Tag Archives: Islamic State

Syrian army opens new front as Islamic State’s many foes attack

Boys help their injured friend after an airstrike on Aleppo's rebel held al-Fardous district

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes has opened a major new front against Islamic State, the third big assault on the self-proclaimed caliphate this week after Iraqi forces attempted to storm a city and a Syrian militia advanced with U.S. support.

The week’s three big offensives are some of the most aggressive campaigns against Islamic State since it declared its aim to rule over all Muslims from parts of Iraq and Syria two years ago. They signal apparent new resolve by the group’s disparate foes on a range of fronts.

Heavy Russian air strikes hit Islamic State-held territory in eastern areas of Syria’s Hama province, near the boundary of Raqqa province on Friday. Raqqa city, further east, is Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria and, along with Mosul in Iraq, the ultimate goal of those seeking to destroy the group’s self-declared caliphate.

The Syrian army had advanced some 20 km (13 miles) and was now near the edge of the provincial boundary, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war.

Separately, U.S.-backed militias, including a Syrian Kurdish force called the YPG and new Arab allies recruited to fight alongside it, have been pressing a multi-pronged attack against Islamic State in other parts of Raqqa province and neighboring Aleppo province.

This week, they began a push toward the city of Manbij near the Turkish border, aiming to seize the last 80 km stretch of Turkish-Syrian frontier in Islamic State control and cut off the group’s main link to the outside world for manpower and supplies.

The U.S. military said on Friday its allies were advancing against heavy resistance from Islamic State. If successful, the Manbij campaign would free 40,000 civilians from Islamic State control.

The YPG and its Arab allies, who formed the Syria Democratic Forces last year, have proven to be the first force in Syria allied to the United States that has been effective in fighting against Islamic State.

President Barack Obama has authorized several hundred special forces troops to operate in Syria, some of whom are deployed as advisers in the latest advance.

The Kurdish fighters’ progress has been limited in the past by Turkey, which considers them enemies. But Ankara has signaled its tacit support for the latest advance, saying it understands that most of the fighters involved will be Arabs, not Kurds.

“RACE FOR RAQQA”

The Syrian army’s new offensive was described in a pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper as part of “the race for Raqqa” – with the government and its Russian allies trying to advance on Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital before it falls to the fighters allied to the Americans.

A Syrian military source played this down. Reports the offensive targeted Raqqa were only “expectations”, he said, and both Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, another Islamic State-held city in eastern Syria, were possible targets.

Whatever its ultimate target, the offensive appears to be the biggest Damascus has mounted against Islamic State since it recaptured the city of Palmyra with Russian support earlier this year. In the past, the United States has accused Assad and his Russian backers of ignoring Islamic State to take on other foes.

Islamic State’s brutal rule, featuring mass killings, forced conversions and rape, has made it the enemy of all global powers and regional countries. But five years of civil war in Syria, a feeble Iraqi state and global and sectarian rivalries among outside powers have made it impossible to coordinate a single campaign against it.

In Iraq, government troops supported both by U.S.-led coalition air strikes and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia, poured into the southern outskirts of the Islamic State bastion Falluja on Monday. They have since held their positions for four straight days without advancing into the main built-up areas of the city.

Iraq’s finance minister acknowledged in an interview that Falluja, where the U.S. military fought the biggest battles of its own 2003-2011 occupation, was a “tough nut to crack”. The assault would go slow to protect thousands of civilians still trapped in the city, he said.

Falluja is Islamic State’s second-largest bastion in Iraq and closest outpost to Baghdad. But the decision to mount an assault there was not in keeping with the plans of Washington, which would prefer that the Baghdad government focus on recapturing Mosul instead.

Fighting in Falluja risks the army becoming bogged down in territory inhabited by Sunni tribes long hostile to the Shi’ite-led government. However, Shi’ite militia and political parties have pressed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to attack the city to bring an end to suicide bombings in the capital, an hour’s drive away.

In Syria, state media said the army had made territorial gains and inflicted heavy casualties on Islamic State fighters in the Athriya area of eastern Hama province, close to the provincial border with Raqqa.

“There is progress from Athriya on two fronts, but the coming direction is not set,” the military source said, adding that it could be either Raqqa or Deir al-Zor, which is on a main route linking Islamic State’s Syrian and Iraqi territories.

The army was focused on eastern and northern areas of both Homs and Hama provinces, he said. Hama borders Raqqa province; Homs borders Deir al-Zor.

The Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar said the first aim was to capture the town of Tabqa, site of an air base and major Islamic State arsenal some 50 km (30 miles) west of Raqqa city, and put “a foot in the area without leaving it completely to the Americans’ allies”.

(Writing by Peter Graff, editing by Larry King)

Israel has homegrown Islamic State threat in hand

An Israeli soldier is silhouetted as he takes part in an open-fire scenario training in which soldiers respond with laser-firing rifles to a simulated Palestinian attack

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s crackdown on Arab citizens trying to join Islamic State in Syria or Iraq or to set up cells at home have prevented the threat reaching the scale seen in the West, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a magazine interview.

About 18 percent of Israel’s population are Muslim Arabs, many of whom identify with the Palestinian struggle, although they seldom take up arms against the majority Jewish country.

However, a rash of defections to Islamic State-held areas of Syria and Iraq and trials of Israeli citizens for identifying with the militant group prompted President Reuven Rivlin to warn in January that “considerable radicalization” was taking root among Israel’s Arab minority.

Eitan Ben-David, head of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau in Netanyahu’s office, told the bi-monthly journal ‘Israel Defense’that “more than a few dozen, but not more than 100” Israeli Arabs had joined Islamic State’s ranks – and some might return.

“These foreign fighters can certainly pose a grave danger internally, so the Shin Bet (security service) and all the state system is doing very good work in foiling this threat, which could be a kind of spreading cancer,” Ben-David said.

“To our satisfaction, the situation is reasonable. It is not like any European country, nor even America, or places like China or Russia which have had a great number of homegrown ISIS fighters,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Israel formally outlawed Islamic State in 2014 and negotiated the repatriation for trial of several Arab citizens who had joined or tried to join the insurgents via Turkey or Jordan.

But government policy hardened last year after one Israeli Arab used a paraglider to fly into an Islamic State-controlled part of southern Syria and after another who had served as a volunteer in Israel’s army defected to the insurgents.

Further raising alarm, two video clips surfaced in October in which Islamic State gunmen vowed in Arabic-accented Hebrew to strike Israel. The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, echoed the threat in an audiotape released in December.

But Ben-David sounded circumspect about that prospect, citing potentially more pressing dangers from Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas or Palestinian militants.

In an incident on Thursday, a Palestinian woman tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank and was shot dead, the military said.

In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 196 Palestinians, 134 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

“When it comes to Islamic State, we worry about terrorist attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets, including abroad, but we are not a main target right now,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)

French Security warns of Islamic State plans for waves of attacks

French soldiers patrol in front of the Festival Palace before the opening of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – Islamