As Russia’s Caspian Sea fleet launched precision-guided cruise missiles at Syrian rebel positions, a Chinese naval vessel continued to loom menacingly in the background, maintaining its presence in the Mediterranean Sea amid Chinese denials that the People’s Liberation Army will enter the Syrian conflict.

A Middle Eastern defense official affirmed the Chinese military ship is located a short trip of several “hours” from the Syrian coast. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that while China’s intentions are unclear, the vessel’s presence is well known to Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf countries as well as to the U.S. and Russia.

The official said that China is reluctant to directly intervene in Syria or approach Syrian waters unless the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad formally requests the assistance of Chinese military advisers.

Even then, China may only take on an advisory role and not carry out military missions alongside the Russians and Syrians, the official said.

Reconfirming information reported by WND last month, the official said another option being discussed is for the Russian government to make a public gesture toward requesting the Chinese presence.

A Syrian regime source confirmed knowledge of the Chinese vessel and said no decision has been made by Assad’s regime about requesting any Chinese assistance in fighting the years-long insurgency led by Middle East rebels.

Publicly, China has maintained a detached posture toward the Syrian conflict.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the U.N. Security Council last week that “the international community cannot look on without lifting a finger, but also ought not to interfere arbitrarily.”

“A political resolution for the Syrian crisis is the fundamental way out,” he added.

Former Soviet-bloc intelligence chief Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa reveals the secret strategies destroying Western civilization in his book “Disinformation ” and the companion documentary.

And Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute, was quoted by the Chinese Global Times tabloid last week calling reports of a Chinese warship advancing toward Syria “purely rumors.”

Junshe was speaking about the Chinese 152 Fleet, which recently finished an escort mission and in August embarked on a five-month tour to take the fleet from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea.

Junshe said the fleet’s mission was planned before Russia started to act in Syria.

The Middle Eastern defense official who spoke to WND denied a report from Debka.com, a private website headquartered in Israel, claiming the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning-CV-16 has docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, accompanied by a guided-missile cruiser.

The Debka report prompted the chatter about China entering the Syria conflict as did the Lebanese English language website Al-Masdar Al-Arabi, which two weeks ago quoted a senior Syrian Army officer stationed in Latakia as saying “the Chinese will be arriving in the coming weeks” and will join the Russian military there.

On Wednesday, acting from 1,000 miles away in the Caspian Sea, the Russian navy bombarded Syrian rebel positions. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced at a televised briefing that Russian ships launched 26 cruise missiles in Syria, destroying 11 targets.

The Washington Post reported the naval strikes represented the first known operational use of state-of-the-art SSN-30A Kalibr cruise missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted the strikes showed the professionalism of Russia’s military.

“We know how difficult it is to carry out this kind of anti-terrorist operation,” Putin said. “Of course, it is early to draw conclusions. But what has been done so far deserves a highly positive assessment.”

The Russian missiles traversed Iranian and Iraqi airspace, demonstrating clear coordination with both countries.

Iraq announced last week week it recently established an intelligence-sharing platform with the Russians, Syrians and Iranians.

The intelligence coordination could jeopardize U.S. security, because the U.S. maintains its own intelligence-sharing channels with Iraq.

The Russian strikes were backed up by a massive Syrian ground campaign, Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub, chief of the General Staff of the Army and Armed Forces, told Syria’s SANA state-run media agency.

The agency further reported that following the Russian missile salvo “hundreds of of terrorists were confirmed dead, and tens of armored vehicles, two Grad rocket launchers and a huge ammunition depot were destroyed as a result of the airstrikes.”

wnd.com

The Palestinian Authority must cease all security cooperation with Israel and support the upsurge of Palestinian “people’s resistance” in Jerusalem and the West Bank in what is now being described by some as the “Third Intifada,” independent Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti has told Middle East Eye.

Speaking to MEE, Barghouti said the Third Intifada “has already begun,” following deadly clashes and protests in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem over the past few weeks, including the fatal shooting of two Palestinian teenagers in recent days and the killing of several Israelis by Palestinians.

The recent violence erupted after Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces last month in the al-Aqsa compound, Islam’s third holiest site, that is also holy to Jews who call it the Temple Mount. Tensions had begun to mount following an increase in Jewish visitors during the Jewish New Year with relations already fraught due to ongoing settler violence and fears over the status quo at al-Aqsa.

Barghouti’s comments follow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s threat at the UN General Assembly last week to withdraw from all agreements signed between the PA and Israel over the past two decades.

Barghouti, who is leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, said that the PA must end its controversial security co-ordination pact with Israel that sees it assuming a policing role against other Palestinian factions in the West Bank.

