Region

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s Ark, a Palestinian-built protest boat which was preparing to run Israel’s naval blockade of the territory, was badly damaged in an explosion on Tuesday that organisers blamed on Israel.

The blast in Gaza City port struck at around 3:45am (00045 GMT) and was preceded by an anonymous telephone call warning the guard that the vessel was about to be blown up, organisers said.

The ship, a large fishing vessel which was being readied to put to sea in June, sustained major damage and sunk in the shallow waters of the port, leaving three-quarters of it submerged.

“An anonymous caller phoned the guard and told him to leave because they were planning to destroy the boat. He was very afraid and ran away,” Project Manager Mahfouz Kabariti told AFP.

He said the guard escaped unhurt as he was about 200 metres away when the explosion struck.

He was referring to an incident in 2011 when two boats docked in Greece were mysteriously damaged ahead of an attempt to break the Gaza blockade that organisers blamed on Israeli “sabotage”.

“We are convinced Israel did it because we were preparing for a test run next week, with the main voyage planned for June 15.”

He said all the details had been given to Gaza’s Hamas-run police force who had opened an investigation.

Mustafa Abu Awad, the 25-year-old guard who was on duty at the time, told AFP he had been warned to leave the area by an anonymous caller.

“I was sleeping near the boat and someone phoned me — an unidentified caller. I answered and he told me: ‘Mustafa, leave the boat right now because we are going to blow it up.’ I asked him who he was, but he hung up.”

Palestinian labourers and foreign activists have been working for more than a year to fit out the boat to carry goods and more than 100 passengers in the latest high-profile attempt to challenge Israel’s maritime lockdown on the tiny Hamas-run territory.

If successful, it would be the first time goods from Gaza have been exported by sea since the signing of the 1994 Oslo peace accords.

TRIPOLI — Gunmen stormed Libya’s parliament on Tuesday and opened fire, forcing lawmakers to abandon a vote on the next prime minister, witnesses said.

Parliament spokesman Omar Hmeidan said several people were wounded in the shooting by the gunmen, who were linked to one of the defeated candidates for prime minister. He gave no name.

Lawmakers fled from the building, witnesses said. The incident ended quickly but the vote was postponed until next week.

The government has been unable to control armed groups and Islamists who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but refuse to disarm and have carved out regional fiefdoms. Militias have repeatedly attacked the interim General National Congress (GNC) to make political or financial demands.

Hmeidan said deputies had started the final vote on a replacement for Premier Abdullah Al Thinni, who resigned two weeks ago saying that gunmen had attacked his family.

In the first ballot, businessman Ahmed Maiteeq came out on top among seven candidates. A second round between Maiteeq and the runner-up Omar Al Hasi had been meant to take place when the gunmen burst into the assembly.

Thinni had resigned just one month after his election, replacing Ali Zeidan, who was fired by deputies over attempts by rebels in the volatile east to sell oil independently.

Deadlock

The assembly is deadlocked between Islamists, tribes and nationalists, compounding a sense of chaos as Libya’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.

Deputies initially agreed to extend their term after their mandate ran out on February 7 to allow a special committee time to draft a new constitution. But that move provoked protests from Libyans angry at the slow pace of political change.

Many people in the OPEC nation blame congress infighting for a lack of progress in the transition to democracy.

In another sign of trouble, the attorney general asked to lift the immunity of assembly president, Nouri Abu Sahmain, to investigate a leaked video showing him being questioned over a late-night visit by two women to his house, Benghazi MP Ahmed Langhi told Reuters.

The case has the potential to damage Abu Sahmain, who is the army commander and has quasi-presidential powers. He has disappeared from public view since the attorney general launched his investigation in March.

At the time of the incident in January, rumours surfaced that he had been briefly detained by a militia to question him about the women. He denied then he had been kidnapped.

RAMALLAH/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — There can be no peace with Israel without first defining the borders of a future Palestinian state, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.

“Since the creation of Israel, nobody knows what the borders are. We are determined to know our borders and theirs, without that there will be no peace,” he said as Washington’s nine-month deadline for reaching a peace deal expired, leaving the process in tatters.

In a televised address, Abbas laid out his conditions for returning to the crisis-hit peace talks with Israel which have made no progress since they were launched on July 29 last year.

“If we want to extend the negotiations there has to be a release of prisoners ... a settlement freeze, and a discussion of maps and borders for three months during which there must be a complete halt to settlement activity,” he said.

The peace talks hit a major stumbling block in late March after Israel refused to comply with a commitment to release 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners, prompting Abbas to resume moves to seek international recognition.

Abbas has repeatedly insisted that Israel release the two dozen detainees plus hundreds more and agree to a freeze on settlement activity.

He has also demanded comprehensive talks on the issue of borders.

But a senior Israeli official said there would be no further talks unless Abbas renounced a reconciliation pact signed last week with Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers, under which the two rival Palestinian administrations would seek to form a new government of technocrats.

“The moment that Mahmoud Abbas gives up the alliance with Hamas, a murderous organisation which calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, we will be ready to return immediately to the negotiating table and discuss all subjects,” he told AFP.

On April 24, a day after the unity deal was announced, the Israeli security Cabinet said it would not negotiate with any Palestinian government backed by Hamas, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Abbas would have to choose between peace with the Islamist movement, or peace with Israel.

The timing of the intra-Palestinian unity agreement was criticised as “unhelpful” by Washington, although US officials are understood to have a wait-and-see attitude to the new government, Haaretz newspaper reported.

“It is clear that the administration also has a ‘glass half full’ view of the controversial deal between the two rival Palestinian factions,” the paper said, quoting a top White House adviser who said it was not possible to make peace “with only a part of the Palestinian people”.

Vandalism

Vandals suspected of being Jewish extremists hit a mosque and a church in Israel, Israeli forces said Tuesday, in the latest of a string of racist and religious attacks.

Separately, security forces arrested an Israeli man after he threatened the Roman Catholic bishop of Nazareth and demanded that Catholics leave the country or face God’s wrath.

Security spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP vandals had scrawled “Close mosques and not yeshivas” (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall of a mosque in the small Arab town of Fureidis, near the northern port city of Haifa.

The tyres of several nearby cars had been slashed.

Security forces were also investigating vandalism at Tabgha church on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which was built on the site where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

Church officials said a group of religious Jews in their early teens had damaged crosses there and attacked clergy.

And in Nazareth, also in northern Israel, Israeli forces arrested a Jewish man in his 40s for threatening Roman Catholic Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo and members of his faith.

“A suspect arrived at [Marcuzzo’s] house and delivered a threatening letter” on Sunday, Rosenfeld told AFP, saying the man was arrested in the nearby town of Safed.

In the letter, the suspect said all Christians, “except Protestants and Anglicans”, should leave Israel by May 5 and said that if Marcuzzo and his community did not comply, they would all be “killed by the heavens” — a term for God.

There are also other Christian communities in Israel, such as the Eastern Orthodox, Armenians and Copts.

The letter, which was signed by “the Messiah, Son of David”, quoted Jewish sources who hold that Christianity is a form of idolatry and should be banned.

The suspect said the message must be distributed to the community through the media by 1700 GMT Tuesday, saying every hour of delay would “cost the lives of 100 Christian souls”.

Reacting to the vandalism, security spokesman Rosenfeld said “crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious.”

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni also condemned the incidents.

“Whoever did these deeds is not part of my people,” she wrote on her Facebook page, pledging to “catch and punish” those responsible.

Speaking for the Catholic Church, Wadie Abu Nassar criticised the attacks as “very dangerous” and the Israeli establishment for its “lack of will” to act against those inciting them — “especially radical rabbis and preachers”.

“The security establishment is not acting sufficiently” to arrest and indict those responsible, he told AFP.

Politically motivated acts of vandalism with their trademark Hebrew graffiti are euphemistically known as “price tag” attacks.

Carried out by suspected Jewish extremists, thought to be predominantly teenagers, the attacks initially targeted Palestinians and their property. They have since grown in scope to include Christian sites and anyone opposed to the settlements.

DAMASCUS — At least 59 people were killed in attacks in Syria’s Damascus and Homs on Tuesday, as an international watchdog said it would probe alleged chlorine attacks in the country.

The parliament speaker, meanwhile, announced four new candidates had registered for presidential polls next month expected to return President Bashar Assad to power despite the civil war, which has left vast swathes of the country out of his control.

On Tuesday morning, a barrage of mortar shells fired by rebels hit a central neighbourhood in the capital, killing at least 14 people, state media reported.

“Fourteen citizens were killed and 86 others wounded by terrorists who targeted the Shaghur neighbourhood in Damascus,” the SANA news agency said.

The attack hit a school of Islamic jurisprudence where some students are as young as 14, though it was unclear if children were among those killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO put the toll in the attack at 17, adding that the figure could rise because several of the injured were in critical condition.

Hours later, a car bomb ripped through a crowded area of the country’s third city Homs, followed shortly afterwards by a rocket attack on the same neighbourhood, the provincial governor told AFP.

Talal Barazi said 45 people were killed in the double attack on the Zahra neighbourhood.

He said 36 died in the car bomb blast and another nine in the rocket fire that followed.

“The rocket fell about half an hour after the bombing on the same area, where there was a crowd of people” trying to help those wounded in the blast, he said.

The attack was one of the deadliest to hit the central city, where rebels control just a few remaining districts, most of them under a tight government siege.

Earlier this month, regime forces launched an attack on rebel areas in the city, where just a few hundred opposition fighters remain after most civilians were evacuated in a UN-led operation.

Chlorine attacks probe planned 

In the Hague, meanwhile, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it would examine allegations that chlorine had been used in attacks in Syria.

The watchdog’s chief Ahmet Uzumcu announced “the creation of an OPCW mission to establish facts surrounding allegations of use of chlorine in Syria”, a statement said.

The Syrian regime and rebels have blamed each other for the use of chlorine in at least one attack, in the rebel-held town of Kafr Zita in Hama province, with the opposition alleging the government has carried out several more.

The OPCW is already in Syria overseeing a deal under which Damascus is to turn over its chemical weapons arsenal by June 30.

On Sunday, the joint UN-OPCW mission in Damascus said 92.5 per cent of the country’s chemical weapons material had been removed or destroyed.

Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme last year, after Washington threatened military action in response to a sarin gas attack outside Damascus that killed up to 1,400 people.

The regime denied carrying out the attack.

New presidential candidates 

In Damascus, Parliamentary Speaker Mohamed Al Lahham said four new candidates had registered to participate in the country’s June 3 presidential election, bringing the total number of candidates, including Assad, to 11.

Ali Wanous, Azza Al Hallaq, Talea Salah Nasser and Samih Mikhael Moussa are all relative unknowns.

Syria’s constitution requires that candidates for the presidency be Muslim, but a source in the constitutional court confirmed that Moussa is Christian.

“We receive all applications for presidential candidacy and transmit them to the parliament,” the source said.

“In the five days after the candidacy period ends, on May 5, we will examine the candidates to see if they meet all requirements. On May 6, we will announce who has met the conditions,” he added.

Hallaq’s application brings the number of women competing in the vote to two.

The constitution contains no explicit prohibition on female candidates, but its phrasing implies only male candidates are permitted.

The elections will be Syria’s first multi-candidate presidential vote after a constitutional amendment did away with the previous referendum system.

But with a brutal civil war raging and large areas of the country held by rebels, it remains unclear how the vote will be organised.

Nearly half of Syria’s residents have fled their homes, and the country’s electoral commission says those who left the country “illegally” will not be allowed to vote.

Electoral rules also prevent anyone who has lived outside Syria in the past decade from running, effectively excluding most prominent opposition figures, who live in exile.

BAGHDAD — Twin bombings killed 15 people northeast of Baghdad Tuesday, the latest in a wave of deadly violence that has cast a pall over Iraq’s first general election since US troops withdrew.

