Region

TRIPOLI — US Navy SEALs seize an oil tanker off Cyprus, stopping an attempt by an autonomy-minded Libyan militia to sell the shipload of crude in defiance of the Libyan government as the militia’s supporters in the east of the country vow to try to export oil again from the ports they control as tribal figures try to negotiate a resolution in the crisis between Tripoli and the east.

Some hoped that the return of the Morning Glory tanker that fuelled anger in this North African nation since it docked, loaded oil, until it escaped the Libyan naval forces, could ease up tension and give a window for peaceful resolution for months-long oil crisis that brought Libyan output from 1.4 billion barrels a day to a trickle after eastern militias seized major terminals since the summer.

The SEALs took control of the Morning Glory late Sunday while it was in international waters near Cyprus, the Pentagon said in a statement. Rear Adm. John Kirby said no one was injured in the operation, which was approved by President Barack Obama.

It said that the tanker will return to Libya under the control of sailors from the USS Stout. It was not clear which Libyan port the vessel was sailing for. North Korea says it has nothing to do with the ship.

The vessel, whose ownership remains a mystery, sparked political tension in the country after it sailed away with a cargo worth more than $30 million from the port of Al Sidra, in eastern Libya, despite government attempts to seize it. The parliament, which had a long rivalry with then-prime minister Ali Zidan, used the crisis to vote him out, saying it had underlined his weakness.

The port is among three of the country’s largest oil terminals, which since last summer have been seized by rebels who demand greater autonomy and equal distribution of oil revenues among the country’s three historic regions.

Cyprus is monitoring the tanker, which had been anchored some 18 nautical miles off its southern coastal town of Limassol when US special forces took control, its Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Adding that the ship was now sailing “in a westward direction” with a US Navy escort.

Libya’s interim government said in a statement Monday that the oil cargo will be unloaded when it arrives in Libya. The crew is safe and will be dealt with in accordance with international law, it added.

“The interim government thanks and appreciates all who contributed to this work... especially international partners, above all the governments of the United States and the Republic of Cyprus,” the government said in a statement, adding: “The oil is the backbone of the national economy and tampering with it... is unacceptable.”

On her Twitter account, US Ambassador to Libya Deborah K. Jones wrote: “Glad we were able to respond positively to Libya’s request for help in preventing illegal sale of its oil on stateless ship.”

Since the downfall of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi, Libya has struggled to rein in unruly militias, most of which stem from the rebellion that overthrew him.

The attempt to sell oil from the seized terminals was a first, a daring move made by an eastern militia led by former rebel fighter named Ibrahim Jedran, who controls the most vital terminals for the country’s so-called Oil Crescent. He is a founding member of a body known as the Cyrenaica Political Bureau, named after Libya’s eastern region, which aims to replace the state oil company and distribute revenues more equitably itself.

Bureau member Essam Al Jihani on Monday said the tanker incident had drawn international attention to the region’s cause. Speaking by telephone from Ajdabiya, close to Al Sidra port, he said his group is preparing to load a second tanker for export, although it was not possible to verify his claims.

However, the threats to bring in a new tanker came at a time Jedran’s group was holding talks with tribal elders who tried to strike a peaceful resolution for the oil crisis. According to Libya Al Ahrar TV network, Abed Rabbo Al Barassi, the head of the Cyrenaica Executive Bureau, one of the bodies set up by Jedran’s group, said that there will be no talks until the parliament withdraw its decision to form a military force to liberate the oil terminals.

The easterners have long complained of marginalisation and discrimination under 42-year Qadhafi rule. Their sense of injustice increased even after the toppling of Qadhafi when they say their city descended into violence and with little government action in protecting the city.

BENGHAZI — A car bomb Monday targeting a military academy in Libya’s restive eastern city of Benghazi killed at least seven soldiers and wounded 12, military and hospital sources said.

Benghazi, cradle of the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, has seen near-daily attacks on security and other targets in recent months as the weak Tripoli government struggles to rein in former rebel brigades turned militias.

The medical centre in Benghazi said “seven bodies have arrived at the hospital in addition to an undetermined number of human remains,” updating a previous toll.

