Region

GAZA CITY — Israeli troops fired tear gas and live bullets at Palestinians throwing stones Friday near the border fence in northern Gaza, the army said, with Palestinian medics saying 17 men were wounded.

Clashes are common on Fridays, with regular protests near the border in support of Gaza farmers who say troops uprooted their trees to create a buffer zone.

Emergency services chief Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP 13 protesters were wounded by gunfire and four hit by tear gas.

Earlier he said one of the men shot was in critical condition.

An army spokeswoman confirmed the shooting but did not say if anyone was hurt.

Later the army said that two “projectiles” fired from the Gaza Strip hit an open area in the southern Israel without causing casualties or damage.

It was not immediately clear if they were rockets or mortar rounds.

MANAMA — Tens of thousands of Bahrainis joined a peaceful demonstration on Saturday to mark the third anniversary of an abortive pro-democracy uprising led by majority Shiite Muslims.

The rally organised by the kingdom’s main opposition Al Wefaq movement was one of the biggest staged since 2011.

Vast crowds of men, women and children took to the streets of the small Gulf Arab nation calling for democracy, political reform and the release of political prisoners, witnesses said.

“We will not stop until we achieve our demands,” protesters shouted. “Shiites and Sunnis, we all love this country.”

Police could not be seen at the rally on Budaiya Highway, which links the capital Manama to the northwestern town of Budaiya, witnesses said. No clashes were reported.

The interior ministry said a policeman had died after being wounded by a “terrorist” blast on Friday. Three other policemen were wounded the same day, while 26 people had been arrested.

“Some villages saw rioting, vandalism and the targeting of policemen,” the ministry said, referring to Friday’s unrest.

Bahrain, with Saudi help, crushed the demonstrations that began on February 14, 2011 inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere, but has yet to resolve the conflict between majority Shiites and the Sunni-led monarchy they accuse of oppressing them.

The ruling family has launched a third round of dialogue with its opponents, but no political agreement is in sight.

The Bahraini authorities, along with their Saudi backers, view Shiite demands for political reform as Iranian-inspired subversion. Their handling of the unrest has embarrassed the United States, which has had to balance its support for an ally that hosts its Fifth Fleet against human rights concerns.

“Three years since the start of the protests, we have seen no peace,” said a 34-year-old clerk in Saar village who gave his name only as Abu Ali. “Every day...youngsters go out and burn tyres on the roads and the police attack them with tear gas.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was concerned about reports of clashes between demonstrators and security forces on Friday, and urged the authorities to act in strict accordance with their international human rights obligations.

‘Unprovoked attacks’

In response, the interior ministry said the constitution guaranteed the right to peaceful protest and assembly and that numerous peaceful rallies and protests had taken place in the past week without police interference, but added: “Over the past two days there have been a series of unprovoked attacks on police by groups who use urban guerrilla warfare tactics. This includes the use of deadly homemade weapons and the detonation of two bombs... When they use force it is done in a proportionate and necessary manner.”

Crown Prince Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a relative moderate in the Sunni Al Khalifa family that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years, stepped in last month to try to revive a dialogue that the opposition had boycotted for four months.

Royal Court Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa has since met opposition leaders and other figures, but formal talks have yet to resume and the two sides still seem far apart.

The opposition had boycotted the talks after the government investigated at least two of its leaders on incitement charges.

Concern is rising that young Shiites will resort more and more to violent militancy if mainstream opposition leaders fail to advance a political settlement that would give Shiites a bigger say in government and improve living conditions.

A tiny Gulf archipelago of 1.7 million people, Bahrain has been in turmoil since the original revolt. The government says it has implemented some reforms recommended by international investigators and that it is willing to discuss further demands.

Shiites want wider-ranging democratisation, entailing Cabinets chosen by an elected parliament rather than appointed exclusively by the king. They also call for an end to alleged discrimination in jobs, housing and other benefits. The government denies any policy of marginalising Shiites.

GENEVA — Red Cross chief Peter Maurer voiced alarm Saturday over the chaos surrounding the evacuation from the besieged Syrian city of Homs, urging the warring sides to respect basic humanitarian law.

“I am concerned about the conditions in which the evacuations took place and about the number of people who remain trapped and unaided between front lines throughout Syria,” Maurer, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement.

