Tag Archives: Islamic State

Iraqi forces battle toward landmark Mosul mosque

An Iraqi displaced woman cares of her children after arriving to Hammam al-Alil camp in the south of Mosul, Iraq, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Isabel Coles and John Davison

MOSUL (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces and police fought Islamic State militants to edge closer to the al-Nuri mosque in western Mosul on Wednesday, tightening their control around the landmark site in the battle to recapture Iraq’s second city, military commanders said.

The close-quarters fighting is focused on the Old City surrounding the mosque where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate nearly three years ago across territory controlled by the group in both Iraq and Syria.

Thousands of residents have fled from IS-held areas inside Mosul, the militants’ biggest remaining stronghold in Iraq. But tens of thousands more are still trapped inside homes, caught in the fighting, shelling and air strikes as Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition advance in the west.

Helicopters circling west Mosul strafed Islamic State positions beyond the city train station, the site of heavy back-and-forth fighting in recent days, and thick black smoke rose into the sky, Reuters reporters on the ground said.

Heavy sustained gunfire could be heard from the Old City area, where militants are hiding among residents and using the alleyways, traditional family homes and snaking narrow roads to their advantage, fleeing residents say.

“Federal police forces have imposed full control over the Qadheeb al-Ban area and the al-Malab sports stadium in the western wing of Old Mosul and are besieging militants around the al-Nuri mosque,” federal police chief Lieutenant General Raed Shaker Jawdat said in a statement.

Rapid Response elite interior ministry troops were advancing on the edge of the Old City, clambering over garden walls. Islamic State responded with rocket fire, streaking the sky with white smoke plumes.

“There are teams going into the Old City since yesterday,” said Rapid Response official Abd al-Amir.

Iraqi troops shot down at least one suspected Islamic State drone. The militants have been using small commercial models to spy and drop munitions on Iraqi military positions.

With the battle entering the densely populated areas of western Mosul, civilian casualties are becoming more of a risk. The United Nations says several hundred civilians have been killed in the last month, and residents say Islamic State militants are using them as human shields.

The senior U.S. commander in Iraq acknowledged on Tuesday that the U.S.-led coalition probably had a role in an explosion in Mosul believed to have killed scores of civilians, but said Islamic State could also be to blame.

As investigators probe the March 17 blast, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend said increases in casualties were to be expected as the war against the insurgents entered its deadliest phase in the cramped, narrow streets of Mosul’s Old City.

Local officials and eyewitnesses say as many as 240 people may have been killed in the Al-Jadida district when a huge blast caused a building to collapse, burying families inside. Rescue workers are still pulling bodies out of the site.

HUGE BLAST

What exactly happened on March 17 is still unclear and there have been conflicting accounts of how many people died.

Iraqi military command has said one line of investigation is whether Islamic State rigged explosives that ultimately caused the blast that destroyed buildings. Iraqi military said there was no indication the building was hit directly by the strike.

Eyewitnesses have said a strike may have hit a massive truck bomb parked by the building. Others say families were either sheltering in a basement or had been forced inside.

“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,” Townsend, the senior coalition commander in Iraq, told a Pentagon news briefing.

“What I don’t know is were they (the civilians) gathered there by the enemy? We still have some assessments to do. … I would say this, that it sure looks like they were.”

The incident has heightened fears for the safety of civilians – an important concern for Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government as it tries to avoid alienating Mosul’s mostly Sunni population.

The United Nations rights chief said on Tuesday at least 307 civilians had been killed and 273 wounded in western Mosul since Feb. 17, saying Islamic State was herding residents into booby-trapped buildings as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee.

(Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Investigators probe Mosul blast as Iraqi forces push into Old City

Iraqi firefighters look for bodies buried under the rubble, of civilians who were killed after an air strike against Islamic State triggered a massive explosion in Mosul. REUTERS/Stringer

By Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Investigators are in the Iraqi city of Mosul to determine whether a U.S.-led coalition strike or Islamic State-rigged explosives caused a blast that destroyed buildings and may have killed more than 200 people, a U.S. military commander said.

