Arab Revolution 2014 ,the Arab Revolution , revolution in arab, Breaking News,World News

The United States declares a state of emergency after Hurricane Sandy hit nuclear plant

2012-10-30T01:16:00.001-07:00

The United States declares a state of emergency after Hurricane Sandy hit nuclear plant

gaddafi killed video ,gaddafi killed pictures

2011-10-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

gaddafi killed video ,gaddafi killed pictures

Egypt withdraws ambassador from Israel

2011-08-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Egypt withdraws ambassador from Israel

Cabinet demands compensation and investigation into cross-border shooting incident that left five Egyptian police dead.

The Egyptian government has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel for consultation in protest over a cross-border shooting incident on Thursday that left five Egyptian security personnel dead.
The cabinet has also summoned the Israeli ambassador in Cairo to provide answers on how an Israeli helicopter apparently accidentally killed Egyptian border police while chasing armed men whom Israel suspected of being connected to an attack near the port city of Eilat earlier that day.
The increased diplomatic pressure on Egypt's neighbour came after Prime Minister Essam Sharaf led the cabinet in a special meeting on Friday and hundreds of protesters attacked barriers outside Israeli embassy in Cairo through the night.
Shalom Cohen, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, landed in Cairo on Saturday to help smooth the frayed relations between the two countries.
Sharaf's cabinet has demanded an apology from Israel and compensation for the slain policemen.
By late Saturday afternoon, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak had expressed "regret" over the deaths.
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, said earlier it was not yet clear how the Egyptians died.
"No [Israeli] soldier intentionally aims any weapons at Egyptian police or soldiers," Gilad said, adding that "perhaps terrorists fired at them, or something else occurred".
Barak ordered a military investigation and a joint inquiry with the Egyptian army to clarify the circumstances of Friday's incident.
Protesters tear down barriers
Demonstrators arrived at the Israeli embassy in southwest Cairo on Friday afternoon and stayed into Saturday morning, burning Israeli flags and demanding that Israel's ambassador be expelled.
They called on the Egyptian military do more to protect its border in the Sinai Peninsula.
Protesters tore down metal and concrete barriers surrounding the embassy and stomped on them, Al Jazeera correspondent Rawya Rageh reported from the scene.

"People are still gathered outside the embassy and they are making quite a lot of noise," she said.
"The protesters are insisting on making their voices heard and one of the protesters told me that they have no intention of leaving until the Israeli flag, perched on top of the 20th floor of the apartment building is brought down.

"Whether the deaths occurred as a result of direct gun fire or air raids still remains unclear and this is one the main contentious issues and one of the main reasons for the anger we were sensing outside the Israeli embassy … there is a lack of transparency regarding what exactly happened.
"We have not seen the army trying to forcefully remove protesters from the embassy, an indication perhaps that the military this time is really realising how strong the sentiment is on the street and how big the issue is for Egyptians, and that it has to thread carefully this time around."
'Urgent probe'
The killings came after four separate attacks in southern Israel on Thursday.
In the first attack, men with grenades, machine guns and a suicide vest struck a bus traveling between Beersheva and Eilat, a port city on the Egyptian border. Later, at least one bomb struck an Israeli army patrol along the border with Egypt, and more armed men fired an anti-tank missile at a civilian car.
Finally, during an evening press conference regarding the earlier events, Israeli counter-terrorism forces exchanged fire with more armed men north of Eilat.
Six civilians, one army soldier and one member of the counter-terrorism unit were killed. Israeli forces killed seven "terrorists" said to be involved in the attacks, the army said.
An Israeli helicopter pursuing armed men back into the Sinai Peninsula apparently accidentally shot and killed three Egyptian security personnel and fatally wounded two others later that night.
Israeli officials alleged that the attackers had come from Gaza and crossed into Israel after moving through the Sinai.
The killings have sparked anger among the Egyptian public, especially after Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said the attacks reflected "the weakening of Egypt's hold in the Sinai and the broadening of activities by terror elements".
Khaled Fouda, the Sinai governor, refuted Barak's statements saying that Egypt has "increased security patrolling and checkpoints in Sinai".
Sami Enan, the Egyptian military chief of staff, visited Sinai on Friday to look into the deaths and speak to troops.
Amr Moussa, a front-runner for Egypt's upcoming presidential

elections who stepped down earlier this year as Arab League chief, urged a strong reaction.
"The blood of these conscripts is not cheap. All parties, including Israel, have to be warned against harming Egyptian soldiers," he said.
"Israel and any other (country) must understand that the day our sons get killed without a strong and an appropriate response, is gone and will not come back," Moussa wrote on Twitter.
"The blood of our martyrs which was spilled while carrying out their duties, will not be shed in vain."
Saad al-Katatni, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said in a statement published on the website for theShorouk newspaper that "the Zionists must realise that Egyptian blood now has a price".
Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former Brotherhood member who is running for president, said that Egypt should expel the Israeli ambassador and halt gas supplies to Israel.
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979 which limits the number of military troops Egypt can station in the Sinai Peninsula, but protesters have called to revise the agreement after a popular revolution ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February.
The military, which took power after Mubarak's overthrow, has said it would honour the treaty.

Begin the process of liberalization of Tripoli,Libyan rebels 'take control' of central Brega

2011-08-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

Libyan rebels 'take control' of central Brega

Rebels claim centre of the eastern oil town, amid conflicting reports as to whether they control its oil facilities.

Opposition fighters have also taken control of an oil refinery in the port city of Az Zawiyah [Reuters]

Libyan rebels have reportedly taken control of the centre of the oil-rich eastern town of Brega, located east of Tripoli.
"It was in the early hours of Saturday morning that opposition forces were able to take the centre of Brega," Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reported from Benghazi.
"They were holed up in residential districts outside the town for a couple days. Very early on Saturday morning they moved in."
Questions remained about their control of the oil facilities there, she said.
"We are getting conflicted reports, though, about whether they have been able to get control of the oil and gas facility in Brega," she said.
"Initial reports from military commanders both here in Benghazi, and the frontlines, said yes, the rebels had taken that facility.
"But we are also hearing conflicted rumours that in fact a couple of vehicles went out, found the oil depot apparently deserted, and became suspicious, fearing possible booby traps and ambushes."

Clashes at Tunisia-Libyan border

Meanwhile on Saturday, Tunisian security forces said armed forces fought through the night against a group of armed Libyans who had infiltrated into Tunisia.

One security source said the group were driving vehicles with weapons and had been intercepted in the desert on Friday night. The fighting, which was continuing on Saturday, had caused several casualties.

A military source confirmed that the armed men were Libyans. He did not say whether they were supporters of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or rebels fighting to topple him.

The military source said a Tunisian military helicopter had crashed on Saturday morning in the border area, killing the pilot and co-pilot. He did not say whether the crash, blamed on a mechanical fault, was linked to fighting with the infiltrators.

The Tunisian army has reinforced its presence and intensified its operations in the border area in recent days.

Libya's rebels have advanced this week, cutting off Gaddafi's forces near the Tunisian border from their supply lines to Gaddafi's capital Tripoli.

Cities fall

The latest advance by the rebel forces come as Libyan opposition wrested control of the strategic cities of Az Zawiyah, Zlitan and as they pushed closer to the stronghold of Gaddafi.

"Az Zawiyah is free," rebels said on Friday as they took up positions in its hospital hours after securing the centre of the town.

Fighting continued late on Friday as Gaddafi forces launched a fierce counterattack along the coastal highway 50km west of Tripoli.
Sustained blasts from rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and anti-aircraft guns were heard from the direction of city's central square as a black column of smoke rose into the evening sky, the Reuters news agency said.
Reuters said that opposition fighters in city's central square exchanged heavy fire with Gaddafi forces occupying a floor of the city's main hospital nearby before driving them out.
This comes a day after rebels took complete control of Az Zawiyah's key oil refinery.
'Heavy losses'
To the east, rebels fought bloody street battles in the city of Zlitan, suffering heavy casualties, Reuters said.

The assault on Zlitan, roughly 150km east of the capital, began around 7:30am local time [0530GMT], and "at 1:00pm local time our information indicates that the rebel troops entered the city centre", the information centre for Misrata military council said in a statement on Friday.
At least 26 rebels are reported to have been killed in the fighting for Zlitan, as forces loyal to Gaddafi used tanks and heavy weapons to repel the attack. Another 150 opposition fighters were reported injured.

The rebels said between 40 and 50 of Gaddafi's forces were also killed in the fighting.

Government troops have been fighting rebels in and around Zlitan for months. The town is a major obstacle in the path from the nearby city of Misrata trying to make their way to Tripoli.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, who visited Zlitan, confirmed the rebel victory there and said there were scenes of jubilation.
"The rebel fighters took heavy losses, they came under fire from artillery and rockets but they moved forward," Simmons said.
"After fighters from Misrata moved in, opposition fighters within Zlitan rose and took on, in small groupings, the Gaddafi forces.
"The Gaddafi troops pulled out leaving ammunition and a lot of equipment behind."
Foreigners to be evacuated
As fighting intensified, the International Organisation for Migration announced plans to start evacuating "large numbers'' of Egyptians and other foreigners, including some journalists, from Tripoli in coming days.