“Humanitarians working in Homs over the last week were operating in an extremely challenging security environment,” he said, lamenting that neither side in the conflict had provided “firm commitment to respect the basic principles of international humanitarian law”.

The UN-led humanitarian operation to help thousands trapped in rebel-held areas of Homs besieged by the Syrian government for 600 days has been hailed as a success for getting some aid in and managing to evacuate some 1,400 people.

But the humanitarian exit operation — the result of months of painstaking UN-brokered negotiations — has been marred by the fragile ceasefire underpinning it.

Aid convoys into the areas, where people had been facing daily bombardment and dwindling supplies, came under attack and 14 people were killed by shelling.

Maurer stressed Saturday that aid workers can provide desperately needed assistance only if all parties agree to respect and protect them, “as required by international humanitarian law”.

“The situation in Homs and other besieged areas is highly complex, but the basic tenets of the law are simple,” he said, stressing the responsibility of the parties to provide for the basic needs of civilians under their control or ensure that aid workers can do so.

Pointing out that more than a million people in Syria are living in “extremely difficult conditions”, he said groups like the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent must be able to go in and “have direct contact with people affected by the fighting in order to assess their needs”.

More than 136,000 people have been killed in nearly three years of civil war in Syria and millions have been forced to flee their homes.

Maurer said the organisations were ready to participate in further evacuations of Syrian civilians, but only if the warring parties “agree to guarantee safe passage to ICRC and SARC teams at all times”.

The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions on warfare, and observers said it had been reluctant to get involved in the Homs evacuation because “it is not by any stretch of the imagination the way this should be done”.

Maurer also referred to the hundreds of male evacuees who were detained in a bid by the regime to weed out “terrorists”.

“Anyone detained after an evacuation must be treated humanely at all times and be allowed to contact their families,” Maurer said, echoing calls from the United Nations.

Respecting humanitarian law is “non-negotiable”, he said, stressing that “Syria is no exception”.

GENEVA — A stand-off between Russia and Western powers left their rival Syrian allies deadlocked in talks in Geneva on Thursday as fighting that has left tens of thousands under siege and hoping for relief from abroad went on.

Russia said it had presented a draft UN resolution on fighting “terrorism” in Syria and its own plan for improving aid access, throwing down a challenge to Western states in the Security Council which proposed another formulation that Moscow said would open the way for Western military intervention.

In Geneva, where a second round of peace talks has made little progress since Monday, Western diplomats and the Syrian opposition delegates complained that President Bashar Assad’s government was refusing to discuss international proposals for a transition of power and hoped Russia would press it to do so.

Mediator Lakhdar Brahimi was meeting senior Russian and US diplomats in Geneva on Thursday, hoping the three-week-old process’ co-sponsors could salvage negotiations which some Western diplomats said were already in danger of collapse.

US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov were also expected to meet Syrian negotiators during their time in Geneva.

“What we have seen so far is that the regime is not serious,” opposition delegate Anas Al Abdah said. “The sooner the Russians can put enough pressure on the Syrian regime side, the better. And they are positioned to do that.”

Western diplomats also said they hoped Moscow could apply pressure on the Damascus government to do more to compromise. If not, some feared a planned third round of talks might not follow any time soon after this week’s discussions are completed.

Opposition activists say the rate of killing has increased in the three weeks since talks began — averaging a record of more than 230 a day — as both sides have sought to shore up their bargaining positions by gaining territory.

On Thursday, activists said government forces dropped crude barrel bombs from the air on rebel-held areas around Damascus and Aleppo, as well as the town of Al Zara near Homs. There were clashes in Hama province near a highway, that rebels have been trying to block to cut the government’s supply lines.

World powers

Russia has been Assad’s most powerful international ally during the three-year-old conflict, using its veto in the Security Council to block bids to pressure him with condemnation or the threat of sanctions.

US President Barack Obama criticised Russian attitudes to the latest UN efforts to provide aid. The Russian foreign ministry hit back on Wednesday, calling that a “distortion”.

Moscow’s new push for a resolution condemning acts of “terrorism” is in tune with rhetoric from Damascus, which uses the term to describe all those fighting to oust Assad in the conflict that has killed more than 130,000 people.

The Syrian government delegation has resisted efforts to discuss a transition of power in Geneva this week, saying fighting “terrorism” must be addressed first.

