Region

TRIPOLI — Libyan authorities vowed Monday to pursue a democratic transition in the face of mounting lawlessness after two MPs were shot when protesters stormed the country’s transitional parliament.

On Sunday, two members of the General National Congress (GNC) were shot and wounded as armed protesters stormed their building in Tripoli. In a separate incident, a French engineer was killed in the restive eastern city of Benghazi.

“I assure you we are committed to the path of the February 17 revolution and to pursue the democratic process,” GNC President Nuri Abu Sahmein said in a televised address, referring to the uprising that ended Muammar Qadhafi’s four-decade rule.

Abu Sahmein said the MPs’ wounds were not life-threatening but condemned what he termed a “flagrant aggression on the seat of legitimate sovereignty”.

He urged former rebel fighters who ousted Qadhafi to protect the capital and state institutions.

On Monday, ex-rebels equipped with pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns were posted around the GNC building, where at least five burnt-out cars testified to the previous day’s violence.

Abu Sahmein said the GNC was examining a roadmap for the handover of power “as quickly as possible” to an elected body.

The GNC, elected after the 2011 uprising, has stirred popular anger by extending its mandate from early February until the end of December.

Under pressure from demonstrators, the GNC, Libya’s highest political authority, has announced early elections will be held but has not yet set a date.

The head of an elected panel tasked with preparing elections, Nuri Al Abbar, submitted his resignation to the GNC on Sunday, saying Libya had to “end political tensions and restore order” before holding polls.

He added that it would take another four or five months of preparations before elections could go ahead.

Libya’s political class is deeply divided, and GNC members are still demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, although they have failed to oust him in a vote of confidence.

Dozens of armed demonstrators on Sunday demanded the GNC be dissolved and railed against the “kidnapping” the previous night of participants in a sit-in protest outside the parliament building.

They later attacked and “abused” deputies, GNC spokesman Omar Hmidan said, adding that their cars had been destroyed.

One GNC member told AFP that the protesters, mostly young people armed with knives and sticks, entered the premises chanting “Resign, resign”.

Two members were “hit by bullets when they tried to leave the venue in their cars,” according to Abu Sahmein.

Ministers to Benghazi 

In Benghazi, meanwhile, gunmen on Sunday shot dead a French engineer who worked for a company doing extensive work at a medical centre in the eastern city, which was the cradle of the 2011 revolt.

The government announced a six-member ministerial team was sent to Benghazi to examine ways to restore order in the city, the scene of almost daily attacks on security forces.

An assault on the US mission in Benghazi in 2012 killed the ambassador and three other Americans.

Three years after the uprising, the government and GNC have come under increasing criticism from Libyans who accuse them of corruption and failing to provide security.

Criminals roam the streets, and rival tribes shoot it out to settle long-standing disputes, while many ex-rebels have formed powerful militias rather than integrate into the regular armed forces and police.

A host of different factions and ex-rebel groups make up a dangerous cocktail which could send Libya sliding into civil war.

However, the proliferation of arms and militias left behind from the uprising have so far served as a balancing factor, deterring a power grab by any single group.

Adding economic misery to Libya’s woes, protesters have blockaded and shut down oil terminals, threatening to bankrupt a government that relies almost exclusively on petroleum revenues to operate.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel began building twice as many settler housing units in the occupied West Bank last year as in 2012, official data showed on Monday, just hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to meet US President Barack Obama.

Obama has been sharply critical of Jewish construction on land Palestinians want for a future state. Such settlement is deemed illegal in international law.

A spokesman for Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington on Sunday at the start of a five-day visit to the United States, had no immediate comment on the figures, which were released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

It said the number of new construction projects in the settlements jumped to 2,534 in 2013 from 1,133 the year before, but did not say where specifically the houses were being built.

Citing security concerns and historic and biblical links to the territory, Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs in any future peace deal. Palestinians say relentless settlement expansion makes a mockery of their aspirations to an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Obama issued a veiled warning to Netanyahu on Sunday, saying it would be harder for Washington to defend Israel against efforts to isolate it internationally if US-led peace talks fail.

“What I do believe is that if you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction and... if Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited,” Obama told Bloomberg View.

He urged Netanyahu to “seize the moment” to help achieve a framework agreement that Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to forge as the basis for a peace settlement.

Israel’s anti-settlement group Peace Now said the increase in settlement building starts showed the Israeli government’s “lack of commitment to negotiations”.

