The comments from Masoud Barzani follow weeks of clashes in predominantly Kurdish parts of northeastern Syria between Kurdish fighters and foreign-sponsored insurgents that have killed dozens on both sides, The Associated Press reported. 

 

In a statement posted on the Kurdistan Regional Government's official website, Barzani called for a delegation to visit Kurdish areas in Syria to verify the reports that "al-Qaeda terrorists" are killing Kurds. If confirmed, then Iraqi Kurdistan "will make use of all its capabilities to defend the Kurdish women, children and citizens in western Kurdistan," he said.

 

Barzani offered no other details about how he would protect Syria's Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan boasts a powerful armed force known as the peshmerga, which includes experienced and equipped fighters hardened by years of guerrilla warfare.

 

But Barzani seems unlikely to risk a direct military intervention. Such a move would likely trigger a furious reaction from Iraq's central government as well as neighboring Turkey, which has been wrestling with its own Kurdish insurgency for decades.

 

Some 25 million Kurds live in an arc of land that covers parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

 

Iraq's Kurds control three provinces in the country's north, where they have established a largely autonomous region that has all the trappings of an independent state, though it's still heavily reliant on Iraq's central government for funding.

 

While its relations with Baghdad remain tense, the region enjoys a level of prosperity and security unrivaled in the rest of Iraq. It has welcomed tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds since the conflict broke out in March 2011.

 

In Syria, Kurds are the largest ethnic minority, making up more than 10 percent of the country's 23 million people. They are centered in the poor northeastern regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. There are also several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in the capital, Damascus, and Syria's largest city, Aleppo.

 

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.

 

“Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria has not disrupted its preparedness for a war with Israel - the opposite is true,” said Colonel Yaron Formosa, a chief artillery officer of Israel, in an interview with Ynetnews on Wednesday. 

 

He added that Hezbollah is closely monitoring the Israeli army’s activities along the border. 

 

“We saw them marking the positions of our artillery guns so they can target them in a war,” Formosa said.

 

He added that Hezbollah fighters have become proficient in the use of advanced weapons due to the fighting against the militants in Syria. 

 

“Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets that are aimed at Israel, and we will not be able to operate against them only with artillery fire or the air force.” 

 

The Tel Aviv regime launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, were killed in the 33-Day War of 2006. 

 

On both occasions, however, Hezbollah fighters defeated the Israeli forces and Tel Aviv was forced to retreat without achieving any of its objectives. 

 

In August 2012, Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said that the resistance movement has both the capability and the courage to defend Lebanon and that the movement’s missiles are ready to strike back certain targets inside Israel in self-defense if Tel Aviv launches an attack on Lebanon. 

 

“If we are forced to use them to protect our people and our country, we will not hesitate to do so... and that will turn the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zionists into a living hell,” Nasrallah said, adding that Hezbollah has fixed its targets. 

 

He also said that a possible future war would be extremely costly for Israel and incomparable with its 2006 war on Lebanon.

 

(Source: Press TV)

 

A total of 17 car bombs and a series of shootings and other blasts killed at least 91 people and wounded over 300 across the country Saturday, security and medical officials said, as Iraqis celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holidays which follow the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Al Jazeera reported.

 

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from the Iraqi capital, said 50 people had been killed in nine blasts in seven areas of the city on Saturday evening, in apparently coordinated strikes.

 

The blasts hit public markets, cafes, and restaurants, while violence earlier on Saturday killed two others in the capital, according to security and medical officials.

 

At Baghdad's Al-Kindi hospital, medics treated a man, apparently a soldier, whose face, chest and arms were covered in blood.

 

Medics sprinted into the hospital pushing people on stretchers, one of them a blanket-swathed man whose eyes were closed. Another man ran behind the stretcher, weeping as it was wheeled into the hospital.

 

Outside, long lines of cars inched along Baghdad roads, held up by increased security measures that came too late for the dozens of victims.

 

Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a police checkpoint in Tuz Khurmatu, north of the capital, killing nine people.

 

A car bomb in Kirkuk, also north of Baghdad, killed an engineer.

