Hamas bans New Year’s Eve parties in Gaza Strip

GAZA CITY, Palestine: Islamist group Hamas has banned public New Year’s Eve parties in the Gaza Strip because they offend the territory’s “values and religious traditions,” police said Wednesday.

“The Interior Ministry and police department did not give permits to any restaurants, hotels or halls for end-of-year parties” after several venues requested permission, police spokesman Ayman al-Batinji told AFP. He said New Year’s Eve celebrations were “incompatible with our customs, traditions, values and the teachings of our religion.”

Parties had also been curtailed in “solidarity with the families of the martyrs of the Jerusalem intifada,” Batinji said, referring to violence that has swept the city and parts of the occupied West Bank in recent months.

Since Oct. 1, 136 Palestinians and 20 Israelis have died in a wave of attacks and clashes across Israel and the Palestinian territories – including some in Gaza.

The majority of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out attacks, leading some to dub the unrest a third Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising.

In previous years restaurants, hotels and cafes in Gaza were allowed to host closed events to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

The new year under the Islamic calendar began this year in October.

Islamist Hamas tightly restricts public parties and celebrations in Gaza. A source close to the police said security forces would close down “any unlicensed party.”

Gaza is home to some 1.8 million Palestinians – one of the highest population densities in the world.

It has been under an Israeli blockade since 2006 when Hamas took control of the region in a violent struggle after the ruling Fatah movement refused to cede power following elections Hamas won.

US planning new Iran sanctions over ballistic missile programme – report

The US is preparing sanctions against firms and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates over alleged links to Iran’s ballistic missile programme, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Such a move would be the first American sanctions against Iran since Tehran signed a nuclear deal with world powers in July that will eventually see Washington drop separate sanctions targeting that programme.

According to the newspaper, the Treasury Department is preparing sanctions on two Iran-linked networks helping develop the missile programme.Under the planned restrictions, US or foreign nationals would be barred from doing business with the firms and people in the networks. US banks would also freeze any US-held assets.

A senior US administration official told the Guardian: “As we’ve said, we’ve been looking for some time‎ at options for additional actions related to Iran’s ballistic missile programme based on our continued concerns about its activities, including the October 10th launch. 

“We are considering various aspects related to additional designations, as well as evolving diplomatic work that is consistent with our national security interests. As always, we keep Congress informed about issues related to Iran sanctions, and will continue to do so as we work through remaining issues.”

Treasury officials did not immediately return an AFP call seeking comment, and the Iranian government did not comment to the Wall Street Journal on the possible new sanctions.

But Iranian officials have previously warned that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei would view such new US sanctions as a violation of the nuclear deal.

Syria arrests two opposition figures heading for Lebanon: monitors

Its recapture would consolidate the army's hold over the heavily fortified region which has formed a southern line of defense protecting Damascus.

Russia, which did not confirm the strikes and has up to now concentrated on the northwest and coastal areas, has said it is primarily targeting hardline Islamic State fighters.

Washington and other regional powers have regularly accused it of striking other anti-Assad rebel groups, seen as more moderate, that some in the West hope will form part of a future settlement of the near five-year war.

The army took the Brigade 82 base from the rebels on Tuesday, lost it as bad weather set in, and took it once more overnight with the support of the air strikes, said rebels.

Syria's army said it had made advances overnight against insurgents who it said were mainly al Qaeda inspired groups.

Sheikh Maskin, the main goal of the army's southern campaign, lies on one of the main supply routes from the capital Damascus to the city of Deraa, close to the border with Jordan.

Securing the town would allow the army to press further south in mainly rebel held towns such as Ibtaa, Dael and in Ataman near Deraa city.

Rebels from another mainstream anti-Assad armed opposition alongside some Islamist groups said they shelled army posts in the city of Izraa, a main government held town that has major fortifications and is based to the east of Sheikh Maskin.

Activists and residents say Russian air strikes, in which missiles and bombs are launched from a high altitude, are distinct from Syrian air force strikes which rely more on barrel bombs dropped from helicopters flying at a lesser height.

