Tag Archives: Islamic State

Iraqi forces push further into northeast Mosul, military says

Iraqi Counter Terrorism units take cover in Mosul as war with Islamic State continues

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces made new advances against Islamic State in east Mosul and fought the militants in areas near the Tigris river on Wednesday, seeking to build on recent gains, military officials said.

The elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) pushed into the northeastern Sadeeq neighborhood, officers on the ground said.

A Reuters reporter in eastern Mosul said CTS forces were engaged in clashes in Sadeeq and were firing into neighboring Hadba, where their units had been fighting the day before.

Securing Hadba, Sadeeq and other nearby districts will allow the CTS to advance further toward the Tigris river that runs through the city, control of whose eastern bank will be crucial to launching attacks on western Mosul. Islamic State still holds all Mosul districts west of the river.

Forces also clashed with the militants further south, a military statement said, seeking to build on gains along the river bank, which they reached last week for the first time in the nearly 3-month campaign.

The U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State out of Mosul, its last major Iraq stronghold, involves a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Shi’ite militias.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group’s loss of the northern city would probably spell the end of the Iraqi side of its self-styled caliphate, which spans parts of Iraq and Syria.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Mosul; John Davison and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Bombed Mosul bridge still lifeline for long-suffering civilians

displaced people escaping ISIS in Mosul

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – The rubble of a bridge blown up by Islamic State in Mosul to block advancing Iraqi forces has become a lifeline for civilians as more and more of the northern city breaks loose from the grip of the ultra-hardline militants.

Men and women, children and the elderly scramble down the banks of the Khosr River, a tributary of the Tigris some 30 meters wide and a meter deep which counter-terrorism forces crossed last week in a nighttime raid.

Lumbering over ladders and pipes, civilians crawl onto the span of the bridge, which has collapsed into the murky water, and shimmy up the opposite bank along a dirt path.

Those escaping east to Zuhur district drag suitcases along with strollers and wheelchairs. Those returning west to Muthanna carry sacks of rice, potatoes and onions, cartons of eggs and packs of baby diapers. The journey in either direction is usually several kilometers.

“Now there are people entering and people leaving,” Major General Sami al-Aridi told Reuters this week after touring both sides of the river on foot.

“The ones who left are returning, and those who are leaving now are coming from … neighborhoods where there are currently clashes.”

He said he expected the latest evacuees to return in a day or two as Iraqi forces pushed further west.

The United Nations had warned that the U.S.-backed campaign to kick Islamic State out of Mosul, their largest urban stronghold in Iraq or Syria, could displace up to 1.5 million people.

But with much of the eastern half of the city now under government control, most residents have stayed in their homes or moved in temporarily with relatives in other neighborhoods.

That has complicated the task of the military, which must fight among civilians in built-up areas against an enemy that has targeted non-combatants and hidden among them.

HARSH CONDITIONS

The offensive, involving a 100,000-strong ground force of Iraqi troops, members of the autonomous Kurdish security forces and mainly Shi’ite militiamen, is the most complex battle in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

When it launched the offensive in October, the government hoped to have retaken the city by the end of 2016 but Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in December it could now take another three months to drive the militants out.

Fawaz, a 46-year-old schoolteacher going back across the ruptured bridge to his family’s home in Muthanna on Monday, held a jerry can filled with fuel in one hand and a bag of fresh food in the other.

“We spent two months without food, just what we had stored up,” he said, describing the harsh conditions that many residents faced after the Mosul campaign began in mid-October. Fawaz said he lost some 30 kg (66 lb) in that period.

He crossed the river earlier in the day to buy supplies and check in with his old workplace but was returning before nightfall to his neighborhood, where Iraqi forces are now in charge but mortars fired by Islamic State still land.

He shrugged off the danger with a laugh and, expressing the deep faith that Mosul residents say sustained them through 2-1/2 years of brutal Islamic State rule, said: “God is present.”

ACCUSTOMED TO VIOLENCE

Along a road running west towards the city’s ancient ruins, black armored Humvees race down one side, transporting soldiers to and from the frontline where they’re fighting Islamic State suicide attackers with machine guns, rockets and air strikes.

Civilians, including infants and the disabled, pad along the other side. Many are fleeing clashes with only their most prized possessions but others are pursuing more mundane tasks such as shopping for groceries or reconnecting electricity cables.

