Region

CAIRO — A 13-year-old boy was shot dead on Wednesday in southern Egypt in clashes between police and supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, a health official said.

And in Qalubiya province, north of Cairo, two Egyptian soldiers were killed in a shootout with Islamists, the interior ministry said, adding six Islamists were killed and eight arrested in a raid on a weapons storage facility.

Political violence, which has dogged Egypt since a popular uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, is expected to intensify as the country prepares for a presidential election, due in a few months, that army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is expected to win easily.

The interior ministry said a brigadier general and a colonel, both bomb disposal experts, were shot dead in the raid on members of Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, Egypt’s most active militant group.

The Sinai-based group has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks, including an assassination attempt on the interior minister last year.

A health official later said a student, 13, was shot dead in clashes between police and pro-Morsi protesters in the city of Beni Suef, south of Cairo. The interior ministry said 12 protesters were arrested.

Demonstrations also erupted in the capital. Medical sources said around 40 pro-Morsi demonstrators were wounded by birdshot or tear gas near Cairo University.

Al Qaeda flag

Egypt has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, killed hundreds of its supporters and arrested thousands.

On Wednesday, about 300 women, supporters of Morsi, most of them covered from head to toe in black, protested outside Al Azhar University, a venerable centre of Islamic learning. They chanted “down with military rule”.

About 500 male demonstrators later took to the streets outside Al Azhar. Police fired tear gas and birdshot at them, a Reuters witness said.

Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered an investigation into a report that some Brotherhood protesters attached an Al Qaeda flag on buildings at Al Azhar.

The Brotherhood denies it has links with violent militant groups and says is committed to peaceful activism.

While the state has devastated the Brotherhood, tackling Sinai-based militant groups has proven to be a far greater challenge.

Security sources said the militants targeted on Wednesday were linked to a March 15 attack by gunmen who killed six army officers near Cairo.

The Islamist insurgency has spread from the Sinai to other parts of the Arab world’s biggest nation, including Cairo, since Morsi’s fall.

“The violence is likely to increase as the political process continues, especially if Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi announces his candidacy, but it won’t have a big effect on political measures,” said Mohamed Gomaa, political analyst at Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

Egypt’s army, the largest in the Arab world, has launched several offensives against militants in the Sinai, but Islamist fighters who have mastered the terrain remain highly effective, residents say.

In the 1990s, it took the government of former president Hosni Mubarak years to stamp out an Islamist insurgency.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel launched air raids against Syrian army positions early Wednesday and issued a stark warning to Damascus just hours after a bomb on the occupied Golan Heights wounded four Israeli soldiers.

The Syrian army said the air strikes killed one soldier and wounded seven, cautioning that the assault endangered “the security and stability of the region”.

The bombing marked the most serious escalation along the ceasefire line with Syria since the 1973 Middle East war, with Israel’s defence minister warning that Damascus would pay a “high price” for helping armed groups bent on harming Israel.

Fighters from Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah, which fought a bloody war with Israel in 2006, are battling alongside regime troops in Syria’s civil war and are credited with a string of recent battlefield successes against the rebels.

Israeli officials have been careful not to directly blame Hizbollah at this stage, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday there was a growing number of “jihadists and Hizbollah elements” on the Syrian Golan, which “represents a new threat” for Israel.

Following the Golan attack, Netanyahu had warned that Israel would act “forcefully” to defend itself.

Israel’s military said a Syrian army training facility, a military headquarters and artillery batteries had been targeted in the response.

Syria’s army command confirmed strikes on its bases in the Quneitra region, which it said led to “the martyrdom of one soldier and the wounding of seven others”.

‘Acts of aggression’ 

“We warn that these desperate attempts to escalate and exacerbate the situation in these circumstances by repeating these acts of aggression would endanger the security and stability of the region,” a statement added.

The early morning air strikes took place 12 hours after four soldiers who were patrolling the Israeli side of the ceasefire line were wounded, one of them severely, by a roadside bomb.

