Attacks against Lebanese Alawites deepen fears

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) — Lebanese members of the Syrian leader's Alawite sect fear their tiny community will be a casualty of the civil war raging in the neighboring country.

Already, Sunni Muslim extremists have stoned a school bus, vandalized stores and beaten or stabbed a number of men in a wave of attacks against Lebanese Alawites, stoking fears of even more violence should Syrian President Bashar Assad be removed from power.

In one particularly humiliating case, angry Sunnis tied a rope around an Alawite man's neck and dragged him around the streets of Tripoli.

"The Alawites are being subjected to an organized campaign that aims to eliminate them on all levels," said Ali Feddah, a prominent member of Lebanon's Arab Democratic Party, which is mainly Alawite.

Feddah spoke to The Associated Press in his office in Tripoli's predominantly Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen. Sitting next to a picture of Assad, he said the Alawites face an "existential threat," mainly because of extremist Sunni incitement against them.

His words echo the sentiments of many Alawites, who have long enjoyed privileges in Syria under Assad family rule and now fear for their future. The tiny community in Lebanon, which has long been a Syrian client state, has also benefited from Assad's rule, particularly during Syria's three-decade hold on its smaller neighbor that ended in 2005.

The Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, represents little more than 10 percent of the population in Syria and about 2 percent in Lebanon. Before their ascent in the mid-20th century, the Alawites were impoverished and marginalized, largely confined to the lmountains of the province of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.

Under the French mandate, the Alawites were granted an autonomous territory stretching in a band along the coast from the Lebanese border to the Turkish border. It lasted a few years until 1937, when their state was incorporated into modern-day Syria.

After the 1963 coup that brought the Baath Party to power in Damascus, Alawites began consolidating their presence in the Syrian government and armed forces.

The uprising against Assad's rule that began in March 2011 quickly became an outlet for long-suppressed grievances, mostly by poor Sunnis from marginalized areas. It has since escalated into an outright civil war.

Many of the rebels trying to overthrow Assad today say they want to replace his government with an Islamic state.

The war, now in its third year, has turned increasingly sectarian with countless cases of tit-for-tat slayings between Sunnis and Alawites. Sunni rebels are often seen in videos posted online referring to Alawites as dogs and heretics.

Abu Bilal al-Homsi, an activist in the central Syrian city of Homs who has links with several rebel groups, said the Assad regime has carried out massacres against Sunnis. He points to waves of sectarian killings this month, allegedly carried out by pro-government Alawite gunmen in the coastal towns of Banias and Bayda. More than 100 civilians were killed in the attacks.

"We will completely wipe out the Alawite sect," said al-Homsi, who does not use his real name because of fear of government reprisals. "There will be no Alawites in Syria. The young and the old will be punished."

Bassam al-Dada, an official in the rebels' Free Syrian Army, disagrees with al-Homsi. "The Alawites have nothing to do with Bashar's crimes," he said.

The U.N. estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed in the war. Human Rights activists say most of them are Sunnis, but Alawites have also paid a heavy price. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday the group has documented the names of more than 35,000 Alawites who have died, most of them soldiers and pro-Assad militiamen.

"Their losses statistically are very high. There is a lot of resentment in Alawite regions," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University in Beirut.

The tensions in Syria are playing out in Lebanon, which is sharply split along sectarian lines and has recently seen repeated bouts of street fighting related to the war across the border.

Northern Lebanon, in particular, is a potential powder keg. It has a strong Sunni population but also has pockets of Alawites.

The Alawites live mainly in Jabal Mohsen, a hilly district where posters of Assad and his father and predecessor, the late Hafez Assad, decorate the streets.

For years, residents of Jabal Mohsen have traded short bouts of automatic weapons fire and volleys of rocket-propelled grenades with residents of the mainly Sunni Bab Tabbaneh neighborhood.

The two districts in Tripoli are separated by a roadway named Syria Street.

The clashes have become more frequent since Syria's uprising began — and so have the targeted attacks.

Ali, an unemployed 25-year-old Alawite from Jabal Mohsen, says he has not been to Sunni neighborhoods of Tripoli for more than a year after he was beaten up in the central Tal neighborhood.