A Humvee rushes down the road to reinforce the troops. Behind, a man wearing a grey hoodie bicycles in the dust kicked up by the vehicle. Two more Humvees pass in the opposite direction carrying disabled civilians in their open beds.

“You see with your own eyes: one hand fights, one hand helps,” said a soldier guarding a forward command post.

A corner grocery has opened on the street and a school-age boy sells packets of sunflower seeds to soldiers.

Young children, one grasping a Barbie doll, play in side streets where orange trees hang low under the weight of ripened fruit. A general clad in black uniform hands out chocolates.

The kids do not flinch at the sound of explosions or gunfire. During a particularly heavy spell of clashes nearby, two boys no older than 10 stop in the road where stray bullets occasionally land. They scan the skyline.

“There, there is the Apache (attack helicopter). There, it’s coming! It’s going to work them in,” said one, turning to add: “We’ve become accustomed.”

AVOID CAMPS

Mosul residents say that despite the obvious dangers, they prefer their homes to camps outside the city where conditions are austere and movement heavily restricted.

About 135,000 people have fled to camps outside Mosul run by the government and aid groups. Rapid advances have accelerated displacement in the past two weeks but the figures are still a fraction of the total population.

“We’ve haven’t stayed in our homes and endured all this bombardment and everything just to live in tents,” said Abu Ahmed, visiting his family in Zuhur at the weekend.

The war raging just down the road doesn’t worry him.

“God willing, there is nothing,” he said before dropping to the ground and running for cover at the buzz of a missile overhead.

The street he was standing in suddenly clears of civilians and soldiers. Fifteen seconds later, the rocket explodes about a kilometer away sending a plum of grey smoke into the sky.

Cracks of gunfire replace the greetings and serendipitous reunions that had filled the street just moments earlier.

Abu Ahmed stands up again with a chuckle and brushes himself off. “A rocket,” he said. “Thanks and praise to God.”

(Editing by David Clarke)

Arizona man faces trial for helping college student join Islamic State

By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Arizona man is set to face trial on charges that he provided support to Islamic State by helping a New York City college student travel to Syria, where he died fighting for the militant group.

Opening statements were expected on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court in the case of Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal, 44, who was arrested in 2015 and charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

El Gammal, who has pleaded not guilty, is one of more than 100 people to face U.S. charges since 2014 in cases related to the Islamic State militant group, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

Prosecutors said the case stemmed from El Gammal’s interactions with Samy Mohammed El-Goarany, a U.S. citizen.

By 2014, El-Goarany, then 24, had begun expressing increased interest in militant forms of Islam, prosecutors said. They said he first contacted El Gammal in August of that year after learning of online comments he posted supporting Islamic State.

El Gammal later traveled to New York and met El-Goarany, who according to a LinkedIn profile attended Baruch College in Manhattan from 2009 to 2013. He then arranged for El-Goarany to get in touch with an individual living in Turkey to help El-Goarany travel to join Islamic State, prosecutors said.

El-Goarany subsequently traveled from New York City to Istanbul in January 2015, and sometime in mid-February arrived in Syria, prosecutors said.

After learning of El Gammal’s arrest in 2015, El-Goarany posted a video on YouTube denying he had helped him and saying he “came here out of my own will,” prosecutors said.

In November 2015, an unidentified person via an instant messaging platform contacted one of El-Goarany’s relatives to report that he had been killed fighting in Syria, prosecutors said.

They said that person provided the relative with photographs of a note from El-Goarany that said “if you’re reading this then know that I’ve been killed in battle and am now with our Lord InshaAllah.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Iraq forces advance in Mosul but civilian toll mounts

Iraqi forces inspect hospital in Mosul after clashes with ISIS

By John Davison and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces fought their way into more districts of Mosul but advances in the city’s southeast were being slowed by Islamic State’s use of civilians for cover, military officials said on Tuesday.

The United Nations said civilian casualties had streamed into nearby hospitals in the last two weeks as fighting intensified in the jihadist group’s last major stronghold in Iraq.

Advances by elite forces in the city’s east and northeast have picked up speed in a new push since the turn of the year, and U.S.-backed forces have for the first time reached the Tigris river, which bisects the city.

“They entered Hadba (district) today. There is a battle inside the city,” Lt-Colonel Abbas al-Azawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi army’s 16th division, said.

