Tag Archives: Middle East

Israel says ISIS could attack it and Jordan after Syria setbacks

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Islamic State’s battleground setbacks in Syria have increased the chance of an attack by the insurgents or their allies on Israel and Jordan, Israel’s military chief said on Monday. 

While focused on shoring up its Syrian and Iraqi fiefdoms, Islamic State has in recent months stepped up attacks abroad and issued public threats to include Israel among its targets.

Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, chief of Israel’s armed forces, said that with Russia intervening last year to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the insurgents’ advance had been largely arrested.

An exception to this, Eizenkot said, was in the southern Syrian border nexus with Israel and Jordan.

“The successes against ISIS raise the probability, in my eyes, that we will see them turning their guns both against us and against the Jordanians,” he told a conference hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for International Security Studies.

Islamic State itself does not have a strong presence on Syria’s south-west border region, but one of several Islamist forces in the area, the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, is believed by its opponents to be linked to the ultra-hardline militant group.

It has fought rival insurgent forces from Syria’s al Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham for control of territory next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and close to northern Jordan.

“In their strategic logic, there is a certain logic in connecting Israel with Jordan,” Eizenkot said, and in the border area “they are not experiencing what the organization and other global jihadi groups are experiencing inside Syria”.

A voice recording release on social media three weeks ago and attributed to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi warned that Israel was a target.

Jordan, one of two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel, has largely weathered the upheaval in much of the Middle East over the past five years, though it has absorbed major refugee influxes from Syria and Iraq, another neighbor wrecked by Islamic State insurgents. 

Jordan has low-key military backing from the United States and Israel, cooperation that the parties rarely discuss publicly.

Israel has formally kept out of the almost five-year-old Syrian civil war, though it has launched occasional bombing raids to thwart suspected transfers of advanced arms by Assad’s government to allied Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah, which fought Israel’s technologically superior military to standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war, remained a major threat and stood to receive boosted support from its Iranian patron thanks to the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran, Eizenkot said.

But he also described Hezbollah as cautious to open a new front with Israel, noting that while the Shi’ite militia had gained combat experience reinforcing Syrian government forces against Sunni Islamist-led rebels, it had also suffered losses.

Some 1,300 Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed and almost another 5,000 wounded in Syria, out of a regular fighting force of 20,000 and a reservist force of 20,000-25,000, Eizenkot said.

Hezbollah generally does not publish details on its casualties, and says it is ready to fight Israel again.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

Iran detained American sailors at gunpoint, U.S. military says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The 10 U.S. sailors who were briefly detained by the Iranian military last week were held at gunpoint and had a verbal exchange with Iranian personnel before they were released, the U.S. military said Monday.

Just two days after the United States and other world powers lifted sanctions on Iran, the military released its most comprehensive timeline to date of the events surrounding the sailors’ brief detainment.

In a news release, the military said the sailors also had two SIM cards pulled out of their satellite phones, but that there was no gunfire exchange.

There were no details on the verbal exchange the sailors had with the Iranians.

The U.S. sailors, who were aboard two patrol craft, were detained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on January 12 when they inadvertently entered Iranian territorial waters. They were released the next day after being held for about 15 hours.

The U.S. military said the Americans were intercepted after the diesel engine in one of their boats developed a mechanical problem, although it was unclear if the crew was aware of their precise location.

The sailors were released unharmed and are in good health.

Their prompt release came just days before world powers lifted crippling sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran’s implementation of a deal curbing its nuclear program.

The Obama administration has said their speedy release shows the power of diplomacy and the promise of its new engagement with Iran.

Republicans, however, have been critical of the deal with Iran, and some say the detainment of the sailors shows how little regard Iran has for America.

Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has been among some of the vocal critics. On Fox News Sunday, Cruz said the only reason the sailors were seized was because of the “weakness of Barack Obama.”

In a speech at Liberty University on Monday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump also lambasted the administration over the incident with the sailors.

“Those young people were on their hands and knees in a begging position with their hands up and thugs behind them with guns, and then we talk like it’s OK. It’s not OK. It’s lack of respect.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said on CNN that once he heard about the sailors’ detention, he was “very frustrated and angry”, and that “I raised it immediately with the Iranians.”

He declined to give the content of his conversation, but added: “Suffice it to say that I made it crystal clear how serious this was. It was imperative to get it resolved.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Ian Simpson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nick Zieminski)

Israeli troops kill two Palestinians in Gaza stone-throwing clash

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians in a stone-throwing clash near the Gaza border on Friday, a Palestinian medical official said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said dozens of Palestinians had been rioting in the area and some had tried to breach the border with Israel. She said soldiers fired warning shots in the air before shooting at people across the fence.

Spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry Ashraf Al-Qidra said the two men killed, one an 18-year-old and the second aged 26, had been throwing stones along with dozens of others near the border.

Since the start of October at least 147 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, 93 of them as they tried to attack Israelis, according to Israeli authorities. Most of the others died in clashes with Israeli security forces.

In the same period, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and gun attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen.

The wave of such attacks has been fueled by Palestinian frustration over the collapse of peace talks, the growth of Jewish settlements on land Palestinians seek for a future state and Islamist calls for the destruction of Israel.

Also stoking the violence has been Muslim opposition to increased Israeli visits to Jerusalem’s al Aqsa mosque complex, which is one of the holiest sites in Islam and is revered in Judaism as the location of two biblical temples.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell; editing by Andrew Roche)

Iran says it removes Arak reactor core in key nuclear deal step

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has removed the sensitive core of its Arak nuclear reactor and U.N. inspectors will visit the site on Thursday to verify the move crucial to the implementation of Tehran’s atomic agreement with major powers, state television said on Thursday.

Removal of the core from the Arak reactor will largely eliminate its ability to yield nuclear bomb-grade plutonium, and was one of the toughest issues to resolve in the long nuclear negotiations with the six powers.

“The core vessel of the Arak reactor has been removed … and IAEA inspectors will visit the site to verify it and report it to the IAEA … We are ready for the implementation day of the deal,” spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Behrouz Kamalvandi said.

Kamalvandi said “Implementation Day,” when Iran will start to get relief from international sanctions in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program under the July 2015 agreement, would come “very soon.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby concurred, saying “I do think we’re very close” to Implementation Day.

Kirby also confirmed that concrete had been poured into the core of the reactor. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday his Iranian counterpart had told him the core had been removed and would be filled with concrete and destroyed.

Under the deal, international sanctions against Iran will be lifted once the IAEA confirms Iran has met its nuclear commitments. Iranian officials expect the IAEA report on this to be issued on Friday. The Vienna-based U.N. watchdog has so far declined to comment on the report.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union’s Federica Mogherini will issue a statement on Saturday or Sunday on the “Implementation Day” of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions, according to Iranian officials.

The U.S. and EU sanctions have choked off nearly 1.5 million barrels per day of Iranian oil exports since early 2012, reducing its oil exports by 60 percent to around 1 million barrels a day.

Tehran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites within the last few months, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia.

“The core’s holes will be filled with concrete … The core was initially supposed to be cut into parts but we did not accept it as we want to keep it as the symbol of Iran’s nuclear industry,” Kamalvandi told state TV.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Doina Chiacu in Washington, writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry)

Two Palestinians killed in West Bank, though Israel sees attacks ‘waning’

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli troops killed two knife-wielding Palestinian assailants in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the army said, the latest in a months-long spate of street violence that Israel’s defense minister described as declining.

Almost daily stabbings, car-rammings and shootings by Palestinians targeting Israelis have been fueled in part by frustration at failed statehood talks and a dispute over a Jerusalem holy site, with Muslims angered by perceived Jewish encroachment.

The Israeli military said soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who tried to stab one of them near the West Bank city of Hebron and, in a separate incident near the town of Nablus, killed a man after he slashed and wounded an army officer.

That brought the number of Palestinians killed since Oct. 1 to at least 145. Israel says 93 of these were assailants, while most of the others died in clashes with Israeli security forces.

Palestinian attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen over the same period.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel’s pre-emptive raids and arrests had prevented the violence from escalating into an armed Palestinian revolt, and he predicted that the grassroots violence would stop.

“We are managing to foil plans by the organizations, the terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to carry out attacks. If it were up to them, there would be suicide bombings and gun attacks here every day,” Yaalon told Israel Radio.

“The fact that we are succeeding lends salience to the attempted stabbing or car-ramming attacks. We will also prevail over this phenomenon, I say, but this is a process that takes time. Statistically, we see a waning of this.”

The remarks followed a warning by a senior Yaalon adviser that the U.S.-backed Palestinian administration, which quietly coordinates West Bank security efforts with Israel despite the diplomatic impasse between the sides, might change course.

The adviser, Amos Gilad, told the Israel Defense journal in an interview published this week that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared to be in an “adversarial mood”.

“If you analyze all of Abu Mazen’s (Abbas’s) statements and conduct, it seems that he will be swept into confrontation with us in 2016 in the diplomatic and security realm,” Gilad said.

“There is the potential for that. We are taking this possibility very seriously.”

Israel accuses Abbas of inciting violence. He has denied the charge while praising Palestinians who “defend” the al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem. It is Islam’s third-holiest shrine and has seen stepped-up visits by Jews, many of whom revere the site as vestige of their two ancient temples and demand an end to a decades-old arrangement allowing only Muslim prayer there.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom has called for an independent probe into whether Israel has carried out extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, pointing to the number of attackers and suspected attackers shot dead.

In response, Israel summoned the Swedish ambassador on Wednesday, saying it was “enraged” at Wallstrom’s comments. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz went as far as to call Wallstrom “anti-semitic, whether consciously or not”.

(Reporting by Dan Williams and Ali Sawafta, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Dominic Evans)

‘Enraged’ Israel summons Swedish envoy over official’s remarks

JERUSALEM/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Israel summoned the Swedish ambassador on Wednesday to convey what it described as its “rage” at a call by Stockholm’s top diplomat for an investigation to determine whether Israeli forces were guilty of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s remarks on Tuesday were the latest in a series of statements to stoke Israeli resentment that has simmered since the Scandinavian country recognized Palestinian statehood last year.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said in a statement that it called in Swedish Ambassador Carl Magnus Nesser to reprimand him over what it deemed “another statement by her (Wallstrom) that attests to her biased and even hostile attitude to Israel”.

It said Nesser was also told of “the rage of the government and people of Israel at the skewed portrayal of the situation”.

Rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force to quell a surge of Palestinian street attacks that has been fueled in part by Muslim agitation at stepped-up Jewish visits to a contested Jerusalem shrine, as well as a long impasse in talks on founding a Palestinian state on Israeli-occupied land.

The bloodshed has raised fears of wider confrontation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have all expressed concern, saying that while they recognize Israel’s right to self-defense, restraint is necessary to ensure the violence does not escalate further.

Since Oct. 1, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and gun attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. Israeli forces or armed civilians have killed at least 143 Palestinians, 91 of whom authorities have described as assailants. Most others were killed in clashes with security forces.

“It is vital that there is a thorough, credible investigation into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability,” Swedish media quoted Wallstrom as saying during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday.

She earlier described the Palestinians’ plight as a factor leading to Islamist radicalization – comments seen in Israel as linking it to the November gun and bomb rampage in Paris.

Pushing back on Wednesday, Deputy Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told reporters that Wallstrom’s censure risked “encouraging Islamic State to take action throughout Europe”.

Hotovely called for a halt to official Swedish visits to Israel – a measure that political sources said was overruled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked to clarify Israel’s position, said Wallstrom “would not be especially welcomed here. Were she to visit, she would not be received by Israeli officials.”

Responding to Israel’s summoning of the envoy, Wallstrom’s spokesman noted an EU call in October for an investigation into Israeli tactics and said: “We want to have good relations with Israel and have an active dialogue, including about values.”

(Writing by Dan Williams; Edting by Mark Heinrich)

Iran releases U.S. sailors as diplomacy eases tensions

DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran freed ten U.S. sailors on Wednesday a day after detaining them aboard two U.S. Navy patrol boats in the Gulf, bringing a swift end to an incident that had rattled nerves shortly before the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear accord.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had released the sailors after determining they had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake. IRGC Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said earlier the boats had strayed due to a broken navigation system.

The quick resolution contrasted with previous cases in which British servicemen were held by Iran for considerably longer, in once case almost two weeks.

Iran expects the U.N. nuclear watchdog to confirm on Friday it has curtailed its nuclear program, paving the way for the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets and an end to bans that have crippled oil exports.

“Our technical investigations showed the two U.S. Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters inadvertently,” the IRGC said in a statement carried by state television. “They were released in international waters after they apologized,” it added.

Iranian state television later released footage of one of the detained men, identified as a U.S. navy commander, apologizing for the incident.

“It was a mistake, that was our fault, and we apologize for our mistake,” the sailor said on IRIB state TV.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden rejected reports Washington had offered Iran an apology over the incident.

“No, there was no apology, nothing to apologize for … and there’s no looking for any apology,” Biden said on CBS’s ‘This Morning’ program.

COOPERATION

A carefully worded statement did not explain how the sailors and their two riverine command boats ended up being detained by Iran, saying only that “the Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors’ presence in Iran”.

The sailors were later taken ashore by U.S. Navy aircraft, while other sailors took charge of the boats and headed towards Bahrain, their original destination.

The Pentagon said there were no indications the sailors were harmed while in Iranian custody.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was pleased the sailors had been freed and appreciated “the timely way in which this situation was resolved”.

He added: “I want to personally thank Secretary of State John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return.”

Kerry thanked Iran for its cooperation in the release of the sailors.

“I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago, and the fact that today this kind of issue can be resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,” Kerry said.

Kerry spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif several times as the United States sought to win the release of the sailors, a U.S. official said.

Zarif said on twitter that he was “happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode”.

Four photographs published by Shargh Daily, a Tehran newspaper, and posted on Twitter, purportedly show the moments after one of the U.S. boats was stopped by the IRGC.

Iranian state television released footage of the arrest, showing the sailors as they knelt down with hands behind their heads and their two vessels being surrounded by several IRGC fast boats.

The video showed weapons and ammunition confiscated from the sailors, who were seen eating food provided by the Iranians. There were also images of American passports being inspected.

The incident raised tensions between Iran and the United States, which, along with other world powers, reached a deal last year under which Iran will curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Some conservatives in both countries, enemies since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, have criticized the deal that is due to be implemented in the coming days.

NUCLEAR DEAL

Iran’s armed forces chief, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, said the incident should demonstrate Iranian strength to “troublemakers” in the U.S. Congress, which has sought to put pressure on Iran after the nuclear deal.

And at a presidential campaign rally in the United States, Republican front runner Donald Trump, who accuses President Barack Obama of being weak on foreign policy, described the detention of the sailors as “an indication of where the hell we’re going”.

A senior U.S. defense official said the circumstances surrounding the incident were still not entirely clear.

“We haven’t been able to fully debrief the sailors,” the official said, adding the U.S. military hoped to do so within hours. The sailors were headed to a U.S. military facility in Qatar.

“They’re going through what always happens in these cases, they’ll get a medical evaluation, and there will be a debriefing.”

Attributing the boats’ incursion into Iranian waters to a navigation error marked a de-escalation in rhetoric. Earlier, the Guards had said the boats were “snooping” in Iranian territory and Zarif had demanded an apology from Washington.

The IRGC, the Islamic Republic’s praetorian guard, is highly suspicious of U.S. military activity near Iran’s borders and many senior officers suspect Washington of pursuing regime change in Tehran.

The Guards operate land and naval units separate to the regular armed forces and stage frequent war games in the Gulf, which separates Iran from its regional rival Saudi Arabia and a U.S. naval base in Bahrain.

Last month, the U.S. Navy said an IRGC vessel fired unguided rockets near the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for crude oil that connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Iran denied the vessel had done so.

In April 2015, the Guards seized a container ship belonging to Maersk, one of the world’s major shipping lines, in the Gulf because of a legal dispute between the company and Iran. The ship and its 24 crew members were released after 10 days.

The Guards have also seized British servicemen on two occasions, in 2004 and 2007, and a civilian British yacht crew in 2009. On each occasion the sailors were released unharmed.

Iran said the British sailors were released when their government apologized to Iran, but London denied that it had offered any apology.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Susan Heavey, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay; Writing by Sam Wilkin; Editing by Sami Aboudi, Peter Graff, Giles Elgood, Peter Millership and Philippa Fletcher)

Yemen peace talks postponed, U.N. says

GENEVA (Reuters) – A round of United Nations-brokered Yemen peace talks will not begin on Jan. 14 as planned but may take place a week or more later, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies has been fighting the Shi’ite Houthi movement, which controls the capital, since March of last year. Nearly 6,000 people are known to have died.

The warring parties agreed last month on a broad framework for ending their war but a temporary truce was widely violated and has since ended.

Last week, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has joined forces with the Houthis, said he would not negotiate with the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, throwing into doubt the fate of the peace talks.

After the December round of talks, U.N. Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said he would bring the two sides together again on Jan. 14, with Switzerland and Ethiopia both mentioned as possible locations.

But a meeting this week is no longer on the table.

“He is looking at a date after Jan 20,” Fawzi said. “It’s taking him some time to get the parties to agree on a location.”

“He wants to go for a location in the region. So his first option is to find a location acceptable to all parties in the region, but he has Switzerland of course in the back of his mind as an option.”