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers live on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war.

DAMASCUS — Food deliveries to thousands of people living in a blockaded area in southern Damascus ground to a halt after a truce collapsed and clashes broke out between Syrian rebels and forces loyal to the government, a UN official and activists said on Monday.

The clashes, which erupted out on Sunday afternoon and lasted until Monday morning, were the most serious violence in weeks in the Palestinian-dominated district of Yarmouk and seriously undermined a tentative truce struck there in early January.

A UN spokesman in Damascus, Chris Gunness, urged all parties to “immediately allow” the resumption of aid to the area, where malnutrition is rife.

The UN “remains deeply concerned about the desperate humanitarian situation in Yarmouk, and the fact that increasing tensions and resort to armed force have disrupted its efforts to alleviate the desperate plight of civilians,” Gunness said Monday.

Activists estimate that over 100 people have died of hunger or hunger-related illnesses since a blockade began nearly a year ago, preventing food and medical aid from entering Yarmouk.

The halt in the food distribution in Yarmouk also underscores problems that bedevil a February 22 UN Security Council resolution that called on warring parties to facilitate food and aid deliveries to Syrians in need.

The latest clashes also sparked concerns for future aid deliveries.

“It will be like it was before. We are back to zero,” said a Yarmouk-based activist who uses the name Abu Akram.

The truce, which took months to negotiate, collapsed after rebel gunmen returned to Yarmouk on Sunday. 

They had withdrawn from the area about a month ago as part of the truce, replaced by a patrol of Palestinian gunmen, keeping out both rebels and fighters loyal to President Bashar Assad.

The rebels accused pro-Assad fighters of violating the truce, said Abu Akram. An activist group, “Palestinians of Syria” voiced similar accusations.

On Saturday, the rebels said Assad loyalists were sneaking weapons into Yarmouk under the guise of the joint patrols, delaying food distribution and arresting young men waiting for UN food parcels.

A day later, the rebels returned and clashes broke out between fighters of the Free Syrian Army, a Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, and other groups, and soldiers and gunmen of Assad-loyal Palestinian groups on the other, Abu Akram said.

The clashes — a mix of gun battles, sniper fire and mortar shells — killed an ambulance driver, he added.

“Reconciliation efforts have, in my opinion, reached a deadlock,” said Anwar Raja, the spokesman for the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command.

Assad loyal forces initially began blockading the camp to force out rebel gunmen.

Since the uprising began three years ago against Assad’s rule, blockades have played a key role in government efforts to crush rebels in their enclaves and strongholds.

The UN began distributing food to Yarmouk on January 18 after warring parties agreed to a truce. The distribution was hindered by sporadic clashes, including on February 7 and 8, said Gunness.

In total, the UN has distributed 7,708 food parcels to Yarmouk’s 18,000 registered Palestinian refugees. Activists say there are thousands more displaced Syrians also living in the district and suffering from malnutrition and food shortages.

DAMASCUS — The Damascus representative of UN-Arab League Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has asked to quit his post, a UN spokesman said Monday.

Mokhtar Lamani, who heads Brahimi’s Damascus office, “has submitted a request to the United Nations to be relieved of his duties, but he has not officially resigned,” UN spokesman Khaled Al Masri told AFP.

The spokesman did not provide an explanation for Lamani’s decision.

He was appointed to represent Brahimi in Damascus in September 2012.

Lamani had expressed his disappointment with the failed Geneva II talks that brought together regime and opposition representatives in two separate rounds in January and February, but reaped no concrete result.

He had said the process was launched too quickly, with insufficient preparation and a lack of the political will needed to carry out successful negotiations.

Lamani has held frequent meetings with both rebel and regime representatives, shuttling across battle lines in Syria, and has a very strong grasp of the situation on the ground.

Brahimi took over from his predecessor, Kofi Annan, as UN-Arab League peace envoy to Syria in September 2012.

Lamani is of Moroccan origin and speaks Arabic fluently. He is said to be a good listener who expresses his views openly to both sides in the war.

He has held several high-level diplomatic posts, including that of representative of the Organisation of Islamic Conference to the United Nations from 1998 to 2002.

Lamani was also Arab League representative to Iraq from 2006 to 2007, but resigned after announcing he could not fulfil the demands of his post.

GAZA CITY — Palestinian civil servants called on the Gaza Strip’s Hamas government Monday to pay them full salaries, the clearest sign yet that Egypt’s blockade of the territory is making it increasingly difficult for the Islamic militants to govern.

