Region

GAZA CITY — A Palestinian fighter was in critical condition after an Israeli air strike on central Gaza on Sunday that the army said targeted a “key” figure responsible for cross-border rocket fire.

The strike was the latest in a growing number of violent incidents in and around Gaza since the start of 2014, prompting an Israeli warning it will continue to strike anyone threatening its citizens.

Medical sources said the man had lost a leg and was in critical condition after a missile struck a motorcycle in Deir Al Balah at around 8:00 am (0600 GMT).

They said a second man, described as a civilian bystander, was also moderately injured in the attack.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike and said it targeted Abdallah Khurati, a fighter with the Popular Resistance Committees and “affiliated with global jihad” who was involved in “numerous incidents of rocket fire towards Israel”.

A senior source in the PRC confirmed the injured man was Khurati, and said he had worked within the movement until several months ago when he broke off to form a splinter group.

Speaking at the weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said anyone trying to harm Israel would be responsible for his own fate.

“Our policy of attacking terror is based on a simple principle: whoever hurts us, whoever has hurt us [in the past] and whoever is intending to hurt us — his blood is on his own head,” he said in remarks communicated by his office.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Khurati had also been involved in rocket fire on Israel’s Red Sea resort city of Eilat, although he did not give details.

In January, Al Qaeda-inspired Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, a jihadist group based in Egypt’s Sinai, claimed responsibility for rocket fire against Eilat, which lies just across the border.

A Gaza-based Salafist group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council claimed responsibly for an August 2013 rocket attack. Nobody was injured in either incident.

“We will continue to pursue with determination any terror operative who tries to harm the security of Israeli citizens and make him pay a very heavy price,” Yaalon said in a statement, which also warned Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers.

“If [Hamas] doesn’t know how to enforce its own authority in the territory, we know how to extract a price from it.”

Tensions have risen in and around Gaza after a year of relative calm, with army figures showing 33 rockets have been fired at southern Israel since the start of 2014.

Last week, Hamas redeployed a 600-strong special security force tasked with preventing cross-border rocket fire, after earlier reports it had been pulled back.

A spokesman said Hamas would “not allow the occupation [Israel] to break off the ceasefire” that ended an eight-day conflict in November 2012 and which was largely respected throughout 2013.

VIENNA/DUBAI — Iran agreed on Sunday to start addressing UN nuclear agency suspicions that it may have worked on designing an atomic weapon, a potential breakthrough in unblocking a long-stalled investigation into Tehran’s disputed atomic activities.

The development — although limited for now — marked a step forward in an international push to settle a decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear work, which it says is peaceful but the West fears is aimed at developing a weapons capability.

The agreement could also send a positive signal to separate, high-stakes negotiations between Iran and six world powers which are due to start on February 18 in Vienna, aimed at reaching a broader diplomatic settlement with the Islamic state.

Efforts to end years of hostile rhetoric and confrontation that could otherwise trigger a new war in the Middle East gained momentum with last year’s election of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as new Iranian president on a platform to ease the country’s international isolation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had agreed during talks in Tehran to take seven new practical measures within three months under a November transparency deal with the IAEA meant to help allay concern about the nuclear programme.

For the first time, one of them specifically dealt with an issue that is part of the UN nuclear agency’s inquiry into what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran’s atomic activities. Iran has repeatedly denied any such ambitions.

It said Iran would provide “information and explanations for the agency to assess Iran’s stated need or application for the development of Exploding Bridge Wire detonators” — fast-functioning equipment that could be used for nuclear weapons.

Although such detonators have some non-nuclear uses, they can also help set off a nuclear explosive device.

“It is potentially an important first step” in resuming the IAEA’s investigation, one Western diplomat said, adding that much more was needed to fully clarify its concerns.

Suggesting that more sensitive issues would have to wait a while longer, there was no mention in a joint IAEA-Iran statement of the agency’s long-sought access to the Parchin military site, where it suspects explosives tests relevant for nuclear bombs may have been conducted a decade ago.