The bloodshed came a day after a spate of blasts, including 10 suicide bombings, killed 64 people, raising questions over whether Iraq’s security forces can protect upwards of 20 million eligible voters during Wednesday’s polls.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, under fire over the worst protracted surge in violence in years along with a laundry list of voter grievances, is bidding for a third term in office in the election, the country’s first since 2010.

The Shiite premier has trumpeted a battle against violent jihadists whom he claims are entering Iraq from war-torn Syria and supported by Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But critics say the authorities’ heavy-handed treatment of minority Sunnis has contributed to the unrest.

In the latest violence, a spate of attacks on Monday killed 64 people in Baghdad as well as north and west of the capital, fuelling fears voters may stay at home rather than risk being caught up in bloodshed.

On Tuesday morning, twin bombings at a market in the town of Saadiyah, northeast of Baghdad, killed 15 more people.

“I can’t imagine the militancy is going to sit back and say, ‘Yeah, have your election’,” said John Drake, a London-based security analyst at AKE Group.

“They are going to make a strong statement undermining the government, undermining the capability of the security forces, and hopefully deterring voters so that the vote result will be seen as illegitimate... in the eyes of many of the electorate.

“This will harm the government, and make the terrorists seem more credible.”

More than 3,000 people have been killed in violence so far this year, according to an AFP tally, including more than 750 already this month.

The unrest is the country’s worst since it was plagued by all-out sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007 that left tens of thousands dead.

Voter grievances 

Authorities have announced a week-long public holiday to try to bolster security for the election, and vehicles will be barred from Baghdad’s streets from Tuesday evening.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest bloodshed, but Sunni militant groups have been accused of carrying out previous bombings in an attempt to derail the political process.

Though voters nationwide often list an array of grievances, from poor public services, rampant corruption and high unemployment, to say nothing of the persistent violence, the month-long campaign ahead of Wednesday’s vote has centred around Maliki’s bid for a third term in office.

The premier contends that foreign interference is behind deteriorating security and complains of being saddled with a unity government of groups that snipe at him in public and block his efforts to pass legislation.

The 63-year-old who hails from Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority and is accused by his opponents of monopolising power and targeting minority Sunnis, is widely expected to win the largest number of seats in parliament, but is unlikely to win a majority on his own.

He will therefore have to win the support of coalition partners, notably from Kurdish and Sunni parties as well as fellow Shiites who have been critical of his rule, in order to form a government.

But with a fractious and divided opposition, analyst say Maliki remains the frontrunner.

Formation of a government could take several months, however, as the country’s various political groups typically negotiate the senior positions of prime minister, president and parliament speaker as part of a package.

In previous elections, a de facto agreement has emerged whereby the premier is Shiite, the president a Kurd and the parliament speaker a Sunni Arab.

RIYADH — The 40-odd men gathered in a sandy, dung-scattered auction pen at one of Saudi Arabia’s largest camel markets were fiercely dismissive of a link scientists have found between the animals and an often fatal virus in humans.

“It’s not true. It’s a lie. We live with camels, we drink their milk, we eat their meat. There’s no disease. We live and sleep and spend our whole lives with them and there’s nothing,” said Faraj Al Subai’i, a trader at the market.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus has infected 345 people in the conservative Islamic kingdom since it was identified two years ago, causing fever, pneumonia and kidney failure in some, and killing around a third of sufferers.

Although many patients in a recent outbreak in Jeddah appear to have become infected through person-to-person transmission in hospitals, MERS has been found in bats and camels, and many experts say the latter form the most likely animal reservoir from which humans are becoming infected.

Camels occupy a special place in Saudi society, providing a link to an important but vanishing nomadic tradition and valued at prices that can climb to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last week the World Health Organisation (WHO) advised people at most risk of severe disease to avoid contact with camels and take precautions when visiting places where the animals are present, and to avoid drinking raw milk.

Among the pungent animal pens in Riyadh’s camel market, stretching several kilometres along a highway out of the city, the traders, owners and camel workers said they had been given no advice, information or warnings on MERS by government officials.

Even Ehab Al Shabouri, an Egyptian veterinary doctor in one of the many practices stretching along a nearby road that cater to the camel owners, said he was unaware that the MERS virus had been found in the animals.

“If it was related to camels, the agriculture ministry would have taken some measures,” he said.

While the link is the subject of extensive study among scientists outside Saudi Arabia, it has been noticeably absent from much of the official debate inside the kingdom.

However on Tuesday, acting Saudi Health Minister Adel Fakieh told a news conference there has been “consensus in the discussions taking place over the last two days after the scientific team reviewed various evidence that it is advised not to get into close contact with camels, especially sick camels”.

He was speaking after meeting foreign experts including from the WHO who were invited by the government to help investigate MERS. They have also advised people not to consume raw milk or raw meat products from camels.

Fakieh was appointed a week ago after the former minister, Abdullah Al Rabeeah, was replaced following mounting expressions of public unease and anger on social media at what many Saudis saw as an inadequate and opaque approach to the outbreak.

The US-ally and conservative absolute monarchy allows little public dissent and is often secretive about subjects seen as politically sensitive, which analysts speculate encourages the spread of rumours and mistrust in its public statements.

Unlike his predecessor, Fakieh immediately visited affected hospitals and was shown on television meeting MERS patients in an apparent attempt to win back public trust.

MERS is of particular concern given Saudi Arabia’s role as host of Islam’s annual haj pilgrimage which attracts millions to the kingdom each year. Fakieh said very old people, children and those with chronic diseases should delay their pilgrimage, set for early October, this year, but that no other restrictions were being imposed.

Admiration, affection and poetry

Some infection experts have speculated that local sensitivities over the reputation of an animal much beloved in the desert kingdom, and closely bound to its cultural identity, may have caused resistance to the idea it may be behind the MERS outbreak.

Those experts fear this could hinder preventative measures aimed at limiting the spread of the disease, which so far appears not to transmit easily between people, by controlling it at source.

Camels are a common sight in some eastern districts of Riyadh, grazing on empty plots of land or carted in trucks on major roads. While they are less prevalent inside some other Saudi cities, such as Jeddah, they are still often seen on town outskirts.

At once a source of transport, milk and meat, camels were indispensible to the nomadic life of the Saudi people’s bedouin forefathers, inspiring admiration, affection and verse after verse of classical Arabic poetry.

That nomadic lifestyle is long gone, replaced decades ago by an urban culture of cars, supermarkets and television, but as Saudis drift further from their bedouin roots, many increasingly cherish values seen as purer and simpler than those of today.

The ownership and love of camels is an integral part of that nostalgic vision, expressed in races and pageants that attract tens of thousands of spectators, and in the millions of riyals that change hands for the fastest or most beautiful animals.

Among the corrugated metal sheds and bumpy roads of Riyadh’s camel market most beasts on sale are far less eminent specimens, said the traders, but are kept for breeding, for their products including milk and urine, and eventually for the slaughterhouse.

As a group of men in white Arab robes dispute the merits of the camels on offer, an auctioneer with a cane touches one tall animal and opens the bidding at 7,500 riyals ($2,000).

Camel flesh is displayed in the meat section of most Saudi supermarkets alongside cuts of New Zealand lamb and Irish beef, while the milk is usually drunk fresh and unpasteurised, and prized as a healthful panacea.

“We drink the milk ourselves and provide it to our guests. It’s medicine. People come to us for camel milk for their health, particularly to cure cancer. We all drink it every day and see how strong we are,” said a white-bearded camel trader.

Outrage

An outraged, high-pitched grunting erupted nearby as a pair of herders walloped a large beast on its haunches to steer it along the correct road, past a Bedouin-style black-and-white tent where five men were kneeling for Islam’s afternoon prayer.

Eid Al Rashidi, one of several men from the same tribe who were buying and selling camels at the auction, said his father and grandfather had both owned herds, and now he has 30 of the animals, valued from 20,000 to 30,000 riyals each.