A hospital spokesman said 12 people were wounded in the bombing, including six in serious condition.

A military source said the car parked in front of the academy blew up as soldiers emerged from an awards ceremony for army promotions.

The explosion left a one-metre deep crater and damaged around 20 cars parked nearby.

Car parts and scraps of military uniforms could be seen several metres away.

As with previous attacks, it was not clear who carried out the bombing and there was no claim of responsibility.

The government condemned the “criminal” and “terrorist” act and declared three days of mourning.

“The government has not and will not spare any effort to pursue those behind this crime and bring them to justice,” it said in a statement.

In a separate incident Monday, a man was killed elsewhere in Benghazi by a bomb that had been attached to his car, a security source told AFP, adding that the deceased has not yet been identified.

On December 22, a suicide car bomb targeting a security post 50 kilometres from Benghazi left 13 dead.

Militants have also attacked foreign missions in Benghazi, including a September 2012 assault on the US consulate in the Mediterranean city that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.

On March 2, gunmen shot dead a French engineer in Benghazi.

Eastern Libya has become a bastion of Islamist extremists, with authorities avoiding a full-blown confrontation with heavily armed former rebels pending the formation of a regular army and police force.

DUBAI — Pumps at Iran’s planned Arak reactor, seen by the West as a potential source of plutonium for nuclear bombs, were tampered with in a failed attempt to sabotage the country’s nuclear programme, a senior official said on Monday.

Asghar Zarean, deputy chief for nuclear protection and security at the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said the incident was one of several such attacks foiled over the past few months, the official IRNA news agency reported.

He did not name the targets of the other alleged attacks or who might have been behind them, according to IRNA.

Iran has in the past often accused its Western and Israeli foes of seeking to sabotage its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is peaceful but the United States and its allies fear may be aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability. It has also accused its enemies of assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.

But this was believed to be the first time Iran has made sabotage suspicions public since a major thaw in ties with the West after a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, was elected president last June on a platform to ease Tehran’s isolation.

“Intelligence inspections of the nuclear facilities indicated that some pumps ... of Arak’s IR-40 project had been mechanically manipulated in an effort to disrupt the routine work of the power plant,” Zarean said.

He gave no further details. A report by the UN nuclear watchdog in November last year said a number of major components had yet to be installed at the plant, including reactor cooling pumps. It was not immediately clear whether Zarean was referring to another type of pumps.

Arak disputed at talks

The fate of Arak was a big sticking point in talks between Iran and six world powers last year that led to a landmark interim agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for some easing of sanctions.

Under the accord that took effect on January 20, Iran pledged to not install any additional reactor components or produce fuel for the plant during the six-month duration of the deal.

The powers — the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia — and Iran are to meet again in Vienna on Tuesday to try to build on the interim accord and reach a final settlement by late July of the decade-old dispute over the Islamic republic’s atomic activities.

Zarean first announced the foiling of the Arak incident on Saturday when he unveiled a new lab to combat cyber attacks, but without giving any details at the time. The lab was launched to identify, prevent and fight threats including modern software viruses, he said in a statement over the weekend.

Iran’s nuclear facilities have previously been subject to an attack by a computer virus known as Stuxnet, which is widely believed to have been developed by the United States and Israel, though no government has taken responsibility for it.

The virus was discovered in 2010 after it was used to impair a uranium enrichment facility at Iran’s Natanz facility. It was the first publicly known example of a virus being used to attack industrial machinery.

Iran has long denied accusations from Israel and Western powers that it has sought to develop the means to produce atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear energy programme.

CAIRO — Prosecutors referred the youngest son of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to trial Monday on charges of drug use and possession, an accusation his family dismisses as an attempt to tarnish their image.

Moumin Salman, a prosecutor in the Nile Delta city of Benha, ordered that 20-year-old Abdullah Morsi, a university freshman, and his friend be tried before a criminal court. A date has not yet been set for the trial.

