped down in the West Bank.

Earlier Sunday, a car was vandalised in the northern town of Yokneam and racist graffiti was left near an Arab village outside Jerusalem.

Such attacks were originally carried out by settlers to enact a “price tag” on Israeli moves to dismantle illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank, but the phenomenon has grown in recent months to an almost daily occurrence, alarming authorities.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told army radio on Sunday that she would meet with Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and top security officials to decide how to tackle the issue, with media reports suggesting the meeting would happen within days.

On Saturday, a former chief of Israel’s Shin Bet, which is responsible for internal security, challenged the agency’s willingness to tackle the matter.

“In the Shin Bet, the expression ‘we can’t’ does not exist, it’s more a case of ‘we don’t want to’,” Carmi Gillon was quoted as saying by public radio.

On Wednesday, the US State Department for the first time included mention of “price tag” attacks in its global report on terror, saying such incidents were “largely unprosecuted”.

But Israeli forces challenged the finding.

“There’s no comparison whatsoever between criminal incidents with nationalistic motives and terrorist-related incidents,” spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

“It is vandalism with nationalistic motives but these are not nationalistic attacks on Palestinians.”

BAGHDAD — Violence in Iraq, including shelling in a militant-held city and an attack targeting Shiite pilgrims, has killed more than 30 people in 24 hours, officials said Sunday.

The bloodshed comes as officials count ballots from the April 30 general election, the first since US troops withdrew in late 2011, and amid a protracted surge in nationwide unrest that has sparked fears of a return to the sectarian killing sprees of 2006-2007.

While officials are quick to blame external factors like the civil war in neighbouring Syria for the heightened violence, analysts and diplomats say widespread anger among the Sunni Arab minority is also a key cause.

In Fallujah, just a short drive west of Baghdad, shelling in southern areas of the city killed 11 people and wounded four, Doctor Ahmed Shami said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the bombardment, which began on Saturday evening and continued into Sunday.

In a sign of both the reach of anti-government militants and the weakness of security forces, all of Fallujah and shifting parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, farther west, have been out of government control since early January.

The crisis in the desert province of Anbar, which shares a long border with conflict-hit Syria, erupted in late December when security forces dismantled Iraq’s main Sunni Arab anti-government protest camp just outside Ramadi.

Militants subsequently seized parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

North of Baghdad, a bombing and shooting targeted a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims on Saturday evening, killing 11 people and wounded 21, police and a doctor said.

The pilgrims were returning from Samarra when a roadside bomb exploded on the outskirts of the town of Balad and gunmen opened fire on the bus.

The worshippers had been participating in commemorations marking the death of Imam Ali Al Hadi, the 10th of 12 imams who are key to the Shiite Muslim faith.

His body lies in a venerated shrine in Samarra that also houses his son Hassan Al Askari, the 11th imam.

Funerals for the victims were held on Sunday in southern Maysan province.

Also on Saturday evening, police found the bodies of eight family members shot dead inside their home in a predominantly Sunni area southeast of Baghdad.

It was unclear why the family had been targeted or who killed them.

And on Sunday, a shooting in Baghdad and a magnetic “sticky bomb” on a vehicle west of the capital killed two people, while a suicide bombing in the northern city of Mosul left one soldier dead, officials said.

The bloodshed comes just days after a parliamentary election, with incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki seeking a third term despite the dramatic deterioration in security and widespread political opposition.

More than 3,000 people have been killed already this year, according to an AFP tally based on security and medical reports.

The unrest is the worst since Iraq emerged from brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian fighting that killed tens of thousands of people in 2006 and 2007.

DUBAI/VIENNA — Iran has provided the UN nuclear watchdog with information about detonators with possible military applications, under an accord intended to allay concerns about Tehran’s atomic activities, an Iranian news agency said on Sunday.

There was no immediate comment from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which for years has been trying to investigate suspicions that Iran may have researched how to make an atomic bomb. Iran, which is seeking an end to sanctions hurting its oil-dependent economy, denies any such work.

Diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, last week told Reuters they did not know whether Iran had so far given the UN body the requested information about fast-functioning Exploding Bridge Wire (EBW) detonators, which can be used to help set off an atomic explosive device but also has civilian applications.

It was one of seven measures Iran agreed three months ago to implement by May 15 under a step-by-step plan for the IAEA to gain more insight into the country’s nuclear work, but the first directly related to the UN body’s long-stalled bomb probe.

As part of the same cooperation pact, IAEA inspectors are this week expected to visit Iran’s Saghand uranium mine and the Ardakan uranium milling facility. Refined uranium can have both civilian and military nuclear uses.

Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said on Sunday that the “EBW report has already been submitted” to the IAEA, as well as updated design information about the planned Arak heavy-water research reactor, which was also among the seven steps.

