Region

TUNIS — Tunisia’s Islamist Prime Minister Ali Larayedh resigned on Thursday to make way for a caretaker government in an agreement with secular opponents to complete the country’s transition to democracy.

Three years after its uprising against autocrat Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia is in the final stages of establishing a full democracy before new elections that would be a rare bright spot in an unstable region.

Tunisia’s new premier, technocrat Mehdi Jomaa, must tackle subsidy cuts sought by international lenders to curb the small North African country’s deficit and also confront a growing threat from Islamist militants.

Illustrating the continued fragility, troops in the southern city of Tatouine fired into the air and police used tear gas on Thursday to disperse protests over economic hardship.

To end months of political crisis, Larayedh’s moderate Islamist party Ennahda agreed late last year to a deal to hand over to an independent Cabinet led by Jomaa, who will govern until the election.

“I have just handed my resignation to the president,” Larayedh told reporters. “The president will appoint the new prime minister, Mehdi Jomaa, shortly and he will present his new Cabinet in the next few days.”

One of the most secular countries in the Arab world, Tunisia has struggled with divisions over the role of Islam and the rise of Islamist radicals since the uprising in 2011 that inspired other revolts in the region.

Model transition

Tunisia’s largely peaceful transition has been widely watched as a model for other nations struggling with instability since their own “Arab Spring” revolts.

But the killings of two secular Tunisian opposition leaders by gunmen last year galvanised Ennahda’s secular foes, who took to the streets to demand the government resign, accusing it of being too lax with hardliners.

After months of wrangling, Ennahda reached a compromise with the main opposition Nidaa Tounes and its allies to resign once parties had finished a new constitution, set a date for fresh elections and appointed a body to oversee the vote.

Much of that agreement has now been implemented. The national assembly is voting on the last clauses of the new charter this week and on Wednesday night the assembly appointed a nine-member electoral commission.

International lenders want Tunisia to trim public subsidies to cut a budget deficit estimated to have hit 6.8 per cent of national output last year. But the cuts will raise fuel and food costs and may spark further discontent among Tunisians.

The International Monetary Fund has still to disperse a $500 million portion from a $1.5 billion loan for Tunisia.

After two days of protests and strikes backed by labour unions in several cities over a hike in vehicle taxes, Larayedh said on Thursday the government would suspend the reform.

Troops and police intervened to repel hundreds of protesters in Tatouine after they attacked two police stations and an Ennahda party office, the state news agency TAP said.

No injuries were reported and local residents said the army had brought the situation under control later in the day.

Authorities say Islamist militants from the Ansar Al Sharia group, whose leader pays allegiance to Al Qaeda, are also a growing menace for a country heavily reliant on foreign tourism.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a popular beach resort late last year — Tunisia’s first such attack in a decade.

Islamist parties who rose to political power after the 2011 revolts in Egypt and Libya have fared less well than Ennahda, whose compromise with secular opponents will allow them to again take part in elections this year.

Egypt’s democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi faces trial after the military ousted him and Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood-allied party is locked in a political crisis with its secular foes in the country’s parliament.

JALAZOUN, West Bank –– Residents of Palestinian refugee camps burnt tyres and closed roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Thursday in protests stemming from a month-long strike by the UN agency that operates the camps.

The demonstrations came as the Palestinian economy falters and while aid agencies struggle to cope with deepening refugee crises related to the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Scores of youths blocked a main road outside the Jalazoun refugee camp north of the de facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah, as well as roads linking other camps inside the city, to vent their anger over a lack of services normally provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

“The trash here is piled up so high we can’t even sleep at night for the smell,” said camp resident Mahdi Ahmed, 20.

“The UNWRA strike has gone on for 35 days, and there are no clinics, no jobs, no education. What hope is there for this generation? We’re being strangled little by little.”

A Palestinian labour union went on strike last month over salaries. UNRWA employs more than 5,000 Palestinians in its 19 camps for some 730,000 West Bank refugees.

The union also objected to a one-off $140 bonus their counterparts in Jordan received.

Diplomatic sources told Reuters the bonus, suggested in part by the United States, aimed at shoring up stability in Jordan, which has taken in over 600,000 refugees from Syria and is already home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees.

Priorities

Many refugees fear UNRWA is slowly disengaging from its aid activities and believe the international community owes them support since it recognised Israel amid the war that led to its founding in 1948 — during which they fled or were driven from their homes to Gaza, the West Bank and surrounding countries.

