Region

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s sole power station will not resume operations until Monday, despite Israel reopening a crossing to fuel deliveries, the deputy chief of the Gaza energy authority said on Sunday.

Officials had said Israel would allow the resumption of diesel deliveries into Gaza on Sunday, a day after the Palestinian territory’s power plant stopped working because of a lack of fuel.

“The central power station will resume operations at 06:00am (0400 GMT)” on Monday, Fathi Al Sheikh Khalil told AFP.

“We were expecting the delivery today (Sunday) of 500,000 litres of fuel, but the delivery has been delayed, and only 100,000 litres have been delivered,” he said.

“We should receive 500,000 litres tomorrow.”

A Palestinian official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said: “Problems in transferring funds between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas government in Gaza are to blame” for the delay.

A spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry unit responsible for crossings into Gaza, confirmed that 100,000 litres of fuel were delivered on Sunday via the Kerem Shalom crossing for the power station.

COGAT had earlier confirmed that the fuel deliveries were to resume on Sunday.

On Thursday, the defence ministry shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing into southern Gaza after fighters  there fired scores of rockets over the border, although no one was injured.

Israel hit back with air strikes, which also caused no injuries, and officials ordered the closure of the terminal, halting all deliveries.

“Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon... instructed to open the Kerem Shalom crossing for the transition of gas into the Gaza Strip,” COGAT said earlier on Sunday.

“The amount coordinated for today... is 500,000 litres of diesel and gasoline for the private sector, 160,000 tonnes of cooking gas, and 200,000 litres of diesel for the operation of the power plant in Gaza,” it said.

The power plant, which supplies some 30 percent of Gaza’s electricity needs, fell silent for 50 days in the latter part of 2013 because of lack of fuel but resumed operations in late December.

Israel routinely closes the crossing in response to rocket fire or other violence in and around Gaza.

The fuel is bought from Israel by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority which also facilitates the delivery because the territory’s Islamist Hamas rulers do not recognise Israel and do not have any direct dealings with its officials.

GAZA CITY — Thirteen people were arrested on Sunday as Gaza security forces broke up a demonstration backing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of key talks at the White House, organisers said.

The rally was organised by Abbas’ Fateh Party which is the dominant faction in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, but a minority in the Gaza Strip which is ruled by the rival Islamist Hamas movement.

Fateh official Mohammed Nahal said police attacked around 80 demonstrators as they were gathering in the square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City.

“The police and Hamas’ internal security forces attacked them and dispersed the demonstration. They arrested 13 people and beat up others,” he told AFP.

Police spokesman Ayub Abu Shaar confirmed the arrests, saying the protesters had no permit.

“Police broke up a gathering of a group of people who were demonstrating... because it was unauthorised,” he told AFP.

Abbas will meet US President Barack Obama on Monday to discuss the crisis in peace talks with Israel ahead of a looming April deadline.

Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month as part of a Herculean effort to convince both sides to agree to a framework proposal to extend the talks to the year’s end.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A far-right Israeli Cabinet minister on Sunday paid a brief visit to the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, an Israeli security official said.

Housing Minister Uri Ariel, deputy leader of the hardline national religious Jewish Home Party, made a short visit to the plaza during the morning as Israel marked the one-day Jewish festival of Purim, security spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP.

“The housing minister paid a visit to the Temple Mount which lasted just a few minutes,” she said. Ariel also confirmed the visit in remarks to public radio.

After the visit, clashes broke out between stone-throwing Palestinian youths and Israeli forces at the site, Samri said. Seven Palestinians were arrested for disturbing the peace.

Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the Al Aqsa compound, the site is considered sacred to both faiths.

Located directly above the Western Wall plaza, it is revered as Judaism’s holiest place, as it marks where the first and second Jewish temples once stood.

Today, the plaza houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque and is considered the third holiest site in Islam.

By law, Jews are not allowed to pray at the site and although non-Muslim visitors are permitted, such high-profile visits by rightwing government figures are very rare and tend to stoke tensions.

SAMARRA, Iraq — Heavily-armed militants attacked the home of an anti-Al Qaeda militiaman north of Baghdad Sunday, killing and decapitating his wife and two sons and killing another person in a brutal pre-dawn assault.

The militia leader, Abu Salim, was not in the house at the time of the attack, which involved more than a dozen vehicles and fighters armed with heavy machineguns and other weapons and also left two of his young sons wounded.

Fighters attacked the militia leader’s house in Jilam, a suburb of the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra, at around midnight on Saturday, and killed Abu Salim’s wife, two sons and another woman, a police colonel and another officer said.