According to police accounts, Morsi’s son was arrested with his friend on March 1 after a local patrol became suspicious of a parked car on the side of the road on the east edge of Cairo. After a search, the officers told prosecutors, the police found two rolled hashish cigarettes in their car. The police say first Morsi and his friend refused to take a drug test, but later agreed and were then released.

The family said the charges are fabricated, and aim to defame Morsi’s family. Abdullah’s older brother, Osama, told The Associated Press at the time that he had received warnings from officials that members of the family will now be targeted for prosecution.

The ousted president has been detained since the military overthrew him in July following mass protests against him. He has since been put on trial on several charges, including conspiring with foreign groups, inciting his supporters to murder protesters, and organising a campaign of violence in Egypt. Thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group to which Morsi belongs, have also been arrested and many are facing trials. But his family has largely been spared the crackdown.

Authorities accuse Morsi and his supporters of seeking to destabilise the country following his ouster. Before he was ousted, Morsi supporters set up two protest camps in the capital— one outside east Cairo’s Rabaah Al Adawiya Mosque and a smaller one outside Cairo University in the west — where they gathered for nearly two months calling for his reinstatement. Hundreds were killed when security forces moved to break up the encampments.

A government-appointed body assigned to investigate the violence during the dispersal said Monday it presented a final report of its probe into the Rabaah dispersal to the country’s interim president, prime minister, top prosecutor and other officials. It demanded an official investigation.

The National Council for Human Rights had blamed Morsi supporters for shooting at police, escalating violence that ultimately led to the death of 624 civilians and eight police officers in the area outside the mosque. But the group also held the security responsible for using excessive firepower and for failing to protect a safe corridor through which it intended the protesters to evacuate.

One rights group has compiled a list of over 900 names, although Morsi supporters insist the toll is much higher. On their part, a Muslim Brotherhood-led coalition said the findings were “a failed attempt” by authorities to get away with the killings.

AL LABWA, Lebanon — Lebanese gunmen sprang into action and sirens blared on Monday as rockets struck a mainly Shiite town near the Syrian border where authorities are struggling to contain sectarian violence fuelled by a Syrian army offensive across the frontier.

The rocket attack on Al Labwa was the latest strike on a Shiite target inside Lebanon after Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and their Lebanese Hizbollah allies recaptured the border town of Yabrud from Sunni Muslim rebels on Sunday.

The rebel defeat at Yabrud sent a stream of refugees and fighters across the border towards the Lebanese Bekaa Valley town of Arsal, and was followed hours later by a suicide car bombing against a local stronghold of Shiite Hizbollah.

The border area has been steadily sucked into Syria’s three-year-old conflict as Syrian troops and jets targeted rebel bases on the frontier and suspected Syrian rebels fired rockets at Shiite towns to punish Hizbollah for supporting Assad.

But the rebel loss of Yabrud could exacerbate sectarian tensions across Lebanon and the flight of 2,000 defeated rebels — some of them into Lebanese territory — would further destabilise the already volatile Bekaa Valley.

“Everyone is scared about the future. They’re scared that after the fall of Yabrud the gunmen who fled might make trouble here,” said Talal Mohieddin, a 35-year-old shop owner in the town of Al Ain near the border.

“No one is leaving their house. Everyone is on guard,” he said, gesturing to the town’s empty streets and shuttered concrete homes and stores.

Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam met army chief General Jean Kahwaji on Monday and called on the military to “take all necessary measures to control the situation in Bekaa’s border areas”, a statement from his office said.

When the rockets struck Al Labwa, a mainly Shiite town about 8 km west of the Sunni town of Arsal, gunmen took up positions on the street and pointed rifles east towards the mountainous border with Syria. Some leapt into cars and sped away as emergency sirens blared.

The army said in a statement a total of four rockets had hit the area, wounding one person. Earlier in the day, security forces blew up a suspected car bomb and combed the border town of Fakeha for those who had planted it.

Triumph and trepidation

The attack on Al Labwa followed a suicide bombing which killed three people in the nearby town of Nabi Osmane on Sunday. Two radical Islamist groups with suspected ties to Sunni Al Qaeda militants in Syria claimed responsibility.