The capture of Zlitan, 150km east of the capital Tripoli, is a major boost for rebel fighters

NATO issued a statement that said its air strikes had destroyed a command centre, two armed vehicles and five tanks near Zlitan.
Simmons said for more than two months the [rebels] had been stuck on the outskirts of Zlitan.

"It was a major block because there wasn't overall support by the people of Zlitan initially," he said.
"Those civilians who may have been Gaddafi supporters were treated well by the opposition.
"It's a strategic town, [if] they want to advance on to Tripoli. Now they could do it very quickly. They have a clear run on this coastal road of almost 60km."
The rebels claimed on Thursday they had captured the 120,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Az Zawiyah, a potential turning point in the six-month war.
Opposition forces also claimed to be in control of the town of Surman, 60km west of Tripoli, and Gharyan, 50km to the south.

Significance of Az Zawiyah
Shashank Joshi, of the Royal United Service Institute in London, told Al Jazeera the rebels have learned from past mistakes to move forward methodically.
"They can't just rush ahead and take ground and then forced to move back," he said.
"They have observed that lesson and I think very effectively, and this is why they are still fighting to clear Az Zawiyah.
"They have taken a number of days to fight their way through to take the refinery and they have worked very hard for that, which is why they are very likely, this time around unlike on previous occasions, to actually hold the ground they had taken.
"The significance of Az Zawiyah cannot be seen in isolation, we have to see it in combination of what’s going on in Gharyan, south of Tripoli and Zlitan to the east.
"And all of these locations can be consolidated and their grip solidified, and we are going to see Tripoli being put in a state of siege."
NATO has stepped up bombings in Tripoli in recent days, while rebels have been seeking to sever supply lines from Tunisia to the west and to Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte in the east in a move to cut off the capital, prompt defections and spark an uprising inside Gaddafi's stronghold.

Al Jazeera journalist Samer Allawi held in Israeli prison ,Libya News

2011-08-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

Al Jazeera journalist held in Israeli prison

Samer Allawi, network's Kabul bureau chief, held in prison since August 10 after being detained in occupied West Bank.

Allawi was arrested when he was crossing the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank

Samer Allawi, Al Jazeera Arabic's Kabul bureau chief, has been brought before an Israeli military court, almost a week after he was arrested by Israeli officials when he tried to cross the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank.

Israeli authorities extended his detention by seven days and charged him with being a member of Hamas on Tuesday.

Allawi was arrested on August 10 at the end of a three-week holiday in his home town of Sabastia near Nablus.
The Israeli authorities originally informed Allawi's family that he would be held for four days for questioning, saying that it was a "security-related arrest".

Last Thursday, the authorities told Al Jazeera that Allawi's detention would be extended.
He is currently in Israeli state custody in a prison camp at Petah Tikva detention centre.

Salim Waqim, Allawi's lawyer, told Al Jazeera that his client was interrogated about his work and management of Al Jazeera's Kabul bureau, his personal financial information, and his relationships with colleagues, friends, family and relatives.

Israeli authorities took his computer login information and during his interrogation Allawi was accused of being a member of Hamas and having contact with its military leadership, Waqim said.

Majed Khadr, output manager at Al Jazeera said that Allawi told his lawyer that he would be charged with transferring money and orders from Afghanistan to the occupied West Bank if he refused to act as an informant.
However, Allawi continued to refuse to cooporate with the authorities interrogating him.

Local human rights and press freedom groups have released statements condemning Allawi's arrest.
Mohamed Abdel Dayam, the Middle East and North Africa programme co-ordinator at the New York-based CPJ said: "Israel must clarify why it continues to hold Samer Allawi.

"Our concern for Allawi's well-being and his legal rights is amplified with every passing day he is held without due process."

Yemeni leader vows to return home soon,Libya News

2011-08-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Yemeni leader vows to return home soon,Libya News

Ali Abdullah Saleh says he will return soon during broadcast from Saudi Arabia where he is recovering from attack.

Steet protests calling for the ousting of President Ali Abdullah Saleh have continued for months in Yemen [Reuters]

Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president recovering in Saudi Arabia from wounds sustained in an attack on his palace in June, has vowed to return home soon.

Saleh, who appeared in good shape compared with previous appearances, spoke on Tuesday in a televised address.
The president renewed his calls for early presidential elections, telling supporters: "See you soon in the capital Sanaa."

He also blasted the opposition, saying they were made up of the "leftovers of Marxists, the Taliban and the imamate," Yemen's ousted monarchist rulers.

Parliament's Common Forum opposition is due to meet on Wednesday to elect an umbrella "national council" aimed at taking over power in the absence of the president.

The United States and Saleh's Saudi hosts have pressured him to remain in Saudi Arabia, fearing his return to Yemen could spark a civil war.

Saleh said he was willing to transfer power to his vice-president if the opposition pulls armed tribal fighters from the streets and the opposition ends its street rallies, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Fierce clashes

Saleh's address came as fierce clashes overnight between tribesmen and Yemen troops left 23 tribesmen dead, according to a tribal source.

"Twenty-three of our fighters were killed in fierce overnight clashes with the Republican Guard," said the source from the Bakil tribe, adding that the worst fighting was concentrated in the area of Sheheb Arhab.

The trouble began last week after the elite Republican Guard, which is led by Saleh's son, Ahmed, installed a checkpoint that allegedly harassed residents of the area that is considered the northeastern gate to Sanaa.

The source said troops chased tribesmen to their villages after few skirmishes, adding that the Republican Guard and the army had recently deployed reinforcements in Arhab, which lies 40km outside Sanaa.

Tribal sources claimed that the army was planning a war against the Bakil tribe, Yemen's largest confederation of smaller tribes.

But officials have claimed that gunmen belonging to the opposition were plotting to take control of a nearby army base and the Sanaa airport.

Dozens were allegedly killed in clashes that erupted in late July between armed tribesmen and the army at the nearby Samaa camp, which the defence ministry claimed gunmen wanted to control in order to seize the international airport.

Deputy information minister Abdo al-Janadi accused Mansur al-Hanaq, a former member of the influential opposition Islamist Al-Islah (Reform) party, of being behind the attack.

A military official said "these armed criminal elements aimed to control the Samaa camp in an attempt to take over Sanaa International airport as part of their plan to overthrow the constitutional legitimacy and seize power by force," according to defence ministry website 26sep.net.

The Republican Guard has been fighting tribes in various regions of Yemen as several of the heavily armed tribesmen sided with protesters demanding the ousting of Saleh since January.

Saleh, in power since 1978, has come under intense pressure from street protesters demanding his resignation and has remained in Saudi Arabia for nearly two months after his palace was attacked.

Libyan rebels tighten grip around Tripoli,Libya News

2011-08-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

Libyan rebels tighten grip around Tripoli,Libya News

Libyan rebels tighten grip around Tripoli

Opposition says its forces have reached Al-Heisha and captured two towns on supply roads in campaign to isolate capital.

Libyan opposition forces have pushed further to isolate Tripoli, moving toward a western town that links the capital and Sirte -- Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's hometown and a stronghold for his military.
"The scouting teams of the revolutionaries reached the outskirts of Al-Heisha after expelling Gaddafi forces," the rebel military command said in a statement early on Wednesday.
It was just the latest in a series of battlefield operations to isolate the capital.Al-Heisha lies roughly 70km south of Misurata and 250km from Tripoli, near two key crossroads that link loyalist-held territory in the west with that in the oil-rich Sirte basin.
In addition to gaining a foothold in Az-Zawiyah, rebels said they had taken two towns near Tripoli on key supply roads Gharyan, 80 km south of the capital and Surman, less than 16 km west of Az-Zawiyah.

"Gharyan is fully in the hands of the revolutionaries," a rebel spokesman, Abdulrahman, said by telephone. "Gaddafi has been isolated. He has been cut off from the outside world."

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim acknowledged in remarks broadcast on state television that rebel fighters were in Gharyan. "There are still armed gangs inside the city. We are able to drive them out," he said.
But while rebels controlled most of Az-Zawiyah, Gaddafi forces shelled the city, wounding several civilians.
Funerals were held for 23 others who rebels said were killed the previous day.

Nuri el-Bouaisi, an oil production engineer in the city, said rebels had cut off pipelines that transport gasoline and diesel fuel to Tripoli.
"We shut down all four pipelines to Tripoli," El-Bouaisi said, whose claim could not be verified.

NTC-Gaddafi talks denied

Meanwhile, a UN envoy has arrived in neighbouring Tunisia, where sources say rebels and representatives of the government are in talks on the island resort of Djerba.
The envoy, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, told the Reuters news agency he would meet "Libyan personalities residing in Tunisia" to discuss the conflict.

Talks could signal the endgame of a battle that has drawn in the NATO alliance and emerged as one of the deadliest confrontations in the wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world.

But spokesman Farhan Haq said the United Nations had "no concrete information" on any talks in Tunisia and that its Libya envoy, al-Khatib, was not taking part in any such talks.
The reports of rebel-government talks also sparked a swift denial from Gaddafi's government. His spokesman dismissed reports of negotiations about the Libyan leader's future as part of a "media war" against him."The leader is here in Libya, fighting for the freedom of our nation. He will not leave Libya," spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said.

Abdul Hafez Ghoga, vice chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), also denied that such talks were under way.

Gaddafi forces on Sunday fired a scud missile near Brega on the main frontline in the east of the country; the first use of the weapon since the uprising against his rule began six months ago, according to a US military official said.
Although no one was hurt in the attack and the missiles are considered unreliable weapons, Richard Weitz, director of the Centre for Political and Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, told Al Jazeera the use of scuds could signal Gaddafi's determination to fight.

Syrian troops 'withdraw' from key cities

2011-08-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Syrian troops 'withdraw' from key cities

State media say security operations ended in Deir ez-Zor and areas of Latakia after assaults said to have killed dozens.

Syrian military and security forces are withdrawing from the city of Deir ez-Zor and key areas in Latakia, according to Syrian state media, following operations which anti-government activists say have left dozens dead.

Convoys of army vehicles were seen leaving Deir ez-Zor after the military cleared the area of "armed terrorist gangs," SANA, the state-run news agency, reported.

Journalists on a government-organised trip to the city on Tuesday reported armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles were leaving, and footage showed pictures of crowds chanting and cheering as the soldiers left.

But only hours later, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that one person was killed when security forces opened fired to disperse an anti-government protest in the city when "hundreds of people" marched in Takaya street.

Residents said tanks were still present at the outskirts of Deir ez-Zor and that troops were raiding houses looking for wanted dissidents. Activists say at least 32 people have died since troops seized control of the city last Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Syria's interior ministry said security forces had completed their operation in the al-Ramel al-Janoubi neighbourhood of the coastal city of Latakia, which had been subjected to a four-day assault that activists say has left at least 36 people dead.

Brigadier General Mohammad Hassan al-Ali said al-Ramel al-Janoubi, which houses a Palestinian refugee camp, "is recovering and the citizens are practicing their normal life that was spoiled by the acts of the terrorist groups," SANA reported.

Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify reports from Syria because of media restrictions.

Heavy fire

A resident of the al-Ramel al-Janoubi neighbourhood, who called himself Ismail, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that gunboats and tanks had been used in the assault on Latakia. He said snipers were stationed around the city, shooting at anyone who ventured into the streets.

Regional powers have turned up the pressure on Assad

"What's happening is really severe ... The moment they see anything moving they will shoot it," he said.

Troops raided and destroyed houses in several neighbourhoods while gunfire could be heard, residents said.

"The heavy machine gun fire and bullets were intense in areas of Latakia, Ramel, Masbah al-Shaab and Ain Tamra for more than three hours," said the UK-based SOHR.

The group said soldiers raided the Sqanturi area and made dozens of arrests.

The UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees in Latakia said that thousands of refugees had fled their camp which reportedly came under fire after President Bashar al-Assad's forces began shelling the city.

"A forgotten population has become a disappeared population because we have no idea of the whereabouts of as many as 10,000 refugees who fled Latakia over the last few days,'' said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.

Anti-government protesters meanwhile continued to take to the streets on Tuesday night - including in Homs, Albu Kamal near the Iraqi border, Binnish in the north and in some Damascus suburbs - despite reports of deaths and arrests as the military cracked down on demonstrators.

Violence condemned

A senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation condemned the violence used against Palestinian refugees in Latakia.

"The shelling is taking place using gunships and tanks on houses built from tin, on people who have no place to run to or even a shelter to hide in. This is a crime against humanity." Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO secretary general, told the Reuters news agency.

British Foreign Minister, William Hague, meanwhile said in a statement: "The regime's violence continues despite widespread condemnation by the international community. The calls for the violence to stop, including from Syria's neighbours, have not been heeded."

Western diplomats said the UN's top human rights body is likely to hold an urgent meeting next week to discuss the escalating crackdown in Syria, according to the AP news agency.

The crackdown in Syria has escalated since the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan, when nightly prayers became the occasion for more protests against Assad and 41 years of Baathist rule.

Syria's key regional ally Iran warned on Tuesday that any Western intervention in the "internal affairs" of Damascus would stoke "public hatred" in the region.

Egyptians voice frustrations in Tahrir Square

2011-07-17T00:46:00.001-07:00

Egyptians voice frustrations in Tahrir Square

Protesters gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square, venting anger at the government for its lack of speedy political reform.

Egyptians have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square as anger and frustration mounts due to the lack of significant changes in the country since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.
The rally, which followed Friday prayers in the capital, comes after the government fired more than 600 senior police officers, pushed parliamentary elections to the end of the year and imposed limits on the committee set to create a new constitution.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Tahrir Square on Friday, said the crowds were growing in number.
"As the sun went down and the tempratures became manageable, more and more people filled up the square. what they lacked in terms of numbers at the beginning of the day, they have certainly made up for with energy at the end of the day," she said

Protesters are calling for a week-long sit-in that will begin on Friday. Among their key demands are an end to the military trials of civilians and the open and speedy trials of former regime officials.
Although the government has taken some measures to instill change, many Egyptians feel they have not gone far enough, she said.

"The main demand that people have here ... is that they want to see all those who have been accused of killing protesters during the revolution - whether they are former regime officials, lower ranking police officers, or even higher ranking police officers - they want to see them all on trial immediately."
"They don't know why it's taking so many months to get to this point. They feel still that the only way to make their voices heard is to come to Tahrir Square."

Demanding change
Tahrir Square in central Cairo was the epicentre of Egypt's 18-day anti-government uprising, which culminated in Mubarak's eventual resignation in February.
Hundreds of people camped out in the square on Thursday to press Egypt's military rulers to punish corruption and brutality under Mubarak's regime.
"As the days go past and that demand is not met, people are calling louder and louder for the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his entire cabinet," our correspondent said.
Tadros said Sharaf had promised a cabinet reshuffle within the next few days, where all former members of the ruling regime would be moved out of their positions.
"But that seems to be too little too late for these people," she added. Protesters are expecting big crowds to attend, but not all factions within Egyptian society will be present at the demonstration.
"There are some groups that are not taking part in the protests today, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi groups," Tadros said.

'Battle of the camel' assault
On Thursday, a fact-finding judicial committee ruled that Safwat al-Sharif - a former speaker of Egypt's upper house of parliament - masterminded the "battle of the camel" assault on February 2 that left left several protesters dead.
On the day, government loyalists rode horses and camels through the protest camp in Tahrir Square, in what was one of the bloodiest events in the uprising.
The investigation concluded that Sharif and other parliamentarians had hired thugs to attack crowds and that he urged them to "kill the protesters if they had to", the state-run MENA news agency reported.
Egyptian prosecutors have also been investigating corruption allegations made against former officials and
businessmen connected with his 30 years in power.
Also on Thursday, authorities detained former prime minister Atef Obeid for 15 days to investigate
allegations he illegally sold land well below market value, judicial sources said.
Mubarak, who is at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is due to go on trial on August 3 over the deaths of more than 840 protesters.

Deadly blasts target Iraqi cities

2011-07-17T00:43:00.003-07:00

Deadly blasts target Iraqi cities

Explosion during Shia pilgrimage in Karbala kills three, while another blast wounds six in Baghdad.

Saturday's attack is Karbala's third in the last two days, amid annual Shia pilgrimage to the holy city

Several bombs have gone off in Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding several.
A parked car bomb targeting a night club killed two people and wounded nine others in central Baghdad on Saturday, police and hospital sources quoted by the Reuters news agency said.

A sticky bomb attached to a policeman's car went off near a checkpoint killing at least three people and wounding 15 others, mainly policemen, in eastern Kerbala, 80km south west of Baghdad, police and provincial council officials said.

Sources at the Karbala general hospital who spoke to Al Jazeera confirmed one death.

An annual pilgrimage has been going on Kerbala.

In other bombing news, armed men in a speeding car using weapons equipped with silencers shot at a police checkpoint and wounded three people, including two policemen, in Baghdad's southeastern Zaafaraniya district, an interior ministry source said.

Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Baghdad, said the attack in the capital was aimed at the general public without specific targets.
Saturday's blast in Karbala was the third attack in the past two days on the holy city, as Shia pilgrims headed to visit the Imam al-Hussein shrine there to commemorate the birth of Imam Mohammed al-Mahdi.
The anniversary has become one of the annual pilgrimages that show strength for Iraq's majority Shia since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Saddam Hussein banned Shia religious rites during his rule. Since his toppling, Sunni Islamists have frequently targeted Shias.
Unlike in previous years, the Shia pilgrimages in recent months have largely gone by without incident. But this year's pilgrimage in Karbala has been the target of repeated attacks.
On Friday, a car bomb exploded in a garage near a hospital west of Karbala, killing four people and wounding 20, police said.
Separately, a bomb placed under a parked car killed two people and wounded four others in northern Karbala on Friday, according to an army commander. A hospital source said the blast killed three people and wounded 23 others.
Last year, car bombs killed and wounded scores of people during the Imam Mahdi observance.

Bahraini woman dies during protest

2011-07-17T00:43:00.001-07:00

Bahraini woman dies 'during protest'

Rights group says her death occurred due to tear gas fired by police on Friday, as national dialogue falters.

Anti-government protesters shout slogans during a gathering held by the opposition Wefaq party on Friday [Reuters]

A Bahraini rights activist has said a woman died during clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said on Saturday that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police during a demonstration on Friday near her home in Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry.
Her death brings to 33 the number of those who have died since February when Bahrain's Shia majority started protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled island kingdom.
Bahrain's interior ministry denied al-Jumaa's death was linked to a police operation and said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late on Friday that the woman died of natural causes.
Friday protests
On Friday, tens of thousands of people took part in a gathering of Bahrain's main Shia opposition bloc, which is considering withdrawing from the ongoing national dialogue.
The Wefaq party rally in the Bilad al-Qadim area of Manama was attended by "around 50,000 people", Khalil al-Marzouk, a resigned member of parliament and head of its delegation at the national dialogue, told the AFP news agency.
In a speech, Wefaq chief Sheikh Ali Salman reiterated the demand for "radical reform centring on a government elected by the people and a parliament with full legislative powers".
He said the movement was not calling for the fall of Bahrain, which is ruled by the Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa dynasty.
Since the 2 July debut of the national dialogue, which is aimed at forwarding political reforms after Shia-led protests were crushed in a bloody crackdown in March, Wefaq has called for a government led by the parliamentary majority.
The group won 18 of 40 seats in the most recent parliamentary elections, but its MPs resigned to protest against violence against demonstrators.
The Wefaq delegation at the national dialogue has said it may withdraw from the talks, and is to announce its decision on Sunday.
The bloc decided only at the last minute to participate in the dialogue, encouraged by the international community, including the US, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.

Yemen protesters form council to run country

2011-07-17T00:42:00.001-07:00

Yemen protesters form council to run country

Coalition of anti-government protesters says presidential council to manage affairs when Saleh's government is toppled.

Protesters have been holding rallies since January calling for Saleh, Yemen's long-time president, to quit office [AFP]

A coalition of protest groups in Yemen has announced the formation of a transitional presidential council it says will prepare to run the country when President Ali Abdullah Saleh is fully and finally toppled.

The council "is charged with leading the country during a transition period not to exceed nine months and with forming a government of technocrats," Tawakul Karman, one of the leaders of the protest movement against Saleh, said on Saturday.
Saleh, who has been in power since 1978, was wounded in a bomb attack on his palace in Sanaa on June 3, and was admitted to hospital in Saudi Arabia the following day.

Protesters have since January been calling for him to quit office.
The council will also announce a 501-member "national assembly" that will draft a new constitution, and seeks to "protect the unity of the country before it completely collapses", Karman said.

For more on Yemen, visit our Spotlight page

The council consists of 17 Yemeni figures of different political affiliation from both inside Yemen and abroad.

They include Ali Nasser Mohammed, the ex-president of formerly independent South Yemen; a former prime minister, Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas; and Abdullah al-Hakimi, an exiled long-time opponent of Saleh.

The new body highlights the gap between Yemen's protesters and Yemen's official opposition parties, who protesters say were late in joining the anti-government rallies inspired by those in Tunisia and Egypt.

Many protesters have criticised the parties for seeking to negotiate Saleh's exit instead of trying to bring down his entire government.
Abdu al-Janadi, a spokesman for Saleh's government who is also Yemen's deputy information minister, said the move "pours gas on the fire".

He said that Saleh is "the legal, democratically elected president, and an alternative will only come though elections, not through an illegal coup".

Opposition party officials declined to comment.
Al-Janadi also said that Saleh, who is currently receiving treatment for blast wounds, will return home "soon" from Saudi Arabia.
"The president is in good health. He will return to Yemen soon, but is awaiting the decision of his doctors," he said without specifying a date.

Deadly violence continues in Syria,Syria Revolution

2011-07-17T00:40:00.001-07:00

Deadly violence continues in Syria

Armed men under the watch of Syrian security forces fire on protesters in central city of Homs, witnesses say.

Armed men under the watch of Syrian security forces looted shops and fired on crowds in the central city of Homs, killing at least one person and wounding many others, a witnesses have said.
The fresh violence on Saturday night follows what is reported to have been one of the deadliest crackdowns on protesters since the anti-government uprisings began in Syria four months ago.
"Armed thugs are randomly shooting at locals in various districts of Homs. One is reported killed and more than 20 others are injured," Majed, a resident from Homs, told Al Jazeera.

"The thugs are looting local shops under the watch of Syrian security forces. Random shooting is still going on at the moment."

Police also killed four people in the south near the Jordanian border, the Reuters news agency said, quoting witnesses and activists.

Three protesters were shot dead in the northern city of Idlib, they said.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets, shouting "We want freedom" while carrying caskets of of some of the protesters killed during protest rallies on Friday.

Activists said at least 32 people were killed when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested against the government of Bashar al-Assad, the president, following Friday prayers.

About 23 people were killed in Damascus, which until now had seen only scattered protests, and its suburbs - the highest death toll for the city so far, Mohammad Abdullah, a spokesman for the Local Co-ordination Committee (LCC), said on Saturday.
The LCC tracks anti-government demonstrations in the country.

Civil disobedience

Exiled Syrian dissidents met in Turkey on Saturday to urge their countrymen to launch a campaign of civil disobedience to try to force Assad from power.
At least 400 members of the opposition, comprising conservative Islamists and liberals, attended the so-called National Salvation Congress in Istanbul on Saturday to try to unite behind the goal of ending 41 years of Assad family rule.
"We want to raise the intensity of the peaceful confrontation by civil disobedience and to choke the regime
economically and paralyse the state with the least damage," Wael al Hafez, an opposition figure, told the Istanbul gathering.

Reports from the conference suggest the different factions have struggled to agree on whether to form a shadow government.

"We will build our council here in Istanbul with some branches to help the people's movement in the streets by money for example. And by meeting responsible people in Turkey to put pressure on the regime to stop attacking the people demonstrating on the streets," Haytham Al Maleh, a senior opposition leader, told Al Jazeera from Istanbul.
Activists in Damascus also took part in Saturday's meeting by telephone. Organisers had planned to hold a conference in Damascus in tandem with the Turkey meeting, but it was cancelled after Friday's bloodshed.
Addressing the conference by phone from the capital, Mashaal Tammo, an opposition figure, said Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule and called on him to step down.
In an emotional speech, he said the "the existence of the regime was no longer justified" and called for a peaceful transition to a civil, pluralistic and democratic state.

'Brutality has to stop'
The government crackdown has led to international condemnation and sanctions.
"What's happening in Syria is very uncertain and troubling because many of us had hoped that President Assad would make the reforms that were necessary," Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said in Turkey on Saturday.
"The brutality has to stop, there must be a legitimate sincere effort with the opposition to try to make changes.''
Activists say the government's crackdown on dissent has killed about 1,600 people since March, most of them unarmed protesters.
But the regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists-not true reform-seekers-are behind it.

Gaddafi to face new attacks from rebels

2011-07-14T05:02:00.002-07:00

Gaddafi to face new attacks from rebels

Opposition fighters in eastern Libya poised to launch major offensive in their campaign to topple Libyan leader.

Opposition fighters in rebel-held eastern Libya say they are preparing to launch another major offensive against Muammar Gadaffi's regime.

They plan to push along the coastal front within days, perhaps even hours, with the aim of recapturing Brega, a strategic oil town that has already changed hands many times.
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reports from Ajdabiya.

Lebya News,Key Libyan village back in rebel hands

2011-07-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

Key Libyan village back in rebel hands

Opposition forces dig in to defend recaptured Qwalish, south of the Libyan capital, and plan new offensive in the east.

Libyan rebel fighters are digging in to defend a village south of Tripoli following a see-saw battle for control with government forces that seen control of the village change hands several times.

