By Jason Szep

PARIS (Reuters) - Several Arab countries have offered to join the United States in air strikes against Islamic State targets, U.S. officials said on Sunday, indicating a possible widening of the air campaign against militants who have seized parts of Iraq and Syria.

The officials declined to identify which countries made the offers. But they said they were under consideration as the United States begins to identify country roles in its emerging coalition against jihadists who have declared a caliphate or Islamic state ruled under Sharia law in the heart of the Middle East.

The addition of Arab fighter jets could strengthen the credibility of the American-led campaign in a region skeptical of how far Washington will commit to a conflict in which nearly every country has a stake, set against the backdrop of Islam's 1,300-year-old rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

“I don’t want to leave you with the impression that these Arab members haven’t offered to do air strikes because several of them have,” a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters in Paris.

The official said the offers were not limited to air strikes on Iraq. "Some have indicated for quite a while a willingness to do them elsewhere," the official said. "We have to sort through all of that because you can’t just go and bomb something."

So far, France has been the only country to publicly offer to join U.S. air strikes on Islamic State targets, although limiting these to Iraq. Britain, Washington's main ally in 2003, has sent mixed messages. It has stressed the West should not go over the heads of regional powers nor neglect the importance of forming an inclusive government in Iraq.

The U.S. comments come a day after Islamic State stirred fresh outrage with a video purporting to show the beheading of British aid worker David Haines. British Prime Minister David Cameron called it "a despicable and appalling murder," and vowed to bring the killers to justice.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond during a conference on Iraq in Paris on Monday. “I am sure that will be a topic of discussion,” a second senior U.S. State Department official said, referring to the beheading.

The conference brings Iraqi authorities together with 15 to 20 international players. It comes ahead of a U.N. Security Council ministerial meeting on Sept. 19 and a heads of state meeting at the U.N. General Assembly later this month.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

“MORE AGGRESSIVE KINETIC ACTION”

Offers of Arab air participation have been made both to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) overseeing the American air campaign and to the Iraqi government, the first U.S. official said.

“I want to be clear that there have been offers both to CENTCOM and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action against ISIL,” said the official, referring to the group by its former name Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

On Thursday, Kerry won backing for a "coordinated military campaign" from 10 Arab countries - Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and six Gulf states including rich rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Although President Barack Obama has authorized the use of U.S. fighter jets in a plan announced on Wednesday to attack both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi frontier and defeat Islamic State Sunni fighters, no decision has been made yet on whether to carry them out, U.S. officials said.

As of Saturday, U.S. fighter jets had conducted 160 air strikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq. The United States will present a legal case before expanding them into Syria, U.S. officials said, justifying them largely on the basis of defending Iraq from militants who have taken shelter in neighboring Syria during its three-year civil war.

“If and when there is a decision to actually conduct a strike, as opposed to authorize strikes which is what the president has talked about, I think we’ll be very clear about what the basis of that is going to be, but I wouldn’t want to get ahead of that,” one official said of possible U.S. air strikes on Syria.

“But surely the defense of Iraq and Iraq’s right to self defense from threats and invasion across its border will play a part in that decision.”

An expansion of U.S. air strikes into Syria would deepen a conflict that already cuts across multiple sectarian lines. Islamic State is made up of Sunni militants fighting a Shi'ite-led government in Iraq and a government in Syria led by members of a Shi'ite offshoot sect.

Several Arab states have powerful air forces, including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

But in Saudi Arabia, as elsewhere in the region, Kerry has faced reluctance to be seen aggressively joining the U.S. campaign in Iraq and Syria, fearing in some cases reprisals by extremists or forces loyal to the Syrian government.

While Gulf Arab leaders are alarmed at the prospect of a disintegrating Iraq that could shelter Islamist militants who may target their own countries, some such as Saudi Arabia also deeply fear the fight against Islamic State could hasten U.S.-Iranian detente.

Saudi Arabia and Iran back opposing sides in wars and political struggles in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. Saudi Arabia’s ruling Sunni Muslim princes, for instance, see the battle to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Riyadh's foe Shi'ite Iran, as pivotal to their own future, fearing that if Assad survives, Tehran will expand its influence across the region and entirely encircle the kingdom.