ISNA added: “The implementation of all seven steps agreed with IAEA will be finalised this week.”

West wants more

The IAEA said in a 2011 report that Iran had told the agency that it had developed EBW detonators for civil and conventional military applications. But, “Iran has not explained ... its own need or application for such detonators,” the IAEA report said.

Western officials say it is vital for Iran to address IAEA concerns about what it calls possible military dimensions to the country’s nuclear programme, as part of efforts to end a decade-old dispute that has raised fears of a new Middle East war.

They say information about detonators would be welcome but that Iran must do more in coming months to clear up concerns about suspected atomic bomb research. The two sides are expected to agree on new measures to be implemented after May 15.

“Key will be the next round of [possible military dimensions] topics agreed for discussion,” one diplomat in Vienna said, making clear his expectation that the next phase of Iran-IAEA cooperation would include more such issues.

Another envoy said work to resolve the concerns should be faster. “More has to come,” the diplomat said.

The IAEA’s talks with Iran are separate from negotiations between Tehran and six world powers, but still closely linked as both sets of negotiations are focused on fears that Tehran may be trying to develop the capability to build nuclear bombs.

Iran says its programme is entirely peaceful.

The powers — the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia — are aiming to reach a long-term agreement with Iran by late July on scaling back its nuclear programme in exchange for an end to international sanctions on Tehran.

ADEN — The army on Sunday killed 40 Al Qaeda suspects, mainly foreigners, and wounded dozens of others on day six of a major offensive in southern Yemen, military officials said.

Most of the “terrorists” were killed in Shabwa province during the ongoing operation against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the defence ministry said in text messages sent to journalists.

“The majority of those killed or wounded are Saudis, Afghans, Somalis, Chechens and others,” the official Saba news agency quoted a military source as saying.

On Friday, soldiers backed by warplanes killed five suspected Al Qaeda militants in the same province.

Residents there told AFP on Sunday of “exceptionally” heavy artillery fire and air raids targeting Al Qaeda hideouts in the region.

Saba quoted General Ahmed Al Yafie, commander of the Third Military Region, as saying the armed forces were “unprecedentedly ready to face this terrorist organisation”.

“The Al Qaeda elements will not escape death,” and troops will fight them “until they are uprooted from Yemen, which cannot be a home for terrorism,” he said.

Two insurgents were killed and five captured as they tried to advance towards Ataq, regional capital of Shabwa, while a local Al Qaeda commander was killed in a smaller operation in the central town of Baida, according to a military source.

Hours before Sunday’s raid, Saba reported that reinforcements had been sent to Shabwa to “deal with Al Qaeda”.

The offensive began on Tuesday with a setback for the army, when Al Qaeda ambushed a convoy, killing 15 soldiers and taking 15 more prisoner, three of whom were later executed.

But the army operation has since gathered pace, resulting in the deaths of 70 militants and more than 24 soldiers, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Among the Al Qaeda fatalities have been two foreign commanders — Abu Islam Al Shishani, who had Chechen links, and Abu Muslim Al Uzbeki, an AQAP leader in Abyan province who hailed from Uzbekistan.

AQAP — a merger of the network’s Yemeni and Saudi branches — has denied President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s allegations that 70 per cent of its fighters are foreigners.

The franchise has been linked to a number of failed terror plots against the United States, and its leader Nasser Al Wuhayshi recently appeared in a rare video in which he vowed to attack Western “crusaders” wherever they are.

The jihadists took advantage of a 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh from power to seize large swathes of southern and eastern Yemen.

The army recaptured several major towns in 2012 but has struggled to reassert control in rural areas, despite the backing of militiamen recruited among local tribes.

The latest government campaign came after a wave of US drone and other air attacks last month on Al Qaeda bases and training camps killed around 70 militants.

The jihadist group denounced the offensive as a “premeditated military escalation” that came after “the Yemeni defence minister visited Washington to receive the orders of his American masters”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The smell of fresh paint wafts through the domed lobby of the latest Israeli arrival in East Jerusalem — a Jewish seminary in a bustling commercial area in the same building as a post office serving thousands of Palestinians every day.

Otzmat Yerushalayim, which includes sleeping quarters and could house as many as 300 young Israelis, is the first Jewish housing venture on Saladin Street, a main shopping thoroughfare across from the walled Old City.

Palestinians and Israeli critics worry the placement of the academy in such a central location is asking for trouble in East Jerusalem, which has stayed largely trouble-free in recent years compared to the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, and which Palestinians hope will be the capital of a future state.

“Tensions are sure to spike here. It isn’t going to be easy,” a Palestinian pharmacist, who gave her name only as Maral, said in a drugstore across the street.