“The Palestinian resistance must be supported by the Palestinian Authority… and must also immediately cease security co-ordination with the [Israeli] occupation,” he told MEE.

“The Third Intifada has already begun. There must be no more negotiations with Israel as they have breached all agreements in the past.”

Abbas told the UN General Assembly last Wednesday that “[the Palestinian Authority] will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of …agreements [with Israel],” further adding that “Israel must assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power” without specifying what powers the PA intended to relinquish.

However, he also said on Tuesday: “We [the PA] do not want a military and security escalation with Israel,” suggesting that the PA may be willing to engage in further talks with the Israelis.

However, this account conflicts with another spokesperson who initially said that no live fire was used by the Israeli army during the incident. B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation that documents Israeli government abuses in the Occupied Territories, denounced the death of Obeidallah and condemned the use of live rounds against Palestinians, saying that .22 calibre rounds were “a lethal weapon, which the Israeli authorities present as a reasonable tool…in dealing with demonstrations”.

The Israeli army report is unlikely to reduce tensions as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a raft of new punitive measures to crack down on Palestinian dissent.

Netanyahu has confirmed that Israel would expedite the demolition of Palestinian homes alleged to have been involved in armed attacks, expand the controversial measure of administrative detention and ban people from entering Jerusalem’s Old City.

Yesterday, the homes of two Palestinians were demolished, even though they were shot and killed by Israel’s security forces.

In a statement, Hamas’ spokesperson, Sami Abu Zuhri, said that stabbings and attacks against Israeli settlers and security forces were “a natural response to [Israeli] occupation and settler crimes against the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian people” further adding that “the Palestinian people cannot sit idly by while the Israeli crimes continue amidst international silence”.

When asked what he expected from the international community, Barghouthi told MEE; “I expect the international community to take punitive action against Israel in the form of international sanctions. They need to make it clear to the Israelis that they must immediately cease their violence.”

palestinemonitor.org

The Algerian Defence Ministry says its security forces have killed a “dangerous terrorist” active since 1995 in an eastern region near the border with Tunisia.

A ministry statement on Wednesday said that Bakari Ali, whose nom de guerre was Abou El-Hacen, was killed a day earlier in the Tebessa region. Weapons including an automatic pistol and a Kalashnikov were seized along with munitions, explosives and portable phones.

The statement said El-Hacen and his wife joined extremist groups in 1995 in the eastern region before heading to the Sahel in 2000, “becoming one of the acolytes of terrorist Moktar Belmokhtar” – the militant who claimed responsibility for the 2013 gas plant attack in southern Algeria in which 37 workers, all but one of them foreigners, were killed.

A small gelatina bomb exploded harmlessly outside the GNC yesterday while members were deciding not to buy into the latest UNSMIL deal. A far bigger political bomb went off early this morning when UNSMIL chief Bernardino Leon announced the formation of the unity government was going ahead without them.

“We have decided to go on,” a weary and crumpled Bernardino Leon told a Skirhat press conference in the small hours of this morning, “and we will continue with the formation of a unity government. Tomorrow, we will be ready to propose this government”.

Leon explained: “After consultations with all the Libyans participating in this national dialogue, I come here to tell you that even though we have been waiting for the GNC to make a decision today, unfortunately this decision has not been the one we were expecting in terms of proposing names for the national unity government”.

He continued that none of the obstacles that it knew it was facing would prevent the national dialogue from proposing a government, “ a government of unity, a strong government that will reunite all the Libyans and will allow Libya to overcome the security crisis and the humanitarian crisis that it is facing”.

Leon continued: “So the message tonight is a message of unity. It’s a message of trust. We know well that there are many Libyans who are confused after what has happened today. Let me say that after consulting with many people inside and outside Tripoli, all over Libya, I can tell them we will prevail, that we will be able to propose a government tomorrow. And this government, this agreement, which is not going to change, this agreement that is final, as it was said very clearly by the international community last Friday, will be supported by the huge majority of the Libyans”.

When asked by a journalist how the new government could operate from Tripoli if it was controlled by the GNC, Leon said it had been a long day, during which UNSMIL had talked to a lot of people. “But what I can tell you is that our impression now is that a huge majority of the Libyans, and this includes a huge majority of Tripoli, and this includes we want also to think, the huge majority of the members of the GNC are ready to support a peaceful solution, a political agreement without changes and a unity government that should be announced tomorrow”.

The EU’s military operation to tackle migrant trafficking in the Mediterranean Sea enters its second phase on Wednesday. Warships will start patrolling international waters to protect migrants and catch smugglers.

Six ships already in place in international waters off the coast of Libya – the departure point for many of the migrant boats – will be able to search and seize suspicious vessels as the second phase of the EU’s “Sophia” mission – formerly known as EUNAVFOR Med – begins.