Rebel fighters took Qwalish, a staging post on the way to the capital about 100km north, a week ago, then lost it to government troops on Wednesday morning. But by nightfall they were back in control.
Scores of fighters manned defensive positions throughout Qwalish on Thursday, supported by trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on the back.

That was in contrast to the light defences in place on Wednesday morning when forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi quickly overran the village.

"We came yesterday and we stayed here and we said we are not moving until the place is secure," said one rebel fighter who was manning a machine gun and gave his name as Tommy.

"This mistake is not going to happen again. We're not going home."

Rebels said forces loyal to Gaddafi, who were now positioned a short distance to the east, had shelled the village overnight but stopped after dawn. A NATO aircraft could be heard overhead.

Scores of Libyan rebels manned defensive positions near the flashpoint hilltop town of Qwalish [AFP]

Control of Qwalish is strategically important because it allows the rebels to come down from their mountain stronghold and move towards the town of Garyan, which controls access to the main highway leading north to Tripoli.

Mohammed al-Bujdidi, a local rebel commander, said there were now many more fighters in Qwalish to stop pro-Gaddafi forces counter-attacking again.

"We do acknowledge that we made mistakes. Some of the Gaddafi forces were able to sneak past us with the support of collaborators," he said.

There were still signs of Wednesday evening's battle for control. Outside the village's eastern edge, the corpses of two young pro-Gaddafi soldiers lay in the road.

Rebels also said they had taken prisoner two government officers who, they said, were mercenaries from Mali.

Tommy, the rebel fighter, said that when the rebels fought their way back into Qwalish they found the bodies of three of their comrades who, he said, had been executed by government forces.

He said one of the dead men had been shot at short range with a large-calibre machine gun. "You could not even recognise his face," he said.
In the east, meanwhile, Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reported from Ajdabiya that rebels were preparing to launch another major offensive.

Fighters will push along the coastal front to take a crucial oil port, the first ambitious offensive in more than two months, our correspondent said.

Karzai bans NATO strikes on Afghan homes Afghan president says foreign forces risk becoming an occupying force if they do not halt air strikes on civilians.

2011-05-31T02:46:00.002-07:00

Karzai bans NATO strikes on Afghan homes

Afghan president says foreign forces risk becoming an occupying force if they do not halt air strikes on civilians.

President Karzai has been under pressure over mounting civilian casualties in NATO raids [EPA]

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has warned that the NATO forces fighting in his country risk becoming an "occupying force" if they do not stop air strikes on Afghan civilian homes as they hunt armed fighters.
On Tuesday, Karzai told reporters in Kabul that "from this moment, air strikes on the houses of people are not allowed.

"The people of Afghanistan so far have endured casualties and have given sacrifices. So these operations should not be used against Afghan people and their houses.
"That's why bombing Afghan houses is banned."

The president's outspoken remarks came days after he issued a "last warning" to foreign forces over civilian casualties following Saturday's killingof 14 civilians, including women and children in an air strike.

Nato apology
NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) later apologised over the incident in the restive southern province of Helmand.

"If after the Afghan government said the aerial bombing of Afghan houses is banned and if it continues, then their presence will change from a war against terrorism to an occupying force," Karzai added.

"And in that case, Afghan history is witness to how the Afghans deal with occupying forces," he said, making apparent reference to the historic defeats of foreign invasions, including that of the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and withdrew 10 years later.

It was the president's strongest statement against the air strikes, which NATO says are a necessary weapon in the war against the Taliban insurgency.

NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government co-ordination and approval. NATO officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Karzai's statement.

Zuma says Gaddafi ready for truce Rebels reject offer as visiting South African president says Libyan leader is ready to stop fighting.

2011-05-31T02:46:00.000-07:00

Zuma says Gaddafi ready for truce

Rebels reject offer as visiting South African president says Libyan leader is ready to stop fighting.

Zuma's office insists his visit to Tripoli was to address political reform and humanitarian concerns [AFP]

Muammar Gaddafi is ready for a truce to stop the fighting in his country, Jacob Zuma, the South African president, has said.

Zuma, who met the Libyan leader at an undisclosed location during a visit to Libya on Monday, also listed conditions set out by the embattled leader that have scuppered previous ceasefire attempts.

He said Gaddafi was willing to accept an African Union (AU) initiative for a ceasefire that would stop all hostilities, including NATO air strikes in support of rebel forces.

But Zuma said Gaddafi insisted that "all Libyans be given a chance to talk among themselves" to determine the country's future. The rebels, however, quickly rejected the offer.

Zuma did not say whether Gaddafi was ready to step down, a key demand of the rebels.
In April, Zuma led a delegation of the African Union to Libya with an AU proposal for a truce. Gaddafi said he would accept the truce, but quickly ignored it and resumed his attacks.

In the rebels' de facto capital of Benghazi, Fathi Baja, the rebel foreign minister, rejected the African Union plan.

"We refuse completely; we don't consider it a political initiative, it is only some stuff that Gaddafi wants to announce to stay in power," he told the Associated Press.
'Nothing new'
Idris Traina, a member of the Libyan opposition based in Los Angeles, told Al Jazeera that there was nothing new in this visit.
"Initially the reports we heard were that president Zuma was there to negotiate an exit strategy for Gaddafi and his family," he said.
"Later we heard repeated talk about the truce, but the Transitional National Council and the Libyan people have rejected these [truce offers] before and are rejecting them now."

Al Jazeera's Cal Perry reports on president Zuma's visit to the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Zuma's visit to Libya came amid reports of mass defections from Gaddafi's army.
Eight senior military officers held a press conference in Italy on Monday, saying they were part of a group of as many as 120 military officials and soldiers who defected from Gaddafi's side in recent days.

The hastily called news conference was organised by the Italian government for the eight officers - five generals, two colonels and a major.

"What is happening to our people has frightened us," said one officer, who identified himself as General Oun Ali Oun.

"There is a lot of killing, genocide ... violence against women. No wise, rational person with the minimum of dignity can do what we saw with our eyes and what he asked us to do."

Another officer, General Salah Giuma Yahmed, said Gaddafi's army was weakening day by day, with the force reduced to 20 per cent of its original capacity.

"Gaddafi's days are numbered," Yahmed said.

Abdurrahman Shalgam, the Libyan UN ambassador, who has also defected from Gaddafi, said all 120 military personnel were outside Libya now, but he did not say where they were.
Nato bombardment
In a statement on the eve of Zuma's visit, his ruling African National Congress in South Africa condemned the NATO bombing of Libya.
"We also join the continent and all peace loving people of the world in condemning the continuing aerial bombardments of Libya by Western forces," it said after a two-day meeting of its executive council.
The development came as Navi Pillay, the UN rights chief, condemned the brutality of the Libyan government's crackdown on protesters, saying the actions were shocking in their disregard for human rights.
"The brutality and magnitude of measures taken by the governments in Libya and now Syria have been particularly shocking in their outright disregard for basic human rights," she said.

Fighting raises Yemen civil war fears ,Truce collapses as forces loyal to president Saleh and opposition tribesmen clash in capital Sanaa.

2011-05-31T02:44:00.000-07:00

Fighting raises Yemen civil war fears

Truce collapses as forces loyal to president Saleh and opposition tribesmen clash in capital Sanaa.

A tenuous truce declared a few days ago to end street fighting in the Yemeni capital between tribal groups and forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh has broken down, sending the country closer to the brink of civil war.
"The ceasefire agreement has ended," a government official said on Tuesday without giving further details.
The announcement came as overnight clashes in Sanaa killed many people and left dozens injured.
Sources told Al Jazeera that the heaviest shelling took place near the interior ministry building and the house of Sadiq al-Ahmar, a powerful tribal leader ranged against President Saleh.

They said forces loyal to Saleh, under pressure from protesters to quit and end his 33-year rule, fired tens of shells and missiles from a mountain near the house of al-Ahmar.
A journalist from Sanaa told Al Jazeera the fighting was the fiercest the capital had seen in a long time.
"People are leaving, several homes were burned and tribal forces took over some government buildings and police stations," the journalist said.

Protesters 'shot dead'
Meanwhile, security forces reportedly shot dead at least two anti-government protesters in Yemen's second-largest city of Taiz on Tuesday, witnesses said.
They said that security forces were attempting to prevent anyone from gathering in the city, firing on those who tried to do so.

Medics confirmed that at least two people had been killed.

Tuesday's deaths came after protesters said security forces smashed a four-month-long sit-in in Taiz on Monday, killing 21 protesters.
According to reports received by the UN, more than 50 protesters have been killed in Taiz since Sunday.
"The UN human rights office has received reports, which remain to be fully verified, that more than 50 people have been killed since Sunday in Taiz by Yemeni Army, Republican Guards and other government-affiliated elements," UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said.