Detonator development

The IAEA has been investigating accusations for several years that Iran may have coordinated efforts to process uranium, test explosives and revamp a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead.

Iran says such claims are baseless and forged.

Other steps to be taken by Iran by May 15 include inspector access to the Saghand uranium mine, the Ardakan uranium ore concentration plant and updated design information about a research reactor the West fears could yield weapons material.

The IAEA, tasked with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, says it needs such access and information to gain a better understanding about Iran’s nuclear programme.

The Iran-IAEA talks are separate from, though still closely linked to, the wider diplomacy between Iran and the six world powers — the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia.

Shortly after Tehran and the IAEA signed their cooperation accord on November 11, Iran and the powers struck an interim deal to curb its nuclear work in exchange for some sanctions easing, designed to buy time for talks on a long-term agreement.

The IAEA’s investigation is focused on the question of whether Iran sought atomic bomb technology in the past and, if it did, to determine whether such work has since stopped.

The joint Iran-IAEA statement issued after the February 8-9 discussions said the two sides held “constructive technical meetings” and that Iran had implemented six previous, initial steps including access to two nuclear-related sites.

The IAEA had hoped to persuade Iran in the talks finally to start addressing its suspicions. Iran has rejected Western and Israeli accusations that is working to develop nuclear weapons as baseless and said it will cooperate with the IAEA to clear up any “ambiguities”.

The issue of detonator development was mentioned in a document that the IAEA prepared in 2011 containing a trove of intelligence information about alleged activities by Iran that could be used in developing atomic arms.

“Given their possible application in a nuclear explosive device, and the fact that there are limited civilian and conventional military applications for such technology, Iran’s development of such detonators and equipment is a matter of concern,” the IAEA said in the 2011 document.

It said Iran had told the UN agency in 2008 that it had developed such detonators for civil and conventional military applications. “However, Iran has not explained to the agency its own need or application for such detonators,” it said.

CAIRO — Egypt’s interior ministry said Sunday it had broken up a “military wing” of the Muslim Brotherhood, allegedly formed to attack policemen, in the most detailed accusation yet implicating the group in militant attacks.

The Brotherhood, the group of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, says it rejected violence decades ago and believes in peaceful protest against the new, military-installed government.

The government designated it a terrorist organisation in December after the suicide car bombing of a police headquarters that killed 15 people without offering any proof of the Brotherhood’s involvement in the attack.

The interior ministry said on Sunday it uncovered a cell organised by a Brotherhood leader that killed five policemen in an attack on a checkpoint south of Cairo last month.

If the accusation is true, it would confirm suspicions some Brotherhood members are joining a growing militant campaign amid a massive crackdown on the Islamists.

“Information showed that leaders of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood instructed a member of the administrative office... to form a military wing,” the statement said.

Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in bombings and shootings since Morsi’s overthrow in July.

An Al Qaeda-inspired group based in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, a hub for militant activity, has claimed the deadliest attacks.

The interior ministry said police have arrested five suspects in the Brotherhood “military wing” so far, including a young man shown on state television confessing his involvement in the January 23 attack on the checkpoint.

The ministry identified him as the son of a Muslim Brotherhood leader.

More than 1,400 people have died in street clashes, and thousands have been imprisoned, in the crackdown on Morsi’s supporters following his overthrow in July.

The campaign has decapitated the Brotherhood, with most of its leaders, including Morsi, in prison, and driven it underground.

Brotherhood officials have said the crackdown could prompt younger rogue members to take up arms, but the leadership, which has weathered successive crackdowns over the past 50 years, insists on peaceful means.

BAGHDAD — Nine people were found dead in two brutal incidents in Iraq Sunday — one where militants forced Shiite policemen to pray before killing them, and another where decapitated heads were left in a market.

The violence is among the most shocking in Iraq’s worst prolonged period of unrest since it emerged in 2008 from a Sunni-Shiite sectarian war, and comes with security forces also battling anti-government fighters in western Anbar province.

