Region

TUNIS — Israeli tourists aboard a cruise ship were prevented from entering Tunisia due to a surprise decision by the Tunisian government, the cruise operator said on Monday.

“During Norwegian Jade’s port call in La Goulette, Tunisia, on Sunday, March 9, 2014, a small number of guests holding Israeli passports were not allowed to go ashore because of a last minute decision made by the Tunisian government,” the Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement.

“We apologise for any inconvenience to our guests and appreciate their understanding. We are reviewing this decision with the appropriate officials,” it said, adding that it would refund port taxes to the guests.

A tourism ministry official said the visitors were prevented from disembarking because of “a procedural problem,” saying they did not have visas.

The interior ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

The issue of relations with Israel is a taboo subject in Tunisia, as it is in other Arab countries, and Tourism Minister Amel Karboul faced questions during her nomination regarding past travel to Israel, which she had made for professional reasons.

Tunisia hosted the Palestine Liberation Organisation from its 1982 expulsion from Lebanon until it returned to the Israeli-occupied territories in the 1990s during the Oslo peace process.

In 1996, Tunisia and Israel opened interest sections in each other’s country, but Tunis froze relations in 2000 in protest at Israel’s response to the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court jailed 77 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi Tuesday for three years for rioting during deadly clashes in Cairo that killed dozens last August, a judicial source said.

The court also ordered that they report to police regularly for another three years after their release.

The fighting erupted in the days following August 14, when hundreds died in clashes when security forces stormed two sit-ins demanding Morsi’s reinstatement after his ouster by the military in July.

The defendants were arrested in central Cairo as they marched towards Al Fateh Mosque in the Ramses area — the site of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces, state news agency MENA reported.

Separately, a criminal court in the southern city of Assiut sentenced 10 students from Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, to three years for being members of a banned group and obstructing public work.

They were also convicted of possessing publications that allegedly incited people to oppose authorities.

Since Morsi’s ouster, his supporters have gathered regularly to call for his reinstatement.

Their rallies have often deteriorated into street clashes with security forces and Morsi’s civilian opponents. But their numbers have declined amid a government crackdown that has killed more than 1,400 people and arrested thousands.

Authorities designated Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group in December.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court on Tuesday ruled that Jewish settlers were the lawful owners of a long-disputed building in the heart of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The supreme court ruling brings an end to a legal dispute lasting nearly seven years, after the Palestinian Rajabi family said its four-storey building had been taken over by Israeli settlers.

Israeli settlements on occupied land the Palestinians want for their future state have been a major source of tensions in US-brokered peace talks relaunched last year.

The building is near a contested holy site known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs in a tightly controlled Israeli enclave where many streets are off-limits to Palestinian cars.

The settlers were evacuated in 2008, and the court verdict said they would not be allowed to move back in until they get defence ministry approval.

The structure was sold in 2004 by its Palestinian owners to settlers through a “non-Jewish straw man”, according to court documents.

When settlers moved into the structure in 2007 the Palestinians charged they had been tricked and said the purchase was invalid, lodging complaints with the police and petitioning the court.

Palestinians view the selling of property in occupied territory to Jewish settlers as a betrayal of their national cause, so such purchases are nearly always conducted in secret or through middlemen, increasing the potential for disputes.

The case was debated in the Jerusalem district court, which in 2012 ruled in favour of the Jewish organisation behind the purchase.

Neria Arnon, a spokeswoman for the Hebron settlers, told AFP the decision proved the purchase was legitimate and legal.

“We’re happy the court confirmed this, and are waiting for the final approval of the defence minister, to do what is necessary to enable us to settle the building,” she said.

The head of the left-wing Meretz Party, Zehava Galon, called on Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon to “refrain from letting the settlers in”, due to the “severe security and diplomatic ramifications of such a move”.

“One must keep in mind there are 500 [extremist] Israelis in Hebron making the life of 145,000 Palestinians miserable, backed up by the army and police,” she said in a statement.

A spokesman for Yaalon said he was “learning the topic”.

The flashpoint city of Hebron, home to nearly 200,000 Palestinians, also comprises some 80 settler units in the centre of town housing about 700 Jews who live under Israeli army protection.

RIYADH — A Saudi court has jailed a tweeter for 10 years after convicting him of insulting the kingdom’s political, and religious leaders and urging anti-regime protests, official SPA news agency reported.

The Riyadh court also sentenced another defendant to eight years in jail after finding him guilty of taking part in protests and publishing anti-regime posts online, SPA said in a report late Monday.

SPA did not identify the defendants who it said have 30 days to file their appeals.

The tweeter was also banned from travel and handed a 100,000 riyal ($27,000) fine, the report said.