The latest violence follows the death of at least 30 people, reportedly killed by air strikes in the southern city of Zinjibar, which is said to be controlled by fighters linked to al-Qaeda.
The air attack on Monday appeared to be in response to Sunday's takeover of the city by 300 alleged al-Qaeda fighters and an overnight ambush that killed at least six Yemeni soldiers and injured dozens more who were travelling to the southern city.
"Civilians found a military car and an armoured vehicle. They were destroyed, and the bodies of six soldiers were found on the roadside," Ayman Mohamed Nasser, editor-in-chief of Attariq, Aden's main opposition paper, told the Reuters news agency by telephone.

Opposition leaders have accused Saleh of deliberately allowing Zinjibar, near a sea lane where about 3 million barrels of oil pass daily, to fall to al-Qaeda in a bid to show how chaotic Yemen would be without him.
Global powers have also been pressing Saleh to sign a deal brokered by Arab Gulf states under their umbrella organisation, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), to hand over power.

Under the deal, Saleh was to hand over power in 30 days and be granted immunity from prosecution. The opposition signed the deal but Saleh refused to sign it.

Fears over al-Qaeda

The deal was aimed at stemming the growing chaos in Yemen, home to al-Qaeda fighters and neighbour to the world's biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia.
The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of attacks by Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, are worried that chaos is emboldening the group.

Saleh has been losing support as protests continued.
A breakaway military group called for other army units to join them in the fight to bring Saleh down.
Under Saleh, Yemen has moved to the brink of financial collapse, with about 40 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day and a third facing chronic hunger.

At least 320 people have been killed in fighting in Yemen since protests calling for Saleh to end his rule started about four months ago, inspired by the popular uprisings that ended the reign of the long-standing rulers of Tunisia and Egypt.

Are Palestinian children less worthy? Although Palestinian children endure lives of suffering, Obama's love for their Israeli counterparts knows no limit.

2011-05-31T02:40:00.000-07:00

Are Palestinian children less worthy?

Although Palestinian children endure lives of suffering, Obama's love for their Israeli counterparts knows no limit.

During the first and second intifada, more than 700 Palestinian children were killed, and a further 313 children died in the Israeli shelling of Gaza in December 2008-July 2009 [GALLO/GETTY]

What is it about Jewish and Arab children that privileges the first and spurns the second in the speeches of President Barack Obama, let alone in the Western media more generally? Are Jewish children smarter, prettier, whiter? Are they deserving of sympathy and solidarity, denied to Arab children, because they are innocent and unsullied by the guilt of their parents, themselves often referred to as "the children of Israel"? Or, is it that Arab children are dangerous, threatening, guilty, even dark and ugly, a situation that can only lead to Arabopaedophobia - the Western fear of Arab children?

Innocence and childhood are common themes in Western political discourse, official and unofficial. While it is a truism to state that since the end of European colonialism the US and Europe have been, at the official and unofficial levels, friendly to and supportive of the Zionist colonial project and hostile to Palestinians and Arabs in their resistance to Zionism, the expectation would be that a West that insists rhetorically on the "universalism" of its values would show at least a rhetorical commitment to the equality of Arab and Jewish children as victims of the violence visited on the region by Zionist colonialism and the resistance to it. Yet, the only Western sympathy manifest is to Jewish children as symbols of Zionist and Israeli innocence. This Western sympathy is deployed primarily to denounce Arab guilt, including the guilt of Arab children.

Indeed, the only time Arab children received any sympathy at all in the West was a few years ago when Israeli and US propaganda outlets, official and unofficial alike, mounted a major propaganda campaign to save these children from their barbaric Arab and Palestinian parents, who allegedly trained them to commit violent acts, or who unlovingly placed them in the middle of danger, sacrificing them for their violent political goals. It was not Israel who was to blame for killing Palestinian children, but the children's own uncaring and cruel parents who placed them in the path of Israeli Jewish bullets, which left Israeli Jews no choice but to kill them. This of course is an old Israeli casuistry used to justify Israel's carnage of Palestinians. Golda Meir had famously articulated the workings of Israel's Jewish conscience thus: "We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours."

In the official discourse of post-World War II US power, Jewish children have been often invoked to illustrate the innocence of Israel, a tradition carried faithfully by Barack Obama's rhetoric. Refusing to even acknowledge Arab children as victims of Israel, on June 4, 2009, Obama told Arabs in his Cairo speech: "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered." He reiterated this in his May 19, 2011 "winds of change" speech, declaring: "For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them."

A Gazan boy sells vegetables in the rain after the Israeli blockade crushed the economy in the coastal territory [GALLO/GETTY]

Later that week, in his speech to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on May 22, Obama expressed sympathy with the hardship colonising Jews experience while appropriating the lands of the Palestinians: "I saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year old [Jewish] boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket." He averred that the US and Israel, presumably unlike Palestinians or Arabs more generally, "both seek a region where families and their children can live free from the threat of violence".

Endorsing Israel's illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, he asserted: "We also know how difficult that search for security can be, especially for a small nation like Israel in a tough neighbourhood. I've seen it firsthand. When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland." Aside from borrowing anti-Black American white racism with the use of terms like "tough neighbourhood" - a term first borrowed by Binyamin Netanyahu to refer to the Middle East over a decade ago - wherein Arabs are the "violent blacks" of the Middle East and Jews are the "peaceful white folks", Obama's endorsement of the Israeli claim that East Jerusalem is part of the Jewish homeland is the first such official US endorsement of Israel's illegal occupation of the city.

Nonetheless, Obama's attention lay elsewhere, in the fear he expresses of Arab children. He first articulated this fear in his May 19 speech: "The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River." In his speech to AIPAC three days later, Obama reiterated his fear once more, as the first "fact" and threat that Israel, Jews, and the US must face: "Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories."

This is hardly a new fear, as Israelis have annual conferences, and have developed all kinds of political and military strategies, to deal with their fear of Palestinian children, whom Israel's President Shimon Peres calls a "demographic bomb" that he wants to defuse. Golda Meir herself once revealed in the early seventies that she could not sleep worrying about the number of Palestinian children being conceived every night. If children are the future - except that Arab children are a negation of it - then the crux of the argument is simple: Israel can only have a future with more Jewish children and fewer Arab children.

Murdering Arab children
The story of Arab children, and especially Palestinian ones, is not only tragic in the context of Israeli violence, but one that also remains ignored, deliberately marginalised, and purposely suppressed in the US and Western media - and in Western political discourse. When Zionist terrorists began to attack Palestinian civilians in the 1930s and 1940s, Palestinian children fell victims. The most famous of these attacks include the Zionist blowing up of Palestinian cafes with grenades (such as occurred in Jerusalem on March 17, 1937) and placing electrically timed mines in crowded market places (first used against Palestinians in Haifa on July 6, 1938).

While the violence of the 1930s was the first introduction to the Middle East of such horrific terrorist violence, it is in the 1947-48 Zionist invasion of Palestinian villages and towns that Palestinian children were deliberately not spared. In December 1947, one of the first attacks by the Haganah (the pre-Israel Zionist paramilitary army) first attacks - which would become typical in this period - targeted the Palestinian village of Khisas in the Galilee and killed four Palestinian children. This proved to be a small number compared with the subsequent mass murders awaiting the Palestinians.

In the village of Al-Dawayimah, where the Haganah committed a massacre in October 1948, an Israeli army soldier, quoted by Israeli historian Benny Morris, described the scene as such:

The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women, and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead... One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house... and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused... The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.

Palestinian children were murdered along with adults in April 1948 in the Deir Yassin massacre, to name the most well known slaughter of 1948. This would continue not only during Israel's wars against Arabs in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1978, 1982, 1996, 2006, and 2008, when thousands of children fell victim to indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, but also in more outright massacres: in Qibya in 1953 where even the school was not spared Israel's destruction; in Kafr Kassem in 1956 where the Israeli army massacred 46 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel, 23 of whom were children. This trend would continue.

In April 1970, during the War of Attrition with Egypt, Israel bombed an Egyptian elementary school in Bahr al-Baqar. Of the 130 school children in attendance, 46 were killed, and over 50 wounded, many of them maimed for life. The school was completely demolished. The first Israeli massacre at Qana in Lebanon in 1996 spared no child or adult, and the second massacre in the same village in 2006 did the same - adults aside, 16 children were killed that year.

The number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers in the first intifada (1987-1993) was 213, not counting the hundreds of induced miscarriages from tear gas grenades thrown inside closed areas targeting pregnant women, and aside from the number of the injured.

The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada", one third of whom were children under the age of ten years old. In the same period, Palestinian attacks resulted in the death of five Israeli children. In the second intifada (2000-2004), Israeli soldiers killed more than 500 children with at least 10,000 injured, and 2,200 children arrested. The televised murder of the Palestinian child Muhammad al-Durra shook the world - but not Israeli Jews, whose government concocted the most outrageous and criminal of stories to exonerate Israel. In the Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008, 1,400 Palestinians were killed, of whom 313 were children.