“They will just close us up the second a confrontation arises and all work will grind to a halt,” she said.

Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem after its occupation in a 1967 war has never been recognised, meaning most of the world views Israeli enclaves there as illegal settlements.

Settlement expansion has been a key sticking point in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed in April. But even when Israel froze construction temporarily in 2010, it always insisted the moratorium exclude East Jerusalem, which it views as an integral part of the country.

Unlike in the occupied territories, most Palestinians in East Jerusalem enjoy Israeli social benefits and looser travel restrictions, making them less motivated to engage in political protests.

Religious fervour runs deep in the holy city, however, and violence flared during the Jewish Passover holiday when Palestinians, gathered at a holy site revered by Muslims and Jews, threw rocks and firecrackers to try to prevent any attempt by ultranationalist Jews to pray there.

Israeli forces used stun grenades to quell the protests at a plaza that overlooks Judaism’s Western Wall and is home to Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Jews refer to the area as the Temple Mount, the site of the two biblical Jewish temples.

Formal opening

Ateret Cohanim, the private organisation behind the seminary project, has been moving hundreds of Jewish families into predominantly Palestinian-inhabited East Jerusalem for years, either by acquiring property or laying claim to land Jews bought before Israel’s creation in 1948.

It expects a formal opening ceremony to take place at the seminary later this month as part of Israeli celebrations of the 47th anniversary of its capture of East Jerusalem.

A teacher at the school, where a rabbi’s portrait hung on freshly painted walls amid benches and bunk beds, said it quietly opened its door a few weeks ago. The seminary’s windows are painted white, shielding those inside from view from the street.

Daniel Luria, a spokesman for Ateret Cohanim, declined to comment on the seminary while accompanying Reuters on a tour of a half-dozen settlement projects the group has spearheaded in Palestinian residential neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.

Luria said Ateret Cohanim, whose website suggests it raises more than half of its funds from donors in the United States, wanted Jews to live alongside Palestinians, not supplant them.

Some 200,000 Israelis have settled in East Jerusalem, which is home to about 280,000 Palestinians. Most live in largely separate areas.

“We’re really just doing what Zionism has always been defined as, the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. But we’re doing that in an area in the heart of Jerusalem,” Luria said.

Sensitive acquisitions

It is not clear how Ateret Cohanim got ahold of a section of the five-storey structure housing the post office, built at a time when neighbouring Jordan controlled East Jerusalem.

Ateret Cohanim refuses to discuss its acquisitions, citing the issue’s sensitivity. Settlement watchdog groups say an Israeli company that occupied the property put it up for sale.

The Israeli government often distances itself from the activities of pro-settler groups in East Jerusalem, generally leaving it up to the courts to decide in case of disputes.

It weighs in more on settlement in the occupied West Bank where it must authorise any enclaves before they are built — though dozens of settlement outposts have gone up without authorisation over the years. Although the government often vows to remove them, that process often takes years.

A spokeswoman at the Israel Lands Authority, the government agency that oversees land and ownership, denied any knowledge of the seminary transaction.

Luria insisted that Ateret Cohanim was not political, but also said a majority of Israelis opposed relinquishing control over any of Jerusalem for a peace deal with Palestinians.

Asked whether his group was seeking to ensure this didn’t happen, he replied: “Not that there are not ramifications behind Jews living in certain areas - we’re not stupid.”

Meir Margalit, a leader of the left-wing Meretz Party’s representatives in Israel’s Jerusalem municipality, said he had sought European and US intervention to try to block the seminary’s opening.

“It’s a sure recipe for violence. This is a very strategic site and there’s a potential here to cause serious disruptions in civic life in this city,” Margalit said.

Outside the post office building, Mohammed Tufaha, a 26-year-old Palestinian physical education teacher, sorted through a packet of letters he had just collected.

“Little by little, they are trying to overtake us. Soon they will move into other buildings as well and Judaise the entire area,” he said.

TRIPOLI — Businessman Ahmed Maiteeq was sworn in as Libya’s new prime minister on Sunday after chaotic voting, with several lawmakers challenging an appointment seen by analysts as unlikely to ease the oil producer’s political turmoil.

Officials gave contradicting versions of the parliamentary election outcome, with a deputy speaker initially saying Maiteeq had failed to obtain the necessary quorum even through he emerged as front-runner in several prior votes.

However, second deputy speaker Saleh Makhzoun later said he had won the necessary support and asked him to form a new government within two weeks.

“Ahmed Maiteeq is officially the new prime minister,” Makhzoun told a televised session interrupted by shouts from lawmakers challenging his win.

