Region

KHARTOUM — Sudan's protest leaders Wednesday agreed to hold direct talks with the country's ruling generals after African Union and Ethiopian mediators called on the two sides to resume stalled negotiations to form a new governing body.

Negotiations between the two sides collapsed in May over the make-up of the governing body and who should lead it — a civilian or a soldier.

Tensions further soared after a brutal crackdown on a longstanding protest camp in Khartoum killed dozens of demonstrators exactly a month ago.

The mediators have now come up with a compromise to resolve the overall crisis that has rocked Sudan for months, following the military ouster of longtime leader Omar Al Bashir in April amid widespread protests against his rule.

On Tuesday the mediators called on the generals and protest leaders to resume talks on Wednesday.

“The Alliance for Freedom and Change met and decided to accept the invitation for direct negotiations” with the generals, prominent protest leader Madani Abbas Madani told reporters on Wednesday, adding one of the conditions for the talks was to reach a decision “within 72 hours”.

The ruling military council that seized power after the army’s ouster of Bashir has still not responded to the plea for talks by the mediators.

But state television said that General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, chief of the military council, ordered the immediate release from jail of 235 members of the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel group fighting government forces in war-torn Darfur, which is part of the protest movement.

Test of mobilisation 

The blueprint drafted by the mediators calls for a civilian-majority governing body.

Protest leaders have exerted pressure on the generals since the June 3 raid, by men in military fatigues, on the protest camp outside army headquarters in Khartoum.

The ruling military council insists it did not order the violent dispersal of the sit-in.

At least 136 people have been killed across the country since the raid, including more than 100 on June 3, according to doctors close to the umbrella protest movement, the Alliance for Freedom and Change.

The health ministry says 78 people have died nationwide during the same period.

On Sunday, in what was the first mass protest against the generals since the raid, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets demanding civilian rule.

The mass protest had been seen as a test for the protest leaders’ ability to mobilise the crowds after the generals imposed a widespread Internet blackout and deployed security forces in the capital’s key squares and districts, its twin city Omdurman and other towns and villages. 

On Monday, protest leaders upped the pressure on the generals by calling for a similar mass protest on July 13, to be followed by a nationwide civil disobedience campaign a day later.

The civil disobedience campaign, if observed, would be the second such agitation since the June 3 raid. 

The first, held between June 9 and 11, paralysed the country, hitting an already dilapidated economy hard.

Protest leaders have been supported by Western nations in their call for civilian rule, while the generals appear to have backing of Arab allies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, experts say.

RIYADH — A Yemeni rebel attack on a civilian airport in southern Saudi Arabia wounded nine civilians on Tuesday, a Riyadh-led coalition said, the latest in a series of strikes on the site.

"The terrorist attack on Abha airport... led to the injury of nine civilians, including eight Saudi citizens and one carrying an Indian passport," the military coalition said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Earlier, the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels said they "launched a wide operation targeting warplanes at Abha international airport" with drones, according to their Al Masira television channel. 

The rebels in neighbouring Yemen have stepped up missile and drone attacks across the border in recent weeks.

On June 12, a rebel missile attack on Abha airport wounded 26 civilians, drawing promises of "stern action" from the coalition.

And on June 23, another rebel attack on Abha airport killed a Syrian national and wounded 21 other civilians, according to the coalition.

The Houthis said on Tuesday they will “not hesitate” to launch operations against Saudi Arabia and the coalition, adding they have a new missile system. 

“Our forces are capable of targeting a number of targets simultaneously and with different weapons,” said a Houthi spokesman during a televised press conference. 

He said targets include oil pipelines and facilities.

The raids come amid heightened regional tensions after Washington — a key ally of Riyadh — accused Iran of shooting down a US drone over international waters and of carrying out attacks on oil tankers in the strategic Gulf of Oman.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly accused Iran of supplying sophisticated weapons to Houthi rebels, a charge Tehran denies.

Following recent attacks, Saudi state media have reported an intensification of coalition air raids on rebel positions in the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah and the Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

The coalition intervened in support of the Yemeni government in 2015 when President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled into Saudi exile as the rebels closed in on his last remaining territory in and around the second city Aden.

Since then, the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.

The fighting has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with millions of people displaced and in need of aid.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump warned Monday that Iran is "playing with fire" after Tehran said it exceeded a limit on enriched uranium reserves under a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by Washington.

Israel urged European states to sanction Iran, while Russia voiced regret but said the move was a consequence of US pressure, which has pushed the deal towards collapse.

Britain called on Tehran "to avoid any further steps away" from the landmark deal, and the UN said Iran must stick to its commitments under the accord.

"Iran has crossed the 300-kilogramme limit based on its plan" announced in May, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told semi-official news agency ISNA.

But he also said the move could be reversed.

"They know what they're doing. They know what they're playing with and I think they're playing with fire," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about Iran.

The United States withdrew from the nuclear deal last year and hit Iran's crucial oil exports and financial transactions as well as other sectors with biting sanctions.

Tehran, which has sought to pressure the remaining parties to save the deal, announced on May 8 it would no longer respect the limit set on its enriched uranium and heavy water stockpiles.

It threatened to abandon further nuclear commitments unless the remaining partners — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — helped it circumvent sanctions, especially to sell its oil.

The White House had earlier said "the United States and its allies will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons", vowing to continue exerting "maximum pressure" on the regime.

“It was a mistake under the Iran nuclear deal to allow Iran to enrich uranium at any level,” spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

The statement added that “even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms”, to which Zarif reacted on Tuesday by Tweeting “seriously?”

‘One mustn’t dramatise’ 

Zarif insisted Iran had done nothing wrong. “We have NOT violated the #JCPOA,” he Tweeted, referring to the deal.

He said Iran would “reverse” its decision “as soon as E3 abide by their obligations” — referring to the European parties to the deal: Britain, France and Germany.

Zarif’s US counterpart Mike Pompeo accused Iran of using its nuclear programme “to extort the international community and threaten regional security”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran had exceeded the limit that the deal imposed on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

A diplomat in Vienna, where the UN’s nuclear watchdog is based, told AFP that Iran had exceeded the 300 kilogramme limit by 2 kilogrammes.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Iran’s move was a cause for “regret” but also “a natural consequence of recent events” and a result of the “unprecedented pressure” from the US.

“One mustn’t dramatize the situation,” Ryabkov, whose country is a close ally of Tehran, said in comments reported by Russian news agencies.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt said on Twitter that London was “deeply worried” and urged Iran to “come back to compliance” with the nuclear deal.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said it was “essential” that Iran stick to the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged European countries to impose sanctions on his country’s arch-foe Iran.

Trump spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday about Iran’s breach of the nuclear deal limit, the White House said.

The US president expressed hope in an interview broadcast on Monday — which was taped prior to Iran’s announcement on the uranium limit — that Tehran will come to the negotiating table.

“Hopefully, at some point, they’ll come back and they’ll say, ‘We’re going to make a deal.’ Let’s see what happens,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight”.

The European Union said Friday after a crisis meeting aimed at salvaging the deal that a special payment mechanism set up to help Iran skirt the sanctions, known as INSTEX, was finally “operational” and that the first transactions were being processed.

But “the Europeans’ efforts were not enough, therefore Iran will go ahead with its announced measures,” Zarif said.

INSTEX, which “is just the beginning” of their commitments, has not yet been fully implemented, he added.

The 2015 deal saw Iran commit to never acquiring an atomic bomb, accept drastic limits on its nuclear program and submit to IAEA inspections in exchange for a partial lifting of crippling international sanctions.

Iran has also threatened to start enriching uranium above the agreed maximum purification level of 3.67 per cent from July 7. That remains far short of the 90 per cent purity required to build a weapon.

The latest tensions coincide with a buildup of US forces in the Gulf and a series of incidents including Iran’s shooting down of a US drone it claimed had entered its airspace.

Damascus — Syria on Tuesday accused Israel of committing “state terrorism” after reported Israeli air strikes killed 15 people including civilians.

“Israeli authorities are increasingly practising state terrorism,” the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

“The latest heinous Israeli aggression falls within the framework of ongoing Israeli attempts to prolong the crisis in Syria,” it added.

Israeli air strikes near Damascus and in Homs province late on Sunday killed nine mostly foreign pro-regime fighters and six civilians, including three children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 

It was not immediately clear if the civilians died in the strikes or in their aftermath, it added.

An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment.

Syria’s foreign ministry filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the attack, demanding accountability, according to SANA.

It said Israel’s “dangerous and hostile” actions would not have been possible without the support of its ally the United States, which protects it in the Security Council.