(Additional reporting by John Irish; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

US-led military exercises due to begin in western Ukraine

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - US-led military exercises involving 15 countries were set to begin in Ukraine Monday, as fighting rumbles on in the restive east between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in violation of a ceasefire.

Heavy fighting erupted around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, piling further pressure on a precarious nine-day-old truce between the government and separatist fighters.

Large clouds of thick black smoke billowed over the industrial city as the boom of sustained shelling and the rattle of automatic gunfire rang out throughout the day, AFP reporters witnessed.

Donetsk council said there had been civilian casualties and described the situation in the city as "critical" but gave no further information.

Kiev accused the rebels of jeopardising the truce by intensifying their attacks on government positions in eastern Ukraine, the scene of five months of deadly combat.

While Kiev and the West accuse Russia of playing a role in the rebellion in the east, soldiers from the 15 nations will begin military exercises dubbed "Rapid Trident 14" near Lviv in the west of the country.

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Ukrainian members of the volunteer Shakhtarsk battalion prepare a grenade launcher in the southern c …

The United States was expected to send around 200 troops to take part in the exercises, the Pentagon said earlier this month, in a show of solidarity with Kiev.

It will mark the first deployment of US ground troops to Ukraine since the Kiev government's conflict with pro-Russia separatists erupted earlier this year.

Sunday's fighting in the east appeared to be concentrated near Donetsk airport where the Ukrainian military said it had driven back an assault by insurgent fighters on Friday.

"The terrorist actions are threatening the realisation of the Ukrainian president's peace plan," said security spokesman Volodymyr Polyovy.

He also took aim at comments by two rebel leaders who both signed the 12-point truce deal in Minsk on September 5, but who declared on Sunday they were mere "observers" at the talks.

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AFP journalists duck for cover while covering heavy clashes between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrai …

The ceasefire is seen as a first step in efforts to draw up a longer term peace deal to end a conflict that has cost more than 2,700 lives and set off the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

President Petro Poroshenko has pledged to offer the eastern regions that form the economic backbone of Ukraine some limited self-rule, although the separatists say they want nothing less than full independence.

Rebels and government forces swapped dozens of captives also on Sunday in the latest exchange agreed under the accord, but the insurgents said Kiev's forces were still firing at them.

- 'Breaking the rules' -

"From our side, nobody is shooting but they are breaking the rules, everybody in the world knows it," said a rebel commander defending a checkpoint near a village south of Donetsk.

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Ukrainian youngsters speak with a soldier during a rally in the southern city of Mariupol, on Septem …

The simmering crisis has exposed layers of mistrust between the West and Moscow and between the largely Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine and the pro-Western leaders in Kiev.

The truce halted a rebel counter-surge across the southeast last month with the alleged support of Russian paratroopers and heavy weaponry that turned the tide of the war against Ukrainian forces.

NATO and Kiev say at least 1,000 Russian soldiers and possibly many more remain on Ukrainian soil although the Kremlin denies this.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of seeking to "eliminate" Ukraine as an independent country with the goal of resurrecting the Soviet Union.

Poroshenko heads to Washington this week to meet President Barack Obama, seeking to secure a "special status" with the United States as he steers Ukraine further out of Russia's orbit.

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Smoke billows around Donetsk's International Airport as shelling continues between pro-Russian f …

Obama has rejected direct military involvement but unveiled tougher economic sanctions on Moscow that -- together with similar EU measures -- effectively lock Russia out of Western capital markets and hamstring its crucial oil industry.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of trying to use the crisis to "break economic ties between the EU and Russia".

The punitive measures and an accompanying East-West trade war have left Russia's economy facing possible recession but have seemingly failed to alter Putin's course.

- Badly needed aid -

Russia on Saturday sent a 220-truck convoy it said was carrying aid to the residents of rebel-held Lugansk, who have been struggling without water and power for weeks.

Ukraine -- which did not give permission for the convoy to cross -- had expressed fears the trucks may be carrying supplies for insurgents and bitterly protested a similar delivery last month.

