Turkish Shells Land on Syria’s Soil:

Turkish artillery pounded Syria after a shell fired from the crisis-hit country landed near a town in southern Turkey, Turkish media report.
Turkish state media reported on Friday that a shell fired from neighboring Syria hit the town of Yayladag in Hatay Province near the Syrian border.
No casualties were reported following the incident.
On February 11, at least 13 people were killed and dozens injured when a Syrian mini-bus exploded at a crossing on Turkey’s border with Syria.
In October 2012, several Syrian soldiers reportedly lost their lives in an attack by Turkish forces on a military post near the border town of Tel Abyad.
The attack followed a mortar strike from Syria that killed five people in the southeastern Turkish town of Akcakale in Sanliurfa Province.
Ankara has openly voiced support for the militants fighting against Damascus.
Many people, including large numbers of security staff, have been killed in the foreign-backed unrest that broke out In Syria nearly two years ago.
The Syrian government blames certain Western states, especially the United States, and their regional allies for fueling the violence.

Bahraini Teen, Policeman Killed in Protests

Bahraini teenager and Policeman were Killed as thousands continued to protest in the country on the second anniversary of revolution.
Bahraini security forces killed the teenager and injured dozens more protesters on Thursday during clashes on the second anniversary of an uprising to demand democratic reforms in the Persian Gulf Arab state.
Furthermore, a police officer died after being hit by an incendiary device thrown during clashes with protesters in a village overnight, the interior ministry said on Friday.
On Thursday, several hundred demonstrators, mostly youths from largely Shiite villages, blocked roads around the capital Manama and hurled stones and fire bombs at police, who responded with birdshot and tear gas, witnesses said.
Security forces confirmed they had fired warning shots at the crowds and one young man had been killed in the protests, which began in the early morning and lasted almost all day.
The clashes were the most violent in recent months and could mar talks that began on Sunday between mostly Shiite Muslim opposition groups and the Sunni-dominated government to try to end political deadlock in Bahrain, which is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
The 16-year-old boy was shot with birdshot in the village of Daih on the outskirts of Manama, where protests erupted early in the morning, added the witnesses.
Many businesses closed their doors in response to a general strike called by the mainly Shiite opposition.

Friday’s Protests
Thousands of anti-government marchers jammed a major highway Friday as clashes broke out for a second day between security forces and protesters marking the anniversary of their uprising in the strategic Persian Gulf nation.
Bahrain has seen almost daily demonstrations in the run-up to the anniversary of the revolt.
Mass protests that erupted in February 2011 at the height of the Arab Spring were crushed, but demonstrations demanding greater rights for Bahrain’s Shiite majority and an end to the absolute power of the Sunni ruling family have continued.
Bahrain’s chief of public security, Brigadier-General Tariq Al Hassan, said police had fired warning shots on Thursday to disperse a crowd that had attacked them with fire bombs, stones and iron rods, injuring several, some seriously.
“Officers discharged birdshot to defend themselves. At least one rioter was injured in the process. A short time later, a young man was pronounced dead at Salmaniya Medical Center,” he said in a statement.
He said several members of the force involved in the incident were being investigated to determine the circumstances of the death.
The main opposition group Wefaq named the youth was Ali Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Jazeeri, a 16-year-old Shiite, and said he had been killed in the village of Diya, near Manama.
It said dozens of others had been hurt, some seriously, and posted pictures of casualties, including a photograph of the dead youth with bandages on his abdomen.
Wefaq said there had also been a confrontation on Sitra island, south of Manama.
“Large numbers of armored vehicles, police cars and buses, convoys of military vehicles and troops deployed in the areas ... to face the peaceful protests demanding freedom and democracy,” it said.
A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said news of the protester’s death was ‘disquieting’.
“We call on all parties to exercise restraint, avoid provocations, and reject violence, especially during the demonstrations today,” he said.
An international inquiry commission said in a November 2011 report that 35 people had died during Bahrain’s uprising. The dead were mainly protesters but included five security personnel and seven foreigners. The report said five people had died from torture. The opposition puts the death toll at more than 80.
Bahrain’s opposition and government resumed reconciliation talks on Sunday for the first time since July 2011.
Officials said delegates had agreed at Wednesday’s session on some ground rules for the talks, including the role of government representatives and mechanisms for implementing any agreement, paving the way for further sessions next week.