He jutted a finger angrily as he declared there could be no MERS cases among the camels. A small crowd behind him added their voices in agreement, many of them asking how it could be linked to the animals if none of the traders had fallen sick.

There were no signposts or other visible warnings around the camel market to advise people to take extra precautions, such as increased hand washing or avoiding animal secretions.

Above Rashidi’s head, the arm of a small crane swung lazily from a truck, an adult camel swaying in the harness beneath it, scattering droppings across the ground before it was carefully lowered to the sand.

Its owner, Arabic headdress wrapped around his face, leaned down to undo the harness and the animal sneezed on him.

Viruses among camels may be particularly widespread now, although there is no indication whether that is the cause of the recent spike in MERS cases, because the birthing season recently ended and calves are more prone to picking up the virus.

As bidding for an adult continued, a group of very young camels, sprouting fluffy blonde curls atop spindly legs, trotted past with a young Saudi boy scampering behind them and patting them on their backs.

“If it has been confirmed that MERS exists in camels, then we are in the danger zone as we are playing with fire,” said Salman Al Rasheed, one of the traders.

“But this is not true, because this market has camels from all regions of the country, sick camels and healthy camels, and we have never seen MERS among any of us,” he added.

WASHINGTON — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is prepared to normalise ties with Israel within days or weeks after counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu apologised for a deadly raid in 2010.

Erdogan, speaking on US broadcaster PBS late Monday, said US President Barack Obama was instrumental in arranging a phone call between the leaders of Israel and Turkey, which have been at odds since a 2010 Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships left nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists dead.

Officials said major progress has been made in recent weeks to narrow the gap between the two sides, by overcoming sticking points including the amount of compensation to be paid to Turkey.

Erdogan said the issue has been resolved.

“We have come to an agreement... with respect to compensation,” he told PBS through a translator.

“And with respect to sending humanitarian aid to the people in Palestine through Turkey... is the other step of the negotiations, and with the completion of that phase we can move towards a process of normalisation,” Erdogan said.

“I think we’re talking about days, weeks.”

Erdogan said the first step “would no doubt be taken by the sending of ambassadors”.

The May 2010 Israeli assault on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara in international waters en route to Gaza sparked widespread condemnation and provoked a major diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador, demanded a formal apology and compensation, and an end to the blockade on the Gaza Strip — which is ruled by Hamas, a Palestinian group.

Talks on compensation began a year ago after Israel extended a formal apology to Turkey in a breakthrough brokered by Obama.

ADEN — Yemeni troops backed by air force planes attacked Al Qaeda bastions in the south of the country on Tuesday to try to eradicate the Islamist militant group that has killed hundreds of people in Yemen since 2011.

The state news agency Saba said five local Al Qaeda leaders, including one identified as Abu Al Qa’qa’, were killed in the fighting. Five Yemeni soldiers were also killed, a local government official said.

Militants from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its allies in the local Ansar Al Sharia group fled to the mountainous area in 2012 after Yemen’s army, backed by the United States, drove them out of cities they had seized in 2011.

The insurgents have posed a challenge to government efforts to restore stability to the US-allied country since long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to step down in 2012 after months of pro-democracy protests.

Hundreds of volunteers from a local militia known as the Popular Committees were taking part on the side of the army in the new offensive, mounted less than two weeks after a series of air strikes killed 55 suspected militants in their main hideouts in southern Yemen.

“Heroes of the armed and security forces, in cooperation with the Popular Committees, are determined to destroy the remnants of the terrorist elements in Al Mahfad area,” Abyan governor Jamal Al Aqel was quoted as saying by the defence ministry.

The militants have carried out dozens of bombings, suicide attacks and commando-style raids against military installations, government facilities and foreign nationals.

Local news websites have reported that several soldiers were captured by militants in the early stages of the fighting and photos were posted online of men in uniform sitting in the back of a truck, between masked men holding an Al Qaeda banner.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reports.

Foreigners

The militants have carried out dozens of bombings, suicide attacks and commando-style raids against military installations, government facilities and foreign nationals.