They then decapitated his wife and two sons, and set off explosives around the house, injuring two other sons, aged four and five.

Policemen at a nearby checkpoint attempted to repel the assault, the officers said, but were unsuccessful and fled the scene when they ran out of ammunition and reinforcements that they had radioed for failed to arrive.

Abu Salim is the leader in Jilam of the Sahwa, or Awakening, a collection of mostly-Sunni tribal militias that from late-2006 onwards sided with US forces against their co-religionists in Al Qaeda, helping turn the tide of Iraq’s insurgency.

But as a result, they are regarded by Sunni militants as traitors, and are regularly targeted in attacks.

In the Baghdad area on Sunday, meanwhile, a bombing and two shootings killed three people, security and medical officials said.

The latest bloodshed came a day after five car bombs were set off in commercial areas of the Iraqi capital, killing 15 people and wounding more than 50 others.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but Sunni militants, including those linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadist group, are often blamed for carrying out coordinated mass-casualty bombings.

Iraq is grappling with its worst prolonged period of violence since it emerged from a bloody sectarian war that left tens of thousands dead in 2006-07.

More than 250 people have been killed already this month, according to an AFP tally.

Analysts and diplomats have urged the Shiite-led government to reach out to the Sunni community, who allege they are mistreated by the government and security forces.

But with elections looming on April 30, political leaders have been loath to be seen to compromise.

YABRUD, Syria — Syria’s army and Lebanon’s Hizbollah seized full control of the rebel bastion Yabrud on Sunday, dealing the opposition a heavy symbolic and strategic blow in the Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border.

An AFP reporter entered the town after the army declared it had captured the opposition stronghold north of the capital.

Syrian soldiers sat in the streets after seizing the town in fierce clashes with the support of battle-hardened fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah and pro-regime militiamen.

“It was a very difficult battle, possibly the most difficult we have faced,” a soldier who identified himself as Abu Mohammed told AFP in Yabrud’s central square between puffs from a traditional water-pipe.

Earlier, the army announced it had “returned security and stability” to the town and its surroundings.

“This new success... is an important step towards securing the border area with Lebanon, and cutting off the roads and tightening the noose around the remaining terrorist cells in Damascus province,” the military added.

While scores of soldiers and fighters wearing different kinds of uniforms could be seen in Yabrud, not one civilian could be spotted anywhere.

Graffiti on the colours of the pro-revolt flag still adorn the heavily damaged town’s walls, while a fighter jet could be heard overhead.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group relying on a network of contacts inside Syria, said Hizbollah had led the operation and “taken control of large parts of Yabrud”.

The observatory and sources across the border in Lebanon reported multiple air raids, including with explosive-packed barrel bombs, on the area between Yabrud and the Lebanese town of Arsal.

The NGO said at least six people were killed in raids on the area, among them two children.

Syrian state television said the army was targeting “groups of terrorists” fleeing Yabrud in the direction of Arsal.

The fall of Yabrud comes after months of Syrian army operations in the Qalamoun region.

Late last year, the army captured a string of nearby towns before turning its sights to Yabrud.

The town was once home to some 30,000 people, including a Christian minority, and had been a rebel bastion since early in the Syrian uprising that began in March 2011.

According to Abu Akram, a Syrian army soldier in Yabrud, the military now aims to take over Flita and Rankus, two rebel positions on the road to Lebanon.

Key strategic prize 

In addition to its symbolic importance, Yabrud is a key strategic prize because of its proximity to the highway and the Lebanese border, across which rebels have smuggled fighters and weapons.

The capture of the town, and continuing army operations in the surrounding area, will sever important supply lines for the rebels as they face several army advances on different fronts.

“It underlines yet again that the real momentum in the strategic zones of this conflict is now with the government,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre.

The fall of Yabrud was yet another testament of division among rebels and their jihadist allies in Al Nusra Front.

According to an Al Nusra fighter in Yabrud, most rebels made a surprise withdrawal from the town, while the jihadists stayed on and fought alone through early Sunday.

The town’s seizure could also place new pressure on Lebanon’s Arsal, which is hosting at least 51,000 Syrian refugees, many from the Qalamoun region.

Sunni Arsal is largely sympathetic to the Sunni-led uprising, and rebel fighters are believed to have rear bases in areas around the town, which are regularly targeted by Syrian warplanes.

Lebanon’s army on Sunday arrested “a group of Syrian men who had weapons and ammunition in their possession,” said the official National News Agency.

Arsal municipality official Ahmad Fliti, meanwhile, told AFP the Syrian air force was staging continuous raids outside the town on Sunday.