This exhibition of atrocity is not simply about regurgitating the history and present of Israel's murder of Arab children for the past six decades and beyond - a history well-known across the Arab world - but to demonstrate how obscene Obama's references to Jewish children are when he insists to Arabs that they must show sympathy with Jewish children, without ever enjoining Jews to show sympathy with the far larger number of Arab children killed by Jews. But Obama himself shows no sympathy with Arab children. Had he attempted to mourn the Arab children who fell and fall victim to Israeli violence at the rate of hundreds, if not thousands, of Arab children to one Jewish child, Arabs might have forgiven him this indiscretion.

Alas, Obama has no place in his heart for Arab children, only for Jewish ones. He even manages to infantilise Israeli Jewish soldiers who kill Palestinians, as nothing short of innocent children whose families miss them. In his AIPAC speech, Obama calls on Hamas "to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years", but not on Israel to release the 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners, who include 300 Palestinian children, languishing in Israel's dungeons for many more years. Perhaps Obama could have at least mentioned the reports of Israeli soldiers' torture of detained Palestinian children issued in late 2010 by Israeli human rights groups. In the case of detained Palestinian sixth graders, in addition to being beaten up and deprived of sleep by Israeli soldiers, two thirteen-year old children testified that "the most awful thing that happened, was when the soldiers went to the bathroom, they peed on us and did not use the toilet. One of them videotaped it." But Obama was not moved by their plight, for they were not Jewish children.

Zionism and Jewish children
Interestingly and unlike Obama, Zionism did not always show similar love towards Jewish children, whom it never flinched from sacrificing for its colonial goals. In the Nazi period, Zionist leaders, for example, protested strongly against granting European Jews refuge in any country other than Palestine. In December 1938, David Ben-Gurion responded to a British offer, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, to take thousands of German Jewish children directly to Britain by saying: "If I knew it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), then I would opt for the second alternative, for we must weigh not only the life of these children but also the history of the people of Israel." In November 1940, the Zionists responded to the British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine, long demanded by the Palestinian people, by blowing up a ship with Jewish civilian passengers in Haifa - killing 242 Jews, including scores of children. For Zionism, Jewish children are as expendable as Palestinian and Arab children, unless they serve its colonial goals. In light of this, it becomes clear that it is not simply the Jewishness or Arabness of children that makes them expendable or not, but their insertion into a political project as figures that can advance its goals or constitute obstacles to them.

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006 [AP]

Israel's recruitment of Jewish children in paramilitary organisations, which began in 1948, continues apace, and is perhaps best exemplified in its Gadna ["Youth Battalions"] programme, where young Jewish boys and girls are prepared early for their future military service in the most militarised state on earth. The most outrageous use of Jewish children, however, would be illustrated when the Israeli army invited them to write messages of hate on the missiles about to be launched against Lebanese children during Israel's July 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Captured by an Associated Press cameraman, the picture of blond Jewish girls near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona writing messages of death to Lebanese children circulated the globe - though it remains unclear if they ever made their way to Obama's desk. It is important to note that Obama might have met these same blond girls when he visited Kiryat Shmona a few months earlier, in January 2006. He recalled later that the town resembled an ordinary suburb in the US, where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children "at joyful play just like my own daughters".

Teaching children to hate
Given this history, not only are Palestinian children guilty of hating Israeli Jews, but also, Obama insists, they have no reason to hate Jews unless their evil elders indoctrinate them to do so. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, in his speech before Congress last week, reiterated Obama's condemnation of Palestinians who allegedly "continue to educate their children to hate". But what about Israeli Jewish children's hatred of Arabs? A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5 per cent of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Palestinian citizens of Israel should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel; 56 per cent believe they should not be eligible for election to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. According to a report in January 2011 in the largest Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, Jewish teachers in Israel stated that anti-Arab racism among Jewish students reached alarming levels, advocating killing Palestinians. The teachers found graffiti written on school walls and even on exam papers stating "Death To Arabs". According to the report, a student at a school in Tel Aviv told his teacher during class that his dream is to become a soldier so he can exterminate all Arabs; several students in his class applauded in support of him. This, in no small amount, is the direct result of the racist Israeli school curricula with which Jewish children are regularly indoctrinated.

In his speech to Congress, Prime Minister Netanyahu correctly diagnosed the situation on the ground. He declared: "Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state." It is the establishment of a Jewish settler colony that the Palestinians must accept to ensure a future for Jewish children and terminate a future for Palestinian children. Indeed it is precisely the refusal of Arabs to adopt Arabopedophobia that is the biggest impediment to peace in the region. Obama hopes that a Palestinian bantustan could limit the threat that Palestinian children constitute to the nightmare that is "the Jewish and democratic state". He recognises that the world can no longer claim to support universalism while endorsing Israel's right to discriminate against non-Jews. In his AIPAC speech, he said as much when he told Israel's lobby that the entire world, including Asia, Latin America, Europe (and he could have added Africa, which he inexplicably excluded) and the Arab World can no longer tolerate Israel's institutionalised racism; that America in fact stands alone with Israel today. Clearly, Obama's love for Jewish children knows no limits. His Arabopedophobic views, however, are not accidental, but are motivated by his great love for the "children of Israel", a love that can only be realised through continued hatred and containment of all Arabs, children and adults alike.

Al Jazeera journalist released from detention

2011-05-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

Al Jazeera journalist released from detention

Dorothy Parvaz, who disappeared on assignment in Syria 19 days ago, was sent back to Doha by Iranian authorities.

Al Jazeera has confirmed the release of its journalist, Dorothy Parvaz, who was detained in Syria upon her arrival in Damascus while on an assignment, and then deported to Iran.
Parvaz landed in Doha, Qatar on May 18 on a flight from Iran.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said: "I'm delighted to let you know that Dorothy Parvaz has been released and is safe and well and back with us in Doha. She has been in contact with her family, and we are with her now to find out more about her ordeal over the last 19 days."
Her fiancé Todd Barker, posted on Facebook: "She is safe in Doha and will be coming to Vancouver BC soon. We can't wait to see her."

Barker, who is planning to marry Parvaz this summer, was with her family when he heard the news.
He thanked US and Canadian officials, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and all of those who had rallied in support of his fiancé.
Barker said he was grateful to Al Jazeera for the network's efforts to obtain Parvaz's release.

"It's been a pleasure working with them, as much as it can be," he said. "They were working like nobodies' business on it and we're just ecstatic."

'Terrifying experience'
Parvaz was detained as soon as she had landed in Damascus on April 29 to cover the unrest sweeping the country. Syrian authorities then deported her to Iran on May 1.

"I was handcuffed repeatedly, blindfolded, taken to a courtyard and just left to hear these men being beaten ... it was an overall terrifying experience"
- Dorothy Parvaz, on her captivity in Syria.

On her return, Parvaz said she had a "terrifying experience" while being held in Syria.

"I was in the Syrian detention centre for three days and what I heard were just savage beatings. I didn't know what these men had done, one agent said that two of them were responsible for murders in or near Deraa.
"I was handcuffed repeatedly, blindfolded, taken to a courtyard and just left to hear these men being beaten.They all sounded very young, they all sounded to be in their late teens or early twenties. So it was an overall terrifying experience," she said.

She, however, was treated well in Iran.
"Actually all told, it was relatively fair. The people there [Iran] treated me with respect. I had a clean room, I had a physical check-up with the doctor as soon as I showed up. All of my questions were answered as much as they could be.

"The women who looked after me at the women’s detention centre were extraordinarily kind, twice a day I was taken out for fresh air. I’m a vegetarian, that diet was adhered to, any medication I needed."
Dorothy is an experienced journalist who joined Al Jazeera in 2010.
She graduated from the University of British Columbia, completed a masters degree in Arizona, and held journalism fellowships at both Harvard and Cambridge. She previously worked as a columnist and feature writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

US imposes sanctions on Syrian president

2011-05-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

US imposes sanctions on Syrian president

US officials say sanctions are to increase pressure on Bashar al-Assad to end his violent crackdown on protesters.

Syrian rights activists say at least 700 civilians have been killed in two months of clashes [Reuters]

The United States is to impose sanctions on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and six senior Syrian officials for human rights abuses over their brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
The White House announced the sanctions on Wednesday, a day before Barack Obama, the US president, was to deliver a major speech on the uprisings throughout the Arab world with prominent mentions of Syria
The sanctions are part of "an effort to increase pressure on the government of Syria to end its violence against its people and begin transitioning to a democratic system," a US official told the AFP news agency on the condition of anonymity.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama said he issued the new sanctions order as a response to the Syrian government's "continuous escalation of violence against the people of Syria".
Obama cited "attacks on protesters, arrests and harassment of protesters and political activists, and repression of democratic change, overseen and executed by numerous elements of the Syrian government".
The sanctions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syrian government officials have in US jurisdiction and make it illegal for Americans to do business with them.

