Mortar shells strike Damascus, killing at least 10

BEIRUT (AP) — Mortar shells crashed into an outdoor cafe at Damascus University on Thursday, killing at least 10 students in the deadliest of a rising number of mortar attacks in the heart of the Syrian capital.

The strikes have escalated as rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad try to enter the city, terrifying civilians whose support the opposition needs to advance its cause.

It was unclear who fired the rounds. The government blamed "terrorists," its blanket term for those fighting Assad's regime. Anti-regime activists accused the regime of staging the attack to turn civilians against the rebels.

Mortar strikes on Damascus are relatively new in Syria's crisis, which began in March 2011 with protests calling for Assad's ouster, then evolved into a civil war. The U.N. says more than 70,000 have been killed in the conflict.

Since last month, mortar shells have hit previously safe parts of the capital with increasing frequency. The near-daily strikes have frightened residents, and many have begun to avoid open areas and put plastic on their windows to help block flying glass from an explosion or shrapnel.

Some shells appear aimed at government targets, such as one of Assad's palaces and the general command of the Syrian army. Others have hit near civilian targets, including the Sheraton Hotel and a soccer stadium, both on the city's west side. Mortar shells also have struck in areas to the east, like the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma.

Thursday's strike was the deadliest yet.

State-run Al-Ikhbariya TV showed video of the university cafe where blood pooled on tiles and plastic chairs and pens and eyeglasses littered the area. Later video showed people being treated in a hospital, including a woman with white bandages around her head and a man whose back was peppered with shrapnel wounds.

The dining facility belongs to the Faculty of Architecture in Damascus's central Baramkeh district.

State TV said 15 people were killed in the strike, but the official news agency, SANA, put the death toll at 10 and said dozens were wounded. It also reported three other mortar strikes nearby.

The opposition activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll at 13.

Similar mortar attacks on Tuesday killed at least three people and wounded dozens. Six people were killed by mortar shells in different parts of the city on March 11.

"No one anywhere in the world can imagine a more criminal act than this," SANA quoted Amer al-Mardini, the president of the university, as saying. He said he hoped the wounded would heal quickly and "resume their studies as soon as possible."

Anti-regime activists accused the regime of launching the attack to tarnish the opposition's image.

Elizabeth O'Bagy, who studies the Syrian rebels at the Institute for the Study of War, said it was not possible to determine who was behind the attack, but it appeared to fit the regime's pattern of escalation. In other aspects of the war, such as the use of airstrikes or Scud missiles, the regime has gone from trying to target rebels to more indiscriminate attacks on civilians, she said.

"Because of the fact that it does follow regime behavior, it is more likely to be a regime attack," she said, while acknowledging it could also have been a rebel misfire.

Rebels have established footholds in a number of Damascus suburbs but have only been able to push into limited areas in the south and northeast parts of the capital. The government has retained its grip of downtown Damascus, although the mortar strikes have deepened fear among many residents that they will soon see the violence that has damaged many other Syrian cities.

Thursday was not the first time Syria's universities have been targeted. On Jan. 15, twin blasts hit Aleppo University, killing more than 80 people. The opposition said the regime had bombed the university, while the government accused rebels of striking it with rockets.

Also Thursday, Ghassan Hitto, the newly elected prime minister of the main opposition bloc, said he was reviewing candidates for a planned rebel interim government. It will be a service-oriented administration with nine to 12 ministries and will be based inside Syria, Hitto said during a meeting with Syrian expats in Qatar.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, has decided to continue serving until his six-month term ends in May. Al-Khatib resigned on March 24, citing frustration with the group and its level of international support. The Coalition rejected his resignation.

Syria's conflict threatens to destabilize neighboring countries, where more than 1 million refugees have fled to escape the violence.

In Jordan, on Syria's southern border, a riot broke out Thursday in a refugee camp after Jordanian authorities refused to let buses full of refugees return to Syria because of violence over the border. U.N. refugee liaison Ali Bibi said it was unclear how many refugees were involved in the melee at the Zaatari camp, but no one was injured.

To the north, Turkey denied reports that it was deporting hundreds of Syrian refugees for rioting on Wednesday in a camp in Akcakale after a fire killed a 7-year-old child. A camp official said local authorities identified 300 people involved in the uprising and prepared to deport them, but the government stopped them.

A Foreign Ministry official said 100 refugees asked to leave the camp and return to Syria on their own.

The U.N. refugee agency did not confirm the reports, but said it was concerned about possible deportations of refugees.

In Israel, on Syria's southeastern border, the military said it was beefing up medical teams along the border because of several cases of wounded Syrians crossing the frontier for medical care. Eleven Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals, including one who died from his wounds on Wednesday, a military official said. Others returned home after their conditions improved.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

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Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Bradley Klapper in Washington; Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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Irish PM's party wins by-election, junior partner suffers

By Stephen Mangan

ASHBOURNE, Ireland (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party held its seat in a by-election on Thursday, but its junior coalition partner Labour was beaten into fifth place in a humiliating defeat.

Labour went into government for the first time since the late 1990s two years ago on a promise to end the previous administration's adherence to "Frankfurt's Way", an austerity plan the party said was dictated by the European Central Bank.

However the centre-left party has angered supporters by pursuing the tough austerity required under the country's EU/IMF bailout and its vote in the Meath East constituency collapsed to 4.6 percent from 21 percent last time.

Fine Gael's Helen McEntee captured 38.5 percent of the vote to win the seat left vacant when her father committed suicide last year. The coalition would have kept its record parliamentary majority even if she had lost.

"I voted for Labour last time out but will never vote for them again," said Abigail Flores, a mother-of-two living in Ashbourne, a town 20 km north of Dublin where so-called "ghost estates" lie unfinished after a spectacular property crash. She said she had no interest in voting this time around.

"I would have always voted for Labour and so would my parents and sisters but they've shown in the last two years that they're just spineless and are no different from Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. They don't actually stand for anything."

By fielding the daughter of the late junior minister Shane McEntee, analysts said Fine Gael sheltered itself somewhat from voter anger. Political dynasties are common in Ireland, Kenny won his first election 38 years ago after his father's death.

The fellow centre-right Fianna Fail, which dominated Irish politics before losing three-quarters of its seats in humbling elections held after it signed up to the bailout, came second after jumping to 32.9 percent from 19 percent two years ago.

A rise of just four percentage points to 13 percent for Sinn Fein, the only major party rallying against austerity, showed the limited Irish appetite for the type of populist political movements making inroads elsewhere in Europe.

"DIFFICULT DAY"

A lack of opposition to deep tax hikes and spending cuts has helped Ireland hit the targets set under its bailout and close in on getting off emergency EU and IMF assistance, a move cemented last month by a landmark 10-year bond sale.

But that has meant little to Labour's traditional working class support base which has been hit hard by high unemployment. State workers face fresh cuts in a new public sector pay deal.

"It's a difficult day for Labour, people are very angry out there and clearly the Labour Party has been singled out for the brunt of responsibility," Pat Rabbitte, a senior Labour minister, told the Today FM radio station.

"There's little point in trying to explain to the individual voter that bond prices are cheaper, that butters no parsnips as far as they're concerned."

Analysts said the loss poses little threat to the coalition and its austerity push as Labour, which has already seen five of its 38 MPs defect from the party, would be unlikely to leave government and force an election with support so low.

"It will make life a bit more uncomfortable but I can't really see what they can do to stem to flow other than to steady the nerves and hope that the economy turns around," said Eoin O'Malley, politics lecturer at Dublin City University.

(Writing by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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South Africa's Mandela "responding positively" to treatment

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection, the government said on Thursday.

A statement said the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader was admitted shortly before midnight. It gave no further details other than to say he was receiving the "best possible expert medical treatment and comfort".

Mandela was admitted briefly to hospital earlier this month for a check up.

However, he spent nearly three weeks in hospital in December with a lung infection and after surgery to remove gallstones.

It was his longest stay in hospital since his release from prison in 1990 after serving 27 years for conspiring to overthrow the white-minority apartheid government.

(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Ed Stoddard)

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Palestinian journalist jailed for Abbas photo

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Two rights groups say a West Bank court has sentenced a Palestinian journalist to a year in prison for a Facebook page photo that portrays President Mahmoud Abbas as a traitor.

Abbas' Palestinian Authority has come under mounting criticism for stifling dissent. In particular, Abbas has been cracking down on the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The defendant in Thursday's ruling was Mamdouh Hamamreh, a reporter for the Hamas-linked Al-Quds TV.