 

Two car bombs in the southern city of Nasiriyah killed four, while a car bomb in the shrine city of Karbala left five others dead.

 

Elsewhere, three people were killed and five others wounded in separate attacks in Babil and Nineveh provinces.

 

More than 800 people died in attacks during the dawn-to-dusk fasting month of Ramadan, which began in the second week of July and ended this week.

 

Fighters struck targets ranging from cafes where Iraqis gathered after breaking their daily fast, to mosques where extended evening prayers were held during the month.

 

The violence came just weeks after attacks on prisons near the capital in which hundreds of inmates were freed.

 

Analysts, as well as global police organization Interpol, have warned that the jailbreaks could lead to a rise in attacks, as the escapees were said to include senior al-Qaeda fighters.

 

The Interior Ministry has said the country faces an "open war" fuelled by Iraq's sectarian divisions and has attempted to boost security in Baghdad, closing roads and sending out frequent helicopter patrols.

 

Our correspondent said the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq 18 months ago has hit security efforts and emboldened Sunni fighters to step up attacks.

 

"People in the Iraqi security services will tell you ... that the Iraqi army is now on its own. They do not have the intelligence from the Americans that they had before. That has caused Sunni groups to go on the offensive.

 

"Then you have Shia groups taking revenge against them, in a classic tit-for-tat situation."

 

The United States condemned the perpetrators of the attacks as "enemies of Islam," in an unusually detailed statement. The State Department said that the car bombs and shootings were "cowardly" attacks "aimed at families celebrating the Eid al-Fitr" holiday.

 

There was no immediate Palestinian comment, though the announcement by Housing Minister Uri Ariel was bound to deepen the atmosphere of distrust as the two sides head into talks after a five-year freeze, AP reported. 

 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had long insisted he would not resume talks without an Israeli settlement freeze, arguing that the expansion of settlements is pre-empting the outcome of negotiations.

 

In the end, Abbas agreed to enter talks without a settlement freeze. 

 

In Sunday's announcement, the Housing Ministry said 1,187 apartments had been given final approval, the last stage before issuing tenders to contractors. Of those, 793 will be built in neighborhoods for Jews in east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel shortly after the 1967 Mideast war. 

 

In addition, 394 apartments are to be built in several large West Bank settlements, including Maaleh Adumim, Efrat and Ariel. The latter sits in the heart of the West Bank, and its expansion could be particularly problematic for negotiators trying to carve out a viable Palestinian state.

 

The housing minister, a leading member of the pro-settler party Jewish Home, said construction would continue.

 

"No country in the world takes orders from other countries where it can build and where it can't," Ariel said in his statement. "We will continue to market housing and build in the entire country… This is the right thing at the present time, for Zionism and for the economy."

 

The United States said last week that Israel and the Palestinian Authority would resume the Middle East peace talks on August 14.

 

“Negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians will be resuming August 14 in Jerusalem and will be followed by a meeting in Jericho (in the occupied West Bank),” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on August 8. 

 

The representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Authority met last month in Washington. The meeting was the first direct negotiations in three years. 

 

Psaki said U.S. envoys Martin Indyk and Frank Lowenstein would go to the Middle East to help facilitate the talks.  

 

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. 

 

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. 

 

The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.

 

The Bahraini opposition party said that the Manama regime forces raided 216 homes in several villages across Bahrain last week. 

 

According to al-Wefaq, most raids took place after midnight or at dawn and 42 people including two children were also arrested. 

 

On August 7, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa banned protests in the capital, Manama, ahead of the August 14 celebrations of the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. 

 

The opposition is planning to hold a major protest on the same day. The Manama regime has warned that any protests would face the “force of the law.” 

 

Bahrain’s loyalist-dominated parliament has also approved a bill banning all protests in Manama. 

 

Bahrainis have been staging demonstrations since mid-February 2011, demanding political reform and a constitutional monarchy, a demand that later changed to an outright call for the ouster of the ruling Al Khalifa family following its brutal crackdown on popular protests. 

 

Scores have been killed, many of them under torture while in custody, and thousands more detained since the popular uprising in Bahrain began. 

 

Protesters say they will continue holding anti-regime demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically-elected government and an end to rights violations are met. 
 