Analysts and diplomats have urged the Shiite-led authorities to pursue reforms and address the grievances of the disaffected Sunni community, but with elections due on April 30, political leaders have been loathe to compromise.

The two incidents took place in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, leaving nine dead in all, security and medical officials said.

In Tuz Khurmatu, an ethnically-mixed town that has been hit by regular attacks, militants surrounded a police encampment protecting a stadium construction site and gathered the six policemen as a group and shot them all dead, two security officials and a doctor at the local hospital said.

One of the six, however, only died at hospital, and a local Tuz official said that the insurgents had attempted to find out if the policemen were Sunni or Shiite before killing them.

The militants asked them which sect they belonged to and the policemen, who were Shiite Turkmen, initially said they were Sunni in an effort to save themselves, the town official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But because prayer rituals of Sunnis and Shiites differ in certain key aspects, the victims were forced to pray as a group and their efforts to mask their confessional background were undone.

In a separate incident in Baiji, the decapitated heads of three men were found in a town market Sunday morning, two police officers in the town said.

The men — an anti-Al Qaeda militia chief, his son and his cousin — were kidnapped late on Thursday near provincial capital Tikrit.

The militiamen, known as the Sahwa, joined forces with the US military against their co-religionists in Al Qaeda from late-2006 onwards, helping turn the tide of Iraq’s violent insurgency.

But, as a result, they are regarded as traitors by Sunni militants and often targeted in attacks.

Violence has surged in Iraq in recent months to levels not seen since 2008, with more than 1,000 people killed in January alone, according to government figures.

DAMASCUS — Aid teams evacuated hundreds of exhausted civilians from besieged districts of the city of Homs on Sunday, as Syria’s regime and rebels again accused each other of violating a truce.

The evacuation of some of 3,000 trapped people who had little more than olives and herbs to eat for more than 600 days came ahead of a new round of peace talks.

The Damascus delegation and members of the opposition began arriving in Switzerland for a new round of the so-called Geneva II peace talks scheduled to begin on Monday.

Sunday’s evacuation from Homs was the second in three days after a UN-brokered truce for besieged districts of Syria’s third city began on Friday.

Five men were killed when one besieged district was hit by mortar fire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

They were the latest deaths in a nearly three-year conflict that has killed 136,000 people and displaced millions.

“Four hundred and twenty besieged people came out today from the old city districts of Homs, and the operation is still under way,” Homs Governor Talal Al Barazi said.

Television footage showed women, children and elderly men getting off the buses that brought them out of the besieged areas.

They appeared visibly exhausted and frail, in video broadcast by Beirut-based channel Al Mayadeen. Children, carried by their parents, looked pale.

The civilians were aided by UN staff wearing helmets and blue vests, and by Syrian Red Crescent volunteers. There was also a strong Syrian army presence at the evacuation site.

“We had nothing. All the children were sick, we even had nothing to drink,” said one exhausted woman, her three children standing round her.

State television said the operation took place under fire from “armed terrorist groups”, using regime terminology for the rebels.

But the Britain-based observatory echoed claims by activists in the besieged areas that at least five people were killed in shelling that targeted the besieged district of Qarabis.

Activists accused pro-regime militiamen positioned in neighbourhoods bordering the besieged districts, who opposed the truce, of firing the mortar rounds.

Shelling also targeted an aid convoy entering the besieged districts on Saturday in an attack that killed five residents and wounded 20, the observatory said.

Sunday’s evacuation was the second after 83 people were brought out on Friday’s first day of the truce.

In other areas of strife-torn Syria, another 300 people were killed on Saturday, according to the observatory.

Regime, opposition in Geneva

Homs, much of which has been reduced to rubble, was dubbed “the capital of the revolution” by activists before a bloody 2012 offensive by regime forces recaptured much of the city.

The 600-day siege was a key point of discussion during a first round of peace talks in Switzerland last month, but which yielded few concrete results.

