W O R L D

Egypt vows crackdown after border massacre
Cairo, August 6
Egypt branded Islamist gunmen who killed 16 policemen near the Israeli border as "infidels" and promised on Monday to launch a crackdown following the massacre that strained Cairo's ties with both Israel and Palestinians. An Egyptian official has said "Jihadist elements" crossed from the Gaza Strip into Egypt before leading the assault on a border station. They then stole two armoured vehicles and headed to nearby Israel, where they were killed by Israeli fire.

A soldier inspects a burnt Egyptian military vehicle that was seized by Islamist gunmen in a cross-border assault on Sunday. — AFP

Egypt vows crackdown after border massacre
Gaza border crossing into Egypt closed indefinitely

Cairo, August 6
Egypt branded Islamist gunmen who killed 16 policemen near the Israeli border as "infidels" and promised on Monday to launch a crackdown following the massacre that strained Cairo's ties with both Israel and Palestinians.

An Egyptian official has said "Jihadist elements" crossed from the Gaza Strip into Egypt before leading the assault on a border station. They then stole two armoured vehicles and headed to nearby Israel, where they were killed by Israeli fire.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that eight assailants died in the attack, adding that he hoped the incident would serve as a "wake-up call" to Egypt, long accused of losing its grip in the desert Sinai peninsula.

The bloodshed represented an early diplomatic test for Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who took office at the end of June after staunch US ally Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year in a popular uprising.

Mubarak cooperated closely with Israel on security and suppressed Islamist movements such as Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood whose leaders often voiced hostility towards the Jewish state.

Egypt's military, which still holds many levers of power in the most populous Arab nation, called the attackers "infidels" and said it had been patient until now in the face of the instability in Sinai.

"But there is a red line and passing it is not acceptable. Egyptians will not wait for long to see a reaction to this event," it said in a statement on its Facebook page. A demilitarised Sinai is the keystone of the historic 1979 peace deal between the two countries.

But for the past year there has been growing lawlessness in the vast desert expanse, as Bedouin bandits, jihadists and Palestinian militants from next-door Gaza fill the vacuum, tearing at already frayed relations between Egypt and Israel.

Egypt announced it was closing its border crossing into Gaza "indefinitely", cutting off the sole exit route for most Palestinians at the height of the Muslim-fast month of Ramadan. — Reuters

Syrian PM joins rebels
Riyad Hijab crosses over to Jordan with his family

Amman, August 6
Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking one of the highest profile desertions from the Damascus government.

Syrian state television said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in the Jordanian capital Amman said he had been dismissed only after he fled across the border with his family.

"I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution," Hijab said in a statement read in his name by the spokesman, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television. "I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution."

Syrian state television reported Hijab's dismissal as government forces appeared to prepare a ground assault to clear battered rebels from Aleppo, the country's biggest city.

The opposition Syrian National Council said a further two ministers and three army generals had defected with Hijab. That assertion could not immediately be verified.

Hijab was a top official of the ruling Baath party but, like all other senior defectors so far from the government and armed forces, he was also a Sunni Muslim rather than a member of Assad's Alawite sect, which has long dominated the Syrian state.

"Hijab is in Jordan with his family," said the Jordanian official source, who did not want to be further identified. The source said Hijab had defected to Jordan before his sacking.

Assad appointed Hijab, formerly agriculture minister, as prime minister only in June following a parliamentary election which authorities said was a step towards political reform but which opponents dismissed as a sham.

Hijab's home province of Deir al-Zor has been under heavy Syrian army shelling for several weeks as Assad's forces try to dislodge rebels from large areas of countryside there. Syrian television said Omar Ghalawanji, who was previously a deputy prime minister, had been appointed to lead a temporary, caretaker government on Monday. — Reuters

Contempt of Court Act
Pak govt to challenge apex court’s verdict
Afzal Khan in Islamabad

Babar said the decision to go into appeal against the SC decision had been taken in consultation with allied parties and legal experts.

NATO strike kills Haqqani leader

Kabul, August 6
NATO forces say they have killed a leader of the Haqqani insurgent group in an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan.

The international military coalition says Sher Mohammad Hakimi was killed on Sunday in Logar province.

Logar province police chief, Raeis Khan Rahimzai, says Hakimi was sitting under a tree with some associates when the NATO strike killed him. He says four others were injured.

Rahimzai says Hakimi was known for organising roadside bomb attacks and for training insurgents. NATO says Hakimi transported weapons through the region and served directly under Haqqani leader Muhammad Agha. — AP