On the domestic front, cracks emerged in Poroshenko's administration when a deputy foreign minister quit over a delay in the implementation of an EU trade deal, apparently under Russian pressure.

Meanwhile the pro-Russian Regions Party that ruled Ukraine under ousted president Viktor Yanukovych also announced Sunday it would boycott the October 26 parliamentary ballot and form an "opposition government" designed to fight Kiev's westward course.

Ukraine truce threatened after fighting erupts

Kiev says intensified attacks by pro-Russian rebels are jeopardizing a nine-day old cease-fire.
Clouds of thick smoke

OAKHURST, Calif. (AP) — Two out-of-control wildfires in California forced hundreds of residents to flee from their homes on Sunday, including one near a lakeside resort town that has burned 21 structures, authorities said.

The blaze, sparked shortly after 1:30 p.m. near Bass Lake in Central California, prompted authorities to evacuate about 1,000 residents out of 400 homes, Madera County Sheriff's spokeswoman Erica Stuart said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said flames damaged or destroyed 21 structures. The Fresno Bee reports one neighborhood was hit especially hard, with several homes turned to ash and smoldering embers.

"This is gut-wrenching," CalFire Battalion Chief Chris Christopherson told the newspaper. "It makes you sick."

The fire started off a road outside of Oakhurst, a foothill community south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park, and made a run to the edge of Bass Lake. Stoked by winds, it quickly charred at least 320 acres, CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

The fire is 20 percent contained.

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A plume of smoke rises into the sky as a wildfire burns in the Cleveland National Forest in eastern …

The area is a popular destination throughout the year. There were no reports of the blaze affecting the park.

"We have a lot of full-time residents as well as renters and people with vacation homes here," Stuart said.

The destructive fire led Gov. Jerry Brown to secure a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover 75 percent of the cost of fighting the fire, state officials said.

Further north, a wildfire about 60 miles east of Sacramento forced the evacuation of 133 homes. El Dorado County Sheriff's officials said residents of another 406 homes were being told to prepare to flee.

Berlant said the blaze started in a remote area Saturday, but exploded on Sunday when it reached a canyon full of thick, dry brush. It has blackened 4 square miles, and was 10 percent contained.

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Helicopters drop water on a wildfire burning near a home in Silverado Canyon in eastern Orange Count …

Meanwhile in Southern California, evacuation orders for 200 homes in Orange County's Silverado Canyon were lifted late Sunday as firefighters contained 50 percent of a wildfire.

The residents were evacuated after the fire broke out Friday. The U.S. Forest Service downgraded the fire's size from 2 ½ square miles to 1 ½ square miles due to better mapping of the blaze.

Six firefighters have suffered minor injuries, many of them heat-related as the region baked under triple-digit temperatures.

A heat wave was expected to last through Tuesday in Southern California, and a smoke advisory was in effect for parts of Riverside and Orange counties.

Berlant said crews were making progress on two wildfires that broke out Saturday in Northern California.

A wildfire in the Sierra Nevada foothills about halfway between Sacramento and Reno burned 250 acres, destroyed two homes and three outbuildings. The burned homes were in Alta Sierra, a community of some 6,000 people about five miles south of Grass Valley.

A 417-acre blaze in Mendocino County destroyed five structures and five outbuildings, according to CalFire. It was 50 percent contained.

Out-of-control Calif. wildfires destroy structures

Hundreds of residents are evacuated near a popular lakeside resort town in the central part of the state.
Firefighters injured

The Middle East has confounded outsiders for years, so it is no surprise that another U.S.-led project with a straightforward goal — destroying a marauding organization of extremists — is bumping up against age-old rivalries and a nod-and-a-wink-style political culture.

U.S. secretary of state John Kerry has received backing for the principle of reversing the territorial gains of the Islamic State group in Iraq. But getting concrete assistance is another matter, and there is a whiff of lip service about the proceedings.

