Region

BAGHDAD — Across parts of Iraq, medical teams in white coats and gloves again roam the streets giving children polio vaccines and marking the walls of their homes, fighting a resurgent virus once more taking advantage of the country’s turmoil.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Iraq polio free in 1990, just before Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait. The virus returned and health officials’ efforts saw the last case reported in 2000 — until a six-month-old boy contracted it in March in a north Baghdad neighbourhood.

With the disease back in neighbouring Syria, engulfed in a civil war, Iraq’s outbreak is a worrying reminder of the close links between the violence-plagued neighbours and the challenges facing Iraq’s weakened public health sector 11 years after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

“As if we are living our life with no problems to have now this polio issue,” said a fuming Mustafa Salim, a police officer and father of two recently vaccinated children in Baghdad’s eastern neighbourhood of Sadr City. “Now, I have another thing to be obsessed with in addition to my safety and my kid’s future in this country.

“With the continuing fighting in Syria and political wrangling and deteriorated security situation inside Iraq, I’m afraid more diseases will attack us along with the daily bombings.”

Polio remains endemic in three countries around the world — Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan — but it spreads in unsanitary conditions often exacerbated by warfare. It is highly infectious and usually strikes children under 5. The disease attacks the central nervous system, and can cause paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.

In Iraq, international agencies helped the country administer vaccines purchased under the United Nations’ oil-for-food programme in the 1990s, fighting back a new outbreak of the disease then. After the 2003 invasion, health officials again began vaccinations, but often found themselves blocked from entering neighbourhoods over raging sectarian fighting.

Now fighting has begun again in Iraq, which last year saw its highest death toll since the worst of such killings in 2007, according to the UN That’s coupled with an influx of Syrians fleeing the civil war. Laboratory testing showed that the virus detected in Iraq’s new polio case closely resembles the virus found in Syria, according to the WHO.

UNICEF, the UN’s children agency, says that polio has paralysed at least 18 children in Syria’s Deir Al Zour province, located along the border with Iraq.

Iraq’s health ministry, backed by UNICEF and the WHO, launched a new round of polio immunisations this week, trying to reach all 5.6 million children five years old and younger across the country. Authorities also have sponsored a radio and television ad campaign, as well as sent text messages warning about the danger of the disease.

“Up to now, our reports indicate that there is a good turnout,” health ministry spokesman Ziad Tariq said. “We are not expecting to cover all the children, but at least 80 per cent, which is good.”

Teams also are working to reach children in Anbar province, where militants from Al Qaeda breakaway group called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other Sunni groups hold parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah. Tariq declined to elaborate.

Gopinath Durairajan, an official with UNICEF’s polio team in Iraq, said most of the children in Anbar province could not be vaccinated due to the unrest.

“Anbar is going to be an issue for us,” Durairajan said, adding that more vaccination rounds may be organised with the health ministry.

Despite the crisis in peace talks, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for a third time this week on Thursday. Israeli and Arab media reports said they discussed proposals to break through the logjam and extend negotiations though early 2015, Reuters news agency reported.

An Israeli source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed a proposal for Israel to freeze some settlement construction and free more than 400 Palestinian prisoners, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would freeze or rescind his signing of 15 world documents that angered Israel this month.

“It’s on the agenda but nothing has yet been agreed upon,” the source said, suggesting some work was still required before any deal could be finalised. Officials on both sides seemed confident the impasse in the talks could be broken.

“I would bet on the possibility of them reaching a deal to continue negotiations between now and the end of the month. The differences are not so substantial,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government minister and now academic at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Settlements have been a constant source of aggravation between Israelis and Palestinians, with construction of new Jewish housing units in the West Bank rising 123 per cent year-on-year in 2013, a surge that coincided with the resumption of talks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that the announcement last week of tenders for 700 new housing units in East Jerusalem was the immediate cause of the negotiations crisis.

An official in Netanyahu’s office said Israel was “deeply disappointed” by Kerry’s remarks, signalling clear tensions in relations between the two allies.

Arab League 

The head of the Arab League said Thursday he is confident that Israel and the Palestinians will soon resolve a crisis over the release of long-held Palestinian prisoners and extend their US-brokered peace talks beyond an April deadline.

Nabil El Araby told The Associated Press that the April 29 deadline would be extended “for months” and rejected the idea that the talks have failed to make progress.

“I believe that negotiations are going to be resumed for several months and we hope that this will be the end of it,” he said at the Nile-side Cairo headquarters of the Arab League.

Araby did not elaborate, but he did say that he “had contact” with Kerry, who is leading the talks.

Abbas also is in Egypt, where he met with Egyptian leaders and held talks with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Araby also met with Ashton, according to AP.

‘Annex settlements’

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli minister has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex a swathe of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying peace talks with the Palestinians were dead, according to Reuters.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who is head of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home Party, wrote to the prime minister late on Wednesday saying Israel should extend its sovereign territory to a number of major settlement blocs.

Mega settlements, such as Ma’ale Adumin, are built on land seized in the 1967 war — territory the Palestinians want for their future state. Successive governments have said the blocs, deemed illegal under international law, should remain part of Israel in any negotiated deal with the Palestinians.

“It is clear that the current process has exhausted itself and that we are entering a new era,” said Bennett, urging Netanyahu to annex a number of large settlements.

“These are areas which enjoy a wide national consensus, have security implications and have historical significance for the state of Israel.”

Netanyahu made no comment on Bennett’s request, but is likely to face strident calls from within his own rightist Likud Party to annex the blocs, home to an estimated 350,000 Israelis, if the latest peace talks implode.

Such a move would almost certainly set off a storm of international condemnation, and Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said Bennett was acting like a “provocative child” who needed parental restraint.

“If you want to go totally crazy, keep it up until we can no longer make a deal and lose everything we hold dear,” Livni, who serves as justice minister, wrote on her Facebook page.

MOSCOW/BRUSSELS — Russia told the West on Wednesday that four-way talks between representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and European Union must focus on fostering dialogue among Ukrainians and not on bilateral relations among the participants.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered the message in a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign ministry said. It said Lavrov and Kerry urged all sides to refrain from violence in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The European Union said on Tuesday that top diplomats from the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States would meet next week to discuss the crisis, but Russia says it wants to know more about the agenda for such a meeting.

“Lavrov noted that this format could be useful if it is aimed not at discussing various aspects of one bilateral relationship or another, but on helping to arrange a broad and equal internal Ukrainian dialogue with the aim of agreeing mutually acceptable constitutional reform,” the ministry said.

Russia, which incited the fury of Ukraine and the West by annexing the Crimea region from its neighbour last month, does not want to be forced into talks with the interim government in power in Kiev after its role in ousting Moscow-allied president Viktor Yanukovich in what Moscow called an armed, Western-encouraged coup d’etat.

Russia accuses the government of ignoring the rights and interests of Russian speakers in the east and south Ukraine and is calling for a new constitution that would grant the regions strong powers and keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Lavrov told Kerry “the authorities in Kiev must finally respond to the legitimate demands of eastern and southern regions of the country,” the ministry said.

Kerry on Tuesday accused Russian agents and special forces of stirring up separatist unrest in eastern Ukraine.

The crisis in Ukraine erupted after Yanukovich cancelled plans to sign trade and political pacts with the EU in November and instead sought closer ties with Russia, triggering protests that turned bloody and drove him from power.

Moscow annexed Crimea in March following a referendum staged after Russian forces established control over the Black Sea peninsula in the biggest East-West crisis since the Cold War.

On Wednesday, the EU created a dedicated support group to advise Ukraine on political and economic reforms and coordinate with other donors and international lenders.

The Brussels-based group is intended to channel EU help and advice for Ukraine through a single coordinating body, and underlines EU support for the new government, which is trying to stabilise the economy while tensions with Moscow remain high.

NATO says Russia has massed tens of thousands of troops close to their Ukraine border.

“It is important to have this support for the... political and economic reforms Ukraine needs to become a sustainable, independent, modern country,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

Last month, the EU said it was willing to provide $15 billion in loans and grants to Ukraine over the next several years. The International Monetary Fund announced a $14-$18 billion loan for Kiev in return for tough economic reforms.

The European Union and Ukraine signed a landmark political cooperation accord last month, committing to the same deal that Yanukovich rejected in November.

Although the free trade parts of the agreement will only be signed after Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election, the European Commission has already agreed to extend trade benefits worth nearly 500 million euros ($689 million), removing duties on a range of farm goods, textiles and other imports.

The support group’s work could be extended to Georgia and Moldova, which are also seeking closer ties with the EU.

BEIRUT — Bashar Al Assad’s Lebanese ally Hizbollah said his Western foes must now accept he will go on ruling Syria after fighting rebels to a standstill — a “reality” to which his foreign enemies seem increasingly resigned.