Seizing control of Hadba, a large district, would likely take more than a day, and Islamic State (IS) were deploying suicide bombers, he added.

Recapturing Mosul after more than two years of Islamic State rule would probably spell the end of the Iraqi side of the group’s self-declared caliphate, which spans areas of Iraq and Syria.

Forces in the city’s eastern and northeastern districts, and in particular the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), have made rapid gains in past days.

Better defenses against militant car bombs and improved coordination among the advancing troops had helped put Islamic State on the back foot, U.S. and Iraqi military officers said.

“Every day the Iraqi Security Forces go forward and every day the enemy goes backward or underground,” U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian, spokesman for the coalition, told reporters in Erbil in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

MILITANTS ‘HIDING IN MOSQUES’

But fighting in neighbourhoods in the southeast has been tougher.

“The challenge is that they (IS) are hiding among civilian families, that’s why our advances are slow and very cautious,” Lieutenant-Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi, a spokesman for the rapid response units of Iraq’s federal police, told Reuters.

Mohammedawi said rapid response units and Iraqi army units had fought their way into the Palestine and Sumer districts in the last day, but that Islamic State fighters were firing at civilians trying to flee.

“The families, when they see Iraqi forces coming, flee from the areas controlled by Daesh (Islamic State) towards the Iraqi forces, holding up white flags, and Daesh bomb them with mortars and Molotov cocktails, and also shoot at them.

“Whenever they (IS) withdraw from a district, they shell it at random, and it’s heavy shelling,” he said.

Col. Dorrian said militant fighters were hiding in mosques, schools and hospitals, using civilians as human shields.

The United Nations’ humanitarian coordination office (OCHA) said nearly 700 people had been taken to hospitals in cities in Kurdish-controlled areas outside Mosul in the last week, and more than 817 had required hospital treatment a week earlier.

“Trauma casualties remain extremely high, particularly near frontline areas,” OCHA said.

The U.S.-backed operation to drive the ultra-hardline militants from Mosul began in October and has recaptured villages and towns surrounding the city, and most of Mosul’s eastern half.

(Additional reporting by Girish Gupta in Erbil; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Lough)

Iraq special forces advance in east Mosul, close to linking with army

military vehicle of Iraqi forces

By Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces made further advances against Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, pushing militants out of another eastern district and edging closer to linking up with army units nearby, officers in the northern Iraqi city said.

The Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) said it was working to seize areas overlooking Mosul university in the city’s northeast, after taking over a nearby district.

The advances brought more of eastern Mosul under Iraqi forces’ control a day after elite units reached the Tigris river, as the U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State from its last city stronghold in the country pressed ahead with renewed vigor.

Reaching the river, which runs through the city center, will allow Iraqi forces to begin assaults on western districts still held by Islamic State.

The jihadists have fought back fiercely with suicide car bombs and snipers. Using a network of tunnels and operating close to Mosul’s civilian population, they slowed Iraqi advances in November and December. Islamic State has also killed dozens of Iraqis in attacks in Baghdad and other cities as it comes under increased pressure.

“The Baladiyat neighborhood is done (recaptured) and Sukkar should be done before nightfall,” Major-General Sami al-Askari of the CTS told a Reuters reporter in Mosul.

“This area is very important because it overlooks the university. It is a central district … If it falls we will control the forests, the presidential palaces and the eastern bank of the Tigris,” he said.

Askari said Islamic State has used the university’s laboratories to make biological weapons and store chemicals.

The CTS were also close to linking up with the army nearby, a commander in a regular army unit said.

“They will soon liberate other areas and hopefully finish the eastern side … God willing we will soon announce the liberation of the entire eastern side from Daesh (Islamic State),” Major-General Najm al-Jubbouri told another Reuters reporter in the al-Hadba apartments complex.

Soldiers posed for photos with black Islamic State flags, and the corpses of several Islamic State fighters could be seen.

There were signs that fierce fighting still raged in parts of the complex, however. Islamic State fighters had carried out four to five suicide car bomb attacks in the area since Friday, several officers said.

Monday’s advances also consolidated Iraqi forces’ control of several districts close to the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, east of the river.

CTS forces reached the east bank of the Tigris in an area further south on Sunday, an advance which will eventually enable them to begin assaults on the city’s west.

