Tag Archives: ISIS

Seeking to secure Sinai, Egypt builds closer ties with Hamas

A Palestinian worker repairs a smuggling tunnel after it was flooded by Egyptian security forces, beneath the border between Egypt and southern Gaza Strip November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem/File Photo

By Lin Noueihed and Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – After years of strained relations, Egypt is moving closer to Hamas in Gaza, offering concessions on trade and free movement in return for moves to secure the border against Islamic State fighters who have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in northern Sinai.

Egypt has been at odds with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, since a crackdown by Cairo on the armed group’s Islamist allies. Egypt closed the border, opening it only rarely.

But in recent weeks Egypt has eased restrictions, allowing in trucks laden with food and other supplies, and providing relief from an Israeli blockade that has restricted the flow of goods into the coastal territory.

The relaxation follows high-level Hamas visits to Cairo, which wants to restore its role as a regional powerbroker and crush Islamic State followers in the Sinai Peninsula, a strategic area bordering Gaza, Israel and the Suez Canal.

It builds on what Egyptian and Palestinian sources say are efforts by Hamas to prevent the movement of militants in and out of Sinai, where they have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police since general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

Egyptian and Palestinian officials say the changes could signal a new era of closer cooperation after years of tension.

“We want cooperation in controlling the borders and tunnels, the handover of perpetrators of armed attacks and a boycott of the Muslim Brotherhood. They want the crossing to be opened and more trade,” one senior Egyptian security source said.

“This has actually begun, but in a partial way. We hope it will continue.”

While it doesn’t engage directly with Hamas, Israel is working with Egypt on border security and monitoring of Gaza. Military officials have voiced support for any steps that bring greater stability to northern Sinai and Gaza.

Hamas has increased security along its side of the border with Sinai over the past year, deploying hundreds of security forces and erecting more watchtowers. The group has also moved to round up Salafi Jihadists, who oppose an Egyptian-brokered 2014 ceasefire with Israel.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction but which has no ambitions for global jihad, has not said how many militants it has captured and refuses to call them jihadists.

Egypt has given Hamas a list of about 85 fugitives, who it says are implicated in attacks and wants extradited, the Egyptian security source said. Hamas denied links with some of them and sources in the group said extraditions were unlikely though it might make its own inquiries.

Hamas has however let Egypt know that it has no interest in stoking unrest in an Arab neighbor that has mediated several truces with Israel and among rival Palestinian factions.

“If we compare it with a year ago, the situation or the relationship is better but it is not yet what is needed,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters.

“The needs of our people are great, their need to travel, pursue education or treatment, attend to their businesses and families abroad, and also the need for open trade with Egypt.”

MUTUAL DISTRUST, COMMON INTERESTS

The blossoming ties have been advanced by intense diplomacy, culminating last month in a visit by Ismail Haniyah, a deputy leader of Hamas, to meet Egyptian intelligence officials.

A series of conferences on Palestinian affairs have also taken place in Egypt in recent months attended by figures from Palestinian factions.

Organizers said the conferences were part of efforts to restore Egypt’s regional role following the chaos of the 2011 Arab Spring revolts.

“The situation now is returning to normal,” said Elazb al-Tayeb Taher, writer on Arab affairs at the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, which hosted one of the conferences in November.

“Egyptian intelligence is restoring its relationship with Hamas in accordance with certain guidelines, chief amongst them being that Hamas does not become a major gateway for threats from Gaza targeting Egypt’s national security.”

Despite mutual distrust, Hamas and Egypt kept communication channels open, with Hamas officials regularly invited to Egypt.

But ties hit a low in 2013, after Sisi overthrew President Mohamed Mursi, banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and jailed many of its supporters.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a militant group that emerged in North Sinai in the chaos of 2011 and initially attacked Egypt’s gas pipelines to Israel, turned its guns on Egyptian forces. In 2014, it joined Islamic State and has since attacked in Cairo, killing 28 people in a church in December.

‘EARLY TO TALK OF TRADE’

Blockaded by Israel and facing the closure of their only other outlet, Gazans dug thousands of tunnels to smuggle in building materials and consumer goods and, according to Egyptian officials, smuggle out arms and fighters.

In a bid to crush the militants, Egypt’s military razed hundreds of homes and destroyed at least 2,000 tunnels.

Curfews, checkpoints and air strikes have devastated an area that once drew holidaymakers to its Mediterranean shore.