Echoing recent bullish talk coming out of Damascus, Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Iranian-backed Shiite militia which is supporting Assad in combat, told Reuters that the president retained popular support among many of Syria’s diverse religious communities and would shortly be re-elected.

“There is a practical Syrian reality that the West should deal with — not with its wishes and dreams, which proved to be false,” Qassem said during a meeting with Reuters journalists at a Hizbollah  office in the group’s southern Beirut stronghold.

He said the United States and its Western allies were in disarray and lacked a coherent policy on Syria — reflecting the quandary that Western officials acknowledge they face since the pro-democracy protests they supported in 2011 became a war that has drawn Al Qaeda and other militants to the rebel cause.

Syria’s fractious opposition — made up of guerrillas inside the country and a largely impotent political coalition in exile — had, he said, proved incapable of providing an alternative to four decades of rule by Assad and his late father before him.

“This is why the option is clear. Either to have an understanding with Assad, to reach a result, or to keep the crisis open with President Assad having the upper hand in running the country,” said the bearded and turbaned cleric.

Qassem’s comments follow an account from another Assad ally, Russian former prime minister Sergei Stepashin, who said after meeting him last week that the Syrian leader felt secure and expected heavy fighting to end this year.

Officials said this week that preparations would begin this month for the presidential election — a move that seems to reflect a degree of optimism in the capital and which may well end with Assad claiming a popular mandate that he would use to resist UN-backed efforts to negotiate a transition of power.

Hizbollah  chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah also said this week that Assad is no longer at risk and that military gains mean the danger of Syria fragmenting was also receding.

Western resignation

It is a view of Assad that — quietly — seems to be gaining ground in Western capitals. Calling it bad news for Syrians, the French foreign ministry said this week: “Maybe he will be the sole survivor of this policy of mass crimes”.

France, which last year was preparing to join US military action that was eventually aborted, now rules out force and called the stalled talks on “transition” the “only plan” — a view US officials say is shared in Washington, notably among military chiefs who see Assad as preferable to sectarian chaos.

While rebels do not admit defeat, leaders like Badr Jamous of the Syrian National Coalition accept that without foreign intervention “this stalemate will go on”. A US official, asked about a deadlock that would leave Assad in control of much of Syria, conceded: “This has become a drawn-out conflict.”

Assad, 48, has weathered an armed insurgency which started with protests in 2011 and descended into a civil war that has sucked in regional powers, including Shiite Iran and Hizbollah  who back the Alawite president and Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar behind the rebels.

With Russia blocking a UN mandate, and voters showing no appetite for war after losses in Afghanistan and Iraq, Western governments have held back from the kind of military engagement that could have toppled the well-armed Syrian leader.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in three years, as Assad has lost the oil-producing and agricultural east and much of the north, including parts of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

But he did not suffer the fate of other autocrats in the Arab Spring, whether the presidents of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen or Muammar Qadhafi, the Libyan leader toppled and killed by rebels who rode into Tripoli under cover of Western air power.

Instead, he has clawed back control near Damascus, where a year ago rebels hoped for a decisive assault, and the centre of the country which links the capital to the coastal stronghold of Assad’s Alawite minority. His troops, backed by Hizbollah  fighters, took another key town on Wednesday.

Though as much as half the country is being fought over, Assad could hope to hold at least a roughly southwestern half, including most of the built-up heartlands near the coast, and more than half of the pre-war population of 23 million.

This leaves Western powers reflecting on a perceived loss of influence in the Middle East. Many now see a new strategy of “containing” Assad — and the fallout from a bitter war that has created millions of refugees and legions of hardened guerrillas.

“The US has a stated policy of regime change, but it has never devoted the resources to effect that change,” said Andrew Exum, a former US official who worked on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “The de facto US strategy of containment is very well suited for what is likely to be a very long war.”

‘Stalemate will continue’ 

Qassem said the United States, which backed away from military action in September after blaming Assad for gassing civilians, was hamstrung by fears over the dominance in rebel ranks of Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, and another group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“America is in a state of confusion. On the one hand it does not want the regime to stay and on the other it cannot control the opposition which is represented by ISIL and Nusra,” he said.

“This is why the latest American position was to leave the situation in Syria in a state of attrition.”

President Barack Obama said last month that the United States had reached “limits” after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and questioned whether years of military engagement in Syria would produce a better outcome there.

Qassem said: “I expect that the stalemate will continue in the Syrian crisis because of the lack of an international and regional decision to facilitate a political solution.”