Much of the problem lies in the Muslim region's Sunni-Shiite divide, which outsiders tend to underestimate again and again — only to see it emerging as the dominant factor once more. Here's a look at the landscape:

SUNNIS AREN'T INCLINED TO HELP SHIITE REGIMES

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has come out against the Islamic State group and its acts of barbarism in Syria and Iraq. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi clearly reviles political Islam and its militant extension, the jihadis who are tearing up Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt's own Sinai Peninsula. Yet they still have reservations about making a direct move that would be seen as aligning with the Shiite leaderships in Baghdad and Damascus. The issue pops up everywhere: secular Sunnis in northern Iraq actually felt so alienated from the Shiite government of Nouri al-Maliki and its anti-Sunni machinations that — at least for a time earlier this year — they genuinely supported the Islamic State group because it was Sunni. Iran factors into this equation as well: although its Persian majority is not ethnically Arab, it is a Shiite nation, and as such supports the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Several days of U.S. lobbying, and a new leader in Iraq more amenable to reaching out to non-Shiites, will not change this. Nor will the U.S. sway Turkey, another Sunni power that has not been pleased with the Islamic State group but is still eager to see the overthrow of its enemy, Syrian President Bashar Assad. The issue has no fix; what is needed is finesse.

U.S. CREDIBILITY HAS WANED

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FILE - In this file photo taken Monday, June 23, 2014, fighters from the Islamic State group parade …

U.S. credibility has suffered in the Middle East since Sept. 11, 2001, which doesn't help the recruitment effort. The arguments for invading Iraq have been discredited, and the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns — which went on years beyond the original plan — are not looking successful. Smaller fights against terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen seem destined to continue without end. The Obama administration's swift abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 shocked allies in the region, most of whom were hardly more democratic than the ousted Egyptian leader. U.S. attempts to work with Islamists, during the brief rule of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, left many concluding that American leadership was naive and its diplomacy inept. When the U.S. threatened Syria if it used chemical weapons, and then did not attack after their alleged use, it was seen as America flinching, even though Assad eventually gave up the arms. In an echo of colonial-era animosities, many in the region see Western leaders who are stirred to action by the beheading of a few Westerners — but not by hundreds of thousands of Arab deaths. Washington also has proven unable to influence its close ally Israel to slow down Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank — one of the few things that can unite virtually all Sunnis and Shiites in angry opposition.

POLITICAL ISLAM IS UNPOPULAR WITH THE GOVERNMENTS

Two years ago, it looked like political Islam was not only ascendant but destined to dominate. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies seemed to have an automatic majority in Egypt, did very well in elections in Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere, and were becoming dominant even in the Syrian opposition. But the tables have turned dramatically, largely because of the success of the Egyptian military in conflating the Muslim Brotherhood with jihadi radicalism, and by the horrifying actions of Islamic extremists who have harmed the Islamist project as a whole. Today, most governments in the region are working to undermine political Islam, leaving mainly Qatar, which supports the Brotherhood financially and has granted refuge to many of the group's leaders from Egypt as well as Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. Yet even Qatar, under pressure from other Gulf nations, appears to be backtracking, announcing this weekend that several key Brotherhood leaders would be leaving. All this aids the coalition-building effort and helps explain why Kerry is not shown the door.

DEMOCRACY IS NOT SO POPULAR, EITHER

A key slice of the regional elite — educated and globalized, but not starry-eyed — considers the Western obsession with free elections to be naive and destructive. The argument says that societies with high illiteracy, little democratic history or infrastructure, and tribal culture shot through with radical Islamic influences are simply not ready for the responsibility of majority rule. It is better, they reason, to enable a type of managed democracy — like in Egypt where the previously elected Islamist party has been outlawed and decapitated — or a lengthy transition or the kind that is offered by King Abdullah in Jordan. For the United States' current coalition project, this means getting into bed with less-than-democratic countries that, after the frustrations of the Arab Spring, do not welcome meddling in their political systems.