On Sunday, the regime delegation and members of the opposition National Coalition arrived for the second round of Geneva II, sources close to the delegations told AFP.

The government delegation is headed by Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem, as was the case for the first round of talks 10 days ago.

Of the opposition delegates, one source said: “Some of them have arrived, each one arriving separately. Each member is travelling in from a different country.”

It was not yet clear if Coalition chief Ahmad Jarba was among them.

Mouallem is set to meet UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi at 7:00pm (1800 GMT) in Geneva, a source close to his delegation told AFP.

But the two warring sides appear far from being able to reach any compromise.

While the regime insists that the talks focus on fighting “terrorism”, the opposition is demanding that the priority in Geneva be agreement on a transition that excludes President Bashar Assad.

Meanwhile, the extreme violence in Syria raged on.

Saturday’s death toll of around 300 included some 20 men executed by loyalists in the central province of Hama, the observatory said.

In the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, south of Damascus, a man and a woman died of malnutrition, it said.

Since the army began blockading Yarmouk in June last year, some 80 people have died as a result of food and medical shortages, the observatory says.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel on Sunday denounced an Iranian announcement that it was sending naval ships towards the United States as further evidence that loosening sanctions on Tehran was counterproductive.

The move to send warships to the Atlantic was announced by the commander of Iran’s northern naval fleet on Saturday, who described it as a “message”.

The ships “have already started their voyage towards the Atlantic Ocean via the waters near South Africa,” said Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, in remarks quoted by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

Iranian media reported that two ships — a destroyer and a helicopter transport vessel — had been dispatched on January 21.

It was not clear how close the ships would travel towards the US maritime border or when they would arrive.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the dispatch of the warships was clear evidence of Iran’s “aggression” and proof it had not moderated its policies following a landmark deal with world powers to roll back its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

“The easing of sanctions against Iran by the international community has not caused Iran to moderate its international aggression — the complete opposite has occurred,” Netanyahu told the weekly Cabinet meeting in remarks relayed by his office.

Israel, the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state, has long viewed Iran’s controversial atomic programme as a threat to its existence and has not ruled out military action to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, and President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate elected last year, has vowed to allay Western concerns about it.

In September 2012, Iran said it was planning to send naval forces to the Atlantic to deploy along US marine borders to counter a beefed up US naval presence in the Persian Gulf, Fars reported, with the navy chief saying the buildup would begin within several years.

In December, the Pentagon said it was not planning to scale back its vast military presence in the Gulf despite the six-month interim nuclear deal.

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi provincial governor Saturday gave militants controlling a city near Baghdad one week to surrender as government forces made steady progress in an effort to end a weeks-long crisis.

The Anbar governor’s ultimatum was directed at anti-government fighters who have held Fallujah for more than a month.

It comes amid a protracted surge in violence with security forces grappling with near-daily attacks nationwide in addition to the fighting in the western desert province.

Analysts and diplomats have called for the Shiite-led government to address Sunni grievances in order to undermine support for militants, but with April elections looming, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has taken a hard line.

“People of Anbar, criminals have kidnapped Fallujah,” Governor Ahmed Al Dulaimi said in a statement.

“But, I swear to God, we will achieve victory against injustice and Fallujah will return to normal.”

Dulaimi gave anti-government fighters a week to lay down their arms and promised them amnesty, but said the authorities would not negotiate with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a powerful jihadist group he said was comprised of “killers and criminals”.

Fallujah and provincial capital Ramadi have for weeks been hit by conflict, and while government forces have made steady progress in retaking militant-held areas of Ramadi, they have largely stayed out of Fallujah for fear that an incursion would spark a drawn-out urban conflict with high numbers of casualties.

The city was a bastion of the Sunni insurgency following the 2003 US-led invasion, and American troops there fought some of their costliest battles since the Vietnam war.