Ali, who declined to give his full name for fear of reprisals, described how he was intercepted by a man who ran toward him, grabbed him by the neck and tried to choke him as he shouted: "Are you from the Jabal?"

He said he denied he was an Alawite and was eventually saved by a Sunni man who knew him.

Last month, a bus carrying school children was attacked on the edge of Jabal Mohsen by a group of extremists who pelted it with rocks for several minutes before troops intervened.

"Since then, all school buses from Jabal Mohsen are accompanied by troops," Feddah said.

Residents say several men have been stabbed and beaten up in the past few weeks. Several shops in Jabal Mohsen were set on fire, their fronts seen shuttered on a recent visit.

Earlier this month, bearded extremists grabbed a Syrian man in Tripoli, beat him up and stripped him to the waist before tying a rope around his neck and parading him through the streets. "I am an Alawite shabih," they wrote on his bare chest, in reference to widely feared pro-Assad militiamen who fight alongside soldiers in Syria.

In Syria, thousands of Alawites have left their homes in war-shattered cities such as Homs, for the relative safety of the overwhelmingly Alawite provinces of Tartous and Latakia.

Syrian opponents of Assad say Alawite fighters are trying to carve out a breakaway enclave in the country's mountainous Alawite heartland by driving out local Sunnis. They say recent killings in overwhelmingly Sunni villages close to Alawite communities are meant to lay the groundwork.

Earlier this month, regime forces from nearby Alawite areas were blamed for killing dozens of civilians in Banias and Bayda, two Sunni communities in western Syria. The violence bore a closer resemblance to two reported mass killings last year in Houla and Qubeir, Sunni villages surrounded by Alawite towns in central Syria.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper that having failed to control the entire country, Assad was now executing his "plan B" — which involves opening up an Alawite corridor between central Syria and Lebanon and driving Sunnis away from the area.

"There is an effort to cleanse the region," Davutoglu said in the interview, published last week. "This will cause turmoil in Lebanon too. It could cause a culture of revenge."

___

Bassem Mroue can be reached on twitter at http://twitter.com/bmroue

View the original article here

Attacks on Sunni mosques fuel fears in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — A sharp rise in attacks on Sunni holy sites in Iraq is feeding fears that the country could spiral into a new round of sectarian violence similar to the bloodletting that brought Iraq to its knees in 2006 and 2007.

Majority Shiites control the levers of power in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks.

That may now have changed.

If it turns out that Iranian-backed Shiite militias are responsible for the recent attacks on Sunnis, it could signal a turn toward cyclical retaliatory violence.

At least 29 Sunni mosques were attacked between mid-April and early May, according to Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie, the deputy head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment, which oversees the sect's holy sites. At least 65 Sunni worshippers were killed, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press from police reports.

By contrast, two Shiite mosques were hit in bombings that killed one person over the same period, police and hospital officials said. Dozens of Shiites were killed in attacks by Sunni extremists at places other than holy sites during this time.

In all of 2012, there were only 10 recorded attacks on Sunni holy sites, al-Sumaidaie said.

In a sign of increasing fears by the Shiite-led government that the country might be descending into sectarian strife, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned last week that terrorists and extremist groups are taking advantage of the turmoil by targeting "certain areas and mosques."

"The attempts to stir sectarian strife again by warlords, terrorists, and militia leaders will not succeed and we will confront them with full force," he said, adding that the army and police would boost security around houses of worship.

Even if the will is there, al-Maliki's government is considered too weak to ensure security and control militias and other extremist Shiite groups that are allegedly linked to and partly financed by Iran.

And many contend that al-Maliki's government planted the seeds for more sectarian tension by becoming more aggressive toward Sunnis after the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011.

For the past five months, Sunnis have been protesting against what they claim is second-class treatment by the government and to demand an end to some laws they believe unfairly target them. Violence has flared on occasion between security forces and protesters.

But the matter came to a head April 23 after government troops moved against a camp of Sunni demonstrators in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad. The clashes there sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.

Al-Sumaidaie suggested the spate of recent attacks on Sunni mosques might be aimed at pressuring Sunni protesters to quit their anti-government rallies.

