Region

TRIPOLI, Libya — A militia commander controlling Libya’s oil terminals denounced the United States for seizing a tanker that his militia was using to try to export oil in defiance of the country’s central government, saying Tuesday that Washington was siding with Tripoli against the aspirations in the eastern half of the country for greater autonomy.

Ibrahim Jedran is part of a movement demanding autonomy for eastern Libya and last summer his militia took over Libya’s oil facilities in the east. As a result, the country’s exports of its biggest revenue earner have slowed to a trickle. This month, Jedran’s militia loaded a tanker full of more than $30 million-worth of oil at a Mediterranean port it controls and tried to export the oil for sale for the east’s coffers.

On Sunday night, US Navy SEAL commandos captured the tanker, Morning Glory, as it was anchored off the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The US Navy is now escorting the vessel back to Libya to hand over to the central government.

The tanker episode illustrated the extreme weakness of Libya’s government since the 2011 ouster and death of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi. Authorities in Tripoli have almost no authority around the country, the army and police are in disarray, and multiple militias around the country have filled the void, claiming their own power. At the same time, the autonomy movement in the east — a region historically known as Cyrenaica — has gained strength, building on local resentment over years of discrimination and marginalisation of the area by Tripoli.

Speaking in a televised statement aired on his private TV network, the militia commander Jedran said Washington was aligning with the wrong side in the dispute of Libya’s regions. He said the central authorities in Tripoli are dominated by Islamists, who hold sway in parliament, and ignore the aspirations of the east.

“The free world should stand next to the side of truth,” Jedran said. “But today we find a super power declaring piracy.”

Jedran warned the US against handing the tanker and three eastern Libyans on board over to “the criminal militia that rules Tripoli”, adding that “such a dangerous measure would lead to a civil war”.

It is not known who the oil was to be sold to or who owns the tanker. Jedran in his comments said it is owned by the Libyan Company for Oil and Gas, a parallel body created by the autonomy movement in the east to run the oil industry in its area. The Cyrenaica autonomy movement has created a number of administrative bodies in the east that are not recognised by Tripoli.

Jedran claims to have around 20,000 fighters under his command, originally rebel fighters who participated in the eight-month uprising that toppled Gadhafi. After the collapse of Gadhafi’s rule, the fighters were tasked with guarding oil terminals in the east, where most of Libya’s oil infrastructure is located. After long accusing the government of corruption and embezzlement, he moved his forces to take over the terminals, virtually shutting down the country’s previous production of 1.4 billion barrels a day. He demands investigation into corruption allegations in oil sales, fair distribution of oil revenues among the country’s three regions — Tripoli, Cyrenaica and the southern region known as Fezzan — and a return to the 1951 constitution, in which the country was a federation where regions had considerable autonomy.

During the oil tanker crisis, parliament tasked western-based militias to launch an offensive to take back the oil facilities. After some initial clashes with Jedran’s forces, the offensive has been put on hold — but the violence deepened polarisation.

Jedran benefits from the increasing sense among the eastern population that authorities are unable to bring stability to the country, with killings taking place almost on a daily basis in eastern cities. Many militias in the east have Islamic extremist ideologies, and are suspected in frequent attacks on police and the military.

On Tuesday, a slain Christian Iraqi professor was found inside his car in a central city of Sirte, according to state news agency.

The agency LANA reported that security forces found the body of Adison Karkha, a 54-year-old medical school professor. The agency added that motives behind the killing are unknown.

DAMASCUS — Syrian regime forces were on Monday readying an assault on the last rebel-held areas in the Qalamoun Mountains, strategically located on the Lebanese border, after overrunning key opposition bastion Yabrud.

The capture of Yabrud on Sunday by Syrian troops and Lebanese Hizbollah fighters came shortly after the conflict entered its fourth year and marked a significant setback for the rebels as it severs their supply lines from across the border.

It also raised fears of further spillover of the conflict into Lebanon, where Sunni extremists carried out a suicide car bomb attack late Sunday in a Hizbollah-dominated area that killed two members of the Shiite group, including a local official.

A security source in Damascus said the army would soon launch operations “in all areas where terrorists are to be found”, using the regime’s term for rebels battling to end the Assad family’s four-decade rule.

“The aim of the army operation is to entirely secure the border and to close all corridors to Lebanon.”

The fighting along the border has sparked a fresh flight of civilians into Lebanon, which is already hosting nearly a million refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

“So far 150 families have crossed the border since Yabrud fell,” said the UNHCR’s Lisa Abu Khaled.

“NGOs there were on standby so they have handed out food, blankets, etc, and the UN plans to register the arrivals this week.”

Speaking to AFP via the Internet from the Qalamoun mountains, activist Jawad Al Sayed said all civilians were “evacuated” from Yabrud before the town fell, either to areas nearby or to neighbouring Lebanon.