Rebels still control large parts of the region, that also borders Israel, but have been largely on the defensive since their failed offensive in June to take the government-controlled part of Deraa city.

The south is the last major stronghold of the mainstream, anti-Assad opposition, who have been weakened elsewhere by the expansion of the ultra-hardline Islamic State group in the east and north, and gains by the Nusra Front in the northwest.

Syrian troops backed by Russian jets enters rebel-held southern town: army

Syrian troops fought their way into a rebel-held town in the southern province of Deraa on Wednesday in an assault which rebels said was supported by the heaviest Russian aerial bombing campaign so far in the south.

Troops were in Sheikh Maskin's main square and had taken over the eastern and northern neighborhoods of the town which lies on a major supply route from the Syrian capital, Damascus, to the city of Deraa, the army said in a statement.

A rebel source confirmed troops had entered parts of the town and said fierce clashes were raging in the eastern neighborhood known as the Masaken - an area of dozens of apartment buildings that formerly housed top army officers.

A commander in a leading rebel group fighting in the area said the heavy Russian bombing on their posts, where rebels had counted at least 100 raids in the past two days, had been decisive in tipping the balance against the rebels.

"This is the heaviest Russian bombing on the side of the regime in Deraa and without it the army, which faces manpower shortages, would not have made these gains," said one commander from Jabhat Thuwwar Souria, a group involved in the fighting.

Rebels from an array of groups - some of them backed by Western powers and including the Islamist Muthana group - fought back against the offensive near a former air base north of the town of Sheikh Maskin, insurgents on the ground told Reuters.

The army assault on Sheikh Maskin is part of the government's first major offensive in southern Syria since Russia joined the fight on Sept. 30 to support its ally President Bashar al-Assad.

Militants, booby-trapped houses in Ramadi to delay civilians' return

About 700 Islamic State fighters were believed to be hiding in the center and eastern outskirts of Ramadi on Wednesday, three days after Iraqi government forces claimed victory over the militants in the western city, the U.S.-led coalition said.

The U.N. refugee agency, assisting families who have left the Anbar provincial capital, said that despite gains by security forces, conditions were not yet good enough for tens of thousands of displaced residents to return.

Much of the center of Ramadi, which previously had a population exceeding 400,000, still needs to be cleared of explosives laid by the jihadist insurgents who seized the city 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad in May, the coalition said.

After months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes, the Iraqi army retook Ramadi on Sunday, its first big victory against the hardline Sunni Islamists since they swept through a third of Iraq in mid-2014.

"Within what we call central Ramadi, they estimate still up to 400 Daesh (Islamic State) members, and then, once you go east of that towards Falluja, you've got about 300 out there in that direction," U.S. Army Captain Chance McCraw, a coalition intelligence officer, told reporters in Baghdad.

Some of these Islamic State militants could try to attack Iraqi forces or returning civilians with snipers and bomb attacks.

Security sources said insurgents clashed with federal police and tribal fighters on Wednesday in Husaiba al-Sharqiya and Jweba, on the eastern fringes of Ramadi. There was no immediate confirmed information on casualties.

"In central Ramadi the house-borne IED (improvised explosive device) continues to be a threat even once CTS (counter-terrorism service) goes through and that's why you don't see civilians moving back into various areas," McCraw said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday ordered the immediate formation of a high-level committee including the Anbar governor and senior federal government officials to stabilize and rebuild Ramadi.

He called for the immediate removal of explosives and the restoration of basic services to allow the safe return of civilians to their homes.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke to Abadi on Wednesday and offered U.N. support to help restore basic services in Ramadi to allow civilians to return, a U.N. spokesman said in a statement.

The United Nations estimates initial reconstruction needs in Ramadi require about $20 million, but the longer term outlay is likely to be much greater for a city battered by U.S. air strikes and Islamic State explosives over the past six months.

"Areas are still insecure, littered with IEDs, and there has been extensive damage of public buildings and houses. Electricity and water services have been damaged," the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Iraqi trade ministry said it was preparing to send emergency food aid to Ramadi.