In Ramadi, meanwhile, police Lieutenant Colonel Hamid Shandukh said security forces had defused upwards of 400 roadside bombs, including dozens used to booby-trap houses.

Tribal leader Ahmed Abu Risha, who years ago sided with the US military and founded the Awakening movement of tribal militias against Al Qaeda, a day earlier held a news conference during which he showed what he said were bills distributed by ISIL as their own currency.

The 100-guinea note bore the likeness of former Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden on one side, and the two World Trade Centre towers attacked by the group on September 11, 2001 on the other.

The Anbar stand-off has prompted more than 140,000 people to flee their homes, the UN refugee agency said last month, calling it the worst displacement in Iraq since the peak of sectarian fighting between 2006 and 2008.

BEIRUT — An aid convoy trying to reach a besieged rebel district of the Syrian city of Homs came under fire on Saturday, threatening a humanitarian operation which aimed to deliver medicine and food to around 2,500 trapped people.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said mortar fire landed close to its convoy and shots were fired at its trucks, wounding one of its drivers and violating a three-day ceasefire in the city.

Syrian media said four Red Crescent workers were wounded in the incident which it blamed on rebels. Opposition activists accused President Bashar Assad’s forces of staging the attack, as well as earlier mortar fire which delayed the start of the operation on Saturday morning.

The violence threatens to unravel a humanitarian deal for Homs which was the first concrete result of talks launched two weeks ago in Geneva to try to end the country’s civil war.

The conflict has killed 130,000 people, driven millions from their homes and devastated whole districts of Syrian cities — particularly Homs, a centre of protest when the 2011 uprising against 40 years of Assad family rule first erupted.

At the Geneva peace talks, which resume on Monday, international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has been pushing for agreement on aid deliveries and prisoner releases, hoping that progress on those issues could build momentum to address the far more contentious question of political transition.

But even the humanitarian talks have taken time and delivered only modest results.

Homs governor Talal Al Barazi said two vehicles carrying aid supplies had entered the Old City but that rebels had targeted the route with mortar fire, preventing any more cars from entering.

An hour after dusk, it was still unclear whether the United Nations and Red Crescent operation had succeeded in delivering any of the medicine or food, which would be the first such delivery to central Homs in a year and a half, or brought out any more civilians.

On Friday 83 women, children and elderly men were evacuated from the Old City of Homs. Aid workers said many showed signs of malnutrition.

Opposition fears

Syria’s opposition National Coalition said on Saturday the aid operation in Homs no substitute for lifting the siege of the remaining rebel-held area.

It said the evacuation of civilians could be “a prelude to the regime destroying the city with the remaining residents trapped inside”.

“It is vital to remember that the regime has used similar tactics in the past to change the demographics of some areas in Syria,” the coalition said in a statement. “It has used similar deals to buy time to strengthen its positions on the ground and to kill more civilians.”

While the aid convoy was trying to get into Homs on Saturday, fighting continued in northern and eastern Syria.

Twenty people were killed in Aleppo by barrel bombs dropped by Syrian army helicopters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The improvised explosives, often rolled out of the cargo holds of aircraft, cause widespread and indiscriminate damage.

Hundreds of people have been killed in such attacks in Aleppo city this year and many thousands have fled rebel-held districts, seeking shelter in government-controlled neighbourhoods or trying to cross the Turkish border.

The air offensive has also helped Assad’s forces take back some ground in Syria’s biggest city, which has been contested since the summer of 2012 when rebel forces swept in from Aleppo’s rural hinterland to take over around half the city.

Since then the army, backed by Iranian military commanders, Lebanon’s Hizbollah militia and Iraqi Shiite fighters, has taken back territory around Damascus and Homs.

Infighting between rival rebel forces, including foreign Sunni Muslim jihadis and Al Qaeda-linked fighters, has also helped Assad’s counter-offensive.

Several Islamist groups have been fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda splinter group, across northern and eastern Syria for several weeks.