The road, he said, was dangerous, echoing reports from a day earlier that at least six people, including two children, were killed in air strikes as they fled for Lebanon.

“The situation of the civilians is very sad... So we have two options, either to go to Lebanon... or to stay here and resist,” said Sayed.

The car bomb attack was claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, which described it as a “quick response to the bravado... of the party of Iran [Hizbollah] for their rape of Yabrud”.

On Monday, four rockets launched from across the border with Syria hit eastern Lebanon, injuring one man, according to the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese military was deployed in force on dirt roads and border crossings in the country’s east, in a bid to avert “the infiltration of car bombs and armed men”, said the official National News Agency.

Nineteen Syrian men and two Lebanese were arrested Monday after crossing the border illegally, said the military, adding that the men had in their possession an assault rifle, two pistols, cash and 30 mobile phones.

‘Very difficult battle’ 

The fall of Yabrud came after five months of Syrian army operations in the Qalamoun region, and more than 30 days of heavy aerial bombardment of the town.

An AFP reporter entered Yabrud, north of Damascus, on Sunday after the army declared it had seized full control of the town.

Exhausted Syrian soldiers sat in the streets after seizing the town in fierce clashes with the support of battle-hardened Hizbollah fighters and pro-regime militiamen.

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

A source close to Hizbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley told AFP that the victory came after a Hizbollah commando raid on Yabrud during which 13 rebel leaders were killed, leaving their forces in disarray.

Among those killed, said the source, was Abu Azzam Al Kuwaiti, a key commander in Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate.

Yabrud was once home to some 30,000 people, including a Christian minority, and had been a rebel bastion since early in the Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011 in the form of peaceful protests.

The town is a strategic prize because of its proximity to the highway and the Lebanese border, across which the mostly Sunni rebels have smuggled fighters and weapons.

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

Syria’s three-year conflict has claimed an estimated 146,000 lives and displaced millions of people.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Monday told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that both he and Israeli leaders must make tough political decisions and take “risks” for peace.

Meeting Obama at the White House, Abbas said Israel’s release of a fourth tranche of Palestinian prisoners by March 29 would show how serious Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about extending peace talks.

“As I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu when he was here just a few weeks ago, I believe that now is the time .... to embrace this opportunity,” Obama said as he sat side-by-side with Abbas in the Oval Office.

“It is very hard, very challenging. We are going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we able to move forward,” Obama said.

The US leader wants Abbas to agree to a US framework to extend peace talks past an end-of April deadline. Little tangible progress has been made in the past seven months.

He said that everyone already understood the shape of an “elusive” peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, saying it would be based on 1967 lines with mutual land swaps.

Abbas did not directly address the Israeli government’s demand for the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a “Jewish” state.

He noted through a translator that the Palestinians had recognised Israel’s legitimacy in 1988 and in “1993 we recognised the state of Israel”.

Abbas also noted the agreement that the Palestinians have with Israel on the release of a fourth batch of prisoners by March 29.

“This will give a very solid impression about the seriousness of these efforts to achieve peace,” Abbas said.

“We don’t have any time to waste. Time is not on our side, especially given the very difficult situation that the Middle East is experiencing and the entire region is facing,” he said.

Israeli ministers said last week that they would have difficulty approving the prisoner release if agreement was not reached to extend the peace talks.

Israel committed to the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners in four tranches when talks were launched in July.

It has so far released 78 of those in three batches.

Ahead of the White House talks, thousands of Palestinians rallied in West Bank cities to show support for Abbas.

“We’re here today to stand up to pressures upon us and make sure President Abbas adheres to his convictions,” said Nasser Eddin Al Shaer, a former Palestinian education minister and member of Fateh’s Islamist rivals Hamas, at a 5,000-strong rally in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Obama told Netanyahu when they met at the White House on March 3 that the peace framework cannot be simply a deal agreed by Israel and the United States and then presented to the Palestinians as a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

But officials also privately say that the Palestinians will be required to make concessions on issues like the return of refugees and borders if they are to secure a state at long last.

However, despite intensive diplomacy by Secretary of State John Kerry, the two sides appear to have made little progress since the talks resumed in July after a three-year freeze.

Abbas met Kerry on Sunday for what a senior State Department official said were “frank and productive” discussions.

“We are at a pivotal time in the negotiations and while these issues have decades of history behind them, neither party should let tough political decisions at this stage stand in the way of a lasting peace,” the official said.

The most nettlesome issues in the peace process include the contours of a future Palestinian state, the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements, security and mutual recognition.

The Palestinians want borders based on the lines that preceded the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, including now-annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

They have also insisted there should be no Israeli troops in their future state.

But Israel wants to retain existing settlements it has built inside occupied Palestinian territory over the past decades. It also wants to maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley, where the West Bank borders Jordan.

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.