The desire to secure the area and restore a semblance of normality is as strong for Egypt, which wants to lure back foreign investors who fled after 2011, as it is for Gazans.

Egyptians who organized the Palestinian conferences suggested the border might be reopened to trade for 10 or 15 days at a time – rather than a few days every six weeks at present – to build trust.

But the ultimate aim is more ambitious; a free trade area and an industrial zone on the Egyptian side to facilitate commerce, allow Gazans to travel abroad, and create jobs for those who might otherwise join the militants.

“We’ve gotten to a point now with Hamas where we’re working on a framework on which to build for the coming period, and this will be contingent upon controlling the borders and the crossing will be open routinely,” said Tareq Fahmy, of the state-linked National Center for Middle East Studies, which co-organized two Palestinian conferences last year.

“We’re thinking of direct trade and all this is pivotal for our brothers in Hamas and the Gaza Strip, but … trust-building processes don’t take place overnight.”

For residents of northern Sinai, who face a gamut of checkpoints each day, open trade seems an outlandish notion. The conflict has rendered the area a wasteland of demolished houses, sand berms and trenches.

“It’s early to talk of trade. We are still living in a security zone,” said one resident.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo; editing by Giles Elgood)

Wisconsin man, Virginia man each get prison for trying to join Islamic State

FILE PHOTO: An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture

(Reuters) – A Wisconsin man and a Virginia man were sentenced separately to federal prison on Friday for attempting to travel abroad to join Islamic State, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Joshua Van Haften, 36, of Madison received a 10-year sentence from a federal court in Wisconsin after pleading guilty in October to attempting to support a terrorist organization.

Van Haften, who posted an oath of allegiance to Islamic State’s leader online, traveled to Turkey in 2014 and tried to cross the border into Syria, according to prosecutors.

He also attempted to aid another American interested in joining the militant group, Leon Davis, who was sentenced to 15 years in 2015 after federal agents arrested him at an Atlanta airport on his way to Turkey.

Meanwhile, Haris Qamar, 26, from Burke, Virginia, was sentenced to 8-1/2 years in prison on Friday by a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Like Van Haften, Qamar pleaded guilty in October to a terrorism charge.

U.S. prosecutors said Qamar helped a confidential witness working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation take photographs of landmarks in Washington, D.C., for what he believed would be a propaganda video for Islamic State to encourage attacks.

Qamar also told the witness he bought a plane ticket to Turkey in 2014 so he could join Islamic State but was stymied when his parents confiscated his passport, prosecutors said.

Federal agents also arrested two acquaintances of Qamar on Wednesday and charged them with lying to investigators about the case.

The Justice Department has prosecuted more than 100 Islamic State-related cases since 2014.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Turkey sets out Raqqa operation plans to U.S.: report

Syrian Democratic Forces

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has presented two proposals to the United States for how to carry out a joint military operation to drive Islamic State from its stronghold in the Syrian city of Raqqa, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on Saturday.

Turkey has said repeatedly that the planned operation should be conducted by local Arab forces, possibly with support from Turkish troops, as opposed to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) — an alliance dominated by Kurdish YPG militia.

Washington’s support for the SDF, which launched a campaign to encircle Raqqa in November, has caused tension with NATO-ally Turkey. Ankara views the Kurdish militia as an extension of militants fighting on its own soil.

It is not yet clear whether the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump will provide weapons to the YPG despite Turkey’s objections. The U.S. says weapons provided to the SDF are so far limited to its Arab elements but Ankara says the arms are going to Kurdish militia and is asking for a halt.

In a meeting on Friday at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, a key hub for U.S.-led coalition against jihadists, Turkish military chief Hulusi Akar and his U.S. counterpart Joseph Dunford discussed the two Raqqa road maps, Hurriyet said, citing security sources.

Ankara’s preferred plan of action envisages Turkish and U.S. special forces, backed by commandoes and Turkey-backed Syrian rebels entering Syria through the border town of Tel Abyad, currently held by Kurdish YPG militia, the newspaper said.

The forces would effectively cut through YPG territory, before pushing on to Raqqa, which lies about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south.

Such a plan would require the United States to convince the Kurdish militia to grant the Turkey-backed forces a 20-kilometre (12-mile)-wide strip through YPG territory in order to push south, the paper said.

The SDF alliance, which includes Arab and other groups in Syria’s north as well as the YPG, controls swathes of territory along the Syria-Turkey border as they push back Islamic State.