Hizbollah’s involvement in Syria has prompted bomb attacks by extremist groups against areas in Lebanon sympathetic to the movement, killing mostly civilians.

The group and Lebanese security forces have said many of the car bombs used in those attacks originated in Yabrud.

The town’s fall comes a day after the third anniversary of Syria’s conflict, which has killed more than 146,000 people.

The UN refugee agency says nine million Syrians have been forced from their homes, creating the world’s largest displaced population.

TEHRAN — Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday talks with world powers this week are unlikely to result in a comprehensive accord on Iran’s controversial nuclear drive.

“This round of talks will be more serious than previous ones,” Zarif said in remarks reported by the official IRNA news agency.

“But we do not expect an agreement [in this round], as it is not expected in the timetable we have agreed,” he added.

Iranian negotiators and representatives of the so-called P5+1 group of world powers resume talks in Vienna on Tuesday for the second time since November, seeking to transform an interim deal into a long-lasting agreement by July 20.

According to Iranian media, the latest talks will wrap up on Wednesday, a day before Iran celebrates the Persian New Year.

Under November’s interim deal, Tehran froze certain nuclear activities for six months in exchange for relief from punishing sanctions hitting its economy.

Sensitive issues must be resolved before a comprehensive agreement can be struck, a deal that would allay Western suspicions that Iran’s nuclear programme masks a military objective, despite repeated denials.

These include the scope of Iran’s enrichment programme and Western demands that its bunkered Fordo uranium enrichment site be closed, along with the Arak heavy-water reactor.

The unfinished Arak site, which Iran says will be used for research, could theoretically provide Tehran with an alternative route to an atom bomb.

In Tehran, more than half of Iran’s 290-member parliament issued a statement on Sunday warning against “any restrictions on research-related activities”, particularly Arak and uranium enrichment.

They also said Iran’s “defence issues, including the missile programme” — which could provide Tehran with a device to deliver a nuclear warhead — should not be discussed in negotiations with the P5+1.

The group — the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany — is seeking to pressure Iran over its ballistic missile programme as part of a comprehensive deal.

Final decisions on key affairs of state, including Iran’s nuclear drive and its missile programme, rest with the ultimate authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

An official in Khamenei’s office and former parliament speaker, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, said at the weekend Khamenei was kept appraised of “minute details of the negotiations” by the foreign ministry, the Jomhuri Eslami daily reported.

Khamenei is sceptical about a lasting deal. He said in February that the talks would “go nowhere”, but that he was not against trying to reach an agreement.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli minister on Sunday said Washington’s top diplomat was “wrong” for pressuring Israel in peace talks, a day before Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas visits the White House.

His remarks came two days after US Secretary of State John Kerry criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

“John Kerry is wrong because he is putting pressure on the wrong side,” said Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, who is considered close to Netanyahu.

“Kerry should be asking Abu Mazen [Abbas] why he is stubbornly refusing to recognise Israel as the Jewish state,” he told public radio.

The demand was only placed on the table several months ago by Netanyahu.

It has been consistently rejected by the Palestinians and is now threatening to derail the peace talks ahead of an April 29 deadline.

Kerry waded into the debate on Friday, saying he believed it was a “mistake” to raise the issue over and over again — in what was taken as open criticism of Netanyahu.

“I think it’s a mistake for some people to be raising it again and again as the critical decider of their attitude toward the possibility of a state and peace,” Kerry told a congressional hearing.

He said such recognition was clear in UN resolutions and was also confirmed by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1988 and in 2004.

The Palestinians, who recognised Israel as a state in the early 1990s, have said that accepting its religious character would ignore its Arab minority and amount to giving up on the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees.

Israel has not formally responded to Kerry’s remarks.

Kerry is facing an uphill battle to get the two sides, which have reportedly failed to agree on anything, to clinch a framework proposal which would extend the talks beyond the April deadline until the end of the year.

On Saturday, another senior member of Netanyahu’s Cabinet poured cold water on Kerry’s efforts by saying Abbas was not a partner for peace.

“He is not a partner for a final agreement that would include the recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and that would end the conflict and all claims,” Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told private Channel 2 television.

“I’m sorry to come to this conclusion, but this [peace agreement] will not happen in my time,” said Yaalon, one of several hardliners in Netanyahu’s government.

Abbas will meet US President Barack Obama on Monday, and is likely to raise the issue of Israel’s pledge to release another 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners, which is due to take place on March 29.

But Israeli officials have said that without any movement in the peace talks, the release is unlikely to happen, especially as the group is said to include a number of Arab Israeli prisoners.

“I’ve already voiced my opposition,” Yaalon told Channel 2.