The strikes hit several Iranian positions near Damascus, and also targeted a research centre and a military airport west of the city of Homs where the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah and Iranians are deployed, the observatory said.

One of the pro-regime fighters killed was Syrian, while the rest were of other nationalities, observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, targeting forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the regime’s allies Iran and Hizbollah.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 370,000 people and drawn in world powers since it started in 2011.

BEIRUT — The United States said Monday it had carried out a strike against Al Qaeda-linked extremists in northwestern Syria, its first such operation there in two years.

On another front in Syria's complex eight-year civil war, Israeli air strikes killed 15 people including civilians late Sunday, a monitor said.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 370,000 people and drawn in world powers since it started in 2011.

The United States has carried out several strikes in northwestern Syria, but they appeared to have petered out since 2017.

The US military said Monday it had targeted extremists in an embattled opposition bastion in the northwest of the country the previous day.

"US forces conducted a strike against Al Qaeda in Syria [AQ-S] leadership at a training facility," US Central Command said in a statement.

"This operation targeted AQ-S operatives responsible for plotting external attacks threatening US citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians," it added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the raid in Aleppo province killed six commanders and other extremists from the Hurras Al Deen group.

They included two Tunisians, two Algerians, an Egyptian and a Syrian, the Britain-based monitor said.

Hurras Al Deen released a statement on social media channels on Monday saying a "group of brotherly jihadists" were killed in an attack on a "religious centre" and not a training facility.

Hurras Al Deen was established in February 2018 and has some 1,800 fighters, including non-Syrians, according to the observatory.

It maintains ties to Al Qaeda and fights alongside the global extremist network's former Syria branch, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham.

HTS has since January controlled most of Idlib province as well as adjacent slivers of Aleppo, Latakia and Hama.

Late Sunday, Israeli air strikes near Damascus and in Homs province killed nine mostly foreign pro-regime fighters and six civilians, including three children, the observatory said.

It was not immediately clear if the civilians died in the strikes or in their aftermath, it added.

The strikes hit several Iranian positions near Damascus, also targeting a research centre and a military airport west of the city of Homs where the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah and Iranians are deployed, the war monitor said.

One of the pro-regime fighters killed was Syrian, while the rest were of other nationalities, observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

State news agency SANA earlier said four civilians had been killed after its air defences responded to an Israeli attack.

An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, targeting forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the regime's allies Iran and Hizbollah.

On Monday, US Central Command pledged to continue targeting extremists in Syria.

"Northwest Syria remains a safe haven where AQ-S leaders actively coordinate terrorist activities, to include planning attacks throughout the region and in the West," US Central Command said.

'New understanding'? 

Syria analyst Sam Heller said the United States had effectively been excluded from the airspace over Idlib since President Donald Trump came to power.

Regime ally Russia "has prevented the US from launching the sort of targeted air strikes it had carried out through the start of 2017," he said.

"It's not clear if this latest air strike signals that a new understanding has been reached, or if the US felt it especially urgent to bomb these militants in particular," Heller said.

The strikes come after both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the G-20 economic summit in Japan last week.

But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told AFP there was "no link" between the strike and Trump's meeting with Putin at the summit.

In March 2017, the observatory said a US-led strike on a mosque in the north of Aleppo province killed 49 people, most of them civilians.

The Pentagon denied that it had targeted the religious building, acknowledging only one possible civilian death.

The US-led coalition has carried out tens of thousands of strikes against the Daesh group in a campaign that saw the extremists lose the last scrap of their cross-border "caliphate" in March.

The greater Idlib area was supposed to be protected by a buffer zone under a September agreement between Russia and Turkey.

Damascus has since late April ramped up its bombardment of the region, home to some three million people.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's protest leaders and ruling generals traded blame Monday for deadly new violence as three blood-stained bodies were found a day after the first mass rallies since a crackdown on demonstrators.

State media reported that seven people were killed on Sunday when tens of thousands rallied to demand a civilian government, while medics linked to the protest movement said five protesters had been killed.

Protesters have been calling for the departure of generals who seized power following the April ouster of longtime ruler Omar Al Bashir.

Sunday's "million man" march had been seen as a test for protest organisers after a June 3 raid on a Khartoum protest camp left dozens dead and a subsequent Internet blackout curbed their ability to mobilise support.