(Source: Press TV)

Separately, it has decided to remove its troops from the UNIFIL peacekeeping forces operating in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese media.

Two Turkish pilots working for Turkish Airlines were kidnapped by armed men who intercepted their bus early on Friday morning.
 

“Given the current situation it is vital that our citizens avoid all travel to Lebanon,” a foreign ministry online statement said on Saturday.
 

“We suggest that citizens who are still in Lebanon return to Turkey if they can, or if they have to remain, to take all measures to ensure their personal safety and be vigilant,” the statement added.
 

Turkey’s foreign ministry also expressed its expectation for the Lebanese government to take “all necessary measures” to ensure the safety of Turkish citizens in the country.
 

UNIFIL statement
 

Lebanese media reported that Turkey had decided to pull back the majority of its peacekeeping forces in the country.
 

Turkey has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon following abduction of two Turkish Airlines pilots by armed men in Beirut.
 

Separately, it has decided to remove its troops from the UNIFIL peacekeeping forces operating in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese media.

Two Turkish pilots working for Turkish Airlines were kidnapped by armed men who intercepted their bus early on Friday morning.
 

“Given the current situation it is vital that our citizens avoid all travel to Lebanon,” a foreign ministry online statement said on Saturday.
 

“We suggest that citizens who are still in Lebanon return to Turkey if they can, or if they have to remain, to take all measures to ensure their personal safety and be vigilant,” the statement added.
 

Turkey’s foreign ministry also expressed its expectation for the Lebanese government to take “all necessary measures” to ensure the safety of Turkish citizens in the country.
 

UNIFIL statement
 

Lebanese media reported that Turkey had decided to pull back the majority of its peacekeeping forces in the country.
 

A representative for the families of the kidnapped Lebanese has denied any involvement in the abduction of the Turkish pilots.
 

There have been several failed rounds of negotiations to free the Lebanese.

The war in Syria frequently spills over into neighboring Lebanon.

The Turkish government is a staunch supporter of the Syrian opposition. 
 

(Source: Al Jazeera and Agencies)

 

Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria's permanent envoy to the UN, said on Friday that certain countries including some members of the international body have prevented the Security Council from condemning the atrocities committed by Takfiri militants in Syria. 

 

Jaafari said countries sending weapons to the militants and giving them political support are partners in terror. 

 

Syria has been gripped by deadly turmoil since 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence. 

 

Reports indicate that Western powers and their regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - are supporting the militants operating inside the country. 

 

President Bashar al-Assad said on August 5 that Syria will strike terror “with an iron fist.”  

 

(Source: Press TV)

 

The State Department also said it had ordered all non-essential U.S. government staff in Yemen to leave the country.

 

The new U.S. measures, announced in a statement on Tuesday, followed a heightened security warning from Washington on Friday that prompted the closure of several Western embassies in Yemen and several U.S. missions across the Middle East and Africa.

 

It also came after at least four suspected Al-Qaeda members were killed in what local tribal leaders said was a U.S. drone strike in central Yemen early on Tuesday.

 

“The Department urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart immediately,” the statement posted on its website said.

 

“On August 6, 2013, the Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks,” it added.

 

The UK's foreign office, meanwhile, advised against all travel to Yemen, and “strongly urge[d] British nationals to leave now”. It said that all British embassy staff had been temporarily withdrawn from the country.

 

'Intercepted communications'

 

Tuesday's warning came after U.S. media reports indicated that the increased threat levels were the result of what U.S. intelligence officials said were intercepted communications between top Al-Qaeda leaders.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the closure of the embassies was the result of intercepted electronic communications between Ayman al-Zawahri, who replaced Osama bin Laden as head of Al-Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of Yemen-based affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

 

U.S. sources said that while some type of message between Zawahri and AQAP was intercepted recently, there were also other streams of intelligence that contributed to the security alert, which was prompted by a threat from AQAP.

 

“The threat picture is based on a broad range of reporting, there is no smoking gun in this threat picture,” a U.S. official told the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.

 

U.S. officials said there was still no information about a specific target or location of a potential attack, but the threat to Western interests had not diminished.