“We made a commitment about Palestinian prisoners from the pre-Oslo period. We did not make a commitment about Arab Israelis,” he said, without saying whether the release would take place.

“Abu Mazen is obstinate. He isn’t prepared to make concessions,” he said. “I don’t know what is going to emerge from this but we aren’t prepared to be extorted.”

RABAT  — Morocco and Spain made seven arrests and dismantled an Islamist militant cell led by a Spanish citizen that sent fighters to “hotbeds of tension” such as Syria, officials from both countries said on Friday.

Hundreds of fighters from Morocco and other Maghreb states like Tunisia and Algeria have joined Islamist-dominated rebel forces in Syria’s civil war and North African governments fear they will pose security threats once they return home.

Spain’s interior ministry said the group’s leader, Mustafa Maya Amaya, a nationalised Spaniard born in Belgium, was arrested in Melilla along with two French citizens. Melilla is a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean, surrounded by Morocco.

Also arrested was a Tunisian man based in Malaga, Spain and three Moroccans arrested in their own country.

Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez said it was the biggest group in Europe recruiting jihadists for Syria. Some of its members had returned to Spain from conflict zones where they were involved with Al Qaeda-linked organisations.

He said the cell was now completely broken up because all of its elements, including document forgers, logistics organisers and jihadists had been arrested.

“The cell was dismantled in coordination with Spanish security forces,” the Moroccan interior ministry said in a statement carried by official news agency MAP.

“Three Moroccans were arrested at the same time as the [Spanish] head of the cell and his acolytes have been arrested by the Spanish security services,” it said.

The Moroccan statement said Amaya, the Spanish head of the cell just broken up, had had close ties with another cell that was linked to Al Qaeda’s North African wing, known as AQIM. That cell was dismantled last year as it planned to send militants to fight in Mali and Syria.

Spain said Maya Amaya used the Internet to recruit jihadists and helped them join movements such as the Al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (IDIL), al Qaeda’s Nusra Front branch in Syria, and AQIM.

Morocco, a Western ally against Islamist militancy, often says it has broken up radical cells accused of plotting inside and outside the kingdom.

It has suffered numerous bomb attacks by suspected Islamist guerrillas, most recently in 2011 in Marrakesh, but militant groups have so far failed to gain any foothold in the kingdom.

Tuesday was the tenth anniversary of the Atocha train bombing in Spain, carried out by an Islamist cell, in which 191 people died. 

BAGHDAD — A series of car bomb attacks targeting commercial areas and a restaurant killed at least 15 people Saturday in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, authorities said.

Police officials said a car bomb went off at night in a commercial street in Al Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 13. Minutes later, police said another car bomb explosion near a falafel restaurant killed three people and wounded six in the capital’s Qahira neighbourhood.

A third car bomb exploded in a commercial street in western Baghdad, killing four persons and wounding 14 others, police said.

Later, a car bomb in a commercial area of Baghdad’s northwestern neighbourhood of Shula killed four people and wounded nine, police said.

Health officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information to reporters.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda breakaway group that frequently uses car bombs and suicide attacks to target public areas in their bid to undermine confidence in the government.

Iraq has seen a spike in violence since last April, with the death toll climbing to its highest levels since the worst of the country’s sectarian bloodletting in 2006-2008.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia demanded that Qatar shut down Al Jazeera and two think tanks during a recent meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a source close to someone who attended the talks told AFP Friday.

Riyadh demanded the closure of the pan-Arab broadcaster as well as the Brookings Doha Centre and the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, the source said on condition of anonymity.

After the reportedly heated March 5 GCC meeting, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recalled their ambassadors from fellow member Qatar, which they accuse of interfering in their internal affairs and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

The source said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal had demanded three things of Doha — “to close the [Qatari-owned] Al Jazeera network, which stirs sedition; close the research centres in Doha, and turn over all outlaws” on its territory.

Doha’s foreign minister replied that the demand constituted “interference in Qatar’s internal affairs”, the same source said.

Gulf officials do not usually comment on closed-door meetings.

Qatar is seen as a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates across the region, which are banned in most Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have long been hostile towards the Brotherhood, fearing that its brand of grass-roots activism and political Islam could undermine their authority.

Saudi Arabia and the other two states accused Doha of giving refuge to opposition figures and of even giving some of them citizenship.

Critics have long accused the influential pan-Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera of biased coverage in favour of the Brotherhood, and several of its journalists are on trial in Egypt for allegedly supporting the group.

Most Gulf states hailed the Egyptian military’s July overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi — a former senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood — and pledged billions in aid. Qatar, which had strongly supported him, has seen its influence in Cairo evaporate.

The Gulf Cooperation Council includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.