At the site of the blast, yellow Hizbollah banners were flying on Monday. “Dear criminals, our blood is stronger than your terror,” read one of them, next to the group’s logo.

The blast blew apart buildings in the area, including a barbershop where the twisted remains of a barber’s chair were visible through the door. A damaged grey Mercedes was parked in the road near the twisted, charred remains of another car.

One person was killed in the same town on Saturday after several rockets were fired from near Arsal.

As bulldozers cleared rubble and shattered glass from the blast site on Monday, bystanders derided what they called “terrorists”, the standard term used by Syria’s government and Hizbollah to describe Syrian rebels.

“These terrorists have no religion, they know no god,” said Mona Taiya, a 48-year-old resident who, like many in the area, works in agriculture.

She voiced doubts that Lebanon’s army could restore security on its own, saying that task would fall largely to Hizbollah. “The Lebanese army helps, but only as much as it can,” she said.

Yabrud was the last rebel stronghold on the Syrian side of the border and its fall ignited open celebrations in Beirut’s southern Shiite suburbs — mixed with fear of revenge attacks.

More than 100 youths on motorcycles paraded through the district on Sunday, waving Hizbollah flags and hooting their horns, and sheep were slaughtered in front of a mosque.

Hours later, however, Hizbollah members deployed in the streets after the Bekaa suicide bombing. Soldiers blocked off entrances to the suburbs and there were lengthy queues at the few open checkpoints, where cars were thoroughly searched.

Last stronghold

Despite the tensions, residents near the border on Monday dismissed the risk of Syria’s conflict leading to a new war in Lebanon, portraying it instead as a security problem for the authorities.

Akram Shammas, a 43-year-old supermarket owner in Al Labwa, said he was anticipating more car bombs in Lebanon after the fall of Yabrud, but that full-scale war was unlikely.

“If a civil war was going to happen, it would have happened after the battle of Qusair,” he said, referring to another rebel-held town near Lebanon that Assad’s forces and Hizbollah captured last year.

Earlier on Monday, the army blew up an explosives-laden car about 5km north of Sunday’s suicide attack. The twisted and charred remains of the car lay in a field of almond trees on a hillside on the outskirts of the small town of Fakeha.

Army humvees mounted with machineguns rolled along the crest of the hill and Lebanese soldiers in fatigues patrolled through the fields and the town, taking up positions along roadsides looking for the men who had been driving the car.

Access from Al Labwa to Arsal was blocked, possibly to prevent Syrian rebels who may have crossed into Arsal from clashing with local Shiites in Al Labwa.

“The road into and out of Arsal is cut,” Arsal Mayor Ali Al Hujeiri told Reuters, adding that more than 400 families had arrived in the town over the last 48 hours.

He said only a handful of the 100 wounded people, who were reportedly treated in an Arsal field hospital, were rebels, but that other fighters may have taken refuge in the rugged and remote border region surrounding the town.

In Tripoli, the army clashed overnight with fighters who fired rockets at military posts in the northern coastal city, security sources said. Twelve people have been killed in four days of fighting stoked by tensions between Sunnis and minority Alawites, from the same faith as the Syrian president.

BAALBEK, Lebanon — A suicide car bomb attack killed two people late Sunday in a Hizbollah-dominated area near the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, a Lebanese security source said.

"A car bomb attack has struck the village of Al Nabi Othman, killing two people and wounding seven others," the source told AFP.

"The blast was carried out by a suicide attacker. Hizbollah members knew he was about to carry out the attack, and tried to stop the vehicle. That was when the attacker detonated the vehicle," he added.

Hizbollah-dominated areas in eastern Lebanon and southern Beirut have suffered a series of deadly attacks, many of them suicide car blasts, since the powerful Shiite movement acknowledged sending fighters into Syria to support President Bashar Assad's troops as they battle rebels.

The latest attack comes hours after the Syrian army backed by Hizbollah fighters captured Yabrud, a former rebel bastion in Syria near the Lebanese border.

Hizbollah and Lebanese security forces have said many of the car bombs used in previous suicide car bombings originated in Yabrud.