Syrian rights activists say at least 700 civilians have been killed in two months of clashes between goverment forces and protesters seeking an end to his 11-year rule.

Swiss sanctions
The US announcement came as Switzerland announced new sanctions against Syria on Wednesday, saying that it was following the European Union's lead in imposing an embargo on arms and equipment used for internal repression.

"The new edict on measures against Syria includes an embargo on military assets and equipment that could be used for internal repression," the Swiss economic ministry said in a statement.

"It also includes financial sanctions and travel restrictions on 13 people from the Damascus regime," it added.

The ministry said that through the new sanctions, "Switzerland is joining sanctions announced on May 9, 2011 by the European Union against Syria."
EU heavyweight Germany, meanwhile, is pushing for further sanctions against Bashar.
"Our demands are clear. Violence and repression against peaceful demonstrators must be stopped immediately," Guido Westerwelle, Germany's foreign minister, said.

Tighten sanctions
European governments agreed on Tuesday to tighten sanctions against the Syrian leadership, but said they would decide next week about whether to include Assad on the list.

The EU put 13 Syrian officials on its sanctions list in what it described as a move to gradually increase pressure.
Meanwhile, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, said his country would not support any UN resolutions on the use of force against the Syrian government.

"As for a resolution on Syria, I will not support such a resolution even if my friends and acquaintances ask me about it," Medvedev told reporters during a rare news conference on Wednesday, arguing Syria must be allowed to settle its domestic affairs.
He did not specify what he meant, adding that such resolutions were open to interpretation.
Last month, Obama signed an executive order imposing a first round of US sanctions against Syria's intelligence agency and two relatives of Assad's for alleged human rights abuses.

Britain Queen to make first visit to Ireland

2011-05-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Britain Queen to make first visit to Ireland

Britain's Queen set to make groundbreaking visit to Ireland amid London bombing threat.

British police are on alert after a dissident Irish group warned of a bomb attack in London.

The alert came hours ahead of a groundbreaking but sensitive visit to the Republic of Ireland by Britain's Queen - the first by a British monarch.

Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons reports.

Queen visits Ireland after bomb scare

2011-05-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Queen visits Ireland after bomb scare

First visit by a British monarch in a century sparks security concern after three devices found near Dublin.

The queen's visit went ahead despite the bomb scare, the foreign office said [Reuters]

Queen Elizabeth II, the British queen, has arrived Ireland in the first visit by a UK royal in a century, despite a bomb being found on a bus near Dublin, the Irish capital.
The four-day trip is intended to highlight good Anglo-Irish relations following years of animosity and peace in Northern Ireland.

Earlier on Tuesday defence forces said they had carried out a controlled explosion on a "viable" explosive device found on a bus heading for Dublin.

"It was on a bus and by the time our team was called in the bus was evacuated and parked at a bus stop," an army spokesman said.

"The device was made safe in situ," he added.
Andrew Simmons, Al Jazeera's reporter in Dublin, said: "The [first] device was on the outskirts in the commuter belt. It was inside a luggage compartment of a bus, and that bus was headed for the capital."
"[There are] are no claims of responsibility but you can certainly say that it's highly likely that dissident Republican groups are involved in the attempts at disruption of this historic visit."

A controlled explosion was also carried out on a second device, which turned out to be a hoax, the defence forces said.
A third device found in the Summerhill area of Dublin also turned out to be a hoax.

Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, said the queen's visit would not be affected by the incidents, and the British foreign office and Buckingham Palace, the monarch's official residence, said the state visit would still go ahead.

"This is an historic and symbolic visit and it is dealing with the conclusion of the past and a message for the future," Kenny told RTE state radio.

"These things happen when global personalities visit any countries ... and whether it be Ireland or other countries, adequate security arrangements are put in place."

The queen is the first British monarch to visit Ireland since its independence from the UK in 1921. It severed its last ties to the British monachy in 1948, but the north of the island remains part of the United Kingdom.
Queen Elizabeth II's itinerary includes a visit to Croke Park, a Gaelic sports stadium where British troops killed 14 people in 1920 during Ireland's uprising against British rule.

Her arrival also coincides with the 37th anniversary of bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, the single bloodiest day in a three-decade sectarian battle over Northern Ireland.

Thousands of police have shut down key roads in the Irish capital and erected pedestrian barricades for several kilometers, while 1,000 Irish troops are on standby for her visit.
Tuesday's events come a day after British police said they had received a bomb threat for central London from
Irish dissident republicans.

Iranian aid ships turned back from Bahrain

2011-05-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

Iranian aid ships turned back from Bahrain

Two ships carrying Iranian activists return to docks after facing "threats" from warships en route to Bahrain

Pro-democracy protests in February were followed by a crackdown on dissent by Bahraini authorities [REUTERS]

Two ships carrying 120 Iranian activists sailed for Bahrain on Monday in an act of solidarity with the island country's Shia majority population.
The Iranian government ordered the two boats to return, while activists threw into the water letters they were carrying as "moral support" to Bahraini Shia, a journalist for Iran's English-language Press TV reported live aboard one of the vessels.

The ships turned back towards Iran at a halfway point after facing "the emergence of threats" from warships belonging to a coalition of Gulf states which have lent support to Bahrain in its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, the Washington Post reported, citing an announcement on the activists' website.
Iranian authorities did not try to stop the ships' trip, the website said, according to the Washington Post.
Mahdi Eghrarian, an organiser of the trip, earlier told the semi-official Fars news agency that the ships had embarked at the southwestern port of Dayyer.

A third of the activists were women, 10 were children, and nobody on board was armed, Eghrarian said.
The group is carrying 5,000 letters which convey the Iranian people's "moral support", he said, for the Shia of Bahrain.
"We've started moving towards international waters. We will carry on sailing towards Bahrain's borders as far as possible in order to be able to hand over letters and messages of the Iranian nation to the Bahraini nation," Eghrarian said according to Fars.

Last month, Iranian authorities stopped two boats carrying Iranian students from leaving the southern port city of Bushehr for Bahrain in a similar show of solidarity.
Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Gulf, has a majority Shia population but is ruled by a Sunni king, who has cracked down on dissent since pro-democracy protests broke out in February.

Pakistan protests over border strike

2011-05-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

Pakistan protests over border strike

Two security personnel wounded as NATO helicopter opens fire on checkpoint near Afghan-Pakistan frontier.

Pakistan's army has lodged a strong protest and demanded talks with NATO commanders after an allliance helicopter hit a Pakistani checkpoint, injuring two security personnel.

"It [the incursion] happened early morning," a Pakistani intelligence official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told the Reuters news agency.
"The helicopter hit a Pakistani checkpoint on the border in the Datta Khel area."

A Western military official in Kabul, told Reuters that two NATO helicopters supporting a base in eastern Afghanistan had returned fire after being attacked from Pakistan.
Pakistan's military said it had sought a meeting with NATO commanders over the incursion, which came a day after US senator John Kerry met Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, amid tensions in the country's relations since the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this month.

Pakistan has condemned the US for conducting that operation in violation of its national sovereignty.
Tuesday's incident came hours before Yusuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, arrives in China on a visit seen by some as a diplomatic effort to seek closer and more productive ties with another major power.

Taliban stronghold
Many fighters loyal to al-Qaeda, including foreign ones, are based in Datta Khel, a frequent target of US drone strikes. The place is also a stronghold of fighters loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a key Pakistani Taliban commander.
A drone attack in the same place on Monday left seven suspected fighters dead, Pakistani officials said.

A Western military official said Tuesday's operation started before dawn, when a NATO base in Afghanistan came under intermittent direct and indirect fire from the Pakistani side of the border.

Two helicopters flew into the area to provide support, one of which fired across the border after being fired at twice from the Pakistani side, the official said.

In a statement, the Pakistani army said its troops fired on a helicopter after it entered Pakistani airspace in the early hours of the morning. Two of its troops were injured when the helicopter returned fire, it said.

'NATO investigating'

NATO, which confirmed the incident, said it was still trying to determine whether the helicopter crossed into Pakistani airspace, Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian, the NATO spokesman, said.

"We're investigating the incident to determine a flight path by examining GPS waypoints in the helicopter computer, to construct a sequence of events and ultimately determine what led to the exchange of fire," said Dorrian.

He declined to say which coalition country was involved. But most of the helicopters that fly in that part of Afghanistan are American.
Dorrian said NATO would work with the Pakistani government to determine what happened, saying they expect it will reflect the same good co-operation seen in recent military operations along the border.

In recent weeks, NATO and Pakistan have launched co-ordinated offensives against fighters loyal to al-Qaeda on their respective sides of the border.
"This is going to be transparently looked into," Dorrian said.
North Waziristan is the base of the Haqqani network, a group of fighters allied to the Taliban which NATO says is fuelling the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan. US-led drone aircraft have repeatedly targeted the area over the past year.