The offensive against the group, which began in October, stalled last month but has regained momentum in the last week.

Recapturing Mosul after more than two years of Islamic State rule would probably spell the end of the Iraqi wing of the group’s self-declared caliphate, which spans areas of Iraq and Syria.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed.; Writing by John Davison; editing by Angus MacSwan and Dominic Evans)

At least four dead in Palestinian truck attack in Jerusalem

Rescue workers carry the body of a victim from the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

By Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said is likely to have been inspired by Islamic State.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets as they disembarked from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which has a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

The military said that a female officer and three officer cadets were killed and that 17 others were injured. Police said three of the dead were women.

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Police identified the truck driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. His uncle, Abu Ali, named him as Fadi Ahmad Hamdan Qunbor, 28, a father of four from the Jabel Mukabar neighborhood.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that nine Jabel Mukabar residents, including five members of the attacker’s family, were arrested on suspicion of aiding the attacker.

The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Netanyahu visited the scene and convened his security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, to discuss Israel’s response. He said that security forces were controlling access in and out of the neighborhood.

“We know the identity of the attacker. According to all the signs he is a supporter of Islamic State,” the prime minister said.

A government source said that ministers had called for the demolition of the attacker’s home and for his body not to be returned to the family for burial. It also decided to detain without trial persons expressing sympathy for Islamic State.

An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem January 8, 2017 REUTERS/Ronen ZvulunRoni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the driver had been motivated by a truck ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

In another attack claimed by Islamic State and involving a truck driven into a crowd, nearly 90 people were killed in the French city of Nice in July.

STREET ATTACKS SLOWED

Actions inspired by Islamic State in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been rare and only a few dozen Arab Israelis and Palestinians are known to have declared their sympathy with the group.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015, with 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans having been killed in these assaults.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 157 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests, blaming the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership.
An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land sought by Palestinians in peace talks that have stalled since 2014.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, routinely praises those who carry out street attacks, and did so on Sunday.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers and then reversing into them.

A security guard identified only as “A” told Channel 10 how he shot at the truck and its driver.

“I shot at a tyre but realized there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle, I shot at him and emptied my magazine,” he said.

“When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Maayan Lubell, Ori Lewis, Mustafa Abu Ghaneyeh, and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza,; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and David Goodman)

In renewed push, Iraqi forces enter Mosul from north for first time

Iraqi forces moving into position during battle of Mosul against ISIS

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi troops entered Mosul from the north for the first time on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle for the city that also saw elite forces bridge a river under cover of darkness in an unprecedented night raid.

The operations were part of a major new push launched last week to seize ground in the city, after progress in the nearly three-month-old operation had stalled for weeks because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Troops would soon “cut the head of the snake” and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said troops had taken territory in an overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul.

“We used special equipment and had the element of surprise – the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day,” Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Iraqi army units later breached the city from the north for the first time since the offensive began on Oct. 17, entering the residential al-Hadba apartments complex, officers at a nearby command post told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much of the area they controlled amid resistance from Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the latest phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in battles to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

“The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism … and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages,” he said in a statement.

‘HEAD OF THE SNAKE’

“The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces … will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God’s help,” Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit’s outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

Iraqi forces meanwhile pushed IS militants back in an area northwest of Baghdad towards the Syrian border, military sources said, in a separate, smaller operation launched on Thursday and part of the wider fight against the group in Anbar province.

They encountered little resistance from the militants, who withdrew towards Aneh, around 50 km northwest of the town of Haditha, the sources said.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)

Turkey detains 18 people over Izmir attack, sees PKK responsible: minister

Turkish police secure area after explosion

By Mehmet Emin Caliskan

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish police detained 18 people over a gun and bomb attack that killed two people in the city of Izmir and the justice minister said on Friday there was no doubt Kurdish militants were responsible.

Militants clashed with police and detonated a car bomb outside the main courthouse in Turkey’s third largest city, located on its western Aegean coast, on Thursday after their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint. A police officer and a court employee were killed. Nine other people were wounded.

The incident again highlighted the deterioration in Turkey’s public security, coming soon after a gunman killed 39 New Year’s revelers inside a popular Istanbul nightclub. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for that attack.

Authorities said it was clear from weapons seized by police that militants had planned a much bigger attack in Izmir but it was thwarted when security forces spotted their vehicle as it approached the courthouse.