"These attacks aim to terrorize the worshippers and they might be a reaction on some issues such as the protesters," he said.

He also accused Shiite militias of being behind the recent attacks on Sunnis, but refused to specify which groups.

In February, Sunni households in mixed areas of Baghdad began receiving threatening leaflets signed by a militant faction known as the Mukhtar Army. The leaflets called Sunnis the enemy and warned them to leave the neighborhood. Their appearance raised new concerns among many Sunnis in the capital because overt threats like that had largely disappeared as widespread sectarian fighting waned in 2008.

The Mukhtar Army was formed by Wathiq al-Batat, a one-time senior official in Iraq's Hezbollah Brigades, which has no direct link to the better-known Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Batat has said the militia's aim is to confront Sunnis who might attempt to topple the Shiite-led government in Baghdad in the same manner that Syrian rebels are trying to overthrow Bashar Assad's Iranian-backed regime in neighboring Syria.

Last week, al-Batat was quoted by Iraqi media issuing new threats against "the centers of terrorism and the people with turbans who are calling for terrorism" — an apparent reference to extremist Sunni clerics.

"We will work to intensify the jihadist operations, by using all means, in order to hunt for these terrorists and strike their economic, social and political interests, and we will not exclude anybody who promotes or calls for terrorism," he said.

Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni minority held a privileged position, while the Shiites were largely oppressed. But since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam, those dynamics have been flipped, and a Shiite-led government now holds power in Baghdad.

Attacks on Sunni mosques have become rare since the peak of the sectarian strife, which was ignited by the bombing of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in the city of Samarra in February 2006. That attack was blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq and set off retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists that left thousands of Iraqis dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The new wave of unrest rolling across Iraq now is worrying in part because of the country's recent past.

Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, warned in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on April 30 that the situation in Iraq has taken "a very dangerous turn" since last month's crackdown in Hawija.

He described the recent violence as reminiscent of the dark days in 2006. Al-Qaida's Iraq arm, he wrote, is regrouping in areas that Iraqi and American forces "cleared at enormous cost," and its ally Jabhat al-Nusra is "attempting to hijack the secular resistance" to Syria's Assad.

"These developments threaten not only to unravel the gains made since 2007, but also to energize the forces of violent extremism in the heart of the Arab world, already burning in Syria," Crocker said.

Ahmed Hussein Saleh, a Sunni resident of Baghdad, said the current political tension has contributed to the deteriorating security situation and the comeback of sectarianism.

"The politicians, Shiite militia leaders, and even al-Qaida, want to restart the sectarian war because it is the only way to keep the people divided and thus rule the country the way they want," said Saleh, who has decided recently not to let his two kids go outside the house on their own, fearing for their safety.

Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Saad Maan Ibrahim said the ministry has taken extra precautions to try to secure mosques, including deploying more security forces and undercover policemen.

"The ministry is giving this issue top priority now because we are aware that this tactic has been used before in order to create a sectarian war among the Iraqi people, but they failed," Ibrahim told The Associated Press.

He said that an investigation is underway to determine which groups are behind the mosque attacks, and cautioned against jumping to any hasty conclusions.

"Basically, these attacks bear the hallmarks of al-Qaida, but we do not rule out the possibility that the militias from the other side might be behind this violence," he said.

At the Mohammed Fanadi al-Kubaisi mosque in western Baghdad, shards of glass litter the prayer hall nearly three weeks a bomb killed three people on April 26. At the front entrance, dozens of slippers and shoes are still neatly stored in the wooden shelves where worshippers left them before fleeing the in a panic.

The mosque's imam, Hussein Ali, who had just started into his Friday sermon when the bomb placed outside one of the windows blew up, said those who targeted the building "want to reignite the civil war among the people here."

"I am sure that God's revenge will fall upon them sooner or later," he said. "It is only a matter of time."

___

Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Hitler's food taster tells of poisoning fears

BERLIN (AP) — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler's food taster.

Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure it wasn't poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf's Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.

"He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there," Woelk said of the Nazi leader. "And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that's why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself."

With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler's food had its advantages.

"The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta," she recalled. "But this constant fear — we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal."