But that did not prevent vast crowds of men and women, chanting slogans demanding "civilian rule", flooding the streets of Khartoum, twin city Omdurman and other towns and cities, AFP correspondents and witnesses reported.

Security forces were deployed en masse in key Khartoum squares, firing tear gas in several areas including at protesters attempting to reach the capital's residential palace.

The official SUNA news agency quoted a health ministry official as saying seven people were killed, without giving details, and another 181 wounded, including 27 by gunfire.

It also said a further 10 security personnel were wounded, including three from the feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), shot with "live ammunition".

‘Just fall!’

A doctors’ committee linked to the protest movement said five protesters were killed on Sunday, four of them in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum.

It also said several more were seriously wounded by gunshots fired by “military council militias,” a term used by protesters for the RSF.

On Monday, three blood-stained bodies were found lying in an area of Omdurman that had seen protests the previous day, an AFP correspondent reported.

Their identities were not immediately clear, but the doctors committee later described them as “martyrs”.

Crowds of people gathered around the bodies, chanting “Just Fall, Just Fall,” another catchcry of the protest movement that has rocked Sudan since demonstrations first erupted against Bashir in December.

The AFP correspondent said riot police later dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Protest leaders blamed the generals for Sunday’s bloodshed.

“The military council is completely responsible for these lives lost,” prominent protest leader Mohamed Naji Al Assam said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

“Peaceful Sudanese protesters are exposed to excessive violence, live bullets and beatings,” he said.

But, he added, “the Sudanese have proven that they will not back down”.

Generals accuse protest leaders 

The generals in turn blamed the protest movement, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, for Sunday’s violence.

“Freedom and Change... incited protesters to go toward the republican palace [prompting] police forces to use tear gas to disperse protesters,” General Jamal Omer said in a video posted on the ruling military council’s Facebook page.

“Freedom and Change bears the entire responsibility for these violations and the casualties among regular forces and citizens.”

Tension remains high between the protest leaders and generals since the June 3 raid, when armed men in military fatigues shot demonstrators who had camped for weeks outside army headquarters.

According to the doctors’ committee, at least 136 people have been killed since the raid, including more than 100 on the day of the crackdown.

Health ministry figures show 68 people have died nationwide since the raid, including those killed on Sunday.

The generals insist it did not order the dispersal of the sit-in, but acknowledge “excesses” after orders were given to purge a nearby area allegedly a notorious hotspot for drug dealers.

The raid came after talks between the protesters and generals collapsed over installing civilian rule.

Ethiopia and the African Union have been mediating between the two sides but have yet to achieve a breakthrough.

France has backed Ethiopia-African Union efforts as it urged a swift solution to the crisis in Sudan.

The French foreign ministry called for the formation of a civilian-led government based on the Ethiopian-African Union blueprint.

TUNIS — Tunisian politicians and social media users called on Monday for transparency on President Beji Caid Essebsi’s health after he was hospitalised last week with a “serious illness”.

It came as a spokeswoman for the presidency said there was a “marked improvement” in the health of 92-year-old Essebsi, who was taken to hospital on Thursday.

“As soon as the doctors decide he will leave hospital,” spokeswoman Saida Garrache told private radio station Mosaique FM without giving details, saying it was up to the hospital to provide further information.

Tunisians are concerned that the cradle of the Arab Spring uprisings could descend into political instability in case of a prolonged vacancy of the presidency.

A group of unidentified Tunisians posted online a statement with the hashtag “#we have the right to know”, demanding “transparency” concerning Essebsi’s health.

According to them, rumours which have spread on media outlets have “disrupted state institutions”.

Several politicians, including members of parliament and party leaders, have also demanded online that the authorities provide details on the president’s condition.

Essebsi was taken to the military hospital in Tunis for a “serious illness”, his office said at the time, the same day that twin suicide attacks claimed by the Daesh group killed a police officer and wounded several other people.

After his hospitalisation, another key adviser Firas Guefrech described the president’s condition as “critical”, and in a later tweet said Essebsi was “stable”.

The president’s son, Hafedh Caid Essebsi, spoke late on Thursday after visiting his father in the hospital of “the beginnings of an improvement” in his condition.

The country’s first democratically elected president, Essebsi came to power in 2014, three years after the Arab Spring that sparked revolts and regime changes in several countries in the region.