“Terrorism is certainly no less acute a problem” than the humanitarian crisis in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference. He added that “terrorist groups” fighting there were a growing threat.

He accused Western countries that have lent support to the opposition and rebel groups, which are fighting alongside Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants, of “de facto attempts to justify terrorism” by arguing it cannot be eradicated from Syria as long as Assad remains in power.

The National Coalition, Syria’s main opposition group, which is backed by the West and began talks with a government delegation in Geneva last month, accuses Assad of supporting terrorists on the ground in Syria as he fights the rebels.

‘Eating cat’

In the city of Homs, a key battleground for much of the war, the evacuation of hungry civilians and rebel fighters from the besieged old quarter was continuing for a seventh day and a ceasefire was extended until Saturday, the governor said.

In all, 1,400 people had been evacuated since Friday, when a UN-brokered ceasefire came into force. It was an early achievement of the Geneva process begun on January 22.

Of these, 220 were still being detained for questioning. While women and children have been free to leave, men and youths aged between 15 and 55 are deemed of fighting age by the Syrian authorities and are being vetted by the security forces.

A US State Department spokesman said on Wednesday that the government had pledged to release men after screening.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday endorsed Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi’s undeclared bid to head the strife-torn North African nation as the two leaders negotiated a massive Moscow weapons deal.

Sisi came to Moscow with Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy for talks aimed at securing Russian assistance — stagnant since the late Soviet era — that could replace subsiding support from Cairo’s more recent ally Washington.

Putin told Sisi that he fully backed Egypt’s new constitution and crucially made no mention of Cairo’s crackdown on protests or the army-backed overthrow in July of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

“I know that you, mister defence minister, have decided to run for president of Egypt,” Putin told Sisi in televised remarks.

“I wish you luck both from myself personally and from the Russian people.”

The 59-year-old Egyptian field marshal has not officially declared his presidential ambitions but is overwhelmingly expected to run in elections likely to be held before the end of April.

A Kuwaiti newspaper had quoted Sisi as saying last week that he felt obliged “to meet the demands of the Egyptian people” and run for head of state. The army later denied the report.

Sisi and Fahmy had earlier on Thursday met their Russian counterparts to negotiate a $2-billion arms deal the two sides initially discussed in Cairo in November — a month after Washington suspended millions of dollars in assistance to the Egyptian army over Morsi’s ouster.

“Our visit offers a new start to the development of military and technological cooperation between Egypt and Russia,” Sisi told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“We hope to speed up this cooperation,” Sisi said.

Top officials revealed no details of Thursday’s military discussions while signalling that both sides were interested in the speedy conclusion of a deal.

“It was decided to accelerate preparations on an intergovernmental agreement on military and technological cooperation,” a joint statement released by the Russian foreign ministry after the talks said.

Air defence systems

The head of Russia’s state industrial holding company had said after the Cairo meeting that Moscow was on the verge of reaching a landmark agreement to deliver air defence systems to Egypt’s army.

Rostec chief Sergei Chemezov said on November 18 that “some contracts [with Egypt] have already been signed — particularly one concerning air defence systems.”

But he later clarified that he was referring only to a framework deal and not to firm delivery contracts.

Moscow’s authoritative Vedomosti business daily on November 15 said the deals under discussion were worth more than $2 billion and could be financed by Saudi Arabia.

Some Gulf media have reported that the United Arab Emirates — a strong Egyptian backer since Morsi’s fall — was also ready to fund a part of the purchase.

The Soviet Union was the main supplier of arms to Egypt in the 1960s and early 1970s. Cooperation between the two sides dropped after Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty and Cairo began receiving generous US aid.

Russia is now keen to revive those ties and Shoigu made clear on Thursday that Moscow fully supported the tough measures taken by Sisi against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement.

“We cannot but celebrate the adoption of the new Egyptian constitution,” the Russian defence minister told Sisi.

“We view your efforts at achieving stability as effective.”

Shoigu added that the two sides had touched on the possibility of Russia and Egypt conducting joint military exercises and the option of the North African country’s officers undergoing military training in Moscow.

MAALEH ADUMIM, Palestinian Territories — Thousands of young Israeli hardliners marched Thursday to demand the government build new settler housing units in E1, a highly sensitive strip of West Bank land near Jerusalem.

