Syria shooting new hit on Iran

Iraqi bloc ‘no’ on poll results

BAGHDAD, Oct 17, (KUNA): The Coordination Framework, a coalition of Shiite political parties, rejected the results of the recent parliamentary elections that they lost.

The bloc held, in a statement, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) fully responsible for the failure of the elections due to its “mismanagement of the process.” The vote results will “impact negatively on the democratic process and societal accord,” it warned, raising “technical observations” about the vote.

The bloc includes the main losers in the elections, namely Fath (the Conquest) Alliance - led by Hadi Al-Ameri, State of Law Coalition, led by ex-prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Al-Hekmah Movement - led by Ammar AlHakim and Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi.

They got only 37 seats, almost a half of the front runner Sadrist Movement’s 70 seats, according to the preliminary results announced by the IHEC.

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced the initial parliamentary elections result after counting all votes.

Speaking at a news conference, head of the commission Jalil Adnan said that the commission published the results on its website after adding some uncounted votes.

JERUSALEM, Oct 17, (AP): The death of a former Syrian Druse lawmaker, allegedly by Israeli sniper fire, could mark a new phase in Israel’s war against Iranian entrenchment in neighboring Syria.

Syria’s state-run news agency said that Midhat Saleh was fatally shot Saturday in Ein el-Tinneh, a village along the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights where he ran a Syrian government office. Israeli media said Saleh had been assisting the Iranian military against Israel.

The Israeli military declined to comment, but if the Syrian claim is true, it would mark the first time that Israeli snipers are known to have killed an Iranian-linked target across the border. Israel has said it will not tolerate a permanent Iranian military presence in Syria and has acknowledged carrying out scores of airstrikes on alleged Iranian arms shipments and military targets in Syria in recent years.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the strategic territory. Most of the world does not recognize the annexation, though the Trump administration declared the territory to be part of Israel.

Saleh was born in Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan, and was jailed several times by Israel, most recently for 12 years until 1997. He later moved to Syria, was elected to parliament in 1998 and served as an adviser to the government on the Golan issue.

The small Druse community living in the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan generally has good relations with Israel. But many members still profess loyalty to Syria, in part because they have relatives on the other side of the border.

Samih Ayoub, a resident on the Israeli side of the Golan, said that Saleh had “no connection” to Iran or to any militia. “He’s just a quiet man who works in an office. They killed him next to his house,” he said.

While there was no official comment, Israeli military commentators - who are given high-level anonymous briefings with top army brass - said Saleh was intimately involved in assisting the Iranians build up their capabilities along the Israeli front. Iran has sent thousands of forces to Syria to back the army of President Bashar Assad during the country’s decade-long civil war.

“He answered directly to the Iranians,” said Yossi Yehoshua, a military correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest paid daily newspaper.

Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, told the Army Radio station that if Israel killed Saleh, it was meant to send a message to the Iranians. “I assume this was not an act of revenge,” he said. “We’re not talking about a mass murderer.”

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow and expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, said it was not a sure thing that Israel had even been involved. He said that Saleh was not an especially valuable target and also had tense relations with Iranian proxy Hezbollah and objected to the group’s activities in the Golan.

But he said that if Israel did indeed kill Saleh through an unprecedented sniper attack, it sent a powerful message to Iran and Syria about their activities near the Israeli border.

“It says that we have many ways and many techniques,” he said. “We’re watching you.”

Meanwhile, Syrian government shelling of a rebel-held town near the border with Turkey on Saturday killed four people and wounded more than a dozen, Syrian opposition activists said.

The shelling of the town of Sarmada comes amid increasing tensions in the last rebel stronghold in the Syrian northwest, where a truce reached in March last year has been repeatedly violated in recent weeks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said three of the dead were local policemen whose station received a direct hit. It said 17 people were also wounded.

The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said the shelling was concentrated on Sarmada and a road linking it with the border crossing point of Bab al-Hawa with Turkey. The Civil Defense also said four persons were killed but gave a higher number of wounded, 23.

A truce negotiated between Turkey, which supports Syria’s opposition, and Russia, the Syrian government’s main backer, ended a crushing Russian-backed government offensive on northwestern Syria in March last year.

In other developments, a roadside bomb hit a Turkish military convoy on Friday night, killing two soldiers and wounding five on the road leading to Bab al-Hawa, according to Turkish media and the Observatory.

The Observatory said the attack was claimed by a group known as Supporters of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Company, a militant group that has claimed previous attacks on Turkish forces.