25 people were killed and 30 got injured after two suicide bombs on Thursday hit a military base and a plant run by French nuclear giant Areva in northern Niger, souces said.

20 Nigerien soldiers and 5 assailants died in twin suicide- attacks against a military barracks in Agadez, the main town in northern Niger, and another one at a factory owned by Somair, a subsidiary of the French group Areva in Arlit in the northern Niger.

The attacks were made on Thursday morning by Niger’s National Defence Minister Karidjo Mahamadou who issued a press statement.

There were also 30 people who were injured, among them 16 soldiers and 14 civilians, the same source said.

“This Thursday, at around 5:30 a.m, two groups of individuals armed with explosives on board Toyota 4×4, simultaneously drove into the Agadez military barracks and the factory of Somair mining company in Arlit with a firm determination to carry out attacks,” the statement from the defence minister indicated.

“These terrorist attacks carried out by the suicide-bombers were contained by our soldiers who, despite the heavy loss, managed to neutralize the assailants some of whom decided to blow themselves up,” the minister said in the statement.

The Agadez death toll was 20 soldiers and 16 of them injured, while 3 assailants were killed. In Arlit, 14 civilians were injured while two assailants were killed.

The defence minister said that the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an islamist group operating in northern Mali, claimed responsibility for the twin suicide attacks.

“The situation is under control and the search for other assailants has already been launched,” the minister said while also promising to inform the public about how the situation develops.

A three days national mourning period will be observed across the entire national territory starting on Thursday.

“The Nigerien armed forces would wish to reaffirm their commitment to defend and protect Niger and its people at all cost, ” the national defence minister reiterated.

It’s worth noting that since the beginning of the crisis in neighbouring northern Mali, these are the first attacks on the Nigerien territory.

Xinhua

Siniora stressed the need to end the party’s involvement “through all possible means.”

“The fighting violates the constitution, laws, Baabda Declaration, the policy of disassociation, and international resolutions,” Siniora noted in a statement issued by his press office.

His list of contacts included Lebanon Speaker Nabih Berri, former Speaker Hussein al-Husseini, Vice President of the Higher Islamic Shiite Council Sheikh Abdul Amir Qabalan, former Ministers Mohammed Abdul Hamid Baydoun and Ibrahim Shamseddine, and clerics Sayyed Ali Fadlallah, Sayyed Ali al-Amin, Sayyed Mohammed Hassan al-Amin, and Sayyed Hani Fahs.

Saniora highlighted to them the dangers of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian crisis, saying that it will drag Lebanon towards more unrest.

“Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria could drag Lebanon and the Lebanese people towards a confrontation with a large segment of the Syrian people, who oppose the Syrian regime,” he explained.

“Hezbollah’s actions are leading to the deaths of Lebanese youths and Syrian citizens. They are causing human suffering and inexplicable destruction” that may steer Lebanon to a confrontation that it has no power in resisting, continued the former PM.

Siniora urged the need for cooperation between all Lebanese factions in order to end Hezbollah’s involvement, demanding that practical measures be taken to that end.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced on Thursday that over a hundred Hezbollah members were killed so far fighting alongside the Syrian regime.

With the bodies from the battle over the border at Qusayr, comes the violence, as civil conflict between Syria’s Iranian-backed ruler and Sunni rebels spreads across the Middle East; the Shi’ite militia’s drive to save Syria’s president is testing Lebanon’s own fragile, sectarian peace and raises the stakes in a broader struggle for power in the region and the wider world.

Having long denied its engagement in Syria behind President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah has committed itself this week to the fight for the strategic small town of Qusayr, sending hundreds of men and losing dozens wounded and between 20 and 50 killed.

Their coffins, escorted by stern-faced Hezbollah gunmen and corteges flying the movement’s yellow banner, stream back to Shi’ite villages in the northeastern Bekaa Valley, ending any discretion about its backing for Assad and his Alawite minority.

For all that staff at hospitals taking in the wounded around the town of Hermel keep doors closed to journalists and insist “There’s nothing to see,” the war has widened its scope.

And with Sunnis and Alawites in the nearby Lebanese port of Tripoli also engaged in the fiercest communal fighting yet, the spread of violence beyond Syria is accelerating.

Already sectarian killing has surged in Iraq, bombs have hit Turkey and Israeli air strikes in Syria targeted Iranian arms for Hezbollah while world powers remain divided among themselves as they try to push Syria’s rivals into holding peace talks.

For Rami Khouri at the American University of Beirut, Hezbollah’s Syrian venture risks rebounding into Lebanon and could even – in a very worst case – fuel a regional war:

“It would vastly increase the likelihood of massive internal Lebanese strife between pro- and anti-Hezbollah groups, broadly spitting Sunnis and Shi’ites against each other, while also inviting another major war with Israel, or possibly participation in an American-Israeli/Iranian-Syrian war.”

Risks for Hezbollah

Hezbollah fighters in their military uniform, foreground, carry the coffin of Hezbollah fighter Hassan Faisal Shuker, 18, who was killed in a battle against Syrian rebels in the Syrian town of Qusayr, during his funeral procession in his hometown of Nabi Sheet in the eastern Bekaa valley, Lebanon, Monday May 20, 2013. Fierce street fighting in Qusayr, Syria, near the Lebanese border has killed  dozens of   elite members of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, activists said Monday, as Syrian government forces pushed deeper into the strategic, opposition-held town. The barefaced Hezbollah involvement — several funerals for group members were held in Lebanon Monday — edges the war further into a regional sectarian conflict pitting the Middle East’s Iranian-backed Shiite axis against Sunnis. (AP)

Hezbollah, armed by Iran since Lebanon’s civil war in the1980s, outguns Beirut’s weak central government as well as other factions, including Sunnis, Christians, Druze and Palestinians.

But in nailing its colors to Assad’s bid to crush a Sunni uprising, the Shi’ite movement has alienated fellow Arabs in the region who once respected it, at least for fighting Israel. It may also irk Lebanese Shi’ites, who have counted on Hezbollah’s protection locally but are not necessarily enthusiastic about dying for Iran in its rivalry with Arab powers and the West.

Rafik Nasrallah, a political analyst in Beirut who is close to Hezbollah, said the movement had been obliged to intervene in Syria to protect Lebanese interests and it had taken into account the prospect of a violent reaction from rival groups:

“There is no Lebanese state, there are groups in the security apparatus here that serve different regional powers or countries,” Nasrallah said. “Hezbollah’s job is to protect Lebanon and its borders, it is doing what it has to do.

“This is a decisive battle,” he said of Qusayr, near Homs, which rebels have held to secure supply routes from Lebanon and to disrupt movement between Damascus and Syria’s Alawite region.

“Hezbollah believes that this battle is of great strategic importance, and they will bear the consequences,” he added, as reports from Syria indicated Hezbollah fighters and Assad’s troops had made some gains after days of fighting in the town.

On the frontlines, the intervention appears to have hardened sectarian attitudes among rebels fearful of losing a key position: “The fall of …. Qusayr will completely change the struggle in Homs province from a revolution into a major assault on Alawites and Shi’ites wherever they are,” said a fighter who uses the name Abu Bilal, speaking to Reuters from Homs.

“Rebel battalions here all agree on this. And every side of this conflict knows this is what is at stake in Homs.”

Hezbollah’s forces are tiny beside the tens of thousands of troops, with tanks and jet aircraft, that Assad can call on even after Sunni desertions from his army. But it does have thousands of guerrillas, many of whom saw action against Israel in 2006.

Hezbollah’s alliance with Assad has not been an easy one for it on the regional stage, but its leaders remain unapologetic, arguing it is crucial to their “axis of resistance” – the term it uses for its anti-Israel alliance with Tehran and Damascus.

The “Party of God,” once admired across the Arab world as a bulwark against Israel, is now derided as “Hezb al-Shaytan” -Party of the Devil – and a sectarian cats paw of non-Arab Iran.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni with powerful allies in Saudi Arabia, said this week: “Hezbollah has chosen to copy Israeli crimes against Lebanon and its people and apply them to the inhabitants of the Syrian city of Qusayr.

“It has become the spearhead of a crime carried out by the regime against its people, which can also be described as the Iranian defense army of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.”
“Resistance”

Hezbollah, in turn, has sought to shore up its pan-Arab credentials by accusing its rebel enemies at Qusayr of being sponsored by Israel and Western powers – thus justifying its intervention as part of its “resistance” to the Jewish state.