Security officials said more than 6,000 people, almost all of them teenagers, joined the march which began in Maaleh Adumim settlement and ended at E1 — an undeveloped stretch of land just to the west, which borders annexed East Jerusalem.

“Kerry = persona non grata,” read one of the signs, referring to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is currently trying to coax Israel and the Palestinians towards a peace agreement.

Israel has been planning construction in E1 since the early 1990s but nothing has ever been built there due to heavy international pressure. Plans for building 1,200 units unveiled in December 2012 were quickly put on the back burner after the announcement triggered a major diplomatic backlash.

The Palestinians say construction in E1 would effectively cut the West Bank in two and prevent the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.

“We will keep [the] promise to build in E1,” Housing Minister Uri Ariel told a crowd composed almost entirely of high schoolers.

Last April, Ariel, who belongs to the far-right national religious Jewish Home Party, pledged to build new apartments in E1 within 18 months.

In January 2013, a group of more than 200 Palestinian activists had set up a protest encampment called Bab Al Shams in E1 as a way of drawing attention to Israel’s plans to settle there.

Israel and Palestinians began a nine-month track of direct peace talks at Kerry’s urging in July 2013, but there has been little visible sign of progress.

Kerry, who has repeatedly come under fire from Israeli hardliners in recent weeks, is currently focusing his efforts on hammering out a framework agreement which would allow for the talks to be extended, likely until the end of the year.

SANAA — Attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at the main prison in Yemen’s capital on Thursday in a failed attempt to free inmates, security sources and witnesses said.

Explosions and gunfire between security forces and the attackers could be heard several kilometres away from the prison in northern Sanaa, which has Al Qaeda members among its inmates. The biggest explosion rattled windows in the area.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Yemen is grappling with a growing threat from one of Al Qaeda’s most active wings, which has killed hundreds of people in assaults on state and military facilities in the past two years.

There were no immediate reports of casualties but witnesses saw ambulances driving towards the high-security prison, which police secured after the 30-minute gunfight.

Attackers fired at least one rocket at a police patrol vehicle outside the main prison gates, a police officer at the scene said.

Police sealed off the road to the airport which runs through the neighbourhood where the prison is located, close to the interior ministry.

Special forces and armed personnel carriers were being sent in to chase the attackers, a security source said. The attackers failed to enter the prison.

Earlier on Thursday, a British teacher was reported missing in Sanaa in what a Yemeni security source suggested could have been a kidnapping. The abduction of foreigners in Yemen is common.

The US ally, with a population of 25 million, is trying to end nearly three years of political unrest, which began when mass protests erupted in 2011 against Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of 33 years, who stepped down.

Interim President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has been facing other challenges in trying to restore stability to Yemen, which shares a long and porous border with top world oil exporter, Saudi Arabia.

Apart from security, Yemen is trying to deal with demands by southern separatists for independence and incorporate rebels from the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement, which has been on an offensive to extend its control over the north.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s advisers consulted a top Saudi Arabia official ahead of Obama’s visit to Riyadh in late March in a flurry of White House activities relating to the Middle East.

Obama will visit Saudi Arabia as part of a trip that will also take him to Europe. He has some fence-mending to do with the Saudis, who have been concerned that the US drive for a nuclear agreement with Iran will end sanctions against Tehran too quickly.

Two top White House officials — national security adviser Susan Rice and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco — met on Wednesday with Saudi Arabia’s powerful Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef.

They discussed security cooperation and efforts to address violent extremism and terrorism across the Middle East, a White House statement said on Thursday.

“They also exchanged views on regional issues and committed to continuing to strengthen our cooperation on a range of common interests,” said the statement from Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

Obama is engaged in Middle East policy on a number of fronts.

He will meet His Majesty King Abdullah on Friday at the historic Walter Annenberg estate called Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, where Obama held talks last June with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

At that session, the two leaders are expected to discuss the civil war in Syria, Middle East peace and other regional issues.

Thousands of Syrian refugees have fled the war and have spilled into Jordan, putting pressure on the Kingdom.

Obama will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 in Washington, for discussions likely to include Iran’s nuclear programme as a key topic. Netanyahu has deep concerns about an interim nuclear deal achieved between the United States and other Western powers and Iran.