The petite widow's story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II.

Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story to The Associated Press as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.

Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.

There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf's Lair complex, located a few miles (kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person — only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women.

Hitler's security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf's Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber.

"We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang," she said of the 1944 bombing. "We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting 'Hitler is dead!' But he wasn't. "

Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives' home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound.

With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf's Lair.

She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.

Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home.

"Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls," she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945.

When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble.   

On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters.

After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 — after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf's Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe.

For many Berlin civilians — their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone — the horror did not end with capitulation.

"The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too," Woelk said. "They took me to a doctor's apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That's why I could never have children. They destroyed everything."

Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe.

She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said.

With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said.

Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story.

"For decades, I tried to shake off those memories," she said. "But they always came back to haunt me at night."   

View the original article here

Israel fears end to 40-year peace on Syrian front

ALONEI HABASHAN, Golan Heights (AP) — Against a vista of green fields and snowcapped mountains, all is silent but for a gusting wind. Then comes a burst of gunfire from the Syrian civil war raging next door, where jihadist rebels are battling Bashar Assad's troops in a village.

Watching it all unfold from a few kilometers (miles) away are Israeli soldiers atop tanks behind a newly fortified fence, while a large-scale Israeli drill sends off its own explosions in the background.

This is the new reality on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, for 40 years the quietest of Israel's front lines, a place of hiking trails, bird-watching, skiing and winery tour. The military predicts all that will soon change as it prepares for the worst — a power vacuum in Syria in which rogue groups could get their hands of the country's large stockpile of chemical weapons.

In many ways, a new era has already begun. The Syrian villages along the border change hands between military and rebel strongholds in daily battles. Their mortar shells and bullets frequently land on the Israeli side, including in some cases narrowly missing soldiers and civilians. A Syrian army tank shell landed in the border community of Alonei Habashan in February.

Though Israel believes these have mostly been cases of errant fire, it has responded with firepower of its own on several occasions in the first round of hostilities since a long-term armistice took hold after the 1973 Mideast war.

"This area became a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests," said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general who is involved in the military's strategic planning and operations. "Syria became a place that we see as a big threat to Israel and that is why we started to work in the last two years on a strong obstacle, on our infrastructure, in order to make sure that we will be ready for the future. And the future is here already."

Officials say the military's present deployment on the plateau is its most robust since 1973, and its most obvious manifestation is the brand new border fence, 6 meters (20 feet) tall, topped with barbed wire and bristling with sophisticated anti-infiltration devices. The previous rundown fence was largely untested until it was trampled over last year by Syrians protesting on behalf of Palestinians.

The military would not detail other measures it is taking, but stressed it was actively defining the new border arrangement now, before it could be too late.

On the other side of the frontier, the village of Bir Ajam is in rebel hands and Israeli troops report watching them successfully deflect Syrian military pre-dawn raids almost daily. In a village nearby, Syrian intelligence and commando forces are based in concrete, windowless structures.

At the triangle where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan meet along the Yarmouk River, a lone jeep is seen crossing uninterrupted from Jordan into Syria. In March, rebels kidnapped 21 Filipino U.N peacekeepers nearby. Thousands of refugees have used the route to flee the carnage into Jordan.

A few injured refugees have trickled into the Golan, and the military runs a field clinic to treat them. But there's no guarantee the trickle won't become a flood if Jordan in the south or Turkey in the north become unreachable.

"Syria right now is a kind of self-evolving system," Hirsch said. "No one can control or predict everything."

Israel, which borders southwestern Syria, has thus far been careful to stay on the sidelines of a civil war that has already claimed the lives of more than 70,000.

Assad is a bitter enemy, an ally of Iran and a major backer of Lebanese Hezbollah guerilla attacks against Israel. But like his father whom he succeeded as president, he has faithfully observed U.S.-brokered accords that ended the 1973 war. Israel worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary.

Chief among Israeli concerns is that Assad's advanced weaponry could reach the hands of either his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups among the rebels trying to oust him.

"Syria is not a regular place ... it is the biggest warehouse for weapons on earth," Hirsch warned.

In an interview with BBC TV last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the rebel groups among "the worst Islamist radicals in the world."