 

(Source: Al Jazeera and agencies)

 

Speaking during a Ramadan fast-breaking feast -- iftar -- with Syrian political and religious figures on Sunday, Assad said, “We meet today to remember that there are men who sacrificed their lives to keep the homeland proud and the word of right high…We meet in solidarity with their families who lost those who are most precious to them…and with the needy people who are facing the accumulative burdens of life with patience and faith,” the official SANA news agency reported.

 

The Syrian president said that “we meet to renew the vow to defend the homeland and face the challenges no matter how big with more resolve and determination."

 

He stated that the meeting aims to underline that "the homeland doesn't abandon its sons during misfortunes, but rather stands by them with all moral and material support."

 

Assad said that it is "a month of forgiveness, mercy, communication, sacrifice, redemption and jihad in its correct meaning; that is jihad of work, accomplishing, creating and amity. To sum up, it's a month of reforming the man as soul and body."

 

He likened the soul and body to the "individual" and the "society" as neither of them can be reformed without the other.

 

"In order for us to reform the society, we must have dialogue among its individuals and spectra, and in order for this dialogue to be useful and fruitful with a meaning and an essence, it must be an honest and transparent dialogue," Assad noted.

 

He reiterated the need for an open and transparent dialogue without compliments if one wants to talk about what is happening in Syria. "As far as the society is concerned, compliments in these circumstances would be like an ostrich burying its head in the sand in order not to see what is going on around it."

 

"Burying the head in the sand for the society now means burying the homeland in the sand," Assad said.

 

He noted that talking openly now is easier than it was two years ago when many of the Syrians were deceived and fell in the trap of trying to understand what was going on.

 

The Syrian president however said that the most pressing question that has been raised since the first days or probably the first hours of the crisis is "when does the crisis end?"

 

"We however can't determine when it ends if we are unable to first determine who ends it. This means that we have to know who is the one responsible for ending it and how, and then comes the question why," he stated.

 

The Syrian leader said that it is only the Syrians themselves who can end the crisis. "Although the external factors are strong and influential and we all know this truth, but the external role, no matter how strong, has a helping or hindering effect; it could either accelerate the solution or prolong the crisis. As we repeatedly said, this external role is contingent on the external gaps we have in Syria."

 

"When we put all external factors aside and we say that there are terrorists, thieves and mercenaries who are killing for money and there are Syrian extremists …is this then an external produce?" Assad asked, only to answer that this is the production of the Syrian society, citing it as one of those gaps.

 

He also cited "the in-between nationalism" among these gaps, stressing that one can be in-between when it comes to politics as he can choose any of many political categories. "However, when it comes to the homeland, there is only white when you are with the homeland and black when you are against the homeland."

 

The Syrian president went on saying that this "in-between nationalism", despite being the output of lack of knowledge and awareness, has created an incubator of chaos and terrorism "which has unleashed beasts into the field…and those beasts have in turn created their own incubators…and started to multiply and unleash other beasts and import their brethren form across the homeland's border."

 

Assad highlighted the importance of being one hand; the white against the black, stressing that then "I'm sure without any hesitation and without exaggeration that we will be easily able…despite this high price and all the blood that has been shed, to come out of this crisis."

 

He affirmed that there can be no exclusion of any means when the goal is to emerge from a domestic crisis that negatively affects everybody, adding that this is the approach that Syria has followed since the start of the crisis.

 

The Syrian president noted that all the suggestions and proposals made at the beginning of the crisis to change certain laws and amend certain articles in the constitution have been met despite the fact that some of those suggestions were put forth in bad faith and with malice.

 

"Yet, we went ahead with the solution based on this idea that as a state we can't say that we will not walk the path of a solution if there are people in Syria who believe that this would lead to improving the situation," he added.

 

Assad lashed at those who claim to be representatives of the Syrian people while they are calling for foreign intervention at the same time, stressing that those do not even represent themselves but only the countries which have funded and created them and give them orders on what to do and what not to do.

 

"When I have the support of the people, I don't need the support of anyone else, because the people are the strongest," said Assad, condemning those who call for foreign support claiming that the army is killing the people.