UN-mediated talks at Geneva failed in February to bridge a gulf between Assad’s government and opponents who insist that Assad must make way for a government of national unity.

Western and regional powers who support the Syrian opposition say it would be a “parody of democracy” to hold an election in the midst of a conflict which has displaced more than 9 million people and divided the country across frontlines.

Syria’s electoral law effectively rules out participation by opponents who have fled the country in fear of Assad’s police — candidates must have lived in Syria continuously for 10 years.

“My conviction is that Assad will run and will win because he has popular support in Syria from all the sects — Sunnis and secularists,” Qassem said. “I believe the election will take place on its due date and Assad will run and win decisively.”

Fear of hardline Islamists has undermined support for some rebels even among the 75 per cent Sunni majority, and bolstered support for Assad among his fellow Alawites, and Christians.

Qassem said it was too soon to speak of Hizbollah  pulling out of Syria, despite an increase in Sunni-Shiite tensions within Lebanon caused by the intervention across the border of a movement that is Lebanon’s most accomplished military force and also holds Cabinet seats in the government in Beirut.

“Until now we consider our presence in Syria necessary and fundamental,” Qassem said.

“But when circumstances change, this will be a military and political matter that requires a new assessment.”

“But if the situation stays as is and the circumstances are similar, we will remain where we should be.”

BAGHDAD — Car bombs hit several mostly Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad and a town south of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens, officials said, the latest bout of violence ahead of the country’s first parliament elections since the 2011 US troop withdrawal.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks but the bombings bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda-inspired group and other Sunni insurgents, who frequently use suicide and car bombs to target public areas and government buildings in their bid to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government.

The explosions also coincided with the anniversary of the 2003 fall of Baghdad in the hands of US troops.

The deadliest of the day’s attacks took place in the town of Numaniyah, about 80 kilometres south of Baghdad, where a bomb first went off in a busy commercial area, followed by a car bomb that exploded as people gathered to help the victims from the first blast. In all, five people were killed and 17 were wounded, police said.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb in Baghdad’s central Nidhal Street killed four people and wounded 11, while three people died and nine were wounded in a car bombing in the northern Kazimiyah district.

Car bombs also exploded in the areas of Shaab, Shammaiya, Karrada and Maamil, killing a total of seven people and wounding 30, police officials added.

Later Wednesday, three more civilians died and eight were wounded when another car bomb struck Baghdad’s central upscale commercial area of Jadiriyah.

Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

Violence has surged in Iraq since last year, with the country weathering its deadliest bout of violence since it pulled back from the brink of civil war in 2008. UN figures showed that last year, Iraq saw the highest death toll in attacks, with 8,868 people killed.

Wednesday’s attacks came as Iraq is heading towards a crucial election on April 30, its first vote since the 2011 US troop pullout.

More than 9,000 candidates will vie for 328 seats in parliament but there will be no balloting in parts of the western, Sunni-dominated Anbar province engulfed in clashes between security forces and  Al Qaeda-inspired militants.

On Tuesday, the country’s Independent High Electoral Commission said those areas were too dangerous for the vote to take place.

Since late December, the western Anbar province has seen fierce fighting between government troops and allied tribal militias on one side, and militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al Qaeda spin-off group, on the other.

The militants have seized and are continuing to hold parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his ministers to limit all but diplomatic and security contact with their Palestinian counterparts, an official said Wednesday, dealing another blow to faltering peace talks.

The move comes a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry, who kick-started talks in July, blamed Israel for derailing the process by announcing new settlement homes in what he described as a “poof” moment in negotiations.

“In response to the Palestinian violation of their commitments under peace talks... Israel government ministers have been told to refrain from meeting their Palestinian counterparts,” the Israeli government official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Palestinian Minister of Labour Ahmad Majdalani dismissed the significance of Israel’s tactic.

“In any case there are no [regular] meetings organised between Palestinian and Israeli ministers, apart from the finance ministers,” he told AFP.

“Ninety per cent of day-to-day dealings are done with the Israeli military administration” of the occupied West Bank, Majdalani added.

Kerry on Tuesday blamed Israel’s approval of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem on April 1 for the latest stalemate in the negotiations, a charge that has left Israeli officials bristling.

While he blamed intransigence on both sides, Kerry told US lawmakers that a delayed Israeli plan to release several Palestinian prisoners as part of a good faith effort was sabotaged by the settlements move.