On Tuesday, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi said 70 per cent of Al Qaeda fighters were foreigners.

“Whoever is doubtful of that among our brothers should go to the morgues in hospitals and see the corpses of people whose countries have refused to accept them. They’re from Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, France and various countries,” Hadi told graduates at the police academy.

Local sources said unmanned drone aircraft had been seen above the target areas before the strikes earlier this month. The United States acknowledges using drone strikes to target AQAP in Yemen but it does not comment on the practice.

The air strikes came after after an online video was posted on the Internet showing AQAP leader Nasser Al Wuhaishi addressing a crowd of fighters in an undisclosed mountainous region of Yemen and vowing to attack the United States.

US officials credit the drone strategy for the fact that AQAP is no longer able to control territory in Yemen as it did in 2011. But critics say the strikes and civilian casualties are increasing sympathy for AQAP and resentment against Washington.

Saudi Arabia also watches AQAP with concern, since the branch was founded by citizens of both countries and has sworn to bring down its ruling Al Saud family.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israelis and the Palestinians appeared determined Monday to seal their divorce as Washington’s deadline for reaching a Mideast peace deal was to expire, leaving hopes for a breakthrough in tatters.

After more than a year of intensive shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry with the initial aim of brokering a deal by April 29, Washington’s patience appeared to be growing thin as both sides moved to distance themselves from the crisis-hit talks.

Speaking to a closed meeting of international figures, Kerry reportedly said that if Israel didn’t seize the opportunity to make peace soon, it risked becoming an “apartheid state”, a US news website reported.

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens — or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” he said, according to a transcript obtained by The Daily Beast and published late Sunday.

Apartheid is the term for the system of racial segregation put in place by the white supremacist regime in South Africa from 1948 until the country’s first all-race elections in 1994.

Although the process was at a point of “confrontation and hiatus”, Kerry insisted it was not dead — yet.

The sword of reconciliation 

But both the Palestinians and the Israelis appear to have drawn their own conclusions about the life expectancy of the US-led negotiations, which have made no visible progress since they began nine months ago.

Last week, Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip announced a surprise unity deal aimed at ending years of occasionally violent rivalry.

Israel denounced the deal as a deathblow to peace hopes and said it would not negotiate with any government backed by the Islamist movement. Washington called the deal “unhelpful”.

Under the agreement, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas will work to establish a new unity government of political independents which would be headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fateh Party dominates the PLO.

It would recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by existing agreements, in line with the key principles set out by the Mideast peacemaking Quartet.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any negotiation with the new government unless Hamas accepts Israel, forcing Abbas to chose between the two.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Israel of using reconciliation as a weapon during the talks.

“Everyday they were asking: What would you do with Gaza?” he told Voice of Palestine.

“So if peace cannot be achieved without Gaza, and it cannot be achieved with Gaza, then there is an Israeli aim here, and that is not achieving peace.”

Meanwhile, in remarks in Gaza on Monday, Mussa Abu Marzuk, a top Cairo-based Hamas leader, reaffirmed that the unity government would “not be political”.

He said its mandate would be primarily to prepare for elections within six months, restructuring the security services and overseeing the reconstruction of the battered Gaza Strip.

An unwise response 

Tzahi HaNegbi, an MP close to Netanyahu, told army radio Israel should “wait to understand the meaning” of the Palestinian unity deal.

“Israel must act intelligently and with restraint, and not to play into the Palestinians’ hands by helping them out of the trap into which they have fallen,” he said.

Other commentators criticised the Israeli leader’s handling of the crisis.

“His first response was: either Hamas or the peace process. This was not the wisest response,” wrote Ben-Dror Yemini in Maariv newspaper.

Instead of a negative response, Netanyahu could have “embarrassed” the Palestinians by expressing support and an outstretched hand, which they would most likely have rejected, he wrote.

“Israel would have scored points in the blame game,” he added. Instead, Netanyahu’s remarks had simply painted Israel as “a rejectionist of peace”.

