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Showing posts from July 12, 2015

Saudi Arabia Breaks Up Islamic State Network, Arrests 431 Members: Ministry

Riyadh:  Saudi authorities announced today that they have broken up an organisation linked to the Islamic State group and have so far arrested 431 of its members, mostly Saudis. Authorities have "managed over the past few weeks to destroy an organisation made of a cluster of cells, which is linked to the terrorist Daesh organisation," the interior ministry said, using the Arabic acronym for IS. Network members were engaged in a "plot managed from areas of unrest abroad, with the aim of sowing sectarian sedition and spreading chaos," the ministry said. The cells were involved in several attacks and plots, including the deadly suicide bombings that hit Shiite mosques in the kingdom's Eastern Province, it said. The Islamic State, which considers Shiites heretics, has claimed responsibility for the attacks. IS controls swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria, and has claimed widespread abuses including the beheading of foreign hostages. Sa

FARC Unilateral Cease-Fire to Last Four Months

The FARC and the Colombian government agreed to ease hostilities in order to bolster support for the ongoing peace process. As part of efforts to de-escalate the armed conflict, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia will respect a unilateral cease-fire for a four month period, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed Wednesday in an interview with local media.  The guerrilla group, known as the FARC, announced in early July that they would reinstate its unilateral cease-fire, originally for a one month period. A few days after the FARC's announcement, the government and the rebels formally agreed to work toward easing the armed conflict. That document signed by the two parties did not specify the length of the unilateral cease-fire, the AFP news agency said it was unable to confirm with FARC spokespeople the cease-fire would indeed last four months.  However, the Colombian government had said that it would use this four-month period to evaluate the progress of the peac

Why we're fighting ISIS

We may be tired of writing about them. You may be tired of reading about them. But the Islamic State certainly isn't tired of continually increasingly their savagery. In an editorial earlier this month, we wrote that ISIS had reached a new low. Looks like it's time to repeat that refrain. At that time it had been reported that the terror group beheaded two Syrian women — the first time women had been the targets of this cruel treatment. Now they've moved on to push the boundaries of evil once again. A new propaganda video released the other day shows a child soldier beheading a Syrian prisoner. The boy looks like he isn't any older than 12. It's the first time such a recording as this has showed a child solider, which they fondly and disturbingly call "cubs of the caliphate." And they released the video of the beheading to coincide with Eid al-Fitr, a celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. While most Muslims around the world are peacefully gathering wi

US-trained rebels rejoin the fight north Syria

ARA News Qamishli, Syria  – The first batch of Syrian opposition fighters, who received training by the U.S. military to fight Islamic State group (IS/ISIS), arrived to the city of Aleppo, in northern Syria, opposition sources reported on Friday.  Some 54 Syrian opposition fighters, who underwent a training by the U.S.-led program in Turkey, arrived to Aleppo through Killis border crossing.  The trained fighters took their positions in the town of Malikiya –where Turkmen constitute majority– near Azaz township in Aleppo province. According to opposition-linked military sources, the returning fighters have received training by U.S. military personnel in Turkey over 74 days, and they have been provided with weapons to fight ISIS. Speaking to ARA News, Mohammed Mullah Rashid, member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), said that such an international support to the opposition forces “will have a significant impact on their performance on the ground”. “However, the United States hasn’t

For the first time, jihadist child beheads Syrian soldier, monitoring group says

BEIRUT   (Reuters) - A child soldier recruited by Islamic State apparently has beheaded a Syrian army officer, the first such documented decapitation, the founder of a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said on Friday. The child is among several hundred so-called "Cubs of the Caliphate". They are children, ranging in age from pre-teens to mid-teens, given military training and hardline indoctrination after being recruited near schools, mosques and in public areas where Islamic State is operating. Images released by the militant group's Homs province in central Syria showed a child, apparently a pre-teen, in a camouflage uniform, holding a human head and a blood-stained knife. The Syrian officer was captured by the militant group after it took control last May of Palmyra, a site of Roman ruins east of the city of Homs, according to Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, who received a copy of the video. "This is the fir

Islamic State instructs kids to 'behead doll' in Iraq training camp

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More than 120 children were lined up and each of them were given a doll and a sword. They were given their next lesson by their Islamic State group instructors: Behead the doll. A 14-year-old who was among the line of abducted boys from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority said at first he couldn't cut it right - he chopped once, twice, three times. "Then they taught me how to hold the sword, and they told me how to hit. They told me it was the head of the infidels," the boy, renamed Yahya by his Islamic State captors, recalled in an interview last week in northern Iraq, where he fled after escaping the IS training camp. When Islamic State extremists overran Yazidi towns and villages in northern Iraq last year, they butchered older men. Many of the women and girls they captured were given to IS loyalists as sex slaves. But dozens of young Yazidi boys like Yahya had a different fate: The group sought to re-educate them. They forced them to convert to Islam from their ancie