"So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists," he said.

This week, a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Assad used chemical weapons last month. After initial denials, American and British officials confirmed the assessment of Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, that the lethal nerve agent sarin was probably used. U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that the introduction of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" that could usher in greater foreign intervention in the civil war.

For Israel, the specter of peace with Syria disintegrating adds to a growing sense of siege. It saw the Gaza Strip fall to the militant Hamas movement in an election in 2006. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the first to make peace with Israel, is now ruled by the fiercely anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. All this against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear program and its threats to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel has all but admitted that its warplanes destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, and on Thursday it shot down a drone which it claimed was operated by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah denied launching it.).

Hirsch, who commanded an Israeli division in a monthlong war with Hezbollah in 2006, said war regional roles have since then been reversed. While once Syria used Hezbollah in Lebanon as a proxy against Israel, Hezbollah is now deterred from acting on Lebanese soil for fear of Israeli retribution and is preparing to use the instability in Syria as its future staging ground.

"The fighting in Syria gives them an opportunity to open a new front against Israel," said Hirsch. "We must be ready for turbulence. We must be ready for the Iranian involvement inside Syria. We must be ready to be able to fight against radical fundamentalist activities that will come from Syria, and that is what we are doing here."

___

Follow Heller on Twitter (at)aronhellerap

View the original article here

Mursi warning stirs fears in Egypt opposition

By Tom Perry

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi threatened on Sunday to take unspecified steps to "protect this nation" after violent demonstrations against his Muslim Brotherhood, using vague but severe language that the opposition said heralded a crackdown.

In remarks following clashes outside the Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters on Friday, Mursi warned that "necessary measures" would be taken against any politicians shown to be involved in what he described as violence and rioting.

"If I am forced to do what is required to protect this nation, then I will do it. And I fear that I might be on the verge of doing it," Mursi said in a statement. He did not elaborate.

Mursi has faced increasing anger since the Brotherhood propelled him to power in a June election, and several spates of protest have turned into violent riots.

Mursi's opponents accuse him and the Brotherhood of seeking to dominate the post-Hosni Mubarak era and resorting to undemocratic police powers two years after autocrat Mubarak was brought down by popular protests.

The brotherhood accuses its secularist opponents of stirring trouble to seize power they could not win at the ballot box, and says the relentless civil unrest is wrecking efforts to salvage an economy driven to its knees by uncertainty.

"They are very scary comments," said Khaled Dawoud, a spokesman for the National Salvation Front (NSF), an alliance of non-Islamist parties formed late last year to oppose Mursi.

"I can see language that is heading towards taking some suppressive measures," he added.

Dozens of people were hurt on Friday when several thousand supporters and opponents of the Brotherhood fought near the Islamist group's headquarters.

RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE

Dawoud said the NSF was not behind those protests, but added that some of its members may have decided to take part.

Mursi said everyone had the right to peaceful protest, but "what is happening now has nothing to do with the revolution".

"I urge all political forces not to provide any political cover for acts of violence and rioting. I will not be happy if investigations prove the guilt of some politicians," he said in the remarks, which were published on his Twitter account.

"Some are using the media to incite violence and those whose involvement is proven will not escape punishment," he added. "Anyone who takes part in incitement is a partner in the crime."

He also spoke of attempts to portray the state as weak but said these had failed: "The apparatus of the state are recovering and can deter any law breaker," he added.

Exactly what new steps Mursi is considering became the subject of speculation.

In late January, he declared a state of emergency rule in three cities near the Suez Canal to combat a wave of violence there. A declaration of a state of emergency elsewhere is unlikely, said Yasser El-Shimy, Egypt analyst for the International Crisis Group, adding arrests were more probable.

"My impression is that Mursi and the Brotherhood in general have had it with the violence that is taking place and they are running out of patience," he said.

"This is definitely the strictest he has spoken regarding the rioting," he added. "Now Mursi feels there is enough public opinion on his side to justify taking stricter measures."

One recent source of tension between Mursi and the opposition was his call for parliamentary elections based on a controversial election law. The vote, due to begin in late April, has been postponed by a court ruling and it is now not clear when it will happen.