Prosecutors say a photo montage on his Facebook page back in 2010 showed Abbas next to a TV villain. The villain was an informer for French colonial rulers and the photo caption read: "They're alike."

Hamamreh denied he posted the photo.

The groups Al-Haq and the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom confirmed the ruling.

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North Korea readies rockets after U.S. show of force

By David Chance and Phil Stewart

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea put its rocket units on standby on Friday to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed off on the order at a midnight meeting of top generals and "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation", official KCNA news agency said.

On Thursday, the United States flew two radar-evading B-2 Spirit bombers on practice runs over South Korea, responding to a series of North Korean threats. They flew from the United States and back in what appeared to be the first exercise of its kind, designed to show America's ability to conduct long-range, precision strikes "quickly and at will", the U.S. military said.

The news of Kim's response was unusually swift.

"He finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets of the KPA, ordering them to be standby for fire so that they may strike any time the U.S. mainland, its military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in south Korea," KCNA said.

The North has an arsenal of Soviet-era Scud missiles that can hit South Korea, but its longer-range missiles are untested. Independent assessments of its missile capability suggest it may have theoretical capacity to hit U.S. bases in Japan and Guam.

The North has launched a daily barrage of threats since early this month when the United States and the South, allies in the 1950-53 Korean War, began routine military drills.

The South and the United States have said the drills are purely defensive in nature and that no incident has taken place in the decades they have been conducted in various forms.

The United States also flew B-52 bombers over South Korea earlier this week.

The North has put its military on highest readiness to fight what it says are hostile forces conducting war drills. Its young leader has previously given "final orders" for its military to wage revolutionary war with the South.

Despite the tide of hostile rhetoric from Pyongyang, it has kept open a joint economic zone with the South which generates $2 billion a year in trade, money the impoverished state can ill-afford to lose.

Pyongyang has also canceled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all communications hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.

U.S. SAYS NORTH ON DANGEROUS PATH

"The North Koreans have to understand that what they're doing is very dangerous," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.

"We must make clear that these provocations by the North are taken by us very seriously and we'll respond to that."

The U.S. military said that its B-2 bombers had flown more than 6,500 miles to stage a trial bombing raid from their bases in Missouri as part of the Foal Eagle war drills being held with South Korea.

The bombers dropped inert munitions on the Jik Do Range, in South Korea, and then returned to the continental United States in a single, continuous mission, the military said.

Thursday's drill was the first time B-2s flew round-trip from the mainland United States over South Korea and dropped inert munitions, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.

Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the drill fit within the context of ramped efforts by the Pentagon to deter the North from acting upon any of its threats.

Asked whether he thought the latest moves could further aggravate tensions on the peninsula, Cha, a former White House official, said: "I don't think the situation can get any more aggravated than it already is."

Despite the shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, will risk starting a full-out war.

Still, Hagel, who on March 15 announced he was bolstering missile defenses over the growing North Korea threat, said all of the provocations by the North had to be taken seriously.

"Their very provocative actions and belligerent tone, it has ratcheted up the danger and we have to understand that reality," Hagel said, renewing a warning that the U.S. military was ready for "any eventuality" on the peninsula.

North Korea conducted a third nuclear weapons test in February in breach of U.N. sanctions and despite warnings from China, its one major diplomatic ally.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Warren Strobel, Paul Simao and Mark Bendeich)

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Syrian officials: 10 killed in university attack

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Mortar shells slammed into a cafeteria at Damascus University on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 20 in what was the deadliest in a string of such attacks on President Bashar Assad's seat of power, state media and officials said.

Rebels began firing shells at the capital earlier this year, and the strikes have become increasingly common in recent weeks as rebels clash with government troops on the east and south sides of the city.

State-run TV said the casualties occurred when mortar shells struck the cafeteria of the university's architecture department in the central Baramkeh district.

At one point, the official news agency SANA said 15 people were killed, but later the news agency put the death toll at 10. A Syrian official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements said 20 people were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came two days after rebels barraged Damascus with mortar shells that killed at least three people and wounded dozens.

The shelling rarely causes many casualties, but it has shattered the aura of normalcy the regime has tried to cultivate in Damascus. In recent days, rebels have struck deeper than ever into the heart of the city in a new tactic to try and loosen Assad's grip on his main stronghold.