“In the afternoon, when they were about to maybe get there, 700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem and, poof, that was sort of the moment,” he testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

At the end of March, Israel refused to release a final batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners as agreed under the talks, and at the same time reissued tenders for 708 settler homes in annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians responded to the prisoner issue by applying for membership of 15 international treaties, breaking their own commitment to refrain from such action during the nine months of talks.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have teetered on the brink of collapse, with Washington fighting an uphill battle to get the two sides to agree to a framework proposal to extend the negotiations beyond an April 29 deadline to the year’s end.

Kerry’s remarks were met with a crisp response from Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home Party.

“Israel will never apologise for building in Jerusalem,” Bennett said.

“I hear that the [building] programme in Jerusalem was defined as ‘poof’. For many years [the Palestinians] tried with explosions and bombs to stop us being in the eternal capital of the Jewish people, it will not happen.”

The State Department, perhaps assessing the potential impact Kerry’s comments could have in the Middle East, rushed to explain that the secretary of state was fairminded in apportioning blame.

“John Kerry was again crystal clear today that both sides have taken unhelpful steps and at no point has he engaged in a blame game,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Twitter.

“He even singled out by name Prime Minister Netanyahu for having made courageous decisions throughout process.”

Kerry was also drawn into a heated exchange with Senator John McCain, who declared the peace talks “finished”.

While Kerry insisted that Israelis and Palestinians were keen on continuing the process, McCain cut in: “It is stopped,” he told Kerry. “Recognise reality.”

Meanwhile, the two sides met US envoy Martin Indyk late on Monday and were to see him again on Wednesday, a Palestinian source told AFP.

It was unclear if the latest Israeli decision would affect that meeting.

JEDDAH — Saudi health authorities announced on Wednesday another death caused by the MERS virus in the capital Riyadh, bringing the nationwide toll to 67.

The 57-year-old Saudi national had been suffering from chronic illnesses, the health ministry said.

It also reported that another two Saudis had been infected by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome — one a 51-year-old and the other a 90-year-old, both of whom are suffering chronic illnesses.

The latest figures bring to 179 the number of cases of MERS in Saudi Arabia since the virus first appeared in the kingdom in September 2012.

The virus was initially concentrated in the eastern region but has now spread across more areas.

Eleven new cases were reported in the western port city of Jeddah in recent weeks, causing a wave of panic fuelled by rumours circulated on social networks.

Of the 11 victims, two died while six have recovered and another three are undergoing treatment, according to the health ministry.

Three of the patients in Jeddah were health workers, including one of the two who died, prompting authorities to close the emergency department at the city’s King Fahd Hospital.

Patients were transferred to other hospitals while the department was disinfected in a process expected to take 24 hours, the ministry said on Tuesday.

The MERS virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Experts are still struggling to understand the disease, for which there is no known vaccine.

A study revealed that the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

The World Health Organisation said at the end of March that it had been told of 206 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection worldwide, of which 86 had been fatal.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — An army deserter attacked a military patrol in north Lebanon killing two soldiers and wounding another before turning the gun on himself, a security official said on Wednesday.

The attack late on Tuesday in the Akkar border region of Lebanon was carried out by Ali Taleb, a 30-year-old soldier who deserted from the army three years ago and has long been sought by the security forces, the official said.

Taleb, who had been described as anti-social and violent, launched the attack on the army patrol at around 9:30pm on Tuesday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

After killing the two soldiers, one of them an officer, and wounding a third, Taleb shot himself dead with a pistol despite pleas by relatives to give himself up.

A young man who was with Taleb at the time has been arrested and an inquiry launched to determine the motive for the attack, the official said.

Many inhabitants of Akkar, a coastal plain near Lebanon’s border with Syria, are soldiers, and employment by the military is the main means of escaping the abject poverty of the region.

GENEVA — The head of Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Church suggested on Wednesday that Syrian refugees should be housed in camps inside Syria, reflecting growing frustration among Lebanese over the burden imposed on their country by their neighbours’ war.

The United Nations has registered one million refugees in Lebanon since the conflict began three years ago, the highest concentration of refugees worldwide. They are housed in homes and local communities rather than refugee camps.

Cardinal Beshara Al Rai, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, told a news conference in Geneva that the presence of so many Syrians represented a huge economic, social, political and security burden for Lebanon.

“Why not install some camps for them in Syrian territory where there is security? The area of Syria is 20 times greater than that of Lebanon,” he said.

“There is plenty of spare space in secure terrority or at least to facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid in no man’s land between the borders of Lebanon and Syria.”