Austrian ISIL teenager member given 2.5-year jail term

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An Austrian court has sentenced a teenager to two and a half years behind bars for joining the ranks of the Takfiri ISIL militant group operating in Syria. On Friday, the Vienna-based court handed down the jail term to the 17-year-old Austrian citizen, identified as Oliver N., who has sustained serious injuries from a bomb attack in ISIL stronghold of Raqqa in eastern Syria, English-language news network  Local  reported. Oliver told the judge that he was not directly involved in terrorist activities in Syria, denying that he had attended a terrorist training camp. He said the only time he carried a gun was when he had to guard an ISIL base in the strategic Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, known as Ain al-Arab in Arabic, during clashes with Kurdish forces. However, photos of him posted online by ISIL show the teenager dressed for battle and heavily armed, urging supporters to “kill infidels.” Oliver also told the court judge that teenage ISIL members have to serve the terrori

ISIL has nothing to do with Islam: Former member

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An ex-member of the Takfiri ISIL terror group has spoken out against the odious crimes being perpetrated at the hands of the extremist militants in Syria, saying the terrorist cult has “nothing” in common with the holy religion of Islam. In a joint interview with Germany’s NDR and WDR broadcasters as well as Süddeutsche Zeitung  newspaper, the former ISIL member, who is identified as Ebrahim B. and is now in German custody after returning from Syria, told of his “terrible” ordeals during life under ISIL. “The world… should know the truth,” said Ebrahim, emphasizing that ISIL “has nothing to do with Islam.” Ebrahim, a Tunisian national who immigrated to Germany along with his family in the 1970s, described his journey from the European country to Syria and how they managed to enter the violence-wracked Arab state through neighboring Turkey. The former ISIL member said he left Germany in May 2014 to join the terrorists active in Syria together with a friend identified as Ayou

Norway university admits mass murderer Breivik

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The University of Oslo has admitted Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik to its political science program. The university rector, Ole Petter Ottersen, made the announcement on Friday, saying that all prisoners in Norway “are entitled to higher education” in the country on condition that “they meet the admission requirements.” Oslo University spokeswoman Marina Tofting also confirmed his admission and said the right-wing extremist “got a place here. He meets the criteria.” The 36-year-old went on a killing rampage in July 2011, leaving 77 people dead in bomb-and-gun massacres in Oslo and  Utoya Island. Labor Party leader Jonas Gahr Stoere (L) and Prime Minister Erna Solberg take part in a wreath laying ceremony on Utoya Island, on July 22, 2014, during a memorial day for the people killed during Anders Behring Breivik’s shooting rampage in 2011. © AFP He has been sentenced to 21 years in prison and his sentence can be extended indefinitely in case he is considered

Islamic State used poison gas in northeast Syria -Kurds, monitor

* Syrian Kurdish YPG says attacked with "makeshift projectiles" Investigators: Islamic State used chemicals in Iraq and Syria * Chemical agent not accurately identified - Kurdish spokesman (Adds White House comment, paragraphs 7-8) By Tom Perry BEIRUT, July 18 (Reuters) - The Islamic State group used poison gas in attacks against Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria in late June, a Syrian Kurdish militia and a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said on Saturday. Two UK-based organisations investigating the attack said they had confirmed Islamic State's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish forces and civilian targets in Syria and Iraq, where they said chemical agents were also used in an attack on an Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga position on June 21 or 22. Kurdish forces are playing a vital role in the fight against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. The ultra-radical group has seized wide areas of both countries, declaring them part of a cross-border "cal

On the front lines of Ukraine's forgotten war

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Nolan Peterson, a former U.S. Air Force special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is a foreign correspondent for The Daily Signal. He embedded with the Ukrainian army for a week in June. Pisky, Ukraine (CNN) The war in  Ukraine  is not over. It's easy to think that it might be. If you walk around the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, or Lviv in western Ukraine, or even in Mariupol, just a 20-minute car ride from the front lines in Shyrokyne, it's hard to feel the war. Life is still going on as normal. People are still going out to bars and restaurants, movies are still playing, young couples are still getting married and students are still in class. Yet the war is not over. This summer the Ukrainian military decided to allow, for the first time, embedded journalists within the regular army -- a unique opportunity to have a raw look at the conflict with Russian-backed separatists that began as tension over a trade deal and became the annexation of Crimea an