With air strikes and special ground forces from the U.S.-led coalition, the SDF is in the middle of a multi-phased operation to surround Raqqa, Islamic State’s base of operations in Syria.

Hurriyet also said Ankara was betting on securing a Syrian and Arab force of about 9,000 to 10,000 troops for the Raqqa operation, with most coming from among the fighters being trained at two camps inside Turkey.

A second but less likely alternative outlined by Akar to Dunford was to push towards Raqqa via the Syrian town of Bab, Hurriyet reported, which Turkey-backed forces have been fighting to seize from Islamic State for the past two months.

But the long journey of 180 kilometres (about 110 miles) and mountainous terrain make that possibility less likely, it said.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Helen Popper)

Baghdad car bomb kills 51 as Islamic State escalates insurgency

People and Iraq forces gather around car bombing sight

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car packed with explosives blew up on Thursday in southern Baghdad, killing at least 51 people and wounding 55, security and medical sources said, in the deadliest such attack in Iraq this year.

Islamic State, which is on the defensive after losing control of eastern Mosul to a U.S.-backed Iraqi military offensive, claimed responsibility for the bombing in an online statement.

As it cedes territory captured in a 2014 offensive across northern and western Iraq, the ultra-hardline group has stepped up insurgent strikes on government areas, particularly in the capital Baghdad.

Security sources said the vehicle which blew up on Thursday was parked in a crowded street full of garages and used car dealers, in Hayy al-Shurta, a Shi’ite district in the southwest of the city.

The death toll could climb further as many of the wounded are in critical condition, a doctor said.

The bombing is the second to hit car markets this week, suggesting the group has found it easier to leave vehicles laden with explosives in places where hundreds of other vehicles are parked.

A suicide bomber detonated a pick-up truck on Wednesday in Sadr City, a poor Shi’ite suburb in the east of the capital, killing at least 15 people. That explosion took place in a street full of used car dealers.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have dislodged Islamic State from most of the cities it captured in 2014 and 2015. The militants also control parts of Syria.

Iraqi government forces last month captured eastern Mosul and are now preparing an offensive on the western side that remains under the militants’ control. The city is divided in two halves by the Tigris river.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans and Alison Williams)

Islamic State readies for close combat in alleyways of west Mosul

US army forces in Mosul

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State militants are developing a network of passageways and tunnels in the narrow alleys of west Mosul that will enable them to hide and fight among the civilian population when Iraqi forces launch an attack that is expected any day now.

Residents said the fighters have been opening passages in the walls between houses to allow them to move from block to block undetected, disappear after hit-and-run operations and track government troop movements.

They have also opened sniper holes in buildings overlooking the Tigris river bisecting the city into east and west, they said.

“They opened these holes and threatened us not to close them,” one resident told Reuters by telephone, asking not to be identified by name or location because Islamic State executes anyone caught communicating with the outside world.

The militants are essentially under siege in western Mosul, along with an estimated 650,000 civilians, after U.S.-backed forces surrounding the city dislodged them from the east in the first phase of an offensive that concluded four weeks ago.

The westward road that links the city to Syria was cut at the end of November. The militants are still in charge of the road that links Mosul to Tal Afar, a town they control 60 km (40 miles) to the west, however.

Coalition aircraft and artillery have been bombarding selected targets in the west, included workshops in the eastern industrial zone where Islamic State is thought to build car bombs and booby traps. Ground forces have paused to redeploy and build new fortifications and staging posts along Mosul’s western flank, as well as rest and repair damaged hardware.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told a meeting of the armed forces commanders on Thursday that the offensive could start “very soon”.

MORE DIFFICULT IN THE WEST

Commanders expect the battle in the west to be more difficult than in the east because, among other things, tanks and armored vehicles cannot pass through its narrow streets and alleyways.

Western Mosul contains the old city center, with its ancient souks, Grand Mosque and most government administrative buildings. The city’s airport is also located there.

“The narrow alleys and densely populated districts, along with the defensive tunnels built by Daesh — all this is definitely going to make the battle tough and complicated,” said Colonel Sattar Karim of the Iraqi army’s 9th Division, using an Arabic acronym of Islamic State.

It was from the pulpit of the Mosul Grand Mosque that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

The city — Iraq’s second biggest — is the largest urban center captured by Islamic State in both countries and its de facto capital in Iraq. Raqqa is its capital in Syria.