The UN agency has said it is trying to end the strike but does not have funds to meet the wage demands. It also says its employees get paid at least 20 per cent and in some cases 80 per cent more than public-sector employees in equivalent fields.

“The general Palestinian public seems increasingly appalled,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told Reuters.

“The strike has deprived some 51,000 children of an education, shut down 42 health facilities, denied 5,800 of the most vulnerable refugees urgently needed relief services and withheld financial support from 5,100 refugee families.”

Unemployment and poverty in the Palestinian territories both hover around 25 per cent. The aid-dependent Palestinian Authority is hard pressed to pay even its own workers.

UNRWA union spokesman Shaker Al Rishq said few agency employees were paid above Palestinian government salaries and that UNRWA staff in neighbouring countries were paid far more.

“The people are furious with the agency, not with our strike. We will engage in steps to escalate our action. Twenty-seven employees have been on hunger strike for 17 days, and some of them are in the hospital,” he said.

The issue of refugees is a major stumbling block for US-backed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians which have struggled to make progress after a three-year pause.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said last week he would not approve a final peace resolution that allowed “even one single [refugee]” to return to “Israeli soil”.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said the issue must be solved according to a 2002 peace initiative backed by Arab countries, which envisions a partial return and compensation.

WASHINGTON –– US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Thursday said President Barack Obama should authorise a more active American role in Iraq but he stopped short of calling for the participation of US troops.

Boehner, responding to a question at a weekly press conference about growing violence in Iraq, said that a new US troop presence was “not called for at this time”.

But Boehner, a Republican, said the Obama administration could aid the Iraqi army with additional equipment. Earlier this week, the administration said it would hasten deliveries of military hardware to Iraq.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting centre in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 21 people in an attack likely meant to send a message to the government and would-be army volunteers over the Iraqi troops’ ongoing push to retake two cities overrun by Al Qaeda militants.

The blast struck as an international rights group warned of the apparent use of indiscriminate mortar fire in civilian areas by Iraqi forces in their campaign to reassert control over the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters overran parts of both cities in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province last week, seizing control of police stations and military posts, freeing prisoners and setting up their own checkpoints.

Iraqi troops, backed by pro-government Sunni militiamen, since have been clashing with the fighters and carrying out air strikes against their positions in an effort to reassert control of the cities.

Tribal leaders in Fallujah, 65 kilometres west of Baghdad, have warned Al Qaeda fighters there to leave to avoid a military showdown.

The United States, whose troops fought bloody battles in Fallujah and Ramadi, has ruled out sending American troops back in but has been delivering missiles to help bolster Iraqi forces, with more on the way.

Vice President Joe Biden has spoken to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki twice this week, voicing support for his government’s efforts to regain control of the cities and urging him to continue talks with local, tribal and national leaders.

Iran, too, is watching the unrest with alarm as it shares American concerns about Al Qaeda-linked militants taking firmer root in Iraq. It has offered to supply military equipment and advisers to help fight militants in Anbar should Baghdad ask for assistance.

Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Iraqi forces appear to have used mortar fire indiscriminately in civilian areas in recent days in their effort to dislodge militants in Anbar, and that some residential areas were targeted with mortar shells and gunfire even though there was no signs of an Al Qaeda presence in those specific areas.

The New York-based group said its allegations were based on multiple accounts provided by Anbar residents.

It also warned that a government blockade of Ramadi and Fallujah is limiting civilian access to food, water and fuel, and that “unlawful methods of fighting by all sides” has caused civilian casualties and major property damage.

Several approaches to Fallujah have been blocked by Iraqi troops, and only families with children were being allowed to leave with “extreme difficulty” through two checkpoints that remained open, the rights group said. It added that single men were being denied exit from the city.

“Civilians have been caught in the middle in Anbar, and the government appears to be doing nothing to protect them,” the group’s Mideast director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.

Iraqi government officials could not immediately be reached for comment to respond to the rights group’s allegations.

The warning came a day after the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross voiced concerns about growing humanitarian threats in the area as food and water supplies start to run out.

Emergency shipments of food, water, blankets and other essential items have begun reaching families displaced by the fighting in Anbar, the UN said Thursday.

Some of the initial supplies were delivered to families left stranded in schools and mosques across Fallujah.

More than 11,000 families have been displaced because of the fighting, according to UN records.

The Baghdad attacker Thursday morning detonated his explosives outside the recruiting centre in the Iraqi capital’s central Allawi neighbourhood as volunteers were waiting to register inside, a police official said. At least 35 people were wounded in the blast, he said.