RIYADH — Saudi authorities have banned hundreds of books, including works by renowned Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish, as part of a crackdown on publications deemed threatening to the conservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia clamped down on dissent following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, from which it has been largely spared, and has adopted an increasingly confrontational stance towards the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups it has long viewed as a threat to its security.

The local Okaz daily reported Sunday that organisers at the Riyadh International Book Fair had confiscated “more than 10,000 copies of 420 books” during the exhibition.

Local news website Sabq.org reported that members of the kingdom’s notorious religious police had protested at “blasphemous passages” in works by the late Darwish, widely considered one of the greatest Arab poets, pressing organisers to withdraw all his books from the fair, which ended Friday.

The religious police frequently intervene to enforce the kingdom’s strict conservative values, but the move to ban so many works was seen as unprecedented.

Similar action was taken against works by Iraq’s most famous modern poet, Badr Shaker Al Sayyab, and another Iraqi poet, Abdul Wahab Al Bayati, as well as those by Palestinian poet Muin Bseiso.

The fair’s organising committee also banned a book titled “When will the Saudi Woman Drive a Car?” by Abdullah Al Alami, the Saudi Gazette daily reported.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women, forced to cover in public from head to toe, are not allowed to drive.

Other banned books include “The History of Hijab” and “Feminism in Islam.”

Activist Aziza Yousef said the crackdown had offered “free advertising to those whose books were banned” as many “rushed to download these works from the Internet.”

Organisers also banned all books by Azmi Bishara, a former Arab Israeli MP who left Israel in 2007 and is now close to authorities in Qatar, where he is based, Sabq.org reported.

The ban comes amid escalating tensions between Qatar and three other Gulf Arab monarchies — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — who pulled their envoys from Doha earlier this month, accusing it of interfering in their internal affairs.

 Concern over Islamists 

The decision to withdraw the ambassadors was seen as driven largely by Saudi animosity towards the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and its regional affiliates, which are widely believed to receive support from Qatar.

“Revolution”, a book by Wael Ghonim, a secular Egyptian and former Google executive who became an icon of the country’s 2011 uprising that toppled Saudi ally Hosni Mubarak, was also banned from the Riyadh fair, according to Sabq.

Organisers of the book fair, which began March 4, had announced ahead of the event that any book deemed “against Islam” or “undermining security” in the kingdom would be confiscated.

A few days after the fair opened, Saudi authorities closed the stall of the Arab Network for Research and Publishing headed by Islamist publisher Nawaf Al Qudaimi, and confiscated all his publications, citing threats to the kingdom’s security.

The crackdown comes after the interior ministry published a list of “terror” groups earlier this month in a move which analysts have warned could further curb 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.

Saudi is a key backer of the rebels fighting to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad but is concerned about possible blowback from jihadists, following a wave of domestic unrest from 2003-2006.

AL LAFITAAT, Egypt — Egypt’s army says it is crushing Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, but in the region’s villages and towns a victory for the state feels a long way off.

In a rare visit to eight villages in Northern Sinai last week, a Reuters reporter saw widespread destruction caused by army operations, but also found evidence that a few hundred militants are successfully playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Arab world’s biggest army and are nowhere near defeat. It is increasingly difficult for foreign correspondents to openly enter conflict zones in the Sinai.

Residents say the militants — a mix of Egyptian Islamists, foreign fighters and disgruntled youth — have seized control of about a third of the villages in the region and are now taking their fight closer to Cairo.

“The army is in control of the main roads but is unable to enter many villages. It can only attack them by helicopter,” said Mustafa Abu Salman, who lives near Al Bars village.

“Even when the army’s armoured personnel vehicles enter villages they fail to arrest militants who have better knowledge of the place, which the military completely lacks.”

Many residents say that the authorities’ military operations are actually creating new enemies for the state.

The fight against militant Islam is a key test for the interim government in Cairo. Sinai-based militants stepped up attacks on police and soldiers last year, soon after Egypt’s army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and tried him on a wide range of charges. The violence has left 300 people dead and hammered Egypt’s economy, which has not recovered from the political turmoil that began in early 2011 when a popular uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak.