On Saturday the Britain-based observatory reported heavy fighting in the eastern province of Deir Al Zor after the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and another Islamist group, Ahrar Al Sham, attacked ISIL, accusing it of seizing control of oilfields and other key installations.

It said at least 20 people were killed in fierce clashes in Deir Al Zor city and elsewhere in the province, which borders the Iraqi province of Anbar where militants including ISIL fighters overran two cities last month.

Syria’s uprising turned into an armed insurgency after demonstrations were put down with force and has now degenerated into a civil war pitting regional Sunni and Shiite powers against each other and destabilising the wider Middle East.

CAIRO — Egypt’s military killed 16 suspected Islamic militants in a series of air strikes on hideouts in the northern Sinai Peninsula, a spokesman said Saturday, alleging that the fighters had ties to the ousted president’s Muslim Brotherhood group.

The military has been waging a wide offensive against militant groups in Sinai, where they have solidified their position since the country’s 2011 uprising.

Militancy spread to central Cairo and Nile Delta cities over the past months in retaliation for the military’s July ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after millions demanded his resignation.

Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said on his official Facebook page that the air strikes targeted hideouts of “terrorist, extremely dangerous takfiri” militants late Friday in the eastern border town of Sheikh Zuweyid. Takfiri is an Arabic term referring to Islamic radicals.

He described the targeted militants as affiliated with the “terrorist” Brotherhood group. The group denies links to terrorism but the military-backed government has branded it a terrorist organisation, amid wave of heavy-handed crackdown on its leadership, members and supporters. Hundreds have been killed and thousands are in detention mostly over crimes of inciting violence.

The Friday air strikes were the fourth with such a high death toll, and are part of a stepped-up operation since militants shot down a military helicopter in a nearby area on January 24.

Friday’s deaths bring the total number of militants killed since then to nearly 60.

Ali also said that the military also foiled attempt to blow up two troop carriers using roadside bombs on Saturday.

Most of the major attacks have been claimed by a Sinai-based, Al Qaeda-inspired militant group called Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, or Champions of Jerusalem. But recently a new organisation, Ajnad Misr — Arabic for Egypt’s Soldiers — has also tried to establish a presence.

In a statement posted on a jihadi website late Friday, Ajnad Misr said it had carried out a double bombing on an Egyptian police checkpoint near Cairo that wounded six people.

It said its “soldiers” had sent a message to the “criminal apparatus ... that they are not safe from retribution”.

It also said its fighters were monitoring the movements of the police and the headquarters from which “they launch their attacks every Friday killing and abusing innocent people”.

The group issued its first statement last week, claiming responsibility for several other bombings, including one on January 24 that hit police just as they returned from clashes with Brotherhood supporters. Pro-Morsi protesters frequently demonstrate early Friday afternoons after Muslim prayers.

Ajnad Misr vowed to continue its attacks on policemen, urging them to defect and repent. It said it would not keep quiet until “justice prevails and a state accepted by God is established”.

It said police should “leave the service before being overpowered because the events are accelerating and that the chance to defect might not last long”.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but it was posted on an Al Qaeda-affiliated website frequently used for militant claims.

The militant attacks come at a time of declining demonstrations by Brotherhood supporters. On Saturday, Egypt’s health ministry said that three people were killed in clashes with police during Friday rallies.

Protesters have been staging non-stop demonstrations denouncing the military-backed government, killings of protesters and demanding Morsi’s reinstatement. They frequently degenerate into violence when police move in to break them up.

Meanwhile, Morsi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak had a sudden health scare when he returned to trial in connection with the killings of protesters during the 2011 uprising.

Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported that Mubarak suffered high blood pressure but trial resumed later.

Mubarak is being retried over charges of failing to stop the killings of protesters after his earlier life-imprisonment sentence was cancelled on appeal. The trial, which has lasted more than two years, comes at a time his successor Morsi faces several trials of his own, including one for allegedly inciting the murder of protesters.

The 85-year-old Mubarak was treated in 2010 for cancer of the gallbladder and pancreas.