The government blamed "terrorists," the term it uses for rebels fighting to oust Assad, and called the attack as a "barbaric massacre."

Government-run Al-Ikhbariya TV showed footage of plastic tables and chairs turned upside down, shattered glass and pens and books scattered on the floor. Pools of blood were seen on the floor of the open-air cafeteria. The station showed paramedics trying to revive a wounded girl.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the attack, saying many of the wounded were in critical condition.

Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with protests demanding Assad's ouster. Following a harsh government crackdown, the uprising steadily grew more violent until it became a full-fledged civil war. The U.N. says Syria's two-year civil war has killed more than 70,000 people.

The mortar attack at the university occurred as officials denied opposition claims that an Iranian cargo plane allegedly carrying weapons to Assad's regime was hit as it landed at Damascus International Airport.

Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera TV quoted activists as saying that the plane was hit Wednesday night and caught fire as it was landing. State-run TV denied the report while the Observatory chief, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said he could not confirm that such an incident happened.

Ghaidaa Abdul-Latif, the general director of the Syrian Arab Airlines, denied in a telephone interview with The AP the occurrence of any incident at the airport. She stressed that all reports about the incident were "absolutely untrue."

Earlier in the day, activists said Syrian rebels attacked army checkpoints in and around a key southern town that is a gateway to Damascus.

The Observatory said rebel attacks were under way in and around Dael in the strategic Daraa province, which borders Jordan. The Local Coordination Committees, another activists group, said regime bombardment of Dael killed at least three people on Thursday.

The Observatory also reported violence in other parts of Syria, including the northern regions of Idlib and Aleppo, and air raids on the suburbs of Damascus.

The fighting comes as Mideast powers opposed to Assad have stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels in coordination with the U.S. in preparation for a push on the Syrian capital, according to officials and military experts who spoke to the AP in Jordan.

In Jordan, the U.N. refugee agency said a riot broke out at a refugee camp for Syrians in the country after some of the refugees were told they could not return home.

Ali Bibi, a U.N. refugee liaison officer in Jordan, said it was unclear how many refugees were involved in Thursday's melee at the Zaatari camp. The riot broke out after some Syrians in the camp tried to board buses to return to their country.

He said Jordanian authorities refused to let the buses head to the border because of ongoing clashes between the rebels and Assad's forces in southern Syria, just across the border from Jordan. Bibi said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Turkish officials on Thursday denied reports that the country was deporting several hundreds of Syrian refugees for causing disturbances inside a refugee camp near the border. A Foreign Ministry official said, however, that a group of 100 refugees asked to be allowed to leave the camp and to return to Syria on their own free will.

A fire at the camp in the town of Akcakale late Wednesday killed a 7-year-old child and sparked unrest among the refugees.

A camp security official said local authorities identified about 300 people who allegedly caused the disturbance and prepared to deport them. But the move was stopped by government officials, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the situation in the camp with journalists.

The U.N. refugee agency could not immediately confirm the reports, but said it was concerned by allegations of possible deportations from Akcakale and was seeking further information.

In Israel, the military said it was beefing up medical teams along the border with Syria following several cases of wounded Syrians crossing the frontier to seek medical assistance.

A military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under military protocol, said on Thursday there have been "numerous incidents" in recent months in which Syrians wounded in the fighting in their country arrived at the frontier for first aid from Israeli medics.

Eleven of them were taken and treated at Israeli hospitals, including one who died from his wounds on Wednesday. Others returned home after their conditions have improved.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under military protocol. He said the military's focus in the Israeli-held Golan Heights was still on security and defense but that Israel sent extra medical teams to the area realizing more wounded could soon arrive.

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Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Suzan Fraser in Ankara Turkey, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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AP Interview: Egypt says Iranian tourists no risk

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's tourism minister says Iranian tourists would help shore up Egypt's dilapidated tourism industry and would not pose security challenge to the nation.

Speaking to The Associated Press in Cairo on Thursday, Hesham Zazou says he does not worry that visiting Iranians would try to export a revolution to Egypt.

Preparations are under way to allow Iranian tourists visit at a time when the Egyptian government is looking to boost the tourism business back to pre-revolution levels when 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010.

Continued unrest since the 2011 uprising that forced longtime authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak to step down, have scared away tourists and investment.

Last year, the number of tourists climbed to more than 10 million, but most tourists go to beach resorts along the Red Sea.

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