Conflicting accounts have emerged since the March 17 explosion in al-Jadida district in west Mosul, where Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes are fighting to clear Islamic State militants from Iraq’s second city.

Iraq’s military command has blamed militants for rigging a building with explosives to cause civilian casualties, but some witnesses say it was collapsed by an air strike, burying many families under the rubble.

If confirmed, the toll would be one of the worst since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, raising questions about civilian safety as Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government tries to avoid alienating Mosul’s mostly Sunni population.

U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley, after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraq’s defense minister late on Monday, said there had been air strikes in the vicinity that day and on previous days but it was not clear they had caused the casualties.

“It is very possible that Daesh blew up that building to blame it on the coalition in order to cause a delay in the offensive on Mosul and cause a delay in the use of coalition air strikes,” Milley said, using an Arabic term for Islamic State.

“It is possible that a coalition air strike did it. We don’t know yet. There are investigators on the ground.”

A source close to Abadi’s office said the U.S. military delegation also called for more coordination among the Iraqi security force units on the ground and for consideration that thousands of civilians are stuck in their homes.

The United Nations rights chief said on Tuesday at least 307 civilians have been killed and 273 wounded in western Mosul since Feb. 17, saying Islamic State was herding residents into booby-trapped buildings as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee.

“This is an enemy that ruthlessly exploits civilians to serve its own ends,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said. “It is vital that the Iraqi security forces and their coalition partners avoid this trap.”

PRECAUTIONS

Iraqi forces have retaken eastern Mosul and are pushing through the west but have faced tough resistance in the densely populated districts around the Old City, where narrow streets and traditional homes force close-quarters fighting.

Iraqi forces fighting around the Old City tried to storm the al-Midan and Suq al Sha’areen districts, where Islamic State ran its religious police who carried out brutal punishments, such as crucifixion and public floggings, federal police commander Lt. Gen. Raed Shakir Jawdat told state al-Sabah newspaper.

Helicopters were strafing Islamic State targets around Al Nuri mosque, where Islamic State’s leader declared his caliphate nearly three years ago after militants took control of swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Thousands of civilians are fleeing the fighting, shelling and air strikes, but as many as half a million people may be trapped inside the city. Fleeing residents say they have been used as human shields by militants who shelter in their homes.

The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said since the campaign against western Mosul began in February, unconfirmed reports have said nearly 700 civilians have been killed by government and coalition air strikes or Islamic State action.

Rights group Amnesty International said the high civilian toll suggested U.S.-led coalition forces had failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths.

The al-Jadida incident is far from clear. Witnesses on Sunday described horrific scenes of body parts strewn over rubble, residents trying desperately to pull out survivors and other people buried out of reach.

The Iraqi military’s figure of 61 bodies was lower than that given by local officials – a municipal official said on Saturday 240 bodies had been pulled from the rubble. A local lawmaker and two witnesses say a coalition air strike may have targeted a truck bomb, triggering a blast that collapsed buildings.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S.-backed forces capture Islamic State-held airport near Euphrates dam

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters walk near damaged ground east of Raqqa city, Syria.

By Angus McDowall and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) – A U.S.-backed Syrian alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias on Sunday took a military airport in northern Syria held by Islamic State, close to the country’s largest dam that may be in danger of collapse.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a U.S.-led international coalition, said in a statement it had seized the air base.

Earlier, SDF spokesman Talal Silo said its fighters had seized “60 to 70 percent” of the airport but were still engaged in intense clashes with the ultra-hardline militants inside the air base and on its outskirts.

The SDF, backed by U.S. special forces in a campaign that has driven Islamic State from large swathes of northern Syria, fights separately from other rebel groups that seek to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The SDF has been battling the militants near the Tabqa dam and air base west of the Syrian city of Raqqa in an accelerating campaign to capture Islamic State’s stronghold.

Hundreds of families were fleeing the city of Tabqa to the relative safety of outlying areas as U.S.-led coalition air strikes intensified in the past few days, according to former residents in touch with relatives.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, said a week-long campaign of U.S-led strikes on Tabqa and the western countryside of Raqqa province had killed at least 90 civilians, a quarter of them children, while injuring dozens.

