IS overruns town in central Syria: Monitor

EIRUT: Islamic State group jihadists seized a small town in Syria's central Homs province Sunday with help from local rebels and advanced on a majority Christian village, a monitoring group said.

"The Islamic State group easily took control of the village of Maheen, southeast of Homs, after two suicide attacks," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Maheen lies 70km southeast of the government-controlled provincial capital Homs city, and 35km east of the Syrian-Lebanese border.

For the past two years, a ceasefire between rebel factions in the town and regime troops at surrounding checkpoints had governed Maheen.

But on Sunday the rebel factions turned against the government fighters and joined ranks with IS jihadists, Abdel Rahman said.

IS launched its assault from the nearby Christian village of al-Qaryatain, which it seized in August, he added.

Doomed Russian passenger jet was in good shape, says official

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt: An Egyptian ground service official who carried out a pre-flight inspection of the Russian passenger plane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula said on Sunday that the Airbus A321-200 appeared to be in good condition.

The Metrojet plane, bound for St. Petersburg in Russia, crashed 23 minutes after it took off from Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday morning. The 224 people on board, all Russian except for four Ukrainians, died.


The Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he was a member of a technical inspection team that included two Russians.

"We are all shocked. It was a good plane. Everything checked out in 35 minutes," the official told The Associated Press. The closest the plane came to being in trouble, he said, was three months ago when the pilot aborted takeoff halfway through because of a system error.

Russian passenger plane 'broke up high in the air', says aviation official

HARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt: The Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt, killing everyone onboard, broke up at high altitude, Russia's top aviation official said on Sunday.

The Metrojet plane, bound for St Petersburg in Russia, crashed 23 minutes after it took off from Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday morning. The 224 people on board, all Russian except for four Ukrainians and one Belarusian, died.

Fragments of the plane were found scattered over a large area, indicating it disintegrated high in the air, said Alexander Neradko, head of Russia's federal aviation agency. Neradko, along with two Russian Cabinet ministers, were in Egypt inspecting the crash site in a remote part of the northern Sinai Peninsula, where Egypt is fighting an Islamic insurgency.

However, Neradko wouldn't comment on a possible reason for the crash, saying the probe was ongoing.

On Sunday, an Egyptian ground service official who conducted a pre-flight inspection of the Airbus A321-200 said the plane appeared to be in good condition.

The Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he was a member of a technical inspection team that included two Russians.

"We are all shocked. It was a good plane. Everything checked out in 35 minutes," the official said. The closest the plane came to being in trouble, he said, was three months ago when the pilot aborted takeoff halfway through because of a system error.

Iran leader says fresh elections needed in Syria

TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader dismissed on Sunday the prospect of foreign countries bartering a deal over Syria's future, saying a halt to fighting and fresh elections is the only solution.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also repeated his ban on direct talks with the United States about turmoil in the Middle East, saying US objectives in the region were utterly at odds with Iranian policy.

The comments, to Iran's ambassadors and other top diplomats, were Khamenei's first since his country joined on Friday international talks in Vienna on the four-year Syrian conflict.

In a wide-ranging speech on foreign policy Khamenei said Syria's people must choose for themselves who their leader would be, rather than US and other foreign powers deciding for them.

"The Americans seek to impose their own interests, not solve problems. They want to impose 60, 70 percent of their will in negotiations. So what's the point of negotiations?" he said, appearing to discount the value of the Vienna talks.

Top diplomats from 17 countries, as well as the United Nations and the European Union, had gathered in Austria to narrow their divisions over Syria's war, which has killed more than 250,000.

Saadi Gaddafi in Tripoli court to face murder charge

The son of deposed Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi appeared in a Tripoli court on Sunday to face charges of murdering a football player and other crimes before the 2011 revolution that ended his father’s rule.
The judge adjoined proceedings against Saadi Gaddafi, who was extradited from Niger last year, until 6 December after his attorney asked for more time to examine the case against him and to have access to military prosecutor documents.
Saadi, dressed in light blue prison garb, sat inside a black caged area of the courtroom.
In July a Tripoli court sentenced another of Gaddafi’s sons Saif al-Islam and eight other former officials to death for crimes committed during the 2011 uprising against his father, who was later killed by rebels.
The sentences have not been carried out although the men, including Gaddafi’s former spy chief, are in jail. Since his capture after the 2011 uprising, Saif himself has been held by forces in the western city of Zintan by a faction beyond Libyan government control.
In August, state prosecutors had also said they were investigating a video that appears to show guards beating Saadi. The video’s authenticity could not be independently verified.
Libya has fallen into turmoil since Gaddafi’s fall, with two rival governments and their allied armed factions fighting for control of the country and its oil resources. UN talks have so far failed to end the crisis.

Russian plane 'broke up in air' before Sinai crash

A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board, broke up in the air, a Russian aviation official said on Sunday.
Viktor Sorochenko, an official with the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee, speaking after inspecting the crash site on the Sinai peninsula, said it was too early to talk about conclusions from the crash, Russian news agencies reported.
A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt had claimed responsibility for bringing down the Kogalymavia Airbus A321 on Saturday “in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land”. However, the Egyptian prime minister disputed the claim, suggesting militants in northern Sinai, where the country is fighting an Islamic insurgency, did not have the weaponry to hit a flight at 9,000 metres (31,000ft). The Russian transport minister had also previously expressed scepticism about the militants’ claim.
Russia, an ally of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, launched airstrikes against opposition groups in Syria, including Isis, on 30 September. The fact that the airliner broke up in the air does not necessarily indicate a bomb was the cause.
Russia’s emergencies ministry has sent more than 100 workers to Egypt to help recover bodies and examine evidence. Staff from the French accident investigation agency, BEA, were also on their way there. The BEA is involved because the Airbus A321-200 was designed in France.

Turkish president's rule hangs in balance as country goes to polls

Turkish voters are going to the polls in parliamentary elections that could end more than a decade of single-party rule by the Justice and Development party (AKP).
Voting stations around the country opened on Sunday morning in the snap elections, which were called by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after negotiations to form a coalition with the opposition following an inconclusive vote in June fell apart.
Now the divisive figure of Erdoğan, accused by critics of authoritarianism, repression of his opponents and suppression of press freedom, is front and centre in polls that could put an end to what his critics say are ambitions to consolidate the power of his office and transform Turkey from a parliamentary system into a president-led republic.
“We will all have to show respect to the national will,” said Erdoğan on Sunday after voting in Istanbul. “Turkey has made great strides in democracy and this stride will be strengthened with today’s election.”
A starkly different message came from Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which garnered 13% of the vote in June’s election and robbed the AKP of its majority for the first time since 2002.
“Unfortunately, it was a difficult and troubled period of election campaigning,” he said, after casting his vote. “Lives were lost. My wish is that a great hope for peace and calm emerges (from the election).”