The Sunni group imposed a radical version of Islam in Mosul, banning cigarettes, televisions and radios, and forcing men to grow beards and women to cover from head to toe. Citizens who failed to comply risked death.

Capturing the city would effectively end the militants’ ambitions for territorial rule in Iraq. They are expected to continue to wage an insurgency, however, carrying out suicide bombings and inspiring lone-wolf actions abroad.

OVERWHELMING FORCE

Islamic State was thought to have up to 6,000 fighters in Mosul when the government’s offensive started in mid-October. Of those, more than one thousand have been killed, according to Iraqi estimates.

The remainder now face a 100,000-strong force made up of Iraqi armed forces, including elite paratroopers and police, Kurdish forces and Iranian-trained Shi’ite paramilitary groups.

The United States, which has deployed more than 5,000 troops in the fighting, leads an international coalition providing critical air and ground support, including artillery fire, to the Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

In the next phase, the Iraqi military’s plan is to wear down the fighters and overwhelm them by moving on all fronts.

“Daesh will not be able to stand against thousands of attacking troops with air and artillery cover,” said federal police captain Haider Radhi.

The police’s target will be to capture the airport, located on Mosul’s southern limits, and secure it for army engineers who will quickly rehabilitate the runway and the other facilities so that it can be used as a close support base for troops, he said.

Intelligence gathering and the cooperation of the civilian population will be key for advancing troops to avoid booby traps and to find weapons caches placed across the city as part of Islamic State’s urban warfare plan, said Baghdad-based analyst and former army general Jasim al-Bahadli.

However, the narrowness of the streets will limit the militants’ ability to attack advancing troops with suicide car bombs, one of the group’s most effective weapons, along with mortar and sniper fire.

“Car bombs will be used in some areas of the western side where the streets are wide enough,” said Bahadli. “In the others, we can expect the group to send walking bombers” who will run or walk toward the troops and detonate explosive belts.

Karim, the army colonel, said the militants are using churches, schools, hospitals and homes as weapon caches to avoid airstrikes.

“The job will not be easy to determine who’s an enemy and who’s a friend,” he said.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Turkey says almost taken Syria’s Bab, war monitor cites heavy toll

rebel fighter on outskirts of al-Bab Syria

By Tulay Karadeniz and Angus McDowall

ANKARA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey’s military said on Friday it was close to taking Syria’s al-Bab from Islamic State, but a war monitor said the jihadists still controlled 90 percent of the town itself and that shelling and air strikes had killed dozens of civilians in recent days.

Al-Bab, an Islamic State stronghold 30 km (20 miles) from the Turkish border, has been a prime target since Turkey launched an incursion last August to push the jihadists from its frontier and prevent gains by a Kurdish militia also fighting them.

Taking control of the town would deepen Turkish influence in an area of Syria where it has already effectively created a buffer zone and allow Turkish forces to press on towards Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

“The operation to gain complete control of the al-Bab region has neared its end and the resistance of the Daesh terror group has largely been broken,” the Turkish military statement said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organization that monitors the war using a network of contacts, said Turkey’s “Euphrates Shield” forces had not made much progress.

Islamic State still controls 90 percent of al-Bab town itself and Turkish shelling and air strikes had killed 45 civilians, including 18 children, during the past 48 hours, the Observatory said.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said that the al-Bab operation was taking longer than anticipated because of numbers of civilians still in the town and the care being taken not to harm them. It dropped leaflets on the town as long ago as December urging civilians to seek shelter.

Turkey believes a string of Islamic State gun and bomb attacks, including a mass shooting at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Eve, were planned from al-Bab and Raqqa, and has said clearing the town of militants is a national security priority.

STRAINED ALLIANCE

The military statement came as U.S. Marine Corps General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford visited the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, used by the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkey is part of that coalition but relations with NATO ally Washington have been strained by U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG militia in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkey views the YPG as a hostile force and an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for over three decades.

“It is time the U.S. leadership made clear who they are cooperating with in their Syria policy,” a senior Turkish government official told Reuters, when asked about the possibility of U.S. combat troops being deployed to Syria under President Donald Trump.

“U.S. soldiers are present in Syrian territory, and we saw the results. They trained the PKK-YPG, which we call a terrorist organization, gave them weapons and supported terrorist groups.”