The civil servants are considered Hamas sympathisers and their public complaints about not getting paid in full over the past four months reflect growing discontent in Gaza.

Still, there were no signs of open revolt against Hamas, which has kept a tight grip on Gaza and its 1.7 million people since the group overran the territory in 2007.

Both Israel and Egypt sharply restricted access to Gaza after the Hamas takeover, though Egypt for years looked the other way as cement, fuel and other goods, including weapons, were smuggled into Gaza through hundreds of tunnels running under the border with Egypt.

That changed last summer when Egypt destroyed or sealed virtually all of the tunnels. The crackdown came as part of the Egyptian military’s overthrow of then-ruler president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas is the Gaza offshoot of the regional Brotherhood, and Egypt’s military alleged Islamic militants infiltrating into Egypt from Gaza were destabilizing the country, particularly Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula, which abuts Gaza.

The closure of the tunnel has meant losses of millions of dollars in tax income for the Hamas government.

At the same time, Brotherhood sympathisers in the Arab world who used to send donations to Gaza have largely rerouted their money to other flashpoints, mainly the civil war in Syria.

In a third financial setback, Hamas fell out with longtime patron and financial supporter Iran in late 2011, after the Palestinian group refused to back Syrian President Bashar Assad, an Iran ally, in his battle against rebels, many of them with ties to the Brotherhood.

In a news conference Monday, the civil servants’ labour union said the Hamas government has only paid partial salaries to its 46,000 workers over the past four months. Ehab Al-Nahal, a union chairman, said the civil servants understood the pressures Hamas faces but they are also struggling to get by and support their families.

“We fully understand the financial hardship experienced by the government under this unjust siege, but at the same time we deeply understand the suffering of the public sector employees who have lost decent life conditions due to the delays in getting paid and started facing hard times in providing the minimum necessities of life,” he said.

The Gaza finance minister, Ziad Al Zaza, said the government needs $45 million each month to pay wages and operating expenses, but currently only has $31 million available.

Al Zaza played down the extent of the money crunch, saying that “we are facing hardship and not a crisis”.

BAGHDAD — Dozens of militants died in two days of fighting with counter-terrorism forces in a city west of Iraq’s capital, a security spokesman said, while violence elsewhere Monday killed at least 10 people.

Violence has surged to a level not seen since 2008, when Iraq was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings in which tens of thousands died.

And shifting parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi and all of the city of Fallujah, to its east, have been held by anti-government fighters for more than eight weeks.

Sabah Noori, spokesman for Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service, said its forces had killed 52 jihadists in fighting on Sunday and Monday in Ramadi.

“During an operation to clear areas of Ramadi, our forces were able to kill 52 terrorists” from powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Noori said.

The dead included foreign fighters, he said, adding that operations to retake some areas of the city were still ongoing.

The crisis in Anbar province erupted in late December when security forces dismantled Iraq’s main Sunni Arab anti-government protest camp just outside Ramadi.

Anti-government fighters subsequently seized Fallujah and parts of Ramadi.

It is the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

More than 370,000 people may have been displaced by violence in Anbar, according to the United Nations.

Violence in other areas of Iraq killed 10 people on Monday.

In the deadliest incident, a mortar round struck a house in Fallujah, killing two women and two children, Dr Ahmed Shami told AFP.

The source of the fire was not immediately clear.

In Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a market, killing one person and wounding five, while gunmen shot dead a policeman in Abu Ghraib, west of the capital.

And attacks in the northern province of Nineveh — one of the most dangerous areas of the country — killed four people, including a lawyer and a policeman.

Iraq is suffering a year-long surge in violence driven by widespread discontent among the minority Sunni Arab community, and by the bloody civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Violence has killed more than 1,740 people since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

RIYADH — An illegal migrant has died and nine others were wounded when Saudi police intervened to quell “chaos” at a detention centre in the west of the kingdom, police said Monday.

The casualties fell during a “stampede” at Al Shumaisi detention centre, south of the holy city of Mecca, where migrants of various nationalities are held pending deportation.

Detainees “tried to cause chaos... resulting in damages to the centre,” Mecca police spokesman Commander Ati Al Qurashi told AFP.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the disturbances but said that police “had to intervene” and that a migrant was killed and nine others wounded in a “stampede”.