A hospital official confirmed the casualty numbers. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Thursday’s attack on the recruiting centre appears to be in retaliation for the military’s offensive and an effort to dissuade potential new recruits from bolstering the Iraqi army’s ranks.

It followed an attack late Wednesday by gunmen who struck at army barracks in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 soldiers.

Al Qaeda militants, emboldened by their gains in the civil war in neighbouring Syria, have sought to position themselves as the champions of Iraq’s disenchanted Sunnis against the Shiite-led government, even though major Sunni tribes in Anbar and elsewhere oppose the group’s extremist ideology and are in some cases fighting against it.

Sectarian tensions have been on the rise for months in Sunni-dominated Anbar province as minority Sunnis protested what they perceive as discrimination and random arrests by the Shiite-led government. Violence spiked after the December 28 arrest of a Sunni lawmaker sought on terrorism charges and the government’s dismantling of a year-old anti-government Sunni protest camp in the provincial capital of Ramadi.

DAMASCUS — Syrian rebels overran the Aleppo headquarters of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Wednesday, as claims emerged that ISIL had massacred prisoners there in cold blood.

They were reportedly also pressing ISIL in Raqa, the only provincial capital lost by the regime of President Bashar Assad and a stronghold of the group.

The operation in Aleppo came a day after ISIL’S` spokesperson threatened to “crush” opposition fighters who have attacked the group in several provinces.

“There are hardly any ISIL members left in the city of Aleppo,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Elsewhere, a diplomat announced two Swedish reporters missing in Syria since November had been freed.

And the fractious Syrian opposition National Coalition said it was postponing until January 17 a final decision on whether to attend peace talks in Switzerland.

On the ground, ISIL battled moderate and Islamist rebels in clashes that first erupted on Friday and have killed at least 385 people, including 56 civilians.

ISIL’s headquarters in a hospital in Aleppo’s Qadi Askar neighbourhood was overrun by opposition fighters, who reportedly freed dozens of prisoners.

But a video posted online Wednesday claimed ISIL had previously executed at least nine prisoners after handcuffing, blindfolding and shooting them in the head.

The coalition denounced “these acts, which perpetuate the regime’s methods to kill free voice, suppress liberty and violate... fundamental human rights”.

Late Tuesday, ISIL spokesperson Abu Mohammad Al Adnani issued a defiant message, urging fighters to “crush them [the rebels] totally and kill the conspiracy at birth”.

“None of you will remain, and we will make of you an example to all those who think of following the same path,” he added.

Adnani also warned that ISIL had declared war on the Coalition and chiefs of the opposition Free Syrian Army.

“Everyone who belongs to this entity is a legitimate target for us, in all places, unless he publicly declares his rejection of that group and of fighting the mujahedeen [jihadist fighters].”

His message came hours after the head of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Al Nusra Front, urging an end to the fighting.

Abu Mohammad Al Jolani warned the fighting “risks costing us dearly on the ground if it continues” and urged all fighters “to give priority to the fight against the regime”.

The Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, was established in mid-2011 with help from ISIL’s Iraqi precursor.

The Iraqi group’s chief later sought to merge with Al Nusra, but they spurned an alliance and pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Since then, they have functioned separately, with Al Nusra largely neutral in the latest fighting.

But the observatory said Al Nusra fighters were pressing ISIL in Raqa, to the east of Aleppo.

It said they had captured a former regime political security office held by ISIL and were shelling the nearby governor’s office, said to be the group’s headquarters.

In Damascus, a security source told AFP the infighting benefited Syria’s regime, calling it a settling of scores by nations backing different rebel groups.

Regime operations continued Wednesday, with the observatory reporting at least eight people killed in air raids on Tal Rifaat in Aleppo province.

Elsewhere, Sweden’s ambassador confirmed that two journalists missing in Syria since November had been freed.

Swedish media named them as Niclas Hammarstroem and Magnus Falkehed.

At least 25 journalists have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, and more than 30 are thought to be missing.

Both the regime and its opponents have been accused of abducting and killing journalists.

In Istanbul, a fiercely debated National Coalition meeting ended without a decision on attending peace talks in Switzerland on January 22.

The general assembly decided to postpone the decision until January 17.

And in The Hague, the world’s chemical watchdog called for Syria to speed up handing over its arsenal for destruction, after missing a key deadline.

The joint OPCW-UN mission said Tuesday that a first cargo of chemicals had been brought to Latakia and transferred to a Danish vessel, but all Syria’s most dangerous chemicals were supposed to have left the country by December 31.