Analysts expect Maiteeq to struggle to make headway as government and parliament are unable to impose authority on a country awash with arms and militias, both a legacy from the NATO-backed 2011 uprising which toppled Muammar Qadhafi.

Since the civil war that ended Qadhafi’s one-man rule, Libya’s nascent democracy has struggled, with its parliament paralysed by rivalries and brigades of heavily armed former rebels challenging the new state.

The premier’s post became vacant after Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni resigned three weeks ago, citing an attack by gunmen on his family just a month into his term.

Parliament began voting on his successor on Wednesday, but that session was postponed after gunmen linked to a defeated candidate stormed the building and wounded several people.

Lawmakers resumed voting on Sunday in a frequently interrupted session, marked by confusion over the number of votes cast for Maiteeq. Some questioned the legitimacy of his election.

“The vote ... to appoint him as the prime minister was totally invalid,” said lawmaker Zainab Haroun Al Targi.

Deadlock

Thinni’s short-lived tenure followed that of Ali Zeidan who fled the country after he was fired by deputies over his failure to stop attempts by rebels in the volatile east to sell oil independently of Tripoli’s government.

Libya’s assembly is deadlocked between Islamists, tribes and nationalists, as the country’s fledgling army tries to assert itself against unruly ex-rebels, tribal groups and Islamist militants.

In February, it agreed to hold early elections in an effort to assuage Libyans frustrated at political chaos nearly three years after the fall of Qadhafi.

Many people in the OPEC nation blame congressional infighting for a lack of progress in the transition to democracy. Libya still has no new constitution.

Assembly President Nouri Abu Sahmain was absent from the vote. He has disappeared from public view since the attorney general launched an investigation into a leaked video showing him being questioned over a late-night visit by two women to his house.

DAMASCUS — Rebels said Sunday they struck a deal to withdraw from the army-besieged heart of Homs city, as government forces advanced on a strategic town near the Syrian capital, a month before elections.

The deal over the Old City of Homs, under total blockade since June 2012, will see some 2,250 people, mostly fighters, evacuate the flashpoint city in central Syria.

Rebels will head to opposition-held areas in the north of Homs province, handing over control to the army, opposition sources told AFP.

The deal brought together — for the first time — representatives of President Bashar Assad’s security forces, the rebels and Damascus backer Iran.

Homs was dubbed the “capital of the revolution” at the start of the anti-Assad uprising in 2011, and it has seen some of the heaviest violence in Syria’s war.

According to the opposition, the deal includes the exchange of an unknown number of Iranian and Lebanese prisoners currently held by the Islamic Front, Syria’s largest rebel alliance.

“An agreement occurred between representatives of the rebels and the chiefs of security, in the presence of the Iranian ambassador, for the pullout of fighters from the Old City,” said rebel negotiator Abul Hareth Al Khalidi.

He said the talk had now moved onto the implementation phase.

Also under the deal, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, relief will be allowed into two Shiite, pro-regime towns in the northern province of Aleppo that are under siege by rebels.

The text specifies that the evacuees will be escorted by UN and Iranian embassy representatives, as “guarantors” of their safety.

But regime representatives said it was an “arrangement” rather than a deal.

“There is no deal, there is an arrangement and reconciliations that should lead to the handing over of the city, stripped empty of weapons and of armed men,” said Homs Governor Talal Al Barazi.

“On the ground there is nothing yet,” he said.

The main opposition National Coalition, for its part, issued a statement in praise of “the heroic actions of the revolutionaries” in Homs.

The group also called on the United Nations “to fulfil its duty and to ensure the regime honours the truce” which began on Friday.

An activist from Homs told AFP: “Today, the modus operandi of the withdrawal was put in place. But there will be fear from both sides until the exit takes place.”

 Army advance 

The army made major advances Sunday on Mleiha, a town strategically located southeast of Damascus near the airport road, a security official said.

“More than half of the town is under army control,” the official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the advance, saying that Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hizbollah was playing a “lead role” in the battle.

Like the rest of the Eastern Ghouta area, Mleiha has been besieged for the past year and under fierce bombardment for several weeks.

The advance and agreed rebel pullout from Homs come a month ahead of a presidential election in which Assad is poised to return to power.

On Sunday, the constitutional court announced it had accepted the bids of two challengers for Assad’s seat: Maher Abdel Hafiz Hajjar and Hassan Abdallah Al Nouri.

Neither contender is known to the Syrian public.

While the June 3 election will be the country’s first multi-candidate vote, the rules effectively rule out any serious opponents to Assad’s regime from running.

Among them is the stipulation that anyone who has lived outside Syria in the past decade is excluded, effectively barring most prominent opposition figures, who live in exile.

At the same time, the vote will only be held in areas under government control.

The election is being held amid a brutal civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people since March 2011 and made millions homeless.