HOLDING LAND

Some districts of the city are littered with explosives.

McCraw said that in one of the more heavily defended areas, Iraqi forces had found about 300 explosives planted along a 150-metre (150-yard) stretch south of the main government complex. After clearing that area, they found more bombs scattered every 50 meters or so, he said.

Nearly 1.4 million people have been displaced from all of Anbar province, according to U.N. estimates. Iraq's government says most civilians fled Ramadi before its assault on the city.

McCraw and other coalition officials declined to estimate how long it would take Iraqi forces to secure the whole city. They said about 400 members of the Anbar police had arrived to help hold areas cleared by better trained and equipped counter-terrorism forces that spearheaded the Ramadi operation.

Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, next year and said this would deal a final blow to Islamic State. It is the largest Iraqi city under the group's control and is expected to be harder to recapture than Ramadi.

Baghdad has said Sunni Muslim tribal fighters will make up the main holding force in Ramadi, a role played in other areas taken from Islamic State by mainly Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim armed groups, but the latter were held back from Ramadi for fear of stoking sectarian tensions.

The coalition said its advisers were not on the ground during the Ramadi battle but provided training and equipment to Iraqi forces.

Islamic State suffers double blow as Ramadi falls, leaders killed

U.S.-led forces have killed 10 Islamic State leaders in air strikes, including individuals linked to the Paris attacks, a U.S. spokesman said, dealing a double blow to the militant group after Iraqi forces ousted it from the city of Ramadi.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi planted the national flag in Ramadi after the army retook the city centre from Islamic State, a victory that could help vindicate his strategy for rebuilding the military after stunning defeats.

"Over the past month, we've killed 10 ISIL leadership figures with targeted air strikes, including several external attack planners, some of whom are linked to the Paris attacks," said U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamist group also known by the acronym ISIL.

"Others had designs on further attacking the West."

One of those killed was Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the militants' external operations and had links to the Paris attack network, Warren said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Dec. 26.

Two days earlier, a coalition air strike in Syria killed Charaffe al Mouadan, a Syria-based Islamic State member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on Nov. 13 which killed 130 people, Warren said.

Mouadan was planning further attacks against the West, he added.

Air strikes on Islamic State's leadership helped explain recent battlefield successes against the group, which also lost control of a dam on a strategic supply route near its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria on Saturday.

"Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the organization is losing its leadership," Warren said.

Little sign of compromise as Turkey seeks constitutional reform

Turkey's ruling AK Party and the main opposition agreed on Wednesday to revive efforts to forge a new constitution, a move President Tayyip Erdogan hopes will hand him sweeping powers, but deep divisions mean progress is likely to be halting.

The AKP has put a new constitution at the heart of its agenda after winning back a majority in a November parliamentary election. Erdogan wants the change to consolidate power in the hands of the presidency by turning the previously ceremonial office into that of a chief executive.

Western allies, which need Turkey as a stable partner in the fight against Islamic State and in efforts to resolve Europe's migration crisis, support the idea of a constitution that bolsters Turkish rights and democracy but fear an executive presidency could strengthen Erdogan's authoritarian instincts.

Turkish opposition parties agree on the need to replace the current constitution, born of a 1980 coup and still bearing the stamp of its military authors, but do not back the presidential system envisaged by Erdogan for the EU candidate nation.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), agreed after a 2-1/2 hour meeting in Ankara to revive a cross-party commission to work on a new text.

"Turkey must rescue itself from the coup constitution," CHP spokesman Haluk Koc told a news conference, making clear that his party would continue to back changes such as moves toward EU-backed reforms.

"(But) we are standing our ground regarding the presidential system, and they are probably guarding their position as well. There was no detailed discussion on this," he said of Kilicdaroglu's meeting with the prime minister.

Davutoglu is due to meet the leader of the nationalist MHP opposition next week to try to win his backing for a new constitution, but has canceled a planned meeting with the leader of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) after it joined a call for Kurdish self-rule.