Even so, mission head Sigrid Kaag expressed guarded optimism that the mid-year target for destroying the entire arsenal can still be met.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki urged Al Qaeda-linked fighters who have overrun two cities west of Baghdad to give up the battle, vowing Wednesday to press forward with a push to regain control of the mainly Sunni areas.

The United Nations, meanwhile, warned that the area in Anbar province is facing a “critical humanitarian situation” as food and water supplies are starting to run out.

Sectarian tensions have been rising in Iraq for months as minority Sunnis protested what they perceive as discrimination and random arrests by the Shiite-led government. But violence spiked after the December 28 arrest of a Sunni lawmaker sought on terrorism charges and the government’s dismantling of a months-old anti-government Sunni protest camp in the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi.

As clashes erupted, Al Qaeda-linked gunmen assaulted Ramadi and nearby Fallujah, cities that were among the bloodiest battlefields for US forces during the war. The militants overran police stations and military posts, freed prisoners and set up their own checkpoints.

The United States and Iran have offered materiel help for the Iraqi government but say they won’t send in troops.

Speaking in his weekly television address, Maliki hinted at a possible pardon for members of Al Qaeda’s local branch known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who abandon the fight.

“The war that is being fought by the Iraqi security forces, tribes and all segments of Iraqi society against Al Qaeda and its affiliates is a sacred war,” he said. “I call on those who were lured to be part of the terrorism machine led by Al Qaeda to return to reason.”

In return, he promised that his government will “open a new page to settle their cases so that they won’t be fuel for the war that is led by Al Qaeda”.

The militant gains in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar are posing the most serious challenge to the Shiite-led government since American forces withdrew in late 2011 after years of bitter warfare following the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led regime and propelled the formerly repressed Shiite majority to power.

UN envoy to Iraq Nickolay Mladenov warned that the humanitarian situation in Anbar is likely to worsen as military operations continue.

Food and water supplies in Fallujah are beginning to run out, and more than 5,000 families have fled to neighbouring provinces to escape the fighting, he said.

“The UN agencies are working to identify the needs of the population and prepare medical supplies, food and non-food items for distribution if safe passage can be ensured,” he said in a statement.

Those residents who remain in Fallujah, 65 kilometres west of Baghdad, appeared Wednesday to be trying to restore some semblance of normalcy, though the situation remained tense.

A call went out over mosque loudspeakers late Tuesday calling on fleeing families to come back and militants to leave the city. Markets reopened and some families returned to their homes. Civilian cars and trucks were seen driving through the city and traffic policemen were on the streets.

Tensions have been simmering in Iraq since December 2012, when the Sunni community staged protests to denounce what they say is second-class treatments by Maliki’s Shiite-led government.

Al Qaeda militants, emboldened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, have sought to position themselves as the Sunnis’ champions against the government, though major Sunni tribes in Anbar and elsewhere oppose the group’s extremist ideology and are fighting against it.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Wednesday adjourned the murder trial of deposed president Mohamed Morsi to February 1, citing “weather conditions” that prevented the Islamist’s transport to court from his prison.

It had been scheduled as the second hearing in Morsi’s trial, after an initial court appearance in November in which he denounced the tribunal and insisted he was still the country’s president.

Morsi, who was toppled by the military in July, is accused of inciting the killings of opposition protesters in December 2012 outside the presidential palace.

“Because of the weather conditions, Mohamed Morsi could not be brought, so the trial will be adjourned to February 1,” said presiding judge Ahmed Sabry Youssef.

Morsi is detained in prison some 60 kilometres from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

He is on trial with 14 co-defendants, but only several were brought Wednesday to the makeshift court house in a police academy on Cairo’s outskirts.

Elsewhere, police fired tear gas at Morsi’s supporters who had rallied in protest at the trial.

In Cairo’s Nasr City neighbourhood, tyres were burnt and some car windows were smashed during brief clashes. Police said they had made 14 arrests.

In the police academy, defendants were held in a room adjacent to the court room as they waited for the hearing to start.

“This is a political trial,” yelled Essam Al Erian, one of the defendants and a senior member of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement.

His lawyer Bahaa El Din Abdel Rahman told AFP his client and other defendants had embarked on a hunger strike.

“All the accused who are present today are on hunger strike and reaffirm that they reject this trial,” he said.

More than 1,000 people have been killed since Morsi’s overthrow and thousands of Islamists have been arrested.

Morsi will also face separate trials on charges of espionage and colluding with militants to carry out attacks in Egypt.

He was catapulted from the underground offices of the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood to become Egypt’s first freely elected president in June 2012 following Mubarak’s overthrow in an early 2011 uprising.