It was the third such incident in two weeks along Israel’s northern frontier, with Israeli military officials blaming the Syrian army for complicity in the attack.

Two previous attempts to strike soldiers along Israel’s northern borders on March 5 and 14 were blamed on Hizbollah.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel held Syria’s regime accountable for the attack.

“We see the Assad regime as responsible for what is happening under its authority, and if it continues to cooperate with terror elements who seek to harm Israel, we will make it pay a high price,” he said in a statement at dawn.

Israel would not tolerate any “breach” of its sovereignty and would continue to strike anyone seeking to harm its forces or civilians, Yaalon said.

“We will react with determination and force against anyone operating against us, at any time and any place, as we have done tonight,” he said.

And Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would not hesitate to take “forceful action” to ensure calm on its northern borders.

‘We hurt those who hurt us’ 

“Our policy is very clear: We hurt those who hurt us. We also thwart, to the best of our ability, the transfer of weapons whether by sea, by air or by land, and this activity will continue,” he said in comments released by his office.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bomb, analysts pointed to similarities with an explosion on Friday that targeted troops along the Lebanese border, prompting Israel to shell Hizbollah positions over the border.

And on March 5, Israeli troops on the Golan opened fire on Hizbollah members who were allegedly trying to plant a bomb near the ceasefire line, hitting two of them. Syrian sources said 11 people had been wounded.

Israel occupied the strategic Golan Heights plateau in the 1967 war and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognised by the international community.

Writing in Yediot Aharonot daily, defence correspondent Alex Fishman said Israel was being “dragged into a brawl” with the Syrians and Hizbollah.

With no policy for halting the deterioration along the border, Israel should consider sending a clear message in the form of “one or several hammers that will pound Damascus or Beirut powerfully and shake up somebody over there”, he wrote.

“A policy of ‘sit-still-and-do-nothing’... is an invitation to the next incident.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel’s Jerusalem municipality approved building plans on Wednesday for 184 new housing units in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, drawing anger from Palestinians engaged in faltering statehood talks.

A municipality spokeswoman said the local planning committee had approved requests by private contractors who purchased the land years ago for the construction of 144 housing units in Har Homa and 40 dwellings in Pisgat Zeev.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), accused Israel of trying to derail US-sponsored peace talks in which the future of settlements on land that Palestinians want for a state is a major issue.

“It has become evident that Israel has done everything possible to destroy the ongoing negotiations and to provoke violence and extremism throughout the region,” Ashrawi said in a statement.

Israel says Palestinian refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state — a step Palestinian leaders say was already taken in interim peace deals — is the main stumbling block.

Har Homa and Pisgat Zeev settlements are in a part of the West Bank that Israel annexed to Jerusalem after capturing the territory in the 1967 Middle East war. The annexation was not recognised internationally.

Palestinians are seeking a state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They say Israeli settlements, regarded as illegal by most countries, could deny them a viable, contiguous country.

Israel regards Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa as neighbourhoods of Jerusalem that it would keep under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

The two sides resumed US-brokered peace talks in July, but the negotiations appear to be going nowhere. Washington is struggling to formulate agreed principles that would extend the talks beyond an original April target date for a final deal.

More than 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that are home to about 2.8 million Palestinians.

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked Al Shebab rebels on Wednesday identified a suicide car bomber who struck a town recently captured by African Union troops as a 60-year-old Somali man who held Norwegian citizenship.

The attack in Buulo Burde in the south of the country on Tuesday targeted a hotel crowded with army officers and was followed by an assault by Shebab gunmen, leaving several dead, officials said.

“The attacker of Buulo Burde was a 60-year-old man who came from Norway to fight the enemies of Allah,” Shebab military spokesman Sheikh Abdul Aziz Abu Musab told AFP, naming the attacker as Abdullahi Ahmed Abdulle, a Norwegian national of Somali origin.

“He paid the sacrifice in order to be close to Allah by killing his enemies. The event is showing us that there is no age limit for jihad,” the spokesman said.

Norway’s PST intelligence service said they were investigating the report.

“In general, we are seeing a growing number of people leave Norway to join militant Islamist groups,” PST spokesman Siv Alsen told AFP.

The attack is the latest by Al Shebab, launched in apparent retaliation for a new offensive to root them out of areas of the war-torn country still under their control.

African Union soldiers, who are fighting the Shebab alongside Somali government troops, captured the small town of Buulo Burde from the Islamists last week.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday announced plans to explore for oil in the West Bank, throwing a new element of uncertainty and confusion into troubled US-backed peace efforts.

The Palestinians proclaimed the project, close to a small oil field in Israel, a key step towards their dream of developing the local economy and gaining independence in the West Bank. But Israel, which wields overall control of the area, gave no indication it has agreed to the plan, and far less ambitious attempts at economic development have repeatedly sputtered in large part because of Israeli restrictions.

Mohammed Mustafa, the Palestinians’ deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said the Palestinians were seeking proposals from international firms to explore and develop oil in the northern West Bank.

He said the project was among a series of initiatives drawn up by Mideast envoy Tony Blair to help develop the Palestinian economy. “The Palestinian people have the right to use their resources,” he told The Associated Press.

Blair has proposed a multiyear plan for developing the Palestinian economy — an effort that is meant to complement and bolster US-led peace talks. But the former British prime minister has made little headway in carrying out the projects, which focus on eight areas of the economy, including agriculture, construction, tourism and energy.

Progress has been hindered because many of the projects are to take place in the 60 per cent of the West Bank that was left under full Israeli control under interim peace deals two decades ago. The Palestinians say they cannot establish a viable state without being allowed to develop this area and say Israel routinely stifles attempts to do so.

According to a map released by the Palestinians, the exploration area covers more than 400 square kilometres in a strip of land along the frontier with Israel. Most, if not all, of this land, remains under full Israeli control.

In a statement, Blair’s office said “the energy sector is indeed one of the eight sectors” including in Blair’s initiative. “Reliable energy supply is critical for the expansion and development of all sectors of the Palestinian economy.” The statement made no reference to the project announced Tuesday and gave no details on where any West Bank oil projects might take place.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had no comment, and Israel’s energy ministry said it was not involved.

The Palestinian announcement appeared to lay the groundwork for a new area of protracted negotiations with Israel. International bodies, including the World Bank, have urged Israel to lift restrictions on Palestinian development in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank.

In his announcement, Mustafa, a US-educated economist and former official at the World Bank, said initial studies have indicated the exploration area may hold oil reserves of 30 million to 186 million barrels. While not large in global terms, he said the project could generate proceeds of roughly $1 billion for the Palestinian government, including taxes and royalties. The government will accept bids from potential partners through June.

“The existence of oil in Palestine is a highly promising opportunity for the Palestinian economy,” he said.

In contrast to their energy-rich neighbors, Israel and the Palestinian areas have historically had few natural resources to exploit. In recent years, Israel has developed natural gas fields off its Mediterranean coast. It also has begun pumping oil from a small field located near the boundary with the West Bank, close to the area the Palestinians hope to exploit.

Giora Eiland, acting chief executive of Israeli oil firm Givot Olam, declined to comment on the Palestinian plan, but said his company “absolutely” does not take any oil from the Palestinian side.

“We only have vertical drills, and all of them are located on the Israeli side,” he said.

DAMASCUS — Syria’s army on Wednesday took over a small village in the Qalamoun area on the Lebanon border, four days after it seized the strategic rebel bastion of Yabrud, state news agency SANA said.

“Army units took over Ras Al Ain, southwest of Yabrud, killing a large number of terrorists,” said SANA, using the regime’s terminology to refer to rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Al Assad.

State television meanwhile broadcast live images from Ras Al Ain, showing village women wearing Islamic headscarves and traditional clothing dancing with joy.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the takeover, and said the army was backed by Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah and the paramilitary National Defence Forces.