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the next target for the Turkish offensive should be Raqqa but that Arab forces, not the YPG, should be involved.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance dominated by the YPG, is in the middle of a multi-phased operation to encircle Raqqa, backed by air strikes and special ground forces from the U.S.-led coalition.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Daren Butler and Angus MacSwan)

In Mosul orphanage, Islamic State groomed child soldiers

Math and English textbooks found in Islamic State facility that trained children

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – When the boys first arrived at the Islamic State training facility in eastern Mosul they would cry and ask about their parents, who went missing when the militants rampaged through northern Iraq in 2014.

But as the weeks passed they appeared to absorb the group’s ultra-hardline ideology, according to a worker at the former orphanage where they were housed.

The children, aged from three to 16 and mostly Shi’ite Muslims or minority Yazidis, began referring to their own families as apostates after they were schooled in Sunni Islam by the militant fighters, he said.

The boys were separated from the girls and infants, undergoing indoctrination and training to become “cubs of the caliphate – a network of child informers and fighters used by the jihadists to support their military operations.

The complex in Mosul’s Zuhur district, which had been home to local orphans until they were kicked out by Islamic State, was one of several sites the jihadists used across the city.

It is now shuttered, its doors sealed with padlocks by Iraqi security forces.

Islamic State withdrew before Iraqi forces launched a U.S.-backed offensive in October to retake the city, but during a Reuters visit last month there were still reminders of the group’s attempt to brainwash dozens of children.

A saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed is painted in black on one wall, urging children to learn to swim, shoot and ride horses. Inside the building is a swimming pool, now dry and full of rubbish.

‘A’ FOR APPLE, ‘B’ FOR BOMB

In another room sits a stack of textbooks Islamic State had amended to fit its brutal ethos.

Arithmetic problems in a fourth grade maths book use imagery of warfare, while the cover bears a rifle made up of equations. History books focus exclusively on the early years of Islam and emphasize martial events.

Another textbook entitled “English for the Islamic State” includes ordinary words like apple and ant beside army, bomb and sniper. Martyr, spy and mortar also appear alongside zebra crossing, yawn, and X-box.

The word “woman” is depicted by a formless black figure wearing the full niqab covering. All faces in the books – even those of animals – are blurred, in keeping with an Islamic proscription against such images.

The orphanage worker, who was cowed into staying on after the militants took over in 2014, said girls who were brought to the center were often married off to the group’s commanders.

The man asked not to be named for fear of reprisals by Islamic State, which still controls the entire western half of Mosul. He was shot in the leg during recent clashes.

He said the militants, mostly Iraqis, taught the Shi’ite children how to pray in the tradition of Sunni Islam and forced the Yazidis to convert.

They memorized the Koran, were taught to treat outsiders as infidels and conducted physical exercise in the yard, which has since grown over.

OLD ENOUGH TO FIGHT

A pair of colorful plastic slides and swing sets now sit untouched amid shattered glass, casings from a grenade launcher and a suicide bomber’s charred remains – signs of the militants’ fierce resistance as they retreated late last year.

Reuters could not independently verify the orphanage worker’s comments. But local residents gave similar accounts, and Islamic State has published numerous videos showing how it trains young fighters and even makes them execute prisoners.

New batches of children arrived at the Zuhur orphanage every few weeks from outside Mosul, including a few from neighboring Syria, while older boys were sent to the town of Tel Afar west of Mosul for intensive military training for duties including with Islamic State’s courts or vice squad, residents said.

“After six months at the camps, some of the boys came back to spend a weekend with their younger brothers. They were wearing uniforms and carrying weapons,” the orphanage worker said, fingering black and yellow prayer beads.

One of the boys, Mohammed, was killed last summer during the battle in the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, he said, recounting how the other children wept upon learning the news.

A few weeks before the Mosul offensive began, Islamic State canceled lessons and sent the boys to guard an airfield near Tel Afar which pro-government forces later seized, he said.

“I told them, ‘If you see the army, drop your weapons and tell them you are orphans. Maybe they will spare your lives'”.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

Turkey says U.S. not insisting on Kurdish role in Raqqa operation

Syrian Forces

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s defense minister said on Thursday the new U.S. administration has a more flexible approach to Syria and is not insisting on the Kurdish YPG militia being involved in the operation to drive Islamic State from its Raqqa stronghold.

U.S. support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance dominated by the YPG, has caused tensions with NATO ally Turkey, which views the Kurdish militia as an extension of militants fighting on its own soil.

“If we want the Raqqa operation to be successful, then it should be carried out with Arab forces in the region and not the YPG,” Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik told reporters in Brussels.