But his single year in power was marred by political turmoil, deadly clashes and a crippling economic crisis.

In December 2012, members of the Muslim Brotherhood attacked opposition protesters camped outside the presidential palace in protest at a decree by Morsi to grant himself extra-judiciary powers.

At least seven people were killed in the clashes, and dozens of opposition protesters were detained and beaten by Morsi’s supporters.

The incident was a turning point in Morsi’s presidency, galvanising a disparate opposition that eventually organised mass protests in June 2012 that prompted the military to oust and detain the Islamist.

Morsi’s defence says there is no proof he had incited the clashes, and that most of those killed in the violence were Brotherhood members.

SANAA — Shiite rebels and gunmen from the powerful Hashid tribe in north Yemen clashed for a third straight day on Wednesday, with the fighting intensifying, tribal sources told AFP.

The fighting first broke out on Monday when Shiite Houthi rebels attempted to take over the towns of Wadi Khaywan and Usaimat, strongholds of the Hashid tribe in Amran province, they said.

The Shiites launched the attacks in retaliation for the Hashid tribe’s support for Sunni Salafist groups fighting Houthis in Dammaj, the Shiites’ stronghold in the northern province of Saada, the sources said.

According to witnesses, the fighting has left dozens dead and wounded. AFP could not confirm the toll due to the difficulty of accessing the area.

The tribal sources said the fighting had intensified on Wednesday, while the Shiite Houthi Ansarullah (Partisans of God) group said on their website that they had taken control of several Hashid strongholds.

During the battles, a Hashid chief, Hashim Al Ahmar, escaped an attack but his guard and four of his relatives were killed, tribal sources said.

Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Hadi on Tuesday sent a delegation to try to broker a truce but they have yet to make contact with leaders from the two sides.

Houthi rebels have been battling the Sanaa government for nearly a decade in the remote Saada province, but the outbreak of fighting with Sunni militants has deepened the sectarian dimension of the unrest.

Fighting that erupted in late October has centred for months on a Salafist mosque and Koranic school in Dammaj.

But the conflict has spread in the northern provinces, embroiling Sunni tribes wary of the power of the Houthis, who have repeatedly been accused of receiving support from Iran.

The Houthis, named after their late leader Abdel Malek Al Houthi, are part of the Zaidi Shiite community.

They rose up in 2004 against the government of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing it of marginalising them politically and economically.

They accuse radical Sunnis in Dammaj of turning the town centre into “a real barracks for thousands of armed foreigners”, a reference to the Dar Al Hadith Koranic School, where foreigners study.

On January 6, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had evacuated 34 people wounded in the Dammaj clashes.

The ICRC said it has managed to enter Dammaj six times since the fighting resumed on October 24.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — More than 10,000 African asylum seekers rallied outside Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem on Wednesday, police said, in a fourth straight day of protests against immigration policy.

The demonstration was “calm”, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, adding that police were deployed to keep order. He put the number of protesters at “more than 10,000”.

“We are refugees, we need protection,” the demonstrators chanted.

An organiser of the rally, who gave his name only as Baso, said that more than 100 busloads of protesters had headed in the morning from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“We have a letter addressed to the government of Israel, but we will hand it to the Knesset [parliament],” he told AFP.

Parliament speaker Yuli Edelstein, however, banned four demonstration leaders, who were invited to a meeting with MPs, from entering the Knesset building.

Edelstein wanted to “avoid provocation that could degenerate into violence”, a statement from his office said.

Tens of thousands of migrants, mostly Eritrean and Sudanese, have demonstrated each day since Sunday in Tel Aviv, including outside offices of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and foreign embassies.

Israel’s commercial capital was the scene of race riots in 2012 and the rightwing government has vowed to step up the repatriation of illegal immigrants, saying they pose a threat to the state’s Jewish character.

Some 52,000 were already in Israel, after managing to slip across the desert border with Egypt, before Israel completed a high-tech barrier last year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the protests will make no difference to his government’s tough stand on asylum seekers.

“Just as we’ve succeeded in blocking off illegal infiltrations thanks to the security fence, we’re determined to send back those who made it in before the border was closed,” he told members of his rightwing Likud Party on Monday.

Under legislation passed last month, authorities can detain illegal immigrants entering Israel for up to a year without trial.

The government has opened a sprawling detention facility in the Negev Desert to house both new entrants and immigrants already in the country deemed to have disturbed public order.

The UN refugees agency has condemned Israel for ignoring the reasons asylum seekers have fled their countries of origin and for failing to provide “those with protection needs” with “access to refugee status determination”.