The spokesman did not provide details on the nationalities of the casualties, the number of illegals held at the centre, or the progress made in their deportation procedures.

Police have been cracking down on illegal migrants since the expiration in early November of a seven-month amnesty during which they had to regularise their status or leave the country.

The operations have sparked deadly clashes, with two Saudis, a Sudanese and another foreigner killed, according to official figures.

The Ethiopian embassy in Riyadh has said three Ethiopians were killed in clashes.

More than 307,000 illegal migrants have been expelled since the start of the campaign, according to Saudi authorities.

Nearly a million migrants from various countries took advantage of the amnesty to leave voluntarily, while another four million were able to find employers to sponsor them, a legal requirement in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

Expatriates account for a full nine million of the oil-rich kingdom’s population of 27 million.

Despite its huge oil wealth, Saudi Arabia has a jobless rate of more than 12.5 per cent among its citizens, a figure the government has long sought to cut.

MANAMA — An explosion killed three policemen in Bahrain on Monday during a protest in a village near the capital Manama, the interior ministry said, in one of the worst incidents of violence in recent months.

The United Arab Emirates said one of its police officers, serving in a Gulf Cooperation Council force operating in the island kingdom, was among the three dead officers, according to the UAE state news agency WAM.

The Bahraini interior ministry said on its Twitter account that a group of protesters had broken away from a mourning procession in the village of Daih and started blocking roads. The explosion took place as police were trying to disperse the rioters, it added.

There was no immediate word on what had caused the blast.

The state news agency BNA quoted the ministry as saying that the policemen had died “while confronting a terrorist group in Daih”.

WAM identified one of the dead as Lieutenant Tareq Mohammed Al Shehhi.

The Sunni Muslim-led island kingdom, home to the US Fifth Fleet, has suffered low-level civil unrest since mass protests in 2011 led by majority Shiites demanding political reforms.

Both the UAE and Bahrain are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and military alliance that also includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.

In 2011, Saudi Arabia and UAE sent forces to support Bahrain’s rulers and quell pro-democracy demonstrators demanding reforms. However, small-scale demonstrations remain frequent and often lead to clashes with security forces.

Negotiations between the government and opposition aimed at ending the turbulence have stalled.

Opposition groups, including the main Shiite group Al Wefaq, condemned Monday’s blast and called on followers to ensure that protest activities were peaceful.

“They assert their rejection of any practice that targets lives and property and call on the people of Bahrain, demanding their just rights, to abide by peaceful means and to condemn these criminal acts,” the opposition groups said in a statement sent to Reuters.

The explosion occurred as hundreds of Bahrainis marched in a procession to mark the final day of mourning for a 23-year-old Shiite who died in custody last week. The interior ministry said the man, who was detained in December and had been accused of smuggling weapons, had died of an illness.

Social media were flooded with pictures of the policemen covered in blood as rescuers tried to apply first aid.

Last month, a policeman was killed by an explosion at a protest to mark the third anniversary of Bahrain’s uprising.

Bahrain’s Shiite majority has long complained of discrimination, a charge denied by the Sunni-led government.

The authorities say they have implemented some reforms and are willing to discuss further demands, but the opposition says there can be no progress until the government is chosen by elected representatives, instead of the ruling family.

A Wefaq spokesman said a group of masked men had attacked the group’s headquarters with clubs and knives on Monday, fleeing when police arrived.

CAIRO — Egypt’s new military-installed prime minister said Sunday that security was his top priority, with police and soldiers facing near daily attacks since the July ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

In his first address to the nation, Ibrahim Mahlab, a former member of the party of toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, said Egypt faced “challenges that are like mountains”, but vowed to confront them with transparency and firmness.

On Saturday, Mahlab unveiled a new 31-member Cabinet that retained Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as defence minister, after the previous government made a surprise exit amid mounting criticism over the battered economy and major industrial strikes.

“The first priority is to impose security, counter terrorism firmly and legally, and restore stability by preserving human rights and democracy,” Mahlab said in a televised speech.

“I know that the responsibility is big, that the challenges are bigger. But together, we will face all crises and steer the nation’s ship to the shore of security.”

Since Morsi’s overthrow, Islamist militants have launched scores of deadly assaults on security forces and bombed a tour bus in what was seen as an attack on one of Egypt’s top revenue generators.

Most of the attacks have been claimed by an Al Qaeda-inspired group based in the restive Sinai Peninsula, but the government has blamed them on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and waged a months-long crackdown on his supporters.