Israel and Washington are reportedly at odds over the proposed new Palestinian government, with US officials waiting to see whether it will embrace the Quartet’s principles.

In a separate but related development, the PLO late Sunday said it would pursue efforts to sign up to another 60 UN bodies and international agreements. There was no immediate Israeli response.

One of Israel’s conditions for agreeing to the US-backed talks was that the Palestinians refrain from pursuing recognition in UN and international bodies.

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad declared on Monday he would seek re-election in June, defying calls from his opponents to step aside and allow a political solution to the country’s devastating civil war.

Assad formally submitted his nomination to Syria’s constitutional court to stand in an election which his Western and Arab foes have dismissed as a parody of democracy.

He is the seventh person to put himself forward for Syria’s first multi-candidate presidential vote in decades, but none of his rivals are expected to mount a serious challenge to 44 years of Assad family rule.

The announcement was made in parliament by speaker Mohammad Al Laham, who read out Assad’s submission. “I ... Dr Bashar Hafez al Assad ... wish to nominate myself for the post of president of the republic, hoping that parliament will endorse it,” it said.

State media said crowds gathered to celebrate the coming election and recent military gains by Assad’s forces who, supported by foreign allies, have turned the tide of a war which 18 months ago challenged his control over Damascus.

“As soon as we heard that the president announced his candidacy we came down to the streets to celebrate because we cannot see any future Syria without his excellency President Bashar Assad,” said Khadija Hashma, one of about 100 people demonstrating in the central Damascus district of Mezzeh.

In a statement minutes after his candidacy was announced, Assad appealed for restraint and said any “demonstration of joy” should be responsible, urging people not to fire celebratory shots in the air.

Election ‘illegitimate’

Syria’s opposition leaders in exile, barred from standing by a constitutional clause requiring candidates to have lived in Syria continuously for 10 years, dismissed the vote as a charade.

The constitution also says candidates must have the backing of 35 members of the pro-Assad parliament, effectively ruling out dissenting voices from the campaign.

The National Coalition, Syria’s main opposition umbrella group in exile, said Assad’s determination to win another term in office showed he was not interested in a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

“From the start this regime is illegitimate, and so is this action,” said Hadi Bahra, a member of the coalition’s political committee. “This has no value, but says that the regime is not serious about a political solution.”

Authorities have not said how they will hold the vote in a country where six million people have been displaced and large swathes of territory remain outside government control.

Another 2.5 million refugees have fled Syria, many smuggling themselves across the frontier to avoid Assad’s security forces. Election commission head Hisham Al Shaar was quoted by Syria’s Al Watan newspaper on Monday as saying Syrians who had left the country illegally would not be eligible to vote.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which started when protests against Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011, inspired by other Arab uprisings.

Demonstrations were put down by force and the uprising became an armed insurgency which now pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and foreign jihadis against forces loyal to Assad, who is from Syria’s Alawite minority — an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The president has been backed by Iran and Russia and his soldiers have been reinforced by Shiite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon’s group Hizbollah, while regional Sunni Muslim powers have backed the rebels.

Turning point?

Assad’s forces have consolidated their grip around Damascus and central Syria, and hold the Alawite heartland provinces on the Mediterranean coast. Rebels control much of the north and east, but have been plagued by infighting.

Two weeks ago Assad said the Syrian conflict had reached a turning point and the deputy leader of Hizbollah said it was time Assad’s Western foes accepted he was there to stay, adding that Assad would win re-election decisively.

Peace talks in Geneva brokered by international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who is widely expected to announce his resignation soon, broke down in February.

Brahimi has warned that holding the presidential election on
June 3 would present an even greater challenge to reviving negotiations which were supposed to include discussion of a transitional governing body in Syria including both opposition and government representatives.

Bahra said Assad’s campaign for a third term in office contravened an accord, known as Geneva 1, agreed by international powers in Switzerland two years ago which was supposed to form the basis for the peace talks.

“He is in defiance of all UN Security Council resolutions and outside the Geneva 1 process,” Bahra said.