The defendant, accused of “adopting extremist ideology”, had contacted “so-called reformers”, urged anti-regime protests, and took part in a demonstration which he filmed and published on social networks, said SPA.

The second defendant was convicted of trying to assist a Shiite protester wounded during clashes with police in the flashpoint village of Awamiya in the Shiite-populated Qatif district.

He was found to have joined the funeral of an activist shot dead by security forces, during which he chanted anti-regime slogans with other protesters demanding punishment against policemen involved in the killing, according to SPA.

He also published anti-regime posts online and supported “saboteurs” in Qatif, site of sporadic unrest sparked by the kingdom’s Shiite minority since 2011.

The kingdom’s interior ministry on Friday published a list of “terror” groups which analysts have warned could further affect civil liberties in the absolute monarchy.

On the list is the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, another jihadist group fighting in Syria and Iraq.

It also includes the little-known Saudi Hizbollah Shiite group and the Shiite Huthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

DAMASCUS — Three suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a local administration building in a Kurdish town in northeastern Syria Tuesday, killing at least five people, the state-run news agency and a Kurdish official said.

SANA said the blasts in the Hadaya hotel killed five people, but a Kurdish official at the scene said at least seven people died, including four women.

The hotel in the centre of the town of Qamishli has functioned as a municipality building, said Joan Mohammad, who spoke to The Associated Press by phone. The area has been the scene of heavy battles recently between Kurdish gunmen and members of the Al Qaeda breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Mohammad said several people wearing explosive belts and firearms shot dead the guards outside the building, walked in and hurled grenades before blowing themselves up. One of them was caught before he detonated his belt and was being questioned.

He said the dead included two employees and two visitors. He added that 15 people were wounded.

“The building is in the centre of the town and is usually very crowded,” said Mohammad, adding that Kurdish fighters in the area were “on high alert” following the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion immediately fell on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Militants from the group have been fighting Kurdish gunmen for months in northern Syria in battles that left hundreds of people dead.

Kurds have carved out their own territory in the country’s northeast, declaring their own civil administration in areas under their control amid the chaos of the civil war. But Kurdish militias continue to battle Islamic militant fighters in an offensive against jihadis that has accelerated in recent months.

Mohammad said one of the attackers appeared to be a woman.

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, making up more than 10 per cent of the country’s 23 million people.

Also on Tuesday, the Syrian government acknowledged it had freed women prisoners in exchange for 13 Greek Orthodox nuns who had been held by Al Qaeda-linked rebels. But Information Minister Omran Al Zoubi said the government freed only 25 prisoners and not the 150 reported by foreign mediators.

“The real number of those who were freed in exchange for the release of the nuns, who were kidnapped by armed terrorist gangs, is 25 persons,” he told Syrian state TV.

Qatari and Lebanese officials, who were mediating between Damascus and the rebels holding the nuns, said previously that 150 women prisoners were released early Monday.

Damascus typically does not comment on releases in exchange for people held by rebels. Al Zoubi’s remarks were a rare acknowledgement that President Bashar Assad’s government made any concessions to the rebels fighting to oust him from power.

The nuns were captured in December as opposition fighters overran a Christian village north of the capital.

The women were held by the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front rebel group in Yabroud near the Syrian border with Lebanon. In recent weeks, the town has been the scene of fierce fighting as Syrian government troops, backed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, try to oust the rebels from the border area.

BEIRUT — Some survive by eating animal feed, others are reduced to living off vegetable peel. The human degradation in Syria, notably in areas besieged by the army, has reached levels unimaginable three years ago.

Since the protests against President Bashar Al Assad in March 2011 descended into a bloody civil war, images of Syrian civilians suffering have become commonplace.

Areas such as Yarmouk, Eastern Ghouta and Homs city have become synonymous with dire living conditions and shortages of basic goods, after regime forces besieged them.

Authorities say they blockade the areas to root out “terrorists” — the government’s term for the rebels fighting to overthrow it — but NGOs like Amnesty International accuse them of using starvation as a “weapon of war”.

Delivery of vital aid has also been hindered by groups hostile to international NGOs in parts of rebel-held northeastern Syria, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP said insecurity in the country had prevented food deliveries reaching 500,000 people.

One of the worst affected areas is the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus.

Once a buzzing neighbourhood that was home to 170,000 people, Yarmouk became a battlefield between rebel and regime forces in 2012, and government troops imposed a choking siege on the area.

Nearly 40,000 Yarmouk residents, both Syrian and Palestinian, are trapped inside, living in abject conditions: Amnesty says at least 60 per cent are malnourished, and a Syrian monitoring group says 120 people have died from hunger and lack of medical care in the camp.

