Amsterdam (AFP) - Faced with an increasingly segregated education system, Dutch immigrant children have taken to the streets of their ethnically mixed Amsterdam neighbourhood seeking "white" pupils to attend their schools and help their integration.

Around 100 schoolchildren -- Arabs, Turks, Africans, Moroccans -- accompanied by their parents and teachers, wore provocative dazzling white T-shirts emblazoned with "Is this white enough for you?".

Dutch native Annelies, 10, and immigrants' daughter Aminata, 11, have been friends since kindergarten and are also wearing the shirts, which have "All children have the right to integrate" written on the back.

They "want more white children in the school to learn about each other's cultures," said Aminata, her smiling face framed by dangling African braids during Friday's protest.

"It's important for later," said the blonde-haired Annelies. "When we're grown up we will have to deal with different cultures, we should already start learning to live together."

"At the moment there's only one boy in our class who is 100 percent Dutch, although we live in a mixed neighbourhood, it's ridiculous," she said.

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The Netherlands calls on immigrants to take part in Dutch society, through work or study (AFP Photo/ …

The pupils' two schools - De Avonturijn and Catharinaschool - are considered "black" in this ethnically mixed southern Amsterdam neighbourhood, as more than 90 percent of their pupils are from immigrant backgrounds.

- 'Black schools' -

The number of new pupils signing up continues to drop and the schools are now threatened with closure, so today they're going door-to-door, ringing doorbells and delivering flyers saying "We're looking for white pupils".

"When, for different reasons, a school 'becomes blacker', it's very difficult to reverse the trend," said Diane Middelkoop, spokeswoman for the two schools.

"White children's parents no longer want to be part of the school. I can understand that: we all want to feel at home and that means that we want to see people who share our origins and culture," she said.

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Marching door to door in Amsterdam, the children chant: 'Don't think black, don't think …

For some, the phenomenon shows that racism is rampant in Dutch culture.

"It's shameful that it's come to this, that children have to take to the street to go to school with white children," said resident Joan, 80, originally from the former Dutch colony of Suriname, tears in her eyes.

She blames parents who take their children out of what Dutch media call "black schools".

"It's racism and I'm ashamed. There was always a bit of racism in this country, but today it's serious, it has to stop," she said.

- Racism or demographics? -

At the other end of the street, florist Wim Barlag has worked here for 50 years, has a son at one of the schools and has a different explanation.

"More and more families are leaving, making way for students -- the problem is there's simply not many children left," he said.

The Netherlands has a reputation for tolerance, but racial tensions and discrimination are on the increase.

"I want my children to be integrated in Dutch society and to learn about different cultures," said 35-year-old mother and housewife Majda Khatibi.

The Netherlands calls on immigrants to take part in Dutch society, through work or study. Once they have learnt the language, they must take an integration exam to make sure they fit in Dutch society.

As immigrant numbers have risen, so has the popularity of far-right politicians, including anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders who criticises immigrants for not integrating enough.

Marching door to door, the children chant: "Don't think black, don't think white, don't think black and white: think the colours of your heart."

Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi forces retook territory from the Islamic State group east of Ramadi Saturday, commanders said, in their first counterattack since the jihadists' capture of the Anbar provincial capital last week.

The UN Security Council, meanwhile, condemned the deadly suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque claimed by IS and called for the group to be defeated.

In Iraq, a mosaic of anti-IS forces have massed in the Euphrates Valley to ready for an offensive aimed at turning the tide on the rampant jihadists.

The May 17 takeover of Ramadi was Baghdad's worst defeat in almost a year, while the capture three days later of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra has put its archaeological treasures in peril and positioned IS for a possible drive on Damascus.

Security officials said an operation was launched early Saturday to retake Husaybah, a town seven kilometres (4.5 miles) east of Ramadi in the Euphrates Valley, that IS had seized earlier in the week.

"The Husaybah area is now under full control and the forces are now advancing to liberate neighbouring Jweibah," a police colonel told AFP from the front.

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Iraqi soldiers and Shiite fighters from the popular committees fire towards Islamic State (IS) posit …

Anbar's most prominent Sunni tribal leader, Sheikh Rafia Abdelkarim al-Fahdawi, deployed his forces, whose knowledge of the terrain is key, alongside fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella for Shiite militia and volunteers.

The police colonel said the Husaybah operation also involved local and federal police, the interior ministry's rapid intervention force as well as the army.

- Stopping the rot -

Swift action was seen as essential to prevent IS from laying booby traps across Ramadi, which would make any advance in the city more risky and complicated.

But government and allied forces were also keen to prevent further losses as IS used its momentum after seizing Ramadi to take more land to the east of the city.