 

He noted that any army in the world, when it tries to attack or kill the people, would immediately fall down because the army is made of the society and can never be exported or manufactured in a factory.

 

Assad stressed that Syria's belief in the political work was what made it deal with the external initiatives despite being aware of the "real intentions" behind them.

 

He stated that the Syrian crisis will only be solved by stamping out "terror".

 

"I don't believe that any reasonable man believes that terrorism can be handled by means of politics. Politics may play a role in dealing with terrorism before it emerges…However, when terrorism emerges and sabotage, killing and destruction start and spread, there can be no solution when dealing with terrorism except that of striking with an iron fist," Assad said.

 

"Terrorism should be hit in order for politics to move well…This doesn’t mean that there can’t be a parallel track…If we are striking terrorism and there is a political track running parallel, then there is no problem as long as this is not used as an excuse to stop combating terrorism," he added.

 

The government troops have recently conducted successful clean-up operations across the country, inflicting heavy losses on the militants. 

 

The Syrian Army’s push against the militants rattled their sponsors. 

 

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said on June 26 that Saudi Arabia is trembling with fear because of the Syrian Army’s recent gains against the militants. 

 

In a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Jeddah on June 25, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal insisted that the militants in Syria must be armed with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. 

 

Zoubi said that the Saudi weapons and money is the main reason behind bloodshed in Syria, adding that Faisal “is lost in the Syrian blood.” 

 

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.

 

The State Department said 19 U.S. embassies and consulates would be closed through Saturday “out of an abundance of caution” and that a number of them would have been closed anyway for most of the week due to the Eid celebration at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

 

The United States initially closed 21 U.S. diplomatic posts for the day on Sunday. Some of those will reopen on Monday, including Kabul, Baghdad and Algiers.

 

Four new diplomatic posts - in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius - were added to the closure list for the week.

Last week, the State Department issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that Al-Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

 

“There is an awful lot of chatter out there,” U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC's “Meet the Press.”

 

He said the “chatter” - communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack - was “very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

 

A National Security Agency surveillance program that electronically collects communications on cellphones and emails - known as intercepts - had helped gather intelligence about this threat, Chambliss said.

 

It was one of the NSA surveillance programs revealed by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to media outlets.

Those programs “allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,” Chambliss said. “If we did not have these programs then we simply wouldn't be able to listen in on the bad guys.”

 

'SERIOUS THREAT'

 

“This is the most serious threat that I've seen in the last several years,” Chambliss said.

 

U.S. military forces in the Middle East region have been on a higher state of alert for the past several days because of the threat, a U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

 

The threat also has prompted some European countries to close their embassies in Yemen, home to an Al-Qaeda affiliate that is considered one of the most dangerous: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
 

Yemeni soldiers blocked roads around the U.S. and British embassies in Sanaa, while troops with automatic rifles stood outside the French Embassy.

 

Interpol, the France-based international police agency, on Saturday issued a global security alert advising member states to increase vigilance against attacks after a series of prison breaks in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

 

“Al-Qaeda is in many ways stronger than it was before 9/11, because it's mutated and it spread and it can come at us from different directions,” U.S. Representative Peter King, a Republican, said on ABC's “This Week.”

 

“And Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is probably the most deadly of all the Al-Qaeda affiliates,” he said.

 

Republicans and Democrats alike on Sunday television talk shows said the threat was serious and sought to defuse the controversy over the NSA surveillance programs, which critics say are an invasion of privacy and civil rights.
 

“The good news is that we picked up intelligence. And that's what we do. That's what NSA does,” U.S. Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC's “This Week.”

 

“We've received information that high-level people from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are talking about a major attack,” he said.

 

The threat information came just before the Eid celebration at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan later this week and just over a month before the anniversary of Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

 

A September 11 attack last year killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in Benghazi.

 

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on CNN's “State of the Union” that the actions taken to close the embassies and issue the global travel alert showed the Obama administration had learned lessons from Benghazi.

“Benghazi was a complete failure. The threats were real there. The reporting was real. And we basically dropped the ball. We've learned from Benghazi, thank God, and the administration is doing this right,” he said.