A media representative for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said it was looking into the Observatory’s assertion.

Last week, the Pentagon said there were no indications a U.S.-led coalition air strike near Raqqa had hit civilians, in response to an Observatory statement that at least 33 people were killed in a strike that hit a school sheltering displaced people near the city. The Pentagon added it would carry out further investigations.

A group of civic bodies and local and tribal notables from Raqqa province warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in the city of Raqqa as a result of the escalating campaign to seize the de facto capital of the militants.

“We call for immediate efforts to save people and protect them,” the statement of the Turkey-based opposition-run Local Council of Raqqa Province said, urging the international coalition to provide safe passage to civilians and ending bombing of infrastructure in the fight against Islamic State.

DAM AT RISK

The Pentagon said last Wednesday it had for the first time airdropped local ground forces behind enemy lines near Tabqa in a move aimed at retaking the major dam.

Islamic State said on its social media channels that Tabqa dam had been put out of service and all flood gates were closed. It said the dam was at risk of collapse because of air strikes and increased water levels.

Islamic State captured the Tabqa Dam, also known as the Euphrates Dam, which is about 40 km (25 miles) upstream from Raqqa and the air base, at the height of its expansion in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

The United Nations warned this year of catastrophic flooding in Syria from the Tabqa dam, which is at risk from high water levels, deliberate sabotage by Islamic State and further damage from air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The director of the Syrian government’s General Authority of Euphrates Dam that formerly operated the huge project blamed U.S. strikes in the past two days for disrupting internal control systems and putting the dam out of service, and warned of growing risks that could lead to flooding and future collapses.

“Before the latest strikes by the Americans, the dam was working. Two days ago, the dam was functioning normally,” Nejm Saleh told Reuters.

“God forbid … there could be collapses or big failures that could lead to flooding,” Saleh said.

An SDF spokesman denied that coalition strikes hit the structure of the dam and said the air drop landing last week was conducted to prevent any damage to the main structure by engaging the militants away from the dam.

“The capture of the dam is being conducted slowly and carefully and this is why the liberation of the dam needs more time,” Silo said, adding that militants dug inside the dam knowing they would not be hit for fear of damaging the dam.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had also learned from its own sources that the dam had stopped functioning but that Islamic State remained in control of its main operational buildings and turbines.

The dam is about 4.5 km (2.8 miles) long. The SDF has advanced a small distance along the dam from the northern bank but its progress is slow because Islamic State has heavily mined the area, the Observatory said.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Peter Cooney)

Iraqi forces to deploy new tactics in Mosul, civilians flee city

Displaced Iraqis flee their homes as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq March 24, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Angus MacSwan

MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces are to deploy new tactics in a fresh push against Islamic State in Mosul, military officials said on Friday, after advances slowed recently in the campaign to drive the militants out of their last stronghold in the country.

Elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) forces made some advances against the jihadists in areas of western Mosul later in the day, a defense spokesman said, despite a hold on operations by other units.

Families meanwhile streamed out of the northern Iraqi city in an ongoing exodus of people fleeing in their thousands each day, headed for cold, crowded camps or to stay with relatives.

The U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State out of Mosul, now in its sixth month, has recaptured most of the city. The entire eastern side and around half of the west is under Iraqi control.

But advances have stuttered in the last two weeks as fighting enters the narrow-alleyed Old City, and the militants put up fierce resistance using car bombs, snipers and mortar fire against forces and residents.

“In the next few days we will surprise Daesh terrorists by targeting and eliminating them using new plans” being discussed by the joint operations command, Iraqi defense ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told state TV.

He did not elaborate on tactics.

Rasool said CTS forces had advanced in tough, building-to-building battles to recapture areas outside the Old City including al-Yabsat.

Islamic State fighters had been positioning car bombs, and forcing residents to move furniture onto the streets which the militants were booby-trapping to slow Iraqi advances, he said.

Reuters could not independently verify new advances by the CTS.