“The new U.S. administration has a different approach to the issue. They are not insisting anymore that the operation should definitely be carried out with the YPG. They haven’t yet made up their minds,” he said in comments broadcast live.

The SDF alliance, which includes Arab and other groups in Syria’s north as well as the YPG, has taken territory along the Syria-Turkey border as they push back Islamic State.

With air strikes and special ground forces from the U.S.-led coalition, the SDF is in the middle of a multi-phased operation to encircle Raqqa, Islamic State’s base of operations in Syria.

A key decision for the Trump administration will be whether to provide weapons to the YPG despite Turkish objections. The U.S. says weapons provided to the SDF are so far limited to its Arab elements.

“We are working with the U.S. on the withdrawal of the YPG from Manbij by the time the al-Bab operation is completed,” Isik said, referring to a town currently under SDF control.

Isik added that Turkey’s priority after al-Bab would be advancing towards Manbij and Raqqa. He also said U.S. chief of staff Joseph Dunford would visit Turkey on Friday.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

U.N. warns of catastrophic dam failure in Syria battle

Euphrates River at sunset in Syria

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations is warning of catastrophic flooding in Syria from the Tabqa dam, which is at risk from high water levels, deliberate sabotage by Islamic State (IS) and further damage from air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The earth-filled dam holds back the Euphrates River 40 km (25 miles) upstream of the IS stronghold of Raqqa and has been controlled by IS since 2014.

Water levels on the river have risen by about 10 meters since Jan. 24, due partly to heavy rainfall and snow and partly to IS opening three turbines of the dam, flooding riverside areas downstream, according to a U.N. report seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

“As per local experts, any further rise of the water level would submerge huge swathes of agricultural land along the river and could potentially damage the Tabqa Dam, which would have catastrophic humanitarian implications in all areas downstream,” it said.

The entrance to the dam was already damaged by airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, it said.

“For example, on 16 January 2017, airstrikes on the western countryside of Ar-Raqqa impacted the entrance of the Euphrates Dam, which, if further damaged, could lead to massive scale flooding across Ar-Raqqa and as far away as Deir-ez-Zor.”

The town of Deir-ez-Zor, or Deir al-Zor, is a further 140 km downstream from Raqqa, and is besieged by IS. The U.N. estimates that 93,500 civilians are trapped in the town, and it has been airdropping food to them for a year.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are undertaking a multiphased operation to encircle Raqqa, and have advanced to within a few kilometers of the dam. The SDF has previously said air strikes are not being used against IS near the dam to avoid damaging it.

As IS, also known as ISIL, retreats, its fighters have deliberately destroyed vital infrastructure, including three water stations and five water towers in the first three weeks of January, the U.N. report said.

“ISIL has reportedly mined water pumping stations on the Euphrates River which hinders the pumping of water and residents are resorting to untreated water from the Euphrates River.”

The U.N. has also warned of the danger of a collapse of the Mosul dam on the Tigris River in Iraq, which could affect 20 million people. The dam was briefly captured by IS in 2014, but remains at risk, with constant repairs needed to avoid disaster.

Last month Lise Grande, the top U.N. humanitarian official in Iraq and a trained hydrologist who is an expert on the Mosul dam, said a catastrophic burst could have “Biblical” consequences. The U.N. is preparing an international response in case the Mosul dam collapses.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Kremlin says Turkey provided intel for ‘friendly fire’ strikes

Syrian fighters

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian air strikes that accidentally killed three Turkish soldiers in Syria were launched based on coordinates provided to Russia by the Turkish military, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

The Turkish military has said the “friendly fire” incident occurred during an operation against Islamic State, highlighting the risk of unintended clashes between the numerous outside powers in a complex war.

“Unfortunately, our military, while carrying out strikes on terrorists, was guided by coordinates given to them by our Turkish partners, and Turkish servicemen should not have been present on those coordinates,” Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told a conference call with reporters.

“It was a lack of coordination in providing coordinates, that is how I would formulate it,” said Peskov.

Speaking with reporters in the city of Afyon, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said it was important that President Vladimir Putin had expressed his condolences to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan.

“From our side the issue is being investigated. Initial information shows this was an accident … and an undesired incident as a result of incorrect information, coordinates,” Kurtulmus said in televised comments.

“It has been understood that closer coordination is required, both with the coalition and with Russia.”

(Reporting by Christian Lowe in Moscow and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Andrew Osborn)