GAZA CITY — Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man near the border fence in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said.

“Ibrahim Suleiman Mansur, 26, died after he was shot by Israeli occupation forces while he was collecting gravel... east of Gaza City,” ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP.

The Israeli army said the man had been seen behaving suspiciously in a restricted area close to the border fence, where explosive devices had been detonated close to troops since the beginning of this year.

“Several Palestinians approached the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip and began tampering with the fence,” a military spokesman told AFP, adding that troops shouted warnings and fired in the air before shooting one of the suspects.

“After exhausting all other means... they fired towards the main instigator,” the spokesman said.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel allows “civilian access on foot to areas up to 100 metres from the perimeter fence for agricultural purposes only, and vehicular access to a distance of 300 metres.”

Israeli soldiers often fire at Palestinians who enter the prohibited zone, which borders southern Israel.

An Israeli army officer was killed on February 4 in a friendly fire incident along the tense frontier. 

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli newspapers bristled Thursday after the European Parliament president criticised the Gaza Strip blockade and suggested that Israelis received four times more water than Palestinians.

The spat erupted Wednesday after the far-right Jewish Home Party stormed out of parliament in protest during a speech by Martin Schulz, and it made the front pages of Israel’s main newspapers.

Most commentators were furious about figures mentioned by Schulz over water usage.

“How can it be that an Israeli is allowed to use 70 litres of water per day, but a Palestinian only 17,” Schulz asked.

But he also admitted he had not had time to verify the numbers.

Shortly afterwards, Schulz criticised settlements as an obstacle to peace and warned that the Gaza blockade could “undermine, rather than strengthen, Israel’s security”.

This prompted a barrage of heckling from Jewish Home MPs, who then walked out.

“Jewish Home demands an apology from the president of the European Parliament, who repeated two lies fed to him by the Palestinians,” party chairman Naftali Bennett said.

He denounced both assertions as “deceitful propaganda”.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waded in, accusing Schulz of being quick to cast blame without checking his facts.

“What was disturbing in Schulz’s speech was the selective hearing that is becoming prevalent in many circles in Europe,” he said in remarks published on parliament’s website.

“These are figures which are not true. [Schulz] said he didn’t check the figures but it didn’t stop him from straight away casting blame.”

The headline in the Israel HaYom freesheet, which is close to Netanyahu, read: “Shock in parliament over slander of Israel.”

The Palestine Liberation Organisation said average daily Palestinian domestic consumption was 70 litres per person, while the World Health Organisation recommends a minimum of 100 litres.

“In the southern West Bank, there are communities that use less than 15 to 20 litres per capita per day,” it added.

Schulz taken aback

In an interview with German daily Die Welt published Thursday, Schulz said he was taken aback by the tirade.

“The angry reaction from some parliamentarians in Jerusalem surprised me and made me concerned,” he said, adding that he considered his Jerusalem address to be “pro-Israel”.

“The people who disturbed my speech belong to a party of hardliners who answer each critical word that bothers them in this way.”

Israel HaYom accused Schulz of choosing to use “false libel” provided by anti-Israeli groups.

Other papers published figures showing a completely different picture of Israeli-Palestinian water usage.

The spat prompted several NGOs to publish their own figures on water usage, with Friends of the Earth Middle East citing statistics from 2011 showing the ratio was close to four to one.

“The municipal water consumption per capita per day in Israel in 2011 was 250 litres, while among Palestinians in the West Bank, after taking into consideration an average loss of approximately 30 per cent of the water — due to theft and lack of infrastructure — it was 70 litres,” the group said.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem also said there was “discrimination in water allocation”, with Israelis receiving “much more water than Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”.

According to the Israeli national water company, Mekorot, the average household water consumption in Israel is between 100 and 230 litres per person per day.

For Palestinians in the West Bank connected to the water mains, the average daily consumption is about 73 litres.

Those not connected to the network — around 113,000 people — rely on stored rainwater and water sold from tanker trucks, which is very expensive.

Typically, they consume less than 60 litres per person per day with shepherding communities in the northern Jordan Valley consuming just 20 litres, the group said.

Average consumption in Gaza is 70-90 litres per person daily, but the water quality is extremely poor, with 90 per cent of supplies pumped there unpotable, according to World Health Organisation standards.