In the Old City, which Iraq’s elite Rapid Response forces, an interior ministry unit, and Federal Police have pushed into, no new advances were reported.

Rapid Response spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi said operations were on hold for the day, but would soon resume, with “new techniques” more suitable to fighting in the Old City.

A Federal Police officer told Reuters new tactics would include deploying additional sniper units against Islamic State sharpshooters. The officer asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of discussing military tactics.

Islamic State fighters have stationed themselves in homes belonging to Mosul residents to fire at Iraqi troops, often drawing air or artillery strikes that have killed civilians.

SNIPER DANGER

They have also launched counter-attacks, sometimes pinning down Iraqi forces on the southern edges of the Old City. Cloud cover and rain in recent weeks have prevented effective air support, military officials say.

One of the next targets of Iraqi forces inside the Old City is the al-Nuri mosque, whose recapture would be a key symbolic victory. It is where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning large areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

As the battle continues, more civilians are being killed or displaced.

Local officials and residents said on Thursday dozens of people were buried in collapsed buildings after an air raid against Islamic State triggered a massive explosion last week.

Outside the city on Friday, hundreds of displaced people poured out of Mosul, walking through the mud with suitcases and bags.

One man said that Islamic State snipers had shot at those fleeing, and some had been killed in explosions.

The situation inside the city is worsening with no drinking water or electricity and no food coming in, residents said.

Khaled Khalil, a 36-year-old carpenter whose shop was destroyed in fighting, clutched his three-year-old daughter.

“We’ve been on the move since yesterday. We’re very tired but now we’re safe. Anybody they (Islamic State) catch, they kill. If we have time, we run,” he said.

(Reporting by Baghdad bureau, Angus MacSwan in Mosul, John Davison in Erbil; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Jon Boyle)

UK parliament attacker British-born, had been investigated over extremism concerns

Police work at Carriage Gate outside the Houses of Parliament. REUTERS/Neil Hall

By Elizabeth Piper and William James

LONDON (Reuters) – The attacker who killed three people near the British parliament before being shot dead was British-born and was once investigated by MI5 intelligence agents over concerns about violent extremism, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued by its Amaq news agency. But it gave no name or other details and it was not clear whether the attacker was directly connected to the group.

Police arrested eight people at six locations in London and Birmingham in the investigation into Wednesday’s lone-wolf attack that May said was inspired by a warped Islamist ideology.

About 40 people were injured and 29 remain in hospital, seven in critical condition, after the incident which resembled Islamic State-inspired attacks in France and Germany where vehicles were driven into crowds.

The assailant sped across Westminster Bridge in a car, ploughing into pedestrians along the way, then ran through the gates of the nearby parliament building and fatally stabbed an unarmed policeman before being shot dead. http://tmsnrt.rs/2napbkD

“What I can confirm is that the man was British-born and that some years ago he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism,” May said in a statement to parliament.

“He was a peripheral figure…He was not part of the current intelligence picture. There was no prior intelligence of his intent or of the plot,” she said, adding that his identity would be revealed when the investigation allowed.

The mayhem in London took came on the first anniversary of attacks that killed 32 people in Brussels. Twelve people were killed in Berlin in December when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market and 84 died in July in a similar attack on Nice waterfront for which Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Islamic State, which is being driven from large areas of Iraq and Syria by local forces supported by a U.S.-led military coalition, said it was responsible for the London attack.

“The perpetrator of the attacks…is an Islamic State soldier and he carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of the coalition,” a statement on its Amaq agency said.

Westminster Bridge and the area just around parliament were still cordoned off on Thursday morning and a line of forensic investigators in light blue overalls were on their hands and knees, examining the scene where the attacker was shot.

The dead were two members of the public, the stabbed policeman and the attacker.

“My thoughts, prayers, and deepest sympathy are with all those who have been affected by yesterday’s awful violence,” Queen Elizabeth said in a message.

Britain’s plan to trigger the formal process of exiting the EU on March 29 will not be delayed due to the attack, May’s spokesman said.