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Israeli soldiers kill three Palestinians in West Bank

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers shot dead three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday including one the military said had tried to stab a soldier, as four months of tensions simmered.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli army gunfire during a confrontation between troops and protesters in the town of Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem. The military said troops had fired at “rioters who hurled firebombs and rocks at the soldiers”.

In a separate incident, a military spokeswoman said troops fatally shot a Palestinian who got out of a car and tried to stab a soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron. The driver of the vehicle was shot and wounded, and fled the scene, the spokeswoman added. Palestinian officials said he died.

Since Oct. 1, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and shooting attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. The wave of bloodshed has raised fears of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

During the period, Israeli forces or armed civilians have killed at least 142 Palestinians, 90 of whom authorities described as assailants. Most others have been killed in clashes with security forces.

Four Israelis, including a soldier and a prison officer, were charged on Tuesday with aggravated assault in connection with the death of an Eritrean national, who was shot and beaten after being mistaken for a gunman during an attack in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Oct. 18.

An Arab citizen of Israel shot and killed one person and wounded 11 in the incident. He was shot dead, and a security guard also fired at the Eritrean, wounding him.

The Eritrean, an asylum-seeker, was then set upon by the four defendants, who prosecutors said kicked him as he lay on the ground and hit him with a bench. He died of his wounds.

The security guard, who authorities said had acted reasonably in the heat of the shooting attack, was not charged.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta, Writing by Ori Lewis, Editing by Jeffrey Heller)

At least 48 killed in attacks in Iraqi capital, eastern town

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Gunmen detonated suicide vests inside a shopping complex in Baghdad on Monday and a car bomb exploded nearby in an attack claimed by Islamic State that killed at least 18 people and wounded 40 others.

Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, killing at least 23 people and wounding another 51, security and medical sources said. Another blast in a southeastern Baghdad suburb killed seven more.

Islamic State militants controlling swathes of Iraq’s north and west claimed responsibility for the attacks in Muqdadiya and at the Baghdad mall, which it said had targeted a gathering of “rejectionists”, its derogatory term for Shi’ite Muslims.

The Iraqi government last month claimed victory against the hardline Sunni militants in the western city of Ramadi, and has slowly pushed them back in other areas.

A security official in Anbar province on Monday said ground advances backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes killed about two dozen insurgents and pushed others out of areas near the government-held city of Haditha in Iraq’s northwest.

Monday’s bombings left the biggest death toll in three months. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan blamed “this terrorist group after they suffered heavy losses by the security forces”, without naming Islamic State.

Seven people, including two policemen, were killed in the car bomb blast near the Jawaher mall in the predominantly Shi’ite district of Baghdad Jadida, police and medical sources said.

Five more people were shot dead by the gunmen storming the mall, and six others were killed when those same assailants detonated their explosive vests, the sources said.

“People started running into the shops to hide, but (the militants) followed them in and opened fire without mercy,” said Hani Fikrat Abdel Hussein, a shop-owner standing amid shattered glass and rubble at the site of the blasts.

Police regained control of the shopping complex, in the east of the city, and a senior security official told state television there were no hostages, rejecting reports that people had been held.

“The security forces are at the scene and managed to recover the wounded. The situation is under control,” Maan added.

CASINO BOMBING

As well as the violence meted out by Islamic State, Iraq is also gripped by a sectarian conflict mostly between Shi’ites and Sunnis that has been exacerbated by the rise of the militant group.

At least seven people were killed when a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a commercial street in a southeastern Baghdad suburb on Monday, police and medical sources said.

The blast in the Sunni district of Nahrawan left more than 15 people wounded, the sources added.

Earlier in the day, three people were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb claimed by Islamic State went off near a restaurant in Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

Two bombs later exploded in an area frequented by Shi’ite militia fighters in the town of Muqdadiya, another 10 miles further northeast, security sources said.

At least 23 people were killed and 51 wounded in those blasts. A bomber detonated his suicide vest inside a casino in the town. A car bomb parked outside then went off as medics and civilians gathered at the site of the first blast.

Security officials said they had imposed a curfew for all of Diyala province, where Muqdadiya and Baquba are located.

Parliamentary speaker Salim al-Jabouri, who is from Muqdadiya, said he was in contact with security and political leaders there and warned violence there aimed to “undermine efforts for civil peace”, state TV said in a news flash.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the Baghdad suburb.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, Stephen Kalin and Reuters TV in Baghdad and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Catherine Evans)