The takeover of Ras Al Ain comes four days after the fall from rebel hands of Yabrud, a key rebel bastion that had come under daily shelling for more than a month.

The Observatory also said fierce clashes were raging in Rankus, a rebel village in the Qalamoun area.

A security source told AFP the army’s goal is to secure the Lebanon border by taking over Flita, Ras Al Maarra and Rankus.

That would close off rebel supply lines for weapons and fighters, but also crucial routes for food and other supplies to civilians in besieged areas of Damascus province, including Eastern Ghouta, activists say.

On Monday, the Observatory said two children had died in Eastern Ghouta because of food and medical shortages, and dire living conditions caused by the regime siege.

Elsewhere, the army entered Al Hosn in the central province of Homs and was fighting for control of the famed Krak des Chevaliers castle, a security official told AFP.

Krak des Chevaliers, built between 1142 and 1271 and considered one of the best preserved Crusader castles in existence, has already sustained damage in Syria’s three-year conflict.

“The army entered Al Hosn and took two districts of the village. It is bombarding areas around the Krak des Chevaliers to take control of the castle,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In southern Syria, rebels took control of the central Gharaz prison in Daraa province, freeing an unspecified number of prisoners.

In the north, the army carried out fresh air strikes against several rebel areas of Aleppo, which has come under sustained aerial bombardment since December, killing hundreds of civilians, said the Observatory.

And in Hassakeh, in the northeast, 20 members of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were killed in fighting against Kurds, said the group.

More than 146,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war, and nearly half the population has been displaced.

DEIR AL-ASAL AL-TAHTA, Palestinian Territories — Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the southern West Bank on Wednesday, sources on both sides told AFP.

A Palestinian security source named the victim as 15-year-old Yussef Shawamreh and said he was shot dead near the barrier southwest of Hebron.

Witnesses said the victim had been foraging for local plants when he was shot, but the army claimed he and two others had been vandalising the security fence.

The security sources initially told AFP the shooting took place near Al Ramadin village, but witnesses said it happened in Deir Al Asal Al Tahta, some 15 kilometres southwest of Hebron.

The Israeli army claimed troops had fired at Palestinians trying to damage the barrier.

“Earlier today three suspects sabotaged the security fence in Deir Al Asal Al Tahta,” a spokeswoman told AFP, saying troops had verbally warned them away from the area then fired warning shots in the air.

When that did not work, troops “fired towards the lower extremities of the main instigator”, she said, confirming he was hit and taken to an Israeli hospital “where he died of his wounds”.

But the victim’s brother, Abed Shawamreh, 23, denied the army’s account and said the teenager had been out looking for gundelia, a thistle-type plant used in cooking.

“Every year, people from the village go out to pick gundelia. Today Yussef went with his friends to pick some in an area close to the wall and the army shot at them. They hit him and arrested two of his friends,” he told AFP.

Israel’s vast separation barrier which cuts through the West Bank is in some parts a towering concrete wall, while in others it is a tangle of barbed-wire fencing.

Israelis refer to it as the security fence, while the Palestinians have branded it the “apartheid wall”.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday suspended operations of the Syrian embassy in Washington and its consulates and told diplomats and staff who are not US citizens or permanent residents to leave the country.

US special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein said Syrian President Bashar Assad had refused to step down and was responsible for atrocities against Syrians.

“We have determined it is unacceptable for individuals appointed by that regime to conduct diplomatic or consular operations in the United States,” said Rubinstein, whose appointment was announced by the State Department on Monday.

“Consequently, the United States notified the Syrian government today [Tuesday] that it must immediately suspend operations of its embassy in Washington, DC, and its honorary consulates in Troy, Michigan, and Houston, Texas,” he said in a statement.

The announcement comes as the Syrian conflict enters its fourth year, with an estimated 150,000 people killed by the war and little sign that initiatives to ease the crisis are working.

Efforts by the United States and Russia to broker a peace settlement now appear to have faded further amid worsening tensions between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine. 

DAMASCUS — Syrian troops have advanced west of the fallen rebel stronghold of Yabrud, entering a new village in the Qalamoun region near the Lebanese border, state news agency SANA said Tuesday.

“The Syrian army is progressing in the village of Ras Al Ain, southwest of Yabrud, killing a large number of terrorists,” said SANA, using the regime’s term for rebels.

Earlier, a security source told AFP the army had taken control of several hills overlooking the village.

The army, backed by Lebanese Hizbollah fighters and pro-regime militiamen, seized the strategic town of Yabrud Sunday after a month of shelling and air strikes, as it moves to sever rebel supply routes across the border.

The army and Hizbollah have now set their sights on the villages of Rankus, south of Yabrud, and Flita and Ras Al Maara, to its northwest.

Elsewhere, regime planes bombed the northern city of Aleppo, killing at least four people, including two children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that relies on activists and other witnesses inside Syria.

The violence in Aleppo came as a prominent female activist detained there a day earlier by rebels for refusing to wear the Islamic headscarf was released.

The Army of Mujahedeen, which had detained Marcell Shehwaro and her friend Mohammad Khalili, issued a statement “apologising in the strongest terms” for the incident.

Elsewhere in Aleppo, troops battled Islamist rebels, including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front, leaving at least seven people dead, according to the observatory.

In the Damascus area, five people were killed by opposition mortar fire, state news agency SANA reported.

Four people were killed in the Jaramana suburb, southeast of the capital, and another in the city itself, SANA said.

In the central Syrian city of Homs, five people were killed and 25 others wounded in a mortar attack against Mahata, a majority Christian area, and Inshaat, in the west of the city, SANA added.

More than 146,000 people have been killed in Syria’s three-year war, and nearly half the population has been displaced.

The March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad initially took the form of peaceful protests but escalated into a full-blown insurgency after the regime launched a brutal crackdown on dissent.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday it might not carry out a final stage of a Palestinian prisoner release unless he commits to prolonging peace talks beyond an April deadline for a deal.

A senior Palestinian official said there would be “big consequences” if the release did not go ahead as planned.

Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, issued her warning just a day after Abbas, at a White House meeting with US President Barack Obama aimed at keeping the talks alive, voiced hope the prisoners would go free by March 29.

“There was never any automatic commitment to release prisoners unrelated to making progress in negotiations,” Livni said in a speech in southern Israel that could complicate Washington’s efforts to salvage peacemaking.

She was referring to Israel’s agreement, as part of US efforts to revive Palestinian statehood talks frozen for three years, to free 104 inmates jailed for attacks, many of them deadly, against Israelis before a 1993 interim peace deal.

Israel has freed more than 70 of those prisoners since the negotiations resumed in July. But the talks have made little progress and Washington is trying to set guidelines to keep them going beyond the original April 29 target date for a deal.

Abbas’ spokesman said a failure to hand over the final batch of prisoners would represent a violation of an accord struck with the United States and Israel.

“Any violation of this agreement would bring about big consequences,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, without giving further details.

US officials fear the negotiations would collapse if Israel fails to free the final group of prisoners. Palestinians regard brethren jailed by Israel as heroes in a quest for an independent state in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. Israel views them as terrorists.

“The key to the door for Palestinian prisoners is in Abu Mazen’s hands,” Livni said, using Abbas’ nickname.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Israel wanted assurances that Abbas wouldn’t walk out of the talks once the prisoners went free.

Netanyahu, who met Obama in Washington two weeks ago, has said any peace deal with the Palestinians would take at least another year to negotiate should both sides accept US-proposed principles to keep the talks going.

“We need to be sure the negotiations will last beyond the release of prisoners, and that they will be substantive, and on solid ground,” the official said.

Another stumbling block, the official said, is a Palestinian demand that Arab Israelis convicted of deadly attacks on Jews be included among those due to go free this month.