Flowers are left outside New Scotland Yard the morning after an attack in London, Britain, March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

“TOOK OUT HIS RAGE”

It was the worst such attack in Britain since 2005, when 52 people were killed by Islamist suicide bombers on London’s public transport system. Police had given the death toll as five but revised it down to four on Thursday.

The casualties included 12 Britons, three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Chinese, one American and two Greeks, May said.

“We meet here, in the oldest of all parliaments, because we know that democracy and the values it entails will always prevail,” she said.

“A terrorist came to the place where people of all nationalities and cultures gather what it means to be free and he took out his rage indiscriminately against innocent men, women and children,” said May.

A minute’s silence was held in parliament and in front of police headquarters at New Scotland Yard at 0933 GMT, in honor of the victims — 933 was the shoulder number on the uniform of Keith Palmer, the policeman who was stabbed to death.

May was in parliament on Wednesday, a short distance away from the spot where the attacker was shot. She was swiftly whisked away as the chaos erupted, according to lawmaker Andrew Bridgen, who was nearby at the time.

A government minister was widely praised for trying to resuscitate Palmer, walking away from the scene with blood on his hands and face.

A crowdfunding page hastily set up to raise money for Palmer’s family attracted close to 20,000 pounds ($25,000)within three hours.

Some have been shocked that the attacker was able to cause such mayhem in the heart of the capital equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a hired car and a knife.

“The police and agencies that we rely on for our security have forestalled a large number of these attacks in recent years, over a dozen last year,” said defense minister Michael Fallon.

“This kind of attack, this lone-wolf attack, using things from daily life, a vehicle, a knife, are much more difficult to forestall,” he told the BBC.

Police officers salute during a minute's silence outside New Scotland Yard. REUTERS/Neil Hall

Police officers salute during a minute’s silence outside New Scotland Yard. REUTERS/Neil Hall

SOLIDARITY

Three French high-school students aged 15 or 16, who were on a school trip to London with fellow students from Brittany, were among the injured.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who traveled to London to bring a message of solidarity, met some of the other students who were on the school trip and their families at a hotel near the hospital where the injured were being treated.

He told reporters the lives of the three youngsters were not in danger. Ayrault later attended the session in parliament where May spoke. France has been hit by repeated deadly Islamist attacks over the past two years.

A vigil was planned in London’s Trafalgar Square at 6 P.M.

Anti-immigration groups were quick to make links between immigration and the attack, though it was subsequently revealed the attacker was British-born.

Leave.EU, a group that has campaigned for immigration to be severely restrained as part of Britain’s exit from the European Union, accused mainstream politicians of facilitating acts of terror by failing to secure borders.

In France, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also drew a link, saying that events in London highlighted the importance of protecting national borders and stepping up security measures.

(Additional reporting by Costas Pitas, Kate Holton, Estelle Shirbon and Elisabeth O’Leary, writing by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Ralph Boulton)

Security tightened at UK sites in New York after London attack

A New York City Police (NYPD) Counter Terrorism officer patrols in Times Square in New York City, U.S., March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York police ramped up security at British sites across the city on Wednesday after an assailant fatally stabbed a policeman outside Britain’s parliament and was then shot and killed by police.

Heavily armed officers and explosives-detecting dogs were deployed to locations including the British Consulate and the British Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, senior New York Police Department officials told a news conference.

“You’ll see a larger presence of the dogs at these locations, as well as (officers) armed with the long guns,” said James Waters, the police department’s counterterrorism chief.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that while authorities were concerned about copycat attacks, there was no specific threat to New York City on Wednesday.

Outside the British Consulate, officers stood guard wearing helmets and tactical vests and carrying semi-automatic rifles. Several police cars were parked nearby, their lights flashing.

Police long-gun teams were also deployed to New York’s City Hall and Grand Central Station, the department said.

Four people died and at least 20 were injured in London after a car plowed into pedestrians and an attacker stabbed a policeman close to parliament in what police called a “marauding terrorist attack.”

New York police previously boosted security at prominent sites around the city after large-scale attacks in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino, California, out of an abundance of caution.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it would lend support to Britain’s investigation of the attack but that the U.S. security posture was unchanged.