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Iraqi security forces stand guard as residents from the city of Ramadi, who fled from Islamic State …

"What happened in Anbar is very similar to what happened last year in Diyala, Mosul and Salaheddin," said Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman of the Hashed al-Shaabi (popular mobilisation).

He was referring to the debacle of security forces when IS-led fighters swept across Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland in June last year, bringing Iraq to the brink of collapse.

Some Iraqi forces were criticised for avoiding battle during the fall of Ramadi, which led Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to call in the Hashed al-Shaabi.

He and Washington had opposed the mass deployment in the Sunni province of Anbar of militia groups with direct ties to Iran and a dubious human rights record.

However, the strategy of US-led coalition air strikes while the security apparatus gets revamped has failed to keep up with the pace of IS advances.

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Ramadi residents who fled their homes as the Islamic State (IS) took over the city, travel to Baghda …

"At this time, the Hashed are Abadi's best bet. I don't think he has many options," said Ayham Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group.

Washington tried to remain upbeat after the loss of Ramadi and Palmyra, playing down the IS advance as tactical setbacks.

- IS expansion -

The jihadists, who now control roughly half of Syria, reinforced their self-declared transfrontier "caliphate" by seizing Syria's Al-Tanaf crossing on the Damascus-Baghdad highway late Thursday.

Fabrice Balanche, a French expert on Syria, said "IS now dominates central Syria, a crossroads of primary importance" that could allow it to advance towards the capital and third city Homs.

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Iraqi families who fled the city of Ramadi after it was seized by Islamic State (IS) militants, gath …

The IS advance in both countries forced tens of thousands of civilians from their homes, sparking concern among humanitarian agencies.

IS on Friday also demonstrated its ability to strike beyond the heart of its "caliphate" when for the first time it claimed an attack in Saudi Arabia.

The suicide bombing, targeting Shiite worshippers at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Qatif, in the east of the kingdom, killed 21 people and wounded 81, Saudi authorities said.

The UN Security Council reacted by stressing that IS "must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence and hatred it espouses must be stamped out".

"There has to be a common effort amongst governments and institutions, including those in the region most affected, to counter" the group, it said.

In Syria, despite a series of regime losses, President Bashar al-Assad saluted the "heroism" of some 150 soldiers and their families who escaped an almost month-long rebel siege of a hospital.

The group had been besieged inside the building in Jisr al-Shughur since the town in northwestern Syria fell to rebels including Al-Qaeda's local affiliate, on April 25.

On Friday, most of those inside managed to escape just as rebel forces overran the hospital.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States on Friday blocked a global document aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons, saying Egypt and other states tried to "cynically manipulate" the process by setting a deadline for Israel and its neighbors to meet within months on a Middle East zone free of such weapons.

The now-failed final document of a landmark treaty review conference had called on the U.N. secretary-general to convene the Middle East conference no later than March 2016, regardless of whether Israel and its neighbors agree on an agenda.

Israel is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has never publicly declared what is widely considered to be an extensive nuclear weapons program. A conference might force Israel to acknowledge it.

Since adopting a final document requires consensus, the rejection by the United States, backed by Britain and Canada, means the entire blueprint for global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation for the next five years has been blocked after four weeks of negotiations. The next treaty review conference is in 2020.

That has alarmed countries without nuclear weapons, who are increasingly frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of nuclear-armed countries to disarm. The United States and Russia hold more than 90 percent of the estimated 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world today.

Amid a growing movement that stresses the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, Austria announced that 107 states have now signed a pledge calling for legal measures to ban and eliminate them.

The U.S. comments Friday came after a top State Department official was dispatched to Israel this week for intense talks, as Israel protested the idea of being forced into a conference with its Arab neighbors without prior agreement on an agenda.

Israel had been furious when the U.S. at the treaty review conference five years ago signed off on a document that called for talks on a Middle East nuclear-free zone by 2012. Those talks never took place.

The language on the final document rejected Friday was "incompatible with our long-standing policies," said Rose Gottemoeller, the U.S. under secretary of state for arms control and international security.

She named Egypt as being one of the countries "not willing to let go of these unrealistic and unworkable conditions."

Egypt later said it was extremely disappointed and warned, "This will have consequences in front of the Arab world and public opinion."

Iran, speaking for a group of more than 100 mostly developing countries, said it was surprised to see the U.S., Britain and Canada willing to block the entire document in defense of a country that it said has endangered the region by not agreeing to safeguards for its nuclear program.

Israel has been a fierce critic of the current efforts of world powers to negotiate an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes only.

Gottemoeller also pointed out that the 2010 mandate to hold a conference on a Middle East nuclear-free zone has now effectively expired. The head of the Russian delegation, Mikhail Ulyanov, noted the setback, saying it was "a shame that an opportunity for dialogue has to be missed, perhaps for a long time to come."