Mursi's political supporters and opponents signed a document agreeing to renounce violence following riots in late January.

Mursi's opponents say they are committed to peaceful protest and have also accused the Brotherhood of using violence and inciting tension in the street. The Brotherhood says the opposition has done little to rein in its followers.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy; Editing by Peter Graff)

View the original article here

Myanmar riots stoke fears of widening sectarian violence

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar has reduced neighborhoods to ashes and stoked fears that last year's sectarian bloodshed is spreading into the country's heartland in a test of Asia's newest democracy.

Buildings in Meikhtila were still burning early on Friday and agitated Buddhist crowds roamed the otherwise near-deserted streets after three days of turbulence, said Reuters reporters in the city 540 km (336 miles) north of the commercial capital Yangon.

Five people, including a Buddhist monk, have been killed and dozens wounded since Wednesday, state media reported. Other authorities put the death toll at 10 or higher.

The unleashing of ethnic hatred, suppressed during 49 years of military rule that ended in March 2011, is challenging the reformist government of one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries.

Jailed dissidents have been released, a free election held and censorship lifted in Myanmar's historic democratic transition. But the government has faced mounting criticism over its failure to stop the bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims.

"I am really sad over what happened here because this is not just happening to one person. It's affecting all of us," said Maung Maung, a Buddhist ward leader in Meikhtila.

Hundreds of Muslims have fled their homes to shelter at a sports stadium, said local officials. The unrest is a bloody reprise of last year's violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, which officially killed 110 people and left 120,000 people homeless, most of them stateless Rohingya Muslims.

BURNING MOSQUE, ARMED RESIDENTS

Locals complained there were too few police in this city of about 180,000 people to subdue the unrest. It erupted after an argument between a Buddhist couple and the Muslim owners of a gold shop spiraled into a riot involving hundreds of people, said police.

Reuters saw some Meikhtila residents arming themselves with knives and sticks in an eerie echo of the Rakhine violence in 2012, when pitched battles between the two communities later morphed into orchestrated attacks on Muslim communities by organized gangs of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger a fragile reform program launched after Myanmar's quasi-civilian government replaced a decades-old military dictatorship in 2011.

"Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace," Vijay Nambiar, U.N. special adviser of the secretary-general, said in a statement.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. There are large and long-established communities in Yangon and Mandalay, Myanmar's two largest cities, where tensions are simmering.

"Everyone is in shock here. We never expected this to happen," said a Muslim teacher in Mandalay, requesting anonymity.

Rumors that violent agitators were heading for the city had set its Muslim community on edge, he said. Buddhist monks known for their anti-Islamic views last year staged several street protests in Mandalay.

In Meikhtila, at least one mosque, an Islamic religious school, several shops and a government office were set alight, said a fire service official, who declined to be named. Reuters saw both Buddhist and Muslim homes burned.

Sectarian unrest is common in central Myanmar, although reports were stifled under the military dictatorship.

Three people died in Sinbyukyun in 2006 when Buddhists attacked homes and shops belonging to Muslims and ethnic Indians, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable.

"The incident reveals underlying tense inter-ethnic relations in the heartland," said the cable, which also referenced similar communal riots in Kyaukse, a town near Meikhtila, in 2003.

(Writing by Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep)

View the original article here

Prisoner's death stokes fears of third uprising

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The mysterious death of a 30-year-old Palestinian gas station attendant in Israeli custody stoked new West Bank clashes Sunday, along with Israeli fears of a third Palestinian uprising.

A senior Palestinian official alleged that Arafat Jaradat was tortured by Israel's Shin Bet security service, citing an autopsy he said revealed bruising and two broken ribs.

Israel's Health Ministry said the autopsy did not conclusively determine the cause of death, but that the bruising and broken ribs were likely the result of attempts to revive the detainee.

Jaradat's death came at a time of rising West Bank tensions, including several days of Palestinian marches in support of four hunger-striking prisoners in Israeli lockups. In all, Israel holds nearly 4,600 Palestinians, including dozens who have never been formally charged or tried.