They include an Italian aircraft carrier, a French frigate and one British, one Spanish and two German ships. At least three other vessels supplied by the Belgian, British and Slovenian navies are expected to arrive at the end of October to complete the force, which also includes four aircraft and 1,318 personnel.

During the first phase of the mission, operational since the end of July, traffickers were not actively targeted, but over 2,100 people have been saved from drowning. The first phase also saw staff compile and analyze information on the trafficker networks.

Sophia is allowed to operate in international waters, but will need a green light from the United Nations Security Council and Libyan authorities to venture into Libyan waters, which is by no means guaranteed. If granted, however, it would launch the third phase of Sophia – targeting traffickers in Libyan waters.

The operation’s name was changed in honor of a young girl born on a German rescue ship off the coast of Libya this summer.

The UN estimates that more than 520,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean this year, sparking Europe’s biggest refugee crisis in decades.

UNSMIL chief Bernardino Leon said that he expects that a National Unity Government  could be finalised as early as today afternoon. He told a press conference in the Moroccan resort of Skirhat that the GNC would be meeting today to put forward names for the roles of prime minister and deputy prime ministers and two other members of the presidential council.

Harking back to the UN General Assembly session in New York last Friday, Leon said that it had been an extremely important meeting.

“We immediately came back to Skhirat and we have been working since then. And we have very good news today because as you know the last participant in the dialogue that had to provide names and fully participate in this discussion was the GNC, and the GNC tomorrow morning at 10 am will have a session to propose these names. In the meantime, we have consultations with the other participants in the dialogue. We have been working for long hours yesterday and today. We will still work for long hours tonight”.

Leon added “We are really hopeful that the GNC will take this very important decision for the future of their people and tomorrow we will have these names, and that tomorrow, sometimes in the afternoon-evening, it will be possible to announce a proposal for a national unity government”.

Quizzed by journalists who wondered if he was not being overly optimistic, Leon replied that the prospects of agreement were good. “It is not a matter of optimism” he insisted. He pointed to the rival Libyan delegates who had been fighting each other but  who had gone to New York last week. “ They were sitting together and they were listening to the messages of the international community and they are here working with us [in Skirhat]”.

He said he was really hopeful that the GNC would provide a list of five names. “I think we have a lot of good news in the last days and it is on the basis of this good news we very much hope that tomorrow we will be able to complete this by reaching this agreement”.

Leon said that the House of Representatives and GNC delegations would propose and then “mutually accept” a deputy prime minister and then with other parties to the dialogue, they would seek to propose a consensus rime minister and the two senior ministers.

“So, we can have already a clear picture of what the others can accept and we hope to have tomorrow a clear picture of what the GNC can accept and can propose” continued Leon, adding “So, it could be possible to make this announcement tomorrow evening and this is what we expect to do and this is what we will encourage them to do”.

Asked about the likely names Leon said that he had a much clear picture, if not about the names themselves, “at least about the profiles and the options, which are not infinite. It is a concrete list of names”.

Noting that thanks to social media, there were no secrets in Libya, Leon said that while he had a reasonable idea of all the nominees , he wished to be discrete and disclose none at this point. He said however, “Everybody is trying to propose names for a government that will be able to work together, people that can be efficient in their jobs and that can be part of a team, because as I have said many times, the problems in Libya cannot be solved by one person or two”.

He insisted: “We are really at the very end, and we have, we need this final step from the GNC, and I hope they will do it”.

Egypt is working quickly to thwart what experts say is a change in tactics by Sinai-based, pro-Islamic State jihadists who have been striking deeper into Egyptian territory in order to make their presence known in Cairo.

To prevent what has been a local insurgency from escalating into a wider jihadist war, and giving the so-called Islamic State (IS) a foothold in Egypt, the Egyptian military for a month has engaged in a sweeping offensive in the Sinai Peninsula that it says has killed or imprisoned more than 1,000 militants.

At stake for IS is the opportunity of bringing its campaign for a Muslim caliphate to the largest city in the Middle East. But analysts warn that the Egyptian military offensive against IS runs the risk of backfiring, by making the mostly Bedouin residents of the Sinai more susceptible to IS recruitment.

The offensive, titled “Martyr’s Right,” was launched in northern Sinai in early September as part of the war with the jihadists, in which hundreds of Egyptian police and soldiers have died in several attacks over the past year.

The military campaign has been targeting Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a militant group that emerged in the Sinai in 2011 and late last year pledged allegiance to IS, rebranding itself as the “Sinai Province.”

On Sept. 22 Egypt hailed the initial phase of the operation as a success. In statements the military has claimed to have killed more than 500 militants and jailed 630 others while destroying dozens of “terrorist” outposts, weapons depots, and vehicles.

Observers say the campaign has come at the expense of the local Bedouin community, which has long felt disenfranchised by the government and left without services. A Human Rights Watch report in September condemned Egypt for evicting more than 3,200 families and razing hundreds of acres of farmland as part of the ongoing crackdown.

Bedouin discontent

“A fear expressed by many analysts is that the nature of the response from the Egyptian state, particularly in the Sinai, is engendering discontent from the local population,” says H.A. Hellyer, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. “That in turn may make it vulnerable to ISIS recruitment.”

Western diplomats in Cairo have long questioned whether the spate of bombings and attacks that have plagued Egypt in the past year were truly the acts of IS.

Western officials pointed to the nature of the attacks, which had been restricted to policemen and soldiers – so-called “symbols” of the government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi – as a sign that the attacks were more of a “local insurgency” rather than IS expansion.

Yet in the past three months, Western officials noted a troubling “change of tactics” as Egyptian jihadists began to export violence outside the Sinai.

‘Cairo is definitely in their crosshairs’

In July, fresh off the assassination of Attorney General Hesham Barakat in Cairo, Sinai Province made the bold attempt to seize the town of Sheikh Zuwaid in the northern Sinai – imitating IS takeovers in Iraq and Syria – and was driven back only with the full-force of Egyptian F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters.

Then the group struck the Italian Consulate on July 11 in the heart of Cairo with an early morning car-bombing. In August, operatives aligned with the group kidnapped a Croatian engineer off the streets of Cairo, selling him off to Sinai Province, which then beheaded him in a graphic video.

“Even if it is not ISIS, it is troubling,” says a Western diplomat on the condition of anonymity.

“It is clear – any influence ISIS has will drive [Sinai Province] towards Cairo,” says counter-terrorism expert Patrick Skinner from Soufan Group, a New York-based security intelligence firm.

“ISIS benefits from having an affiliate in the Sinai, but they hugely benefit from conducting attacks in Cairo. Cairo is definitely in their crosshairs.”

No network yet of Cairo supporters

Despite the crackdown, observers say jihadist militants in the near-term will likely stay to the Sinai, taking advantage of its vast area and normally limited military presence. Observers say the requirements for a continued presence in Cairo – a vast network of supporters and safehouses and an ability to avoid detection by security services – may be outside of Sinai Province’s current capabilities.

However, officials also fear a larger alliance between Sinai Province and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, who have been pushed underground and threatened with arrest. A pact with the Brotherhood would give Sinai Peninsula the operational reach to cause havoc in Cairo.

There are no figures for how many former Brotherhood supporters have gone to the side of Sinai Peninsula, though former Muslim Brotherhood leaders, on the condition of anonymity, place their numbers at around 200.

Another potential threat to Egypt would be the influx of pro-IS foreign fighters from neighboring Libya, which analysts say could escalate the insurgency into a wider international jihadist war against the state.

“What could happen, of course, is with weapons and personnel coming in from Libya, the conflict becomes much larger,” says Adel Abdel Ghafar, Egypt expert and joint fellow at Brookings Doha Center.

‘It’s do or die in Sinai’

Observers say Mr. Sisi’s government is taking notice, working swiftly to solve the problem in the Sinai before it can spread beyond the peninsula.

In concert with the military crackdown, observers say Egypt will look to boost development and win back the trust of Sinai residents, allowing millions of dollars in local and international investment in the peninsula.

“They are trying to adjust this policy. It is do or die in Sinai,” says Mr. Abdel Ghafar.

But the war is likely far from over.

“ISIS is no longer limited to Sinai, and hasn’t been for a while,” Mr. Hellyer says. “Security experts expect more [attacks] in the coming months.”

The Tunisian police has broken up three “cells” that were recruiting fighters for Islamic State and arrested 11 people suspected of trying to join the Islamist militant group in Libya, the Tunisian Ministry of Interior said.

Tunisia has been on high alert against possible attacks since Islamist gunmen killed 21 tourists in March at the popular Bardo Museum in Tunis. In June, a man shot dead 38 foreigners at a beach hotel in the southern city of Sousse.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for both attacks. Officials said all three attackers were trained in jihadist camps over the border in Libya, where political chaos has allowed Islamist militants to grow in strength.

“The National Guard counterterrorism unit dismantled three cells which sent young people to Libya,” the Interior Ministry said in statement late on Monday.

Last week, Tunisia seized two car bombs and weapons on the border with Libya. In July, the government began building a wall along the border to stop Islamist militants slipping across.

The government says that more than 3,000 Tunisians have left to fight for Islamist militant groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Some of them have threatened to return home and carry out attacks on Tunisian soil.