“The lexicon of man’s inhumanity to man has a new word: Yarmouk,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, told AFP.

He said some people have been “reduced to eating animal feed”, adding women in the camp were “dying in childbirth for lack of medical services”.

The agency released a striking picture showing thousands of residents crammed into a war-scarred street queuing for aid, illustating their desperation.

Amnesty said the Yarmouk siege was “the deadliest of a series of armed blockades of other civilian areas, imposed by Syrian armed forces or armed opposition groups... across the country”.

‘Insult to our dignity’ 

Sahar, a 56-year-old Yarmouk resident has already paid a heavy price in the conflict in Syria, losing her husband and son in the violence.

But since the government cut the camp off from the outside world, she has lost “20 kilograms”, she told AFP via the Internet, a problem aggravated by her hypoglycemia and osteoporosis.

“The shortages are an insult to our dignity.”

For Sahar and thousands of others like her trapped in the camp, regular meals are a distant memory.

“Days ago, some neighbours managed to bring in aubergines and rice from Babbila,” an area near the camp, she says.

“It was the first time that I have had a meal in months,” she says, choking back tears. “We had almost forgot what ‘cooking’ meant.”

Others in the camp told AFP stories that showed the extent of the degradation of a country that was once self-sufficient for food.

“People are dying at home and the rats eat them before their neighbours can find their bodies,” says Jassem, an activist in Yarmouk.

Since January, UNRWA has distributed nearly 8,000 food parcels in the camp, calling this “a drop in the ocean compared with the rising tide of need”.

Heating ‘a luxury’ 

And in besieged areas, shortages of medical supplies, fuel, water and electricity are just as pressing.

“Things that were normal before the siege, like television or heating, have become a luxury.” says Tarek, a teacher in the Eastern Ghouta area, which was nicknamed “Damascus’ orchard” before the siege.

“A kilogram of margarine has risen from 50 Syrian pounds to 750 ($0.30 to $5) and a litre of diesel from 20 to 1,700 pounds,” he says over Skype.

Eastern Ghouta residents have resorted to “digging wells, like in the olden times, but the water there is very polluted”, says Tarek, who teaches by candlelight in basements in case of shelling.

The army has also encircled several areas of the central city of Homs, where 1,500 civilians were evacuated by the UN in February.

At the beginning of March, the UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in Syria said more than 250,000 people were under siege across the country.

It said government forces and rebels were using the tactic to force “people to choose between starvation and surrender”.

The conflict has already claimed a terrible human toll, with more than 140,000 people killed since the uprising began Another 2.5 million people have fled abroad while 6.5 million have sought refuge inside the country.

More than half of the country’s hospitals have been destroyed and 2.2 million children have been forced out of school in a country that once offered free healthcare and education to all.

CAIRO –– At least 24 people were killed in Egypt Tuesday when a bus ploughed into a truck parked on the side of a road, police and medics said.

The accident occurred near the entrance to the Sinai peninsula, home to beach resorts that attract tourists and workers from the mainland.

All those killed were Egyptians, the officials said.

Police said the bus carrying 50 people appeared to have been speeding and that the accident occurred at a time when road visibility was poor.

Traffic accidents are common in Egypt, where roads are often poorly maintained and traffic regulations are laxly enforced.

On Monday, 16 people were killed when two passenger mini-buses collided south of Cairo.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Libyan authorities stopped a North Korean-flagged tanker as it left a rebel-held port on Monday with an “illegal” shipment of crude, a military source said.

Former rebels calling for autonomy for eastern Libya have been blockading the port of Al Sidra and other key export terminals in the region since July last year.

On Saturday, they began loading crude onto the North Korean-flagged Morning Glory which docked at Al Sidra.

On Monday, the navy intercepted the ship as it left the terminal with orders to escort it “towards a port controlled by the state”, a military source told AFP on condition of anonymity

The country’s highest political authority, the General National Congress, confirmed the interception, Libyan broadcaster Al Nabaa reported.

Walid Al Tarhuni, spokesman for the former rebels who had been blockading the terminals, told Al Nabaa the tanker was probably heading for the port of Zawiyah, 50 kilometres west of the capital Tripoli, to unload its cargo.

Oil Minister Omar Al Shakmak had said earlier that the ship had interrupted loading late Sunday and put back to sea.

The 350,000 barrel-capacity vessel had only loaded 234,000 barrels of crude, according to a member of a crisis team formed by the government.

The official told AFP the navy would not allow the vessel to enter international waters, resulting in a standoff offshore.

Warships had deployed to block the Morning Glory after Culture Minister Amin Al Habib warned Sunday the tanker would be “turned into a pile of metal” if it tried to leave port.