“Israel is in Qusayr … The attack on Syria is all part of an Israeli, foreign-led attack on Syria,” said Amin Hate it, a Lebanese commentator close to Hezbollah. “This is a party of ideology, not nationalities. So wherever there are enemies to those beliefs, its fighters will go. They go voluntarily.”

It is unclear, however, quite how willingly Lebanese Shi’ites will go on fighting and dying in Syria like Radwan and Ali Qassem al-Attar, brothers who fell at Qusayr a few days ago and in whose memory yellow Hezbollah banners now fly at a spot near their home, off a dusty side road in the Bekaa Valley.

Syria’s war is intruding on pastoral tranquility. Men in camouflage secure checkpoints; the peace of cows grazing nearby is shattered by occasional rocket fire. Locals point to a white-tented Hezbollah position just over the border, on Syrian land.

But a security source close to Hezbollah believes it cannot count on unlimited backing from its local supporters. Leaders had calculated, he said, that the movement could afford to lose several dozen men at Qusayr, due to its strategic importance.

But if the battle drags on, recruitment might suffer. Party media were playing down the losses, he said. But he added: “The party can’t help that, whatever they do, if a man in one of these villages dies, every villager will go to that funeral.”

“Soon they could start asking ‘Why should we fight and die for Syrians?’“

Al Arabiya

Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib published his initiative on Facebook, as the main National Coalition he headed until March gathered in Istanbul to choose a new leader and discuss a US-Russian peace initiative dubbed Geneva 2.

Under Khatib’s initiative, Assad would have 20 days from Thursday to give “his acceptance of a peaceful transition of authority.”

After accepting, Assad would have one month to hand over power to either Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi or Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa, who would then govern Syria for a transitional period of 100 days.

As part of the transition Khatib envisages, Assad would “leave the country along with five hundred people whom he will select, along with their families and children, to any other country that may choose to host them.”

This is the first time one of Syria’s opposition chiefs has made an offer of political immunity to Assad and key members of his regime.

Khatib’s proposal is an effort to pull Syria “out from the catastrophe that has struck our nation”, said the former Omayyad mosque imam and controversial opposition figure on Facebook.

It is also “a practical response to the need of a political settlement ensuring a peaceful transition of authority”, Khatib added.

“This initiative is a product of Syria and its goal is Syria,” he said.

While calling on dissident groups to adopt the initiative “as a way out from the catastrophe that has struck our nation”, Khatib also said the international community should “oversee it and ensure that it is implemented.”

This would be accompanied by the release of all political prisoners in Syria, Khatib wrote.

The initiative gives Assad a month to “completely hand over authority”, and stipulates that while parliament should be dissolved, all of its powers should be handed to Assad’s replacement.

Over the same 100-day period, an interim government would “restructure the security and military” apparatus in Syria, said Khatib.

He also suggested that the UN should appoint an international mediator to oversee the transition.

At the end of the 100 days, the responsibilities of the current government would pass to the transitional government, formed with international guarantees, which would “be responsible for the preparation and the re-building of the new Syria,” Khatib said.

Khaled Saleh, spokesman for the opposition coalition, said it was a “personal initiative” that would be “submitted at the coalition meeting and maybe discussed.”

NOW/ AFP

“These children come to school with a deep desire for learning,” says Ali Hujeiri, 55, the school principal. “They know what they’ve missed and now they appreciate the value of their education.”

They have arrived from Syrian towns and cities such as Qusayr, Dara’a and Homs – places that are now battlegrounds. At least one of the boys in the class has seen his home blown to pieces. But somehow the silent walls of school that provide them a place for study also nurture a sense of hope beyond conflict. Here Billal, aged 11, can dream of becoming a teacher. Halid, also 11, aspires one day to be a doctor. Ten-year-old Selieman wants to be a hairdresser.

Arsal was once a sleepy town nestled in the hills a few kilometres from the Syrian border. When war broke out in Syria two years ago, the town bulged as civilians, most of them women and children, fled to Lebanon. Soon Arsal grew by 10,000 people – roughly half were children.