“We are in close contact with our British counterparts to monitor the tragic events and to support the ongoing investigation,” the department said in a statement.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Additional reporting by Timothy Ahmann in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Peter Cooney)

Scorched earth: If Islamic State can’t have it, no one can

FILE PHOTO: Graffiti sprayed by Islamic State militants which reads "We remain" is seen on a stone at the Temple of Bel in the historic city of Palmyra, in Homs Governorate, Syria April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sanadik/File Photo

By Ali Abdelaty

CAIRO (Reuters) – As Islamic State loses ground in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group which once held territory amounting to a third of those countries is turning to sabotage to ensure its enemies cannot benefit from its losses.

As the Syrian army and allied militias advanced under heavy Russian air cover on the ancient city of Palmyra three weeks ago, Islamic State leaders ordered fighters to destroy oil and gas fields.

“It is the duty of mujahideen today to expand operations targeting economic assets of the infidel regimes in order to deprive crusader and apostate governments of resources,” an article in the group’s online weekly magazine al-Nabaa said.

The strategy poses a double challenge to Baghdad and Damascus, depriving their governments of income and making it harder to provide services and gain popular support in devastated areas recaptured from the militants.

The March 2 article said operations by Islamic State in the area around Palmyra “prove the massive effect that strikes aimed at the infidels’ economy have, confusing them and drawing them … into battles they are not ready for.”

It’s not just oil wells the group has targeted. Twice in the last two years it has taken over Palmyra, about 200 km (130 miles) northeast of Damascus, and both times destroyed priceless antiquities before being driven out.

A Syrian antiquities official said earlier this month that he had seen serious damage to the Tetrapylon, a square stone platform with matching structures of four columns positioned at each corner. Only four of the 16 columns were still standing.

In their earlier occupation of the city, the militants ruined an 1,800-year-old monumental arch and the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin.

However, the article in al-Nabaa suggested Islamic State sees the destruction of tangible economic assets as a greater weapon against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is from Syria’s Alawite minority.

“In the first days of the second conquest of Palmyra, where fighters secured the city and other vast areas to the west that include the Alawite regime’s last petrol resources … the Alawite regime and its allies rushed to the depth of the desert to reclaim them,” Islamic State wrote.

“But the caliphate’s soldiers had beaten them to the punch and destroyed the wells and refineries completely so that their enemies could not gain from them and so that their economic crisis goes on for the longest time possible.”

‘MASS DESTRUCTION POLICY’

Islamic State, which declared a caliphate across large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, has lost much territory and many fighters as it comes under attack from a U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive in Iraq and three separate ground forces in Syria.

Iraqi troops have recaptured most of Mosul, the largest city to be taken by the group and the base from which its leader proclaimed the caliphate. In Syria, the group has lost Palmyra and its main stronghold, Raqqa, is surrounded.

As well as destroying resources before they pull out, the militants have stepped up insurgent attacks in areas beyond their control, especially in Iraq.

“Any harm to the economic interests of these two governments will weaken them, be it an electricity tower in Diyala, an oil well in Kirkuk, a telecommunications network in Baghdad, or a tourist area in Erbil,” the article in al-Nabaa said.

It said those attacks would further stretch the group’s enemies by forcing them to defend economic interests, weakening their readiness for the battles to come.

Islamic State has caused about $30 billion in damage to Iraqi infrastructure since 2014, an adviser to the Iraqi government on infrastructure told Reuters.

“Daesh has used a mass destruction policy on factories and buildings with the aim of causing as much economic harm to Iraq as possible,” said Jaafar al-Ibrahimi, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

“Over 90 percent of infrastructure that has come under their hands was destroyed. Daesh burned all oil wells in the Qayyarah field south of Mosul.”

They also destroyed sugar and cement factories and transported the equipment to Syria, he said.

In Syria, the militants destroyed over 65 percent of the Hayan gas plant, the country’s oil minister told the state news agency. The Hayan field, in Homs province where Palmyra is located, produced 3 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Dominic Evans and Mark Trevelyan)

Year on from bombings, Brussels remains on alert

People take part in a rally called "The march against the fear, Tous Ensemble, Samen Een, All Together" in memory for the victims of bomb attacks in Brussels metro and Brussels international airport of Zaventem, in Brussels, Belgium, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A year after Islamic State suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels, Belgian authorities say much remains unclear about who ordered the attacks, even if those who staged them are either dead or in jail.

The March 22 bloodshed in Brussels hit Zaventem airport and a metro train, coming four months after bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 130 people. Both sets of attacks were carried out by related cells of young Muslims, some of whom had returned from fighting in Syria.

Since then, Belgium has remained on high alert as it tries to curtail threats both at home and from militants who may return from the Middle East.

“We will only have certainty when the situation in Syria and Iraq is resolved,” one senior official said of the inquiries into the Brussels attacks. Those two countries have attracted over 400 Belgians to join the ranks of Islamist militants, according to a study by the Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

That figure makes Belgium one of the biggest contributors to foreign jihadists in the Middle East in proportion to its population.

As the Belgian capital prepares to mark Wednesday’s anniversary with ceremonies timed to the moment the bombers struck, authorities are still unsure just who in the IS group organized and ordered the attacks, even though 59 people are in custody and 60 on bail.

The most recent arrest was in January, of a man suspected of providing forged identity papers to Khalid El Bakraoui, the 27-year-old suicide bomber who killed 16 people on a train at the downtown Maelbeek metro station.

With soldiers still a permanent presence around Brussels’ transportation hubs, security officials told reporters in briefings ahead of the anniversary that there was still a risk that armed militants were still at large.

For Belgian security services, some communities can remain hard to penetrate, such as the tight-knit Muslim neighborhood of Molenbeek where the prime suspect of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, hid near his family home for four months. His arrest triggered his associates to strike Brussels four days later.

Despite efforts to detect and discourage the influence of violent Islamist ideas, young men who engaged in petty crime remain vulnerable to it, officials said. But surveillance over potential jihadists has intensified in the past year, they added

Only five Belgians were detected trying to leave for Syria last year, with only one succeeding, officials said, marking a contrast from the previous years.

That, however, has raised concerns, a senior security official told reporters, since Islamic State appeared to be issuing instructions to followers to “attack infidels at home”.

Some 160 Belgian citizens remain in Syria, officials estimate, but some 80 children have been born to them there, creating fears of a new risk.

“These children could be tomorrow’s danger,” the official said. “They’ve seen atrocities, they’ve been brainwashed. Some of them already received military training. We really have to work with them on their return.”

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Edited by Vin Shahrestani; @macdonaldrtr)

Iraqi forces try to bring civilians out of east Mosul, U.S. pledges more support

A wounded displaced Iraqi girl and her family who had fled their homes wait to enter Hammam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Patrick Markey

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces attempted to evacuate civilians from Mosul’s Islamic State-held Old City on Tuesday so that troops could clear the area, but militant snipers hampered the effort, Iraqi officers said.

They said the insurgents were also using civilians as human shields as government units edged toward the al-Nuri Mosque, the focus of recent fighting in the five-month-long campaign to crush Islamic State in the city that was once the de facto capital of their self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate.

As many as 600,000 civilians remain in the western sector of Mosul, complicating a battle being fought with artillery and air strikes as well as ground combat. Thousands have escaped in recent days.

“Our forces control around 60 percent of the west now,” Defence Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told a news conference in eastern Mosul. “It’s the Old City now with small streets and it’s a hard fight with civilians inside. We are trying to evacuate them.

“We are a few hundred meters from the mosque now, we are advancing on al-Nuri. We know it means a lot to Daesh,” he said, using an Arab acronym for Islamic State.

The capture of the mosque would be a huge symbolic prize as well as strategic gain for the government as it was there where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al—Baghdadi declared the caliphate in July 2014 after the militants had captured large areas of Iraq and Syria.

Government forces backed by a U.S.-led international coalition retook several cities last year, liberated eastern Mosul in December, and are now closing in on the west, but the militants are putting up fierce resistance from the close-packed houses and narrow streets.

Baghdadi and other leaders have fled the city for the hinterlands, where Islamic State remnants may regroup and wage a new phase of insurgency. At the same time, IS forces in the Syrian city of Raqqa are under attack in a parallel conflict.

Brigadier General Saad Maan said soldiers had killed nine IS snipers on Tuesday and destroyed a bomb factory.

“There are lots of snipers on top of the buildings in the Old City around the al-Nuri Mosque. We need to evacuate the families from inside as they using them as a shield when we are advancing on the mosque,” he told the news conference.

No precise toll of civilian casualties has been given but a prominent Iraqi politician said last week that the number could be as high as 3,500 dead since the attack on western Mosul started in mid-February.

An emergency field hospital set up by the U.S. medical charity Samaritan’s Purse says it has treated more than 1,000 patients, many of them women and children, since January. They suffered wounds from gunfire, land mines, mortar rounds, car bombings and booby-traps.

Reporters at the frontline on Tuesday said clashes took place around the railway station in some areas troops had held a few days earlier. Troops fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-guns at militants around the station as families ran across streets to avoid snipers

“We sitting inside our house and bullets were coming through our door” said one woman fleeing to government lines.

U.S. SUPPORT TO INCREASE

Saad Maan also said the bodies of a colonel and two other officers who had gone missing during the battle had been found. The colonel had been shot. But he said the men had not been captured by the insurgents.

An Interior Ministry official told Reuters on Monday that the insurgents had captured a police colonel and eight other officers after they ran out of ammunition during a skirmish. But a Rapid Response units spokesman denied this when asked for comment on Monday night.

The issue is sensitive as Islamic State have a record of torturing, mutilating and killing military and civilian captives, and such an incident could be a blow to troops’ morale.

The number of displaced people from both sides of Mosul since the start of the offensive has reached 355,000, according to government figures. Some 181,000 had poured out of western Mosul since the start of the operations to retake that side.

In Washington, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he had won assurances of greater U.S. support in the war in talks on Monday with U.S. President Donald Trump. But Abadi cautioned that military might alone would not be sufficient.

He told a forum in Washington after his meeting with Trump that he had been told U.S. “support will not only continue but will accelerate.”

“But of course we have to be careful here,” he said. “We are not talking about military confrontation as such. Committing troops is one thing, while fighting terrorism is another thing.”

Abadi, who leads the Shi’ite majority government in Baghdad, said it would be crucial to win over the local population in Sunni-dominated Mosul to achieve lasting peace.

He is in Washington this week ahead of a gathering of world leaders of the coalition fighting Islamic State, who as well as waging war in Iraq and Syria have inspired attacks on civilian targets in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that have killed hundreds of people.

Click http://tmsnrt.rs/2mZWV4j for graphic on Battle for Mosul

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Writing by Angus MacSwan in Erbil; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Man claiming to be Boko Haram leader denies 5,000 hostages freed

By Ardo Abdullahi

BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) – A man purporting to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram denied in a video posted on Friday that 5,000 people held by the group had been freed by West African forces earlier in the week.

On Wednesday, Cameroon said regional forces had rescued the hostages, who were held in villages by the jihadist group, in an operation along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

“You are telling lies that you killed 60 of our men and rescued 20 children, and that you rescued 5,000 of your people, Paul Biya,” said the man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, referring to Cameroon’s president.

He also claimed responsibility for attacks earlier this week which included suicide bombings in the city of Maiduguri and a raid on the town of Magumeri, both of which are in the northeast Nigerian state of Borno.

Nigeria’s military has said on multiple occasions in the last few years that it has killed or wounded Shekau.

Such statements have often been followed by video denials by someone who says he is Shekau, but poor footage makes it difficult to confirm if the person is the same man as in previous footage.

Boko Haram has killed around 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to strict Islamic laws in the northeast of Africa’s most populous nation.

The jihadist group, whose attacks have increased since the end of the rainy season in late 2016, also carries out cross-border attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)