The army and the government say they are beating the militants. In an attempt to stop the illegal flow of arms, Egyptian authorities have destroyed thousands of tunnels that ran under the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which borders North Sinai. Almost every night, Apache helicopters fire rockets at suspected Islamist militant hideouts in the houses and farms of the largely lawless peninsula, a 61,000 sq.km. area wedged between the Suez Canal to the west and Israel and Gaza to the east.

“We are doing an extremely good job but that does not mean we have completely ended terrorism,” army spokesman Ahmed Ali told Reuters. “It is a vicious war because the terrorists have light and heavy weapons. The lives of the people in Sinai are of great importance for the armed forces and they are seen as the foundation for national security in that area.”

Army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who is expected to become Egypt’s next president, owes much of his popularity to his ouster of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and his tough stance against the militants.

Sisi has described the Sinai operation as an ongoing security campaign to rid the region of extremists and criminals. The Sinai, he has said, is a top security priority.

So far, though, local residents say the military is making little progress. The army’s blunt tactic of rocketing suspected hideouts is failing, they say, because the militants have mastered the terrain. They move around villages using alleyways where it is difficult to spot them from the air, and mix with civilians or hide in olive groves. The effort to stop the flow of weapons is also a struggle, they say, in large part because smugglers are bringing in weapons from Libya. Residents say the number of fighters has decreased in the past few months, partly because many fighters have moved towards the Nile Valley.

“The army has entered a war, but it is not specialised in this type of war, which requires special counterinsurgency forces, not an army,” said Mussab Abu Fajr, a bedouin leader in the Sinai’s main city of Al Arish.

Major General Samih Bishady, the head of security in North Sinai, said that the army has “killed and arrested many of the wanted in Sinai”. He put the number of active militants remaining there at just 80. At the same time, he and other officials in Cairo agree that many Islamist fighters have moved to the Nile Delta, bringing the conflict much closer to the capital and Egypt’s main population centres.

Change of tactics

Standing beside two olive trees outside the village of Al Lafitaat, a senior militant who would be identified only by his initials, S.A., set out the way the groups’ tactics have changed.

“At the start of the fighting we used to hide in mountains but now we are present in the villages among residents, because it is safer there,” he said. “When we were in the mountains it was easy for the army to strike us with helicopters. But as long as we are with the people it is hard to reach us.”

S.A. said that he and his fellow fighters use simple home-made bombs such as jam jars stuffed with dynamite. The devices are hidden in olive trees or on the side of road, with desert sand covering detonation cords. He said the militants wait on hilltops for military convoys to pass and then detonate their bombs by remote control, using cell phone identification cards.

“We use cooking cylinders and water jugs and we will pack them with explosives, and connect them to timers and a SIM card and we plant them on roads we know are used by the army,” said S.A.

The threat of roadside bombs has prompted the army to cut mobile phone networks and the Internet during daylight hours when military vehicles move around.

“The militants are dealing with us in haphazard primitive ways and they have entered a dirty war with us,” said a military official in Sinai who declined to be identified.

In an effort to evade the attention of the military, many residents now hang several Egyptian flags on their homes as a gesture of loyalty to the state.

Ahmed Abu Gerida, who lives in Al Bars village, said militants sometimes hide in civilians’ houses to avoid detection. “They hang up women’s clothes, including bras and underwear, because they know the army will hesitate to approach bedouin women,” he said. “One time soldiers entered one of these homes and found a storage place for explosives, and blew up the house.”

Air strikes, launched almost daily since Morsi’s fall, have hammered villages like Al Lafitaat, where all 12 single-storey cement houses have been destroyed or heavily damaged over the past few months. Some were reduced to a few beams, while others were burnt out, their ceilings collapsed. Residents fled, leaving behind a handful of sheep.

One woman named Ni’imaa stood next to the remnants of her house with her two children, after returning a few days earlier to retrieve her belongings. She collected a pillow, a mattress, some dishes and a small stove and placed them in a pickup truck. She said the army killed her husband, who she said was not a militant, four months ago.

“We want to go to a safe spot with my children. As you can see a rocket destroyed half of my house and I will not wait until the other half gets destroyed.”