Frozen Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the recent re-election of Israeli hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Palestinian cash crisis and the Palestinians' sense of being abandoned by the Arab world seem to have created fertile ground for a third Palestinian revolt.

Over the weekend, Israel's army chief convened senior commanders to discuss the growing unrest.

Jaradat's death "is liable to become the opening shot" in a third uprising, Israeli military commentator Alex Fishman wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily Sunday, arguing that the "Palestinian street has been boiling with anger for a number of weeks now."

However, Israeli officials have previously expressed concern about a new uprising, only to see bursts of Palestinian protests fizzle.

The first uprising, marked by stone-throwing protests and commercial strikes, erupted in the late 1980s and led to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The second uprising broke out in 2000, after failed talks on a final peace deal, and was far deadlier, with Israel reoccupying the West Bank in response to bombings and shootings.

In recent years, the West Bank has been relatively calm. Despite recent tensions, the Palestinian self-rule government has not broken off security coordination with Israel in their joint campaign against Islamic militants.

Palestinian activists also say they learned from the mistakes of the armed revolt a decade ago and are turning to more creative protests against Israel's 45-year rule over lands they want for a future state.

Former Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub, speaking in Hebrew on Israel Radio, tried to reassure Israelis, declaring Sunday "on behalf of the entire Palestinian leadership that there is no plan to lead to bloodshed."

Jaradat, a father of two from the West Bank village of Saeer, died in Megiddo Prison in northern Israel on Saturday, six days after his arrest on suspicion of stone throwing.

Jaradat's attorney, Kamil Sabbagh, said his client told an Israeli military judge Thursday during a hearing that he was being forced to sit for long periods during interrogation. He also complained of back pain and seemed terrified to return to the Shin Bet lockup, although he did not have any apparent signs of physical abuse, Sabbagh said.

After the court hearing, the judge ordered Jaradat to be examined by a prison doctor.

The Shin Bet said that during interrogation, Jaradat was examined several times by a doctor who detected no health problems. On Saturday, he was in his cell and felt unwell after lunch, the agency said.

"Rescue services and a doctor were alerted and treated him," the statement said. But "they didn't succeed in saving his life."

On Sunday, Israel's forensics institute performed an autopsy attended by a physician from the Palestinian Authority.

After being briefed by the Palestinian physician, Issa Karake, the Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, told a news conference late Sunday that Jaradat had suffered two broken ribs on the right side of his chest. The autopsy also showed bruises on Jaradat's back and chest.

Israeli officials initially said Jaradat apparently died of a heart attack, but Karake said the Palestinian physician told him there was no evidence of that.

Later, Israel's Health Ministry said Jaradat did not suffer from disease and that it was not possible yet to determine his cause of death conclusively.

Jaradat "faced harsh torture, leading to his immediate, direct death. Israel is fully responsible for his killing," Karake said.

Protesting Jaradat's death, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli troops in several locations, including the West Bank city of Hebron and at a checkpoint near the military's Ofer prison on Sunday. In two locations, troops fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets.

In the clash near the checkpoint, troops fired live rounds, shooting the 15-year-old son of the commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in the chest and stomach, said Palestinian health official Dr. Ahmed Bitawi. The teen, Walid Hab al-Reeh, was in stable condition, while another man was wounded in the arm, Bitawi said.

The Preventive Security Service is key to security coordination with Israel. The Israeli military said it was aware of a report that a Palestinian youth was seriously hurt by gunfire, but could not confirm that soldiers used live rounds to disperse the protest.

Kadoura Fares, who heads a Palestinian group advocating for prisoners, urged Palestinians on Sunday to keep demonstrating. He also said that one of the four hunger-striking prisoners, Jafar Izzeldeen, was moved to a hospital Sunday because his condition was deteriorating.

Recent West Bank protests have focused on the fate of prisoners, an emotional Palestinian consensus issue.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned since Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in 1967, meaning virtually every Palestinian family has had someone locked up.

The detainees are held on a range of charges, from stone-throwing to deadly attacks. Most Palestinians embrace them as heroes resisting occupation, while Israelis tend to view them as terrorists.

___

Associated Press writers Diaa Hadid, Aron Heller and Dalia Nammari in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

View the original article here