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of the slain police officer, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the two assailants, shot dead by police, had been identified and efforts were under way to find their accomplices. Police had detained 18 people.

“All the information we have obtained show it was the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist organization who gave instructions for the attack and that the terrorists were from the PKK,” he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

On Friday, security police took up guard near the courthouse as hundreds of people filed in for the funeral. Thursday’s explosion shattered windows in a nearby cafeteria and scattered rubble across the steps to the courthouse entrance.

Hundreds in Izmir’s main Alsancak square protested over the attack, holding up banners that read, “We are not afraid.”

The PKK – designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union – and its affiliates have been carrying out increasingly deadly attacks over the past year and a half, ever further from the largely Kurdish southeast, where they have waged an insurgency since 1984.

Izmir, a liberal city on Turkey’s Aegean seacoast, had largely escaped the PKK and Islamist militant violence that has scarred Istanbul and the capital Ankara in recent months.

Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Two car bombs in Baghdad kill at least 14:sources

Iraqi security forces at the scene of car bomb

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 14 people on Thursday, police and medics said, part of a surge in violence across the capital at a time U.S.-backed forces try to drive Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the first blast which went off in Baghdad’s eastern al-Obeidi area during the morning rush, killing six and wounding 15.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group said it had targeted a gathering of Shi’ite Muslims, whom it considers apostates.

The second explosion hit the central Baghdad district of Bab al-Moadham near a security checkpoint, killing eight. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Both bombs had been left in parked vehicles.

More than 60 people have been killed in Baghdad in attacks over the past week as Islamic State intensifies its campaign of violence in the capital as a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces extends its advances against the group in Mosul.

Mosul is Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country. The group has lost most of the territory it seized in northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate.

Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, Iraq’s joint operations commander, told Reuters on Wednesday that pro-government troops had retaken about 70 percent of Mosul’s eastern districts since an offensive began on Oct. 17.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Richard Lough)

U.S., European weapons used to commit war crimes in Iraq: Amnesty

Shi'ite fighters gather to fight ISIS

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Militias fighting alongside Iraqi troops against Islamic State are committing war crimes using weapons provided to the Iraqi military by the United States, Europe, Russia and Iran, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

The rights group said that the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim militias, known collective as the Hashid Shaabi, were using weapons from Iraqi military stockpiles to commit war crimes including enforced disappearances, torture and summary killings.

Hashid Shaabi rejected Amnesty’s accusation as “lies”.

Parliament voted for the Hashid to formally become part of Iraq’s armed forces in November but the session was boycotted by Sunni Muslim representatives, who worry the move will entrench Shi’ite majority rule as well as Iran’s regional influence.

Iraqi and Western officials have expressed serious concern about the government’s ability to bring the Shi’ite militias under greater control.

“International arms suppliers, including the USA, European countries, Russia and Iran, must wake up to the fact that all arms transfers to Iraq carry a real risk of ending up in the hands of militia groups with long histories of human rights violations,” Amnesty researcher Patrick Wilcken said.

States wishing to sell arms to Iraq should ensure strict measures to ensure weapons will not be used by militias to violate human rights, he added in a statement.

Hashid spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi denied Amnesty’s report.

“These lies falsify truths and contribute directly or indirectly to the continuation of struggles that the Iraqi people and the people of neighbouring countries suffer from,” he told a news conference aired by state television.

“This is very clear in this report when it is purposefully slandering an official government institution,” he added, calling for an inquiry into Amnesty’s sources.

Amnesty cited nearly 2-1/2 years of its own field research, including interviews with dozens of former detainees, witnesses, survivors, and relatives of those killed, detained or missing.

Its report focused on four powerful militia groups, most of which receive backing from Iran: the Badr Organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Hezbollah and Saraya al-Salam.

The Hashid deny having sectarian aims or committing widespread abuses. They say they saved the nation by pushing Islamic State back from Baghdad’s borders after the army crumbled before the jihadists’ lightning advance in 2014.

There have been few accusations of serious abuses by the Hashid since the start of a major offensive on Oct. 17 to retake the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State. Various Hashid groups have joined in that battle, and a top U.S. general told The Daily Beast last week they had been “remarkably disciplined”.

(Reporting by Girish Gupta and Saif Hameed; Editing by Mark Heinrich)