Army spokesman Ali said: “We try by all ways to avoid having innocent civilian casualties during these clashes with the terrorists. The terrorists use these tactics of targeting civilians so that they can make the armed forces lose the support of the people in Sinai. There are some losses in the clashes that are caused by extremists.”

‘Between two fires’

Residents have become familiar with the rituals of the conflict. Every day at 4:00pm the army closes the main streets in every village. At night, a buzzing noise overhead is a sign that rockets may follow. Sinai residents and some Egyptian security officials believe the noise is made by drones, perhaps from Israel; Islamist militant groups in the Sinai are seen as a security threat to Israel.

Asked if Israeli combat aircraft operate over Egypt, a senior Israeli military officer said: “No.”

The Egyptian military says it does not target civilians. A military officer at a checkpoint in Al Masoura village said the army only attacks villages which are occupied by militants.

“Some innocents die but at the hands of terrorists not us.”

But residents say the military campaign is fanning resentment in a population that already felt neglected by the central government. The bedouin population has long accused the Egyptian authorities of neglecting the Sinai region, failing to provide basic services and jobs.

“The military operations hit the wanted and unwanted,” said Mona Barhouma, who lives in Rafah and complains that innocent people are regularly killed.

Even residents who are opposed to militants say they are scared to cooperate with the army, which has appealed for tips to find the fighters.

Sheikh Hassan Khalaf, who heads the Sawarka tribe in Sinai, said 35 Sinai residents who gave the army information on militants had been shot dead in the past three months. The army confirmed the shooting, but not the numbers involved.

Many people feel trapped between both sides.

“We are between two fires. If we report the terrorists to the army, the militants will kill us the next day,” said Subayha, a bedouin who said that she and her children struggle to sleep because of army shelling in her village of Al Mahdiya. For safety, they sometimes sleep outside the gates of a building that houses international peacekeepers, she says.

“If we remain silent the army considers us allies of the terrorists and can start attacking our villages,” said Subayha.

Cuts to the mobile phone network and Internet have added to public frustration.

Sisi’s big challenge

Aside from responding to calls for holy war, militants are given worldly incentives, according to residents and security officials. They say leaders offer young recruits wives, money and homes in return for a commitment to carry out suicide bombings. “They have the good life for a few months and are promised it will only get better in paradise after the operation,” said Bishady, the head of security in North Sinai.

Egyptian security officials say combatants include Egyptian fighters as well as some from Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip and from Afghanistan. They believe some of the Egyptian fighters spent time in Taliban-controlled areas in Pakistan, returning after the election of Morsi in 2012.

The army-backed government accused Morsi of allowing militancy to flourish in the Sinai by freeing hardcore Islamists from jail. Security chief Bishady said that during Morsi’s rule he saw presidential vehicles transport officials to meetings with Islamists. Army officials also say those talks took place.

Khalaf, the Sawarka tribal leader, said he saw Mohamed Al Zawahiri, the brother of Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri, in a presidential car. Sinai police were not allowed to approach the convoys or meetings, said Khalaf.

Senior Muslim Brotherhood official Mohamed Saleh told Reuters: “There is no evidence of this. It is all lies spread in an attempt to hurt the reputation of the Muslim Brotherhood. We have never associated in our history with any groups that hurt Egypt.”

Wael Haddara, a senior adviser to Morsi while he was president, said Morsi’s public “efforts to reach out to bona fide tribal elders and leaders” might now be “cast as a meeting with terrorists”. The Brotherhood has said it released prisoners when it was in power because the prisoners had been unfairly tried or had served their sentences.

At the same time, senior Brotherhood leader Mohamed Al Beltagy said last year after Morsi’s fall that the violence in the Sinai would stop if the army reversed what the Muslim Brotherhood calls a coup.

The big fear is that the conflict is spreading. Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, the best-known Sinai-based militant group, has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks in Cairo in recent months, including a suicide bombing that failed to kill the interior minister last September. The group also said it shot down a military helicopter in January, killing five soldiers.