Amnesty International says more than 1,400 people, mostly Morsi supporters, have been killed in street clashes since the military overthrew him in July.

The previous government, also installed by the military after Morsi’s ouster, had become increasingly unpopular despite announcing two economic stimulus packages aimed at kick-starting the economy with funds provided by friendly Gulf Arab states.

Analyst Eman Ragab of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies said that focusing on security alone could lead to “failure” for the new government.

“Security challenges must be confronted with political and economic policies that curb anger on the street, not only by security policies,” she told AFP.

The new premier also urged the country’s industrial workers to stop protesting.

“I urge you to end any sit-ins, strikes and protests. Let’s begin rebuilding the nation,” said Mahlab, a former state-sector construction boss.

Egypt’s industrial sector has been hard hit by labour unrest since Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011, adding to the sense of crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Mahlab’s government is tasked with organising a presidential election for this spring, which is widely expected to bring army chief Sisi to power a little over three years after Mubarak was toppled by one of the region’s first democratic uprisings.

Sisi, who has yet to announce his candidacy, emerged as the nation’s most popular political figure after he removed Morsi from power following massive street protests against the divisive year-long rule of Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.

MOADAMIYET AL SHAM, Syria — Displaced residents returned Sunday to their homes near Damascus thanks to a truce in a rebel-held town that Syria’s army besieged more than a year ago, an AFP journalist said.

Among the returnees was a veiled mother of two who said she had come back to Moadamiyet Al Sham, southwest of the capital, for the first time in 14 months.

Speaking near an army checkpoint on the edges of the rebel-controlled area, the 40-year-old, who refused to give her name, said: “We’ve been told everything is calm now, so we’ve decided to return just to see the house.”

Moadamiyet Al Sham was once home to 100,000 people, but fighting, bombing and an army blockade forced tens of thousands to seek shelter elsewhere.

Some 15,000 people still live in the town, and have benefitted from the lull in fighting and the entry of food and other humanitarian supplies since rebels and the regime signed a truce in December.

But without basic services, few of those who fled Moadamiyet Al Sham for other parts of Syria or beyond are willing to go back, even in the long run.

“We will return for good if there’s water and electricity,” said the woman who was accompanied by her two children.

The AFP journalist was not allowed through the army checkpoint into the rebel area, but saw that most of those trickling in were women, children and elderly people.

At the entrance, a banner read: “Residents of Moadamiyet Al Sham want to banish violence and sectarianism, and reinforce national unity.”

A 38-year-old who only identified herself as Maryam said she also wanted to revisit her hometown more than a year-and-a-half after she fled due to bombing.

Accompanied by her four children and father, she appeared visibly exhausted by Syria’s three-year war, but had little hope basic services would return to her town.

“Electricity is still cut off inside,” she said.

In December, rebels and President Bashar Assad’s regime reached the truce for Moadamiyet Al Sham, after the town had been besieged for more than a year by government forces.

‘Children starve to death’ 

The siege led to massive food and medical shortages, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, reported several child deaths as a result of malnutrition.

On Sunday, the AFP journalist saw several pickup trucks loaded with mattresses, butane gas canisters and boxes full of clothes that had been brought to Moadamiyet Al Sham by the visiting families.

At the checkpoint, the correspondent also saw a 15-year-old boy who said he had been sent out of the town to collect goods.

Balancing three bags on his head, he said: “I’m taking in bread for my family.”

A Damascus businessman, Mohammad Said Fattaleh, said he helped send in food.

“Every day, seven or eight vehicles loaded with food are sent in by the government,” he said.

Two months before the truce was sealed, some 3,800 residents of Moadamiyet Al Sham were evacuated by the Syrian Red Crescent and the authorities.

The truce was the first of a string of ceasefire agreements reached between rebels and government representatives securing a relative peace in several neighbourhoods around Damascus.

Despite some improvement in the humanitarian situation, activists have said the government is blocking goods such as flour that would allow residents to live self-sufficiently.

“We receive some 1,000 packets of bread a day. But we are unable to bring in flour, or to open bakeries,” said Abu Malek, an activist in the town reached via the Internet.

The UN Security Council last month adopted a resolution calling for humanitarian aid convoys to be allowed access throughout the war-torn country.

Damascus said it is ready to cooperate with the resolution, so long as it respects “state sovereignty”.