There wasn’t enough room in the schools to handle all the newcomers, so the municipality was asked by the Lebanese Ministry of Education to create a second shift between one and six in the afternoon. Arsal Middle School gladly complied and 236 Syrian students were enrolled. “I look at these children and I say, ‘What in this war is their fault?’” says Hujeiri. “They didn’t do anything to deserve their fate. These children need to be educated.”

Throughout Lebanon almost 40 per cent of the refugee population is of school age. But enrollment in the education system remains critically low. In the current academic year, only 30,000 of the estimated 120,000 school-age refugee children go to state schools.

It is estimated that another 10,000 receive some form of private education. This level of refugee participation in education is nowhere near the ambitious goal set by the Lebanese government to have 60 per cent of all refugee children in school.

While the Ministry of Education has promised that all refugee children are entitled to attend a state school, many schools are either overcrowded or lacking in basic resources such as books.

The Arsal approach of double shifts represents one solution. Tuition fees, which cost US$136 per term, are paid for by the UN refugee agency. Other UNHCR partners fund books, supplies and other educational needs. The Syrian students arriving in the village are unfamiliar with the Lebanese curriculum or the French language in which some courses are taught, but they have managed to excel in just a few months.

“We see the approach that Arsal has taken as a model for the rest of the country,” says Linda Kjosaas, a UNHCR education expert in Lebanon. “With an increasing influx, the number of children in school-age at the end of 2013 will exceed the current number of children enrolled in state schools, and in some places even a second shift will not solve the space problem. The impact of the conflict is staggering, but despite what these children have had to endure in the past, they need to be given a real chance to further their education and not become a lost generation.”

The refugee children of Arsal still face daunting problems. Many children cannot go to school because they are required to work by their parents. Others are traumatized by war as well as the transient nature of their lives. “It is the lack of stability that has affected them the most,” says the school principal, Hujeiri. “They don’t have food on their tables each day. They don’t live in the same place every day.”

To that extent, the educational environment at the school is more than just a learning tool. It is a way to create a shared space of safety. Children who are not in school are at much higher risk of ending up as child labour. Moreover, it would be more difficult for the government and humanitarian agencies to identify the health and other needs of the young not at school.

“For many villages, the school is the heart of the community, and to be able to bring children to the safety of a school and offer them needed services is very important. Quality education is the only way for these children to integrate well in their new reality and have a real chance for a future,” notes Hujeiri.

Currently UNHCR, UNICEF and partners are planning for next year’s Back to School programme. With a forecast number of 300,000 registered refugees in school-age in Lebanon, the costs of failure for these students is simply too high and so a strong spirit of cooperation has flourished between school officials, local government, UNHCR and other key partners. “We are all team players here,” says Terra Mackinnon, UNHCR associate field officer. “Gold stars for collaboration for everyone!”

UNHCR

Photo: Female students at the school in Arsal, which is running a second shift of classes in the afternoon to accommodate Syrian refugees.

During a meeting  on Thursday  with the mayors in  Akkar region,   acting  Director-General of the Internal Security Forces,  General Roger  Salem, said that  Lebanon is facing difficulties in dealing with the influx of refugees from Syria  and is being left alone to deal with the burden.

He revealed that  currently there is more  than a million and two hundred thousand  displaced Syrians  and more than 60 , 000 displace Palestinians from Syria in Lebanon.

“Currently, more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees  and over  60 thousand  displaced Palestinians from Syria” He said

He added : “The situation is very  difficult we  need the cooperation of al  public and private institutions and communities,  including municipalities and civil security forces  in order to deal with this situation .”

Salem pointed out that “there is a plan  that has been discussed at the presidential palace two days ago to deal with the refugees , but financial support from abroad  is virtually non-existent, which means that Lebanon is  being left alone  to bear the burden. There is the burden of hospitalization and medical services, medicines and the cost of relief and living,  especially  since we expect the number of  Syrian refugees in Lebanon  to increase  during the coming period. ”

Salam did not indicate whether the number of  displaced Syrians  in Lebanon include the Syrian seasonal workers . Usually there are about 500, 000 to 600,000 Syrian laborers  who cross the border to work in agriculture and construction ,.

The alliance described their armed presence in the country as a threat to regional stability, Reuters said.