Ordinary Lebanese had welcomed the Syrians but were now paying a price for doing so, he said.

“They take all the work from the Lebanese people and the Lebanese are chased out. It’s not possible.”

Rai did not elaborate on the suggestion of building camps in Syria or say exactly where they could be built.

Many refugees coming to Lebanon fled as Syrian forces and Hizbollah captured territory from rebels close to the border, making it unlikely they would risk returning to areas controlled by those same forces.

And while the refugee population has ballooned — not just in Lebanon but also Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, to a total of 2.65 million — even greater numbers are displaced within Syria.

The UN refugee agency estimates 6.5 million are displaced within the country, and many have been made homeless more than once, as an apparently safe shelter became caught up in new fighting.

Hundreds of thousands more have left Syria but not requested international assistance.

Many Syrians have requested asylum in rich countries, especially Sweden and Germany, but the numbers gaining asylum or being resettled for humanitarian reasons are a tiny fraction of the total.

Despite a huge humanitarian appeal and universal calls for an end to the violence, the UN has too little cash to feed Syrians in need and has begun cutting their rations.

DAMASCUS — Two car bombs exploded Wednesday in a government-held district of Syria’s battleground city of Homs, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100, state media said.

The blasts hit a commercial street inhabited mostly by members of President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect in the central city, where government forces have been imposing a heavy siege on rebel-controlled districts.

Syria’s uprising, which began with largely peaceful protests against Assad’s rule in March 2011, has since evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels against an Assad government that is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Homs, a city of about one million, has shown great sympathy for the opposition since the early days of the uprising. The city was once known as “the capital of the Syrian revolution” before government forces captured large parts of once rebel-held neighbourhoods such as Baba Amr and Khaldiyeh.

State news agency SANA said one car blew up near a sweets shop in a busy street and about half an hour later another car exploded about 100 metres away “in order to inflict the biggest numbers of casualties among citizens”.

SANA said the wounded included its photographer in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, adding that the blasts went off in the Karm Al Loz neighbourhood. It said the explosion that struck a busy street also wounded 107 people.

It said the dead and wounded in the explosions included women and children.

Syrian TV showed several shops and cars on fire. Bloodied people could be seen being carried on stretchers into ambulances.

“As ambulances and fire engines were working in the first site, the second blast went off, increasing the number of casualties,” a witness in the city told The Associated Press. The man, who asked that his name not be given for fear of reprisals, said he counted eight bodies of people killed in the second blast.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blasts killed 21 people including children. It added that the number “is expected to rise” because some of the wounded are in critical conditions.

The observatory said the dead might have included some pro-government gunmen.

On March 27, a blast occurred in an Alawite neighbourhood in the city, killing and wounding dozens of people.

The blasts in Homs came hours after Syrian troops backed by Hizbollah fighters captured the last major town in the Qalamoun region near the border with Lebanon after weeks of intense fighting.

Syrian TV and Lebanon’s Hizbollah-owned Al Manar station said the town of Rankous fell earlier Wednesday, depriving the rebels their last major base in the rugged area.

President Bashar Assad’s forces backed by Hizbollah fighters have been on the offensive in the Qalamoun region since November when they captured most of the border area with Lebanon. The six-month battle forced tens of thousands of Syrians to flee to safety in Lebanon.

The capture of Rankous and other towns and villages has cut a major supply route for weapons and fighters into the country from eastern Lebanon.

Syrian TV aired live footage from inside Rankous on Wednesday saying that the operation to capture the town lasted 18 hours. Much of the homes appeared intact in the town’s center, overlooked by a mosque with a green dome atop a hill.

“Rankous returns to the nation and is under the control of the Syrian Arab Army,” a TV announcer said.

The observatory reported that troops and Hizbollah fighters are in full control of the town. It added that the fighting is continuing in a nearby area known as Rankous Farms.

Also Wednesday, the UN refugee agency said it had delivered aid to a rebel-held area of the war-shattered northern city of Aleppo in a “rare and risky” operation carried out in cooperation with the Syrian Red Crescent.

UNHCR said in a statement that the operation took place following an agreement with the Syrian government and the opposition to observe a brief ceasefire that was respected by both sides.

It said two trucks packed with blankets, plastic sheeting, hygiene kits and kitchen sets and food were delivered to the needy in the besieged neighbourhood of Bustan Al Qasr in eastern Aleppo.

UNHCR staff observed a “dire” humanitarian situation in the area, including acute shortage of food, water and medicine, the statement said. UNHCR last accessed the area in June 2013.