The defence ministry had also deployed the air force, the official LANA news agency said.

Washington said Sunday it was “deeply concerned” over the loading of the “illicitly obtained” oil.

“This action is counter to law and amounts to theft from the Libyan people,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“The oil belongs to the Libyan National Oil Company and its joint venture partners.”

Breaking the blockades 

Ex-rebels at Al Sidra spent the weekend loading oil onto the tanker, ignoring Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s threats to bomb the ship.

The former rebels turned against Libya’s interim authorities after toppling veteran dictator Muammar Qadhafi in the North African country’s 2011 uprising.

The GNC said that a task force composed of both regular troops and ex-rebel militia was being formed to bring the rebel ports back under central government control.

The decision was taken by the GNC president, Nuri Abu Sahmein, who is also Libya’s armed forces chief, parliament spokesman Omar Hmidan said.

The crisis erupted in July, when ex-rebel security guards at key terminals shut them down, accusing the authorities of corruption and demanding a more equitable distribution of oil revenues.

The demands of the protesters swiftly escalated with a call for the eastern Cyrenaica region to be granted autonomy and the right to enjoy the revenues from its own oil exports.

Oil is a key source of revenue for Libya and following the blockade of terminals production plunged to about 250,000 barrels per day from 1.5 million.

DOHA — Qatar on Monday again dismissed demands by three fellow Gulf Arab states for changes to its foreign policy, calling its independence “non-negotiable” in a further sign that it will continue to aid Islamists such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

In an unprecedented move within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of allied hereditary monarchies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on March 5, accusing Doha of failing to abide by an accord not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

The three GCC states are especially angry at Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose ideology challenges the principle of conservative dynastic rule long dominant in the Gulf.

“Qatar is to take decisions, and follow a path, of its own,” the official Qatar news agency quoted Foreign Minister Khaled Al Attiyah as saying in a speech in Paris.

“The independence of Qatar’s foreign policy is simply non-negotiable. Therefore I strongly believe that the recent statements made by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have no relationship whatsoever with the internal security of the GCC countries, but they are related to clear differences in views on international issues.”

A source close to Qatar’s government said last week the dispute had more to do with issues in the wider Middle East such as the crises in Egypt and Syria, than about matters affecting fellow Gulf states.

However, Saudi Arabia and the UAE do see Qatar as at odds with them on Gulf issues.

They resent the way Doha has sheltered prominent Brotherhood preacher Youssef Al Qaradawi, a critic of Saudi and UAE authorities, and given him regular air time on its pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, and on Qatari state television.

Attiyah said one of Qatar’s basic foreign policy principles was its support for popular aspirations to justice and freedom in the Arab world. Islamists have figured prominently in the Arab Spring uprisings since 2011.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia on Monday slammed as “aggressive and irresponsible” accusations by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki that the kingdom was supporting global terrorism.

“The kingdom condemns the aggressive and irresponsible statements made by the Iraqi prime minister,” an unidentified official told the SPA state news agency.

In an interview aired on Saturday, Maliki charged that Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Qatar were supporting militant groups in Iraq and across the Middle East as well as terrorism worldwide.

“Nouri Al Maliki knows very well, more than anyone else, the clear and categoric position of the kingdom against terrorism... and is aware of the kingdom’s efforts to combat this phenomenon locally and globally,” the official said.

“Instead of making haphazard accusations, the Iraqi prime minister should take measures to end the chaos and violence that swamp Iraq.”

The Saudi official accused Maliki’s Shiite-led government of sectarian policies towards sections of the Iraqi population, an apparent reference to the disgruntled Sunni Arab minority.

The official said the violence convulsing Iraq was taking place “clearly with the blessing and support of the sectarian and exclusionary policies of his government”.

“It is clear that those statements are aimed at turning the facts on their head, and blaming others for the domestic failures of the Iraqi prime minister.”

In an apparent allusion to Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia’s Shiite rival Iran, the official said that Maliki’s failings had “subordinated Iraq to regional parties who have contributed to sectarian violence unprecedented in Iraq’s history”.

Maliki’s alleged failings have also “endangered Iraq’s territorial and national unity”, he said.

Iraq has been hit by a year-long surge in violence that has reached levels not seen since 2008, driven principally by discontent among its Sunni Arab minority and by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The United Nations and Western governments have urged the Shiite-led authorities to reach out to disaffected Sunnis.

But with elections due next month, political leaders have not wanted to be seen to compromise, and have instead adopted a hard line against Sunni militants.

In January, Maliki blamed “diabolical” and “treacherous” Arab governments for the upsurge in violence, but before Saturday he had refrained from pointing directly at particular states.