Syrian rebels release 4 UN Filipino peacekeepers

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian rebels on Sunday released four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers they abducted last week in a dramatic incident that prompted warnings from the Philippines that the nation might pull out its contingent from the Golan Heights.

Meanwhile, a Syrian official said President Bashar Assad's troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish — a veiled threat toward Israel to stay out of Syria's conflict.

Also Sunday, Damascus rejected Turkey's allegations that Syria was behind two car bombings that killed 46 people in Turkey and wounded dozens more the day before.

The four Filipinos, seized Tuesday, were apparently unharmed, but they will undergo a medical checkup and stress debriefing, said Brig. Gen. Domingo Tutaan.

A statement by the rebel group holding the peacekeepers — the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade — said the four were handed over to a U.N. delegation in the border area on Sunday, but provided no other details.

The peacekeepers are part of a U.N. contingent that patrols a buffer zone between Syria and the Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

It was the second abduction of Filipino peacekeepers since March, when 21 were held for three days by rebels fighting Assad.

The Philippine foreign secretary has said he would recommend withdrawing Filipinos from the peacekeeping contingent in Syria, but the final decision is up to the country's president.

Nearly 1,000 U.N. peacekeepers patrol the Golan. Other major contributors are India and Austria. Croatia recently withdrew its contingent.

The buffer zone has been largely quiet for four decades, but tensions have risen there since the outbreak of the revolt in Syria more than two years ago.

In Damascus, Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told a news conference on Sunday that Syria has the right to enter the Golan Heights.

"The Golan is Syrian Arab territory and will remain so, even if the Israeli army is stationed there. We have the right to go in and out of it whenever we want and however we please," he said.

His comments came in response to last week's Israeli airstrikes on Syria, which Israeli officials say targeted advanced Iranian missiles intended for Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The strikes marked a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in the Syrian civil war and raised fears that a conflict that has repeatedly spilled over Syria's borders could turn into a regional war.

Syria has threatened to retaliate but the official response was relatively mild.

"Israel should understand that the Syrian skies are not a picnic for anyone," al-Zoubi warned.

"We are a people who do not forget to retaliate against those who commit aggression against us, and we do not forget our martyrs or those who killed them," he said.

Israeli officials had no comment.

Assad's regime might be reluctant to open a new front against Israel with his army already stretched thin in the deadlocked fight with the rebels.

But he has a history of operating through proxies, such as the Lebanese militant Hezbollah or radical Syrian-based Palestinian factions that can potentially launch attacks on Israel from the Golan.

The Syrian uprising escalated into a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions of Syrians. The two sides have been largely deadlocked on the battlefield.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that closely monitors the fighting in Syria, said in a statement Sunday that more than 80,000 people — nearly half of them civilians — have been killed in Syria's conflict since March 2011.

The Syrian government does not release official figures for casualties in the civil war. In February, the U.N. estimated that around 70,000 have died.

In the latest violence in the capital, Damascus, six mortar shells struck a neighborhood, causing damage and casualties, a Syrian official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

The mortars hit the predominantly Alawite district of Mazzeh 86 during the morning rush hour, he said. Sunday is the first day of the work week in Syria.

Alawites are followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and have dominated government for four decades under Assad family rule. Rebels and regime forces have been fighting in parts of Damascus, and rebels have fired mortars at neighborhoods seen as pro-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, confirmed that mortars struck Mazzeh 86, but said it had no reports of casualties.

The Observatory also reported that regime forces have secured the international highway linking Damascus with the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad's regime began.

The report confirms claims made by state media on Saturday and marks a significant reversal of gains made by rebels in the strategic region near the border with Jordan only few weeks earlier.

Zoubi's comments were the first official Syrian comment since Saturday's blasts in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, near Syria.

The bombings left 46 people dead and marked the biggest incident of violence across the border since the start of Syria's civil war, raising fears that Turkey — once one of Syria's top allies in the region — might be pulled deeper into the conflict.

The Syrian minister alleged that Turkey is responsible "for all that happened in Syria and what happened in Turkey yesterday," accusing Istanbul of facilitating the entry of "terrorists" to Syria.

The Syrian regime routinely describes rebels fighting to topple Assad as terrorists.

Al-Zoubi also launched one of the harshest personal attacks on Turkey's prime minister, demanding that Recep Tayyip Erdogan "step down as a killer and as a butcher."

In Egypt, a senior aide to President Mohammed Morsi said in remarks published Sunday that Egypt is seeking a negotiated solution for the Syrian crisis that would ensure the country's territorial integrity and prevent foreign intervention.

Essam el-Haddad, a presidential assistant on foreign affairs, said Egypt is developing its regional initiative and that representatives of the Damascus regime who have "no blood on their hands" must be approved by the opposition before they can negotiate.

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Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report from Cairo.

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Syrian rebels seize 4 UN peacekeepers on Golan

BEIRUT (AP) — Rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad detained four U.N. peacekeepers on Tuesday in area that separates Syria and Israel, raising tension between the two countries just days after the Jewish state launched back-to-back airstrikes near Damascus.

The abduction was the second such incident in the area in two months. The incident exposed the vulnerability of the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. It also sent a worrisome signal to Syria's neighbors — including Israel — about the ensuing lawlessness along their shared frontiers.

Rebels with the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades are holding the peacekeepers, a spokesman for the group told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The Yarmouk Brigades were behind the abduction in March of 21 Filipino U.N. peacekeepers released unharmed after four days of tough negotiations. The spokesman talked with the AP on condition of anonymity because he was outside of Syria serving as a mediator on peaceful matters concerning the group.

In New York, Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping department, confirmed the abduction and said the four peacekeepers, all from the Philippines, were taken on Tuesday by an unidentified armed group near the town of Jamla in southern Syria.

"Efforts are underway to secure their release now," Dwyer said.

In a statement posted on the Yarmouk Brigades' Facebook page, the group said the peacekeepers were not hostages, but were being held for their own safety. The statement did not specify where the peacekeepers were being held, nor did it specify conditions for their release.

The rebel unit said it suspects the U.N. peacekeepers are shielding Assad's troops, who the rebels said killed civilians during an army sweep of Wadi Raqat in the south.

The U.N. monitoring mission was set up in 1974, seven years after Israel captured the Golan Heights and a year after it managed to push back Syrian troops trying to recapture its territory in another regional war. For nearly four decades, the U.N. monitors have helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria.

But in recent months, Syrian mortar shells overshooting their target have repeatedly hit the Israeli-controlled Golan.

Israel's recent airstrikes inside Syria raised the possibility of a wider regional conflict as a result of the civil war in which more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed. Israeli officials have said the airstrikes were meant to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, an ally of Syria and foe of Israel.

Syria has hinted at possible retribution against Israel for the raid, although official government statements have been relatively mild. On Tuesday, however, a Syria-based Palestinian militant group said it got a go-ahead from the Assad regime to set up missiles to attack Israel in the wake of the airstrikes.

"Syria has given the green light to set up missile batteries to directly attack Israeli targets," Anwar Raja, the spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, told the AP.

He said authorities also told his group that it could carry out attacks independently without consulting Syrian authorities.

"Practically, the Syrian stand has always been supportive of the Palestinian resistance and Syria provides the Palestinian resistance with all capabilities including all kinds of weapons," Raja said.

When the revolt against Assad's rule began in March 2011, the Palestinian community in Syria largely stayed on the sidelines. But as the uprising shifted into a civil war, many Palestinians backed the rebels, while some groups have been fighting on the government side.

Those include the Popular Front, a small Damascus-based Palestinian militant faction that the U.S has designated a terrorist organization.

While the group earned notoriety for its past attacks on Israel, it has been eclipsed in the past 20 years by the other Islamic militant groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Assad regime's decision to allow a minor Syria-based Palestinian group to prepare for attacks is largely seen as a face-saving gesture unlikely to escalate Syria's confrontation with Israel.

Iran, a close ally of Damascus, has condemned the Israeli attacks and warned of possible retaliation, which it said should come from Israel's Arab neighbors, not Tehran.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was in Damascus on Tuesday, meeting with Assad and other Syrian officials, according to Syrian state TV. There were no details on issues discussed during the talks.

Earlier Tuesday, Salehi told reporters in Amman, Jordan, that Arab nations "must stand by their brethren in Damascus."

Iran is deeply concerned with the fate of the Assad regime, which has allowed Syrian territory to serve as a conduit for Iranian weapons and other support to reach their proxy, Hezbollah. Tehran has supplied cash and weapons to help the Syrian government in its efforts to crush the anti-Assad revolt.

Salehi warned of the possible repercussions if the government in Damascus was to fall.

"The fallout from a vacuum in Syria will have adverse effects on its neighbors and the whole region," he said. "There will be serious repercussions from a vacuum. It will be grave and nobody can predict the results."

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AP writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, and Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

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U.N.'s Ban recommends African troops in Mali become peacekeepers

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An African force currently in Mali should be converted into a U.N. peacekeeping operation and a separate combat force should be created to confront Islamist threats, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended to the Security Council on Tuesday.

The U.N.-backed African force in Mali is due to take over from France when it starts withdrawing its 4,000 troops from the country in late April.

In a report to the 15-member Security Council, Ban recommended that the African force, known as AFISMA, become a U.N. peacekeeping force of some 11,200 troops and 1,440 police - once major combat ends.

To tackle Islamist extremists directly, Ban recommended that a so-called parallel force be created, which would work in close coordination with the U.N. mission.

Diplomats have said France is likely to provide troops for the smaller parallel force, which could be based in Mali or elsewhere in the West Africa region.

"Given the anticipated level and nature of the residual threat, there would be a fundamental requirement for a parallel force to operate in Mali alongside the U.N. mission in order to conduct major combat and counter-terrorism operations," Ban wrote.

The parallel force would not have a formal U.N. mandate, though it would be operating with the informal blessing of the Security Council. The report did not specify a time limit for the mission.

The Security Council was due to be briefed on Wednesday on Ban's recommendations and diplomats hope a vote to approve the peacekeeping force can take place by mid-April.

France began a military offensive in January to drive out Islamist fighters, who had hijacked a revolt by Mali's Tuareg rebels and seized two-thirds of the West African country. Paris said Mali's vast desert North was in danger of becoming a springboard for extremist attacks on the region and the West.

In a nine-week operation French, Chadian and Malian troops have driven the Islamists into desert hideaways and mountains near the Algerian border. French President Francois Hollande said recently that Mali's sovereignty had almost been restored.

However, Islamist fighters attacked northern Mali's largest town, Gao, over the weekend. It was the third major offensive there by the rebels since the town was retaken by a French-led military operation in late January.

CHILD RECRUITS

The African force in Mali is made up of troops mainly from West Africa, including more than 2,000 Chadians. Other than Chad's contingent, most African elements remain in the south of Mali away from the fighting.

The United Nations would only take on security responsibilities in Mali when "the necessary security and political conditions were deemed to be in place, following an assessment by the (U.N.) Secretariat."

Mali's government hopes to hold elections in July, but Security Council diplomats and U.N. officials said that goal may be overly ambitious.

Ban said that once the African soldiers become a U.N. peacekeeping force, the majority of the troops and police would operate in the north of the country, while there would be a "light presence" based in the country's capital, Bamako.

"The force would operate under robust rules of engagement, with a mandate to use all necessary means to address threats to the implementation of its mandate, which would include protection of civilians," Ban said.

"This could include the conduct of operations on its own or in cooperation with the Malian ... forces," he said.

Ban also suggested that the Security Council consider establishing an independent group of experts to investigate transnational and organized crime in Mali with the possibility of imposing punitive, targeted sanctions.

Mali was once viewed as an example of a working democracy in Africa, but its north has been a center of cross-desert trafficking of drugs, stolen goods and Western hostages. Border towns are used as transit hubs for trans-Sahara cocaine and hashish smuggling.

Ban raised serious concerns in the report about human rights violations being committed in northern Mali, including summary executions, illegal arrests and forced disappearances, use of children by armed groups, rape, forced marriages and looting.

"Hundreds of children have been recruited by all of the armed groups active in the north, including AQUIM (al Qaeda's north African wing), Ansar Dine, MUJAO and the MNLA," he said.

"The capture and detention of children for intelligence purposes is also an emerging trend that needs to be addressed as a matter of the utmost urgency," Ban wrote.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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