The bloc also said any transitional government in Syria being proposed as a core of a U.S. and Russian peace initiative must have authority over the army and the executive, which are now in President Bashar Assad’s hands.

The meeting of 11 Western and Arab nations, as well as Turkey, which constitute the core group of the alliance, also warned of “severe consequences” if use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces is confirmed.

The Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh spoke during the opening session and said the aim of the talks is to develop plans for a political transition period to start in Syria.

During the opening session, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad escalated violence in the country.

The Jordanian foreign minister also added that the Syrian crisis left more than one hundred thousand as victims of war in the country until now.

Earlier on Wednesday, Kerry held a press conference with Judeh in Amman.

“We would call on President Assad to make the same commitment to find peace in his country,” Kerry said.

Kerry said if Assad was not prepared to discuss a political solution to end Syria’s civil war, it will prompt the United States and other countries to consider increasing their support to the Syrian opposition.

The U.S. secretary of state also stated that Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, was taking part in Syrian conflict, with the Iranian support.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said earlier on Wednesday that both Iran and Hezbollah are “propping up” Assad and increasingly supporting him.

Hague said Britain would urge international powers to set a date, in the next few days, for an international conference to try to end the two-year-old conflict engulfing Syria and threatening regional stability.

“It is the longstanding view of the U.K. that Assad needs to go, and we have never been able to see any solution which involves him staying,” Hague told a press conference.

The aim of the meeting, Hague stressed, would be agreement on the formation of “a transitional government with full executive authority, formed on the basis of mutual consent.”

In a rare twist, Syrian Ambassador to Jordan, Bahjat Suleiman, has denounced the meeting of nations that back the Syrian opposition, calling the gathering part of a U.S.-Israeli campaign to destroy his country.

According to The Associated Press, Suleiman criticized Arab nations for attending the Amman meeting, saying they are assisting Washington in its “aggressive, terrorist war, on behalf of Israel, to destroy Syria.”
Al Arabiya

“There have been 57 killed and 18 others who have died of their wounds since the start of its (Hezbollah’s) participation in the war in Syria,” the source told AFP.

Hezbollah combatants have become increasingly involved in Syria’s conflict, fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces against an insurgency that flared after a brutal regime crackdown on democracy protests.

Initially Hezbollah said it only wanted to defend 13 Syrian villages along the border where Lebanese Shiites live, and the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine near Damascus, an important Shiite pilgrimage site.

However, its elite fighters later encircled Qusair with regime troops before the launch on Sunday of a withering assault on the strategic border town that is home to 25,000 people.

Hezbollah denied its involvement in Syria for some time, quietly burying fighters killed in Syria.

But the movement stopped hiding its dead when its leader Hassan Nasrallah paid homage to militants killed across the border on April 30.

“Syria has true friends in the region who will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of the United States, Israel and ‘takfiri’ groups,” he said in an interview with the movement’s television channel, Al-Manar.

Waddah Sharara, an expert on the organization, says Hezbollah has some 20,000 fighters, of whom 5,000 to 7,000 have experience of combat. Between 800 and 1,200 of these have been taking part in the battle for Qusair.

Arab News/ AFP

Tripoli has suffered sporadic sectarian violence since the Sunni Muslim-led uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad broke out in March 2011, but after a night of mortar, grenade and machinegun fire, residents said this was the fiercest so far.

At least 18 people have been killed and more than 170 wounded in the Lebanese port city since the latest bout of fighting started on Sunday.

The use of heavy weapons stopped as the sun rose on Thursday and only the sound of sniper fire could be heard. The militant groups tend to fight through the night and rest by day.

Sunnis sympathetic to Syrian rebels live in a district of Tripoli overlooked by a hilltop neighborhood home to minority Alawites, the offshoot of Shi’ite Islam to which Assad belongs.

The two groups have clashed in Tripoli on and off for decades, but the Syrian conflict has reopened old wounds, with each side accusing the other of using the city as a base for sending fighters and weapons in and out of Syria.

Syrian activists said the fighting in Tripoli flared after a fierce assault by Assad’s forces on the rebel-held Syrian border town of Qusair, where fighters from Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah movement are battling alongside Syrian troops.

Reuters