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FILE - In this file photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014, President Barack Obama addresses the nati …

THE LEAST BAD OPTION

The jihadis are aiming for a form of utopia, from their perspective. But most people in the Middle East have grown accustomed to compromise — to accepting and even embracing the least bad option. In this way, secular Palestinians accept Hamas, preferring Islamist oppression to the corruption of secular rulers like Yasser Arafat. Many Libyans are surely nostalgic for their stability and reasonable prosperity under Moammar Gadhafi. There was no political freedom and even the hint of insanity at the top. But it could be seen as less bad than the current situation with two competing governments, neither in control, violent Islamist militias holding Tripoli and Benghazi, and foreign workers fleeing for their lives. Many Syrians are concluding that the Assad regime — secular and commercially competent, if capable of using chemical weapons on its own people — may be the least bad option as well, if the likely replacement is a coalition of jihadis. Western leaders fret that hitting the Islamic State group may help Assad, but many in the region find that a palatable outcome, even if they won't say so publicly. Others hope for an optimal solution: Hit the jihadis, and also finally support in earnest the rapidly disintegrating Free Syrian Army — the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels who have almost been forgotten as so much of the region has gone up in flames.

___

Dan Perry has covered the Middle East since the 1990s and currently leads AP's text coverage in the region. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/perry_dan

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Thousands evacuate in Mexico as Hurricane Odile makes landfall

By Gerardo Esquerre

CABO SAN LUCAS Mexico (Reuters) - Hurricane Odile barreled into the Mexican beach Mecca of Baja California early on Monday, lashing luxury resorts and ripping trees from their roots as tens of thousands of tourists hunkered down in shelters.

Winds of up to 120 miles per hour (195 km/h) blew away boards nailed over windows and tore signposts out of the ground, as one of the worst recorded storms to slam the region hammered the golden sand beaches of the popular resort of Los Cabos.

Emergency officials feared the storm could unleash deadly flash floods as it dumped heavy rains over the southern tip of the mountainous desert peninsula.

Tourists stranded in shelters or hiding in the bathtubs of their rooms posted photos on social media showing windows barricaded with furniture that were blown in by the gusts.

"This is really bad. My ears are about to explode by the pressure and I have an inch of water in my kitchen/living room," said Sarah McKinney on her Twitter account.

Another woman posted a video on the Web showing workmen erecting sheets of chipboard and boarded-up windows shaking. Dozens of people sat huddled with pillows in the middle of a large room.

"We've moved downstairs. These windows didn't seem to hold hurricane #Odile. I'm sweating like hell. Scary sound of howling wind," Alba Mora Roca said on her Twitter feed.

"Sounds of glass breaking. I'm in a room with a nice couple of African American pastors from Chicago. No windows. Thanks God there's power!"

Reuters was not immediately able to contact either woman.

"NO WORDS FOR THIS"

At least 26,000 foreign tourists and 4,000 Mexicans were in the region, according to Mexican officials, while emergency workers and military personal evacuated thousands of people from areas at risk of flooding.

Odile lost some strength as it neared Baja on Sunday evening and the center of the storm was expected to move near or over the peninsula through Tuesday as it starts to weaken, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Some storm experts said it was the strongest hurricane to hit the southern tip of the peninsula since the advent of satellite data.

"We haven't seen one get so close and with the possibility of impact, and of such a nature," said Wenceslao Petit, head of emergency services in Los Cabos. "There aren't words for this."

Ahead of the storm's approach, people in Cabo San Lucas had rushed to board up windows, clear beach furniture and remove fishing boats and yachts from the water into dry docks.

"If it doesn't lose intensity, this is going to do some damage," said Rosalio Salas, 59, who works at Picante sport fishing charters in Cabo San Lucas.

While other beaches in Mexico are packed with tourists during the long weekend to Tuesday's Independence Day holiday, the resorts of Los Cabos are mostly visited by Americans and are in their low season.

Luis Puente, the head of Mexico's civil protection agency, told a news conference that 164 shelters had been readied with a capacity for 30,000 people. There are no major oil installations in the area.

(Reporting by Michael O'Boyle and Tomas Sarmiento; Editing by Simon Gardner and Gareth Jones)

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Powerful hurricane bears down on Mexico's Baja

Hurricane Odile, one of the worst storms to hit the region, rips trees out of the ground, witnesses say.
125-mph winds