An army official in Cairo said the Sinai militants had made a strategic move to shift operations to other places in Egypt. If Sisi becomes president, the attacks are most probably going to increase, as in militants’ eyes, Egypt will be “officially run by a military regime”, he said.

“This will be the biggest challenge to Sisi’s rule.”

KHARTOUM — The governor of Sudan’s troubled North Darfur state has survived an ambush after visiting a town briefly seized by rebels, a source familiar with the incident said Sunday.

“He’s OK,” the source told AFP after the Saturday attack against North Darfur governor Osman Kbir, which was the latest sign of instability in the region.

It came while he was returning to the state capital El Fasher after assessing the situation in Mellit town, more than 50 kilometres north, said the source, who asked for anonymity.

There was no indication of who carried out the ambush.

The state-linked Sudanese Media Centre (SMC) reported that Kbir, accompanied by a legislative and security delegation, had visited the area but the report made no mention of an attack.

SMC is close to Sudan’s security apparatus.

The official SUNA news agency on Saturday quoted Kbir as saying Mellit was “fully under control of the armed forces” after the attack by insurgents.

Minni Minnawi, who heads a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, told AFP on Thursday that his forces had captured the town.

It was the fourth major outbreak of violence in Darfur since late February, with rebels attacking an area in the southeast and another uprising erupting in the far west, where local sources said militia loyal to Musa Hilal took control of Saraf Omra town.

Even before the Mellit incident, about 115,000 people had been displaced by violence in North Darfur and in South Darfur, according to the United Nations.

International peacekeepers said “a number of military and civilian casualties” were reported after last week’s attack against a Sudanese military base in Mellit.

TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya’s ousted prime minister gave his first interview since he left the country, saying in the televised appearance aired Saturday that he doesn’t recognise parliament’s dismissal of him and will contest the decision he called invalid.

Ali Zidan blasted his Islamist rivals in the more than one-hour-long interview with the private television station Libya Ahrar, saying they worked against him from the time he was sworn in in November 2012.

“For them, Zidan was rejected in every way. From the first day, they tried to get me to quit or dismiss me,” Zidan said. “Since the prime minister is not a member in their political group, regardless if he is a success or a failure, he must be finished.”

He also said “they want no one else with them.”

Zidan said he didn’t flee Libya, but that he was advised by allies in the parliament to leave the country over concerns about his safety and to avoid getting arrested after he was voted out of office Tuesday.

A member of parliament told him that “they have no fear and they don’t fear God. I think they are plotting something bad,” Zidan said.

Zidan also said Islamists miscounted the votes in parliament to oust him, including “yes” votes after the ballots were counted to say they secured the need two-third majority. He also said his government was not notified before the vote, nor questioned in parliament.

Zidan’s defence minister, Abdullah Al Thinni, has been named interim prime minister. Zidan left the country for Europe after parliament’s vote, though it’s unclear where he is now. He said he’ll only return to Libya when his safety is guaranteed.

He said he will contest the parliament vote before the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court, but urged the parliament to reconsider its decision. He said he will not give up his political career.

However, Zidan acknowledged he had a tough time running the country, with its battered institutions, security agencies and army after 42 years of the rule of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Islamists led by Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservatives in the Gratitude to the Martyrs Bloc have been trying to oust Zidan for several months but were always blocked by the non-Islamist bloc. The rivalry is rooted in Zidan’s opposition to the militias, which proliferated after Qadhafi’s fall, and which are mostly led by Islamist commanders. Under Zidan, an Al Qaeda wanted militant was nabbed from Tripoli, and Islamists accused Zidan of handing the West a list of extremists he wanted arrested.

The rivalry is also over powers between the government and parliament. The parliament speaker is the supreme commander of the armed forces who has the authority to order troops to battle.

But Zidan said there was no military to speak of in Libya. His ouster comes after a major standoff with an autonomy-minded militia in the country’s east that has seized most of the country’s oil facilities. The militia succeeded last week in exporting a tanker of oil from a port it holds in defiance of the central government. Naval forces failed to stop the shipment.

“I thought there was an army, but through practice, I realised there is none,” Zidan said.