Iraqis Stage Anti-Gov’t Protests

Iraqis have staged rallies against and in support of the country’s prime minister in recent months as the sectarian tension in the Arab state is intensifying.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis gathered in several Iraqi cities to protest against what they describe as unfair treatment by the country’s government.
In the western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, former insurgent strongholds, demonstrators blocked the main highway to Jordan and Syria to perform Friday noon prayers. Others gathered in main squares in the northern cities of Samarra and Mosul, and outside a prominent Sunni mosque in the Baghdad, AP reported.
In the capital, security forces blocked roads leading from Sunni-dominated provinces and sealed off all Sunni neighborhoods.
Sunnis have staged mass rallies since late December, demanding Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki step down and calling for an end to raids in their areas and measures against former regime officials, as well as for the release of prisoners.
On Monday, Iraqi demonstrators took to the streets in the southern city of Basra to show solidarity with Nouri Al-Maliki.
Holding pictures of Al-Maliki the protesters chanted slogans in support of the premier and denounced former member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri for instigating anti-government demonstrations.
Iraq has been the scene of anti-government demonstrations since December 23, 2012, when bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafie Al-Issawi were arrested on terrorism-related charges.
The demonstrators allege that the arrests were made on sectarian grounds and demand an end to anti-terrorism laws. The government says it is up to the parliament to decide on abolishing those laws.
This is while, earlier, the Iraqi premier warned that terrorists are trying to infiltrate into anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar to provoke confrontations between security forces and the demonstrators.

Australia-Israel Ties Strained Over Death of Spy Agent

In January 2010 a suspected Mossad hit squad assassinated a top Hamas militant in Dubai. It emerged afterwards--to the fury of Canberra--that some of the cell were using Australian passports.
Current defense minister Stephen Smith, foreign minister at the time, summoned the Israeli ambassador and warned that the countries’ friendly ties were at risk.
The explosive revelations this week surrounding so-called “Prisoner X” who died in a Tel Aviv jail has again raised concern over the Israeli spy agency’s use of foreign passports.
The man, identified by media as Australian-Israeli Mossad agent Ben Zygier, committed suicide in December 2010 while in isolation at Ayalon prison in a case Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up.
His arrest in February 2010 came just a week after Dubai police publicly accused Mossad agents of carrying out the Hamas hit, saying they were looking for around a dozen people with Western passports--four of them Australian.
The speculation is that Zygier was on the verge of revealing details about Mossad’s use of Western passports, among other sensitive operational issues.
An unnamed Australian security official familiar with the case told the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday that Zygier “may well have been about to blow the whistle, but he never got the chance”.
The newspaper said he was one of at least three dual Australian-Israeli citizens who emigrated to Israel in the past decade whose cases were investigated by Australia’s overseas espionage agency ASIS.
It alleged that in each case the men used their Australian passports to travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon--countries that do not allow Israelis to enter. Zygier denied he was a spy.
Former Australian intelligence officer Warren Reed said passports from countries such as Australia were particularly useful to Israel.
“It’s a clean country, it has a good image like New Zealand. There aren’t many countries like that so our nationality and anything connected with it can be very useful in intelligence work,” he said.
Reed added that it was not just Israel recruiting people to make use of their passports for espionage activities.
“It’s not only Israel doing it, but the Israeli intelligence system possibly depends on this sort of thing more than anyone else,” he told Sky News.
“If Ben was going to blow the whistle on something like that, that’s a key operational factor and they wouldn’t want that to get out.
“One wonders though whether the passport thing is at the center of this. It may be just one component.”
In March 2004, two suspected Mossad agents were arrested in New Zealand and later convicted for fraudulently trying to obtain passports from the country, prompting diplomatic sanctions.
When the Dubai story broke in 2010, former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky was quoted in Australian media as saying the agency regularly faked Australian passports for its agents.

Egyptians Rally Against Protests

Around 5,000 mostly Islamists rallied in Egypt against a recent wave of anti-government protests that have killed around 70 people.
The latest cycle of clashes between protesters and police began three weeks ago on the second anniversary of the start of Egypt’s uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, AP reported.
Friday’s rally, organized by Gamaa Islamiya, is largely seen as a denunciation of those protests, which were staged by liberal activist groups against President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The rally was not expected to reach massive numbers because Egypt’s most powerful Islamist parties are not officially participating.
The Muslim Brotherhood says it will only have a symbolic presence at the protest being held outside Cairo University while the more conservative Salafi parties have declined official participation.

Turkey Arrests More Officers Over Coup Plot

Turkey’s state-run news agency said authorities have arrested eight more retired officers over their alleged involvement in the ousting of a government in the late 1990s.
Anadolu Agency reports said the eight, including seven retired generals, were detained on Wednesday and late Thursday pending a trial over a military campaign that forced former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign. No trial date has been set.
Anadolu said on Friday that authorities were also questioning six other generals, including a former Air Force commander. They had not been arrested.
Several other officers have already been charged in Erbakan’s ouster, which has been dubbed Turkey’s “post-modern coup” because the military simply pressured the government to resign.
Turkey has curtailed the military’s powers and is making generals account for intervening in government affairs.

Rally for Hunger Striker

Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli soldiers on Friday at a rally held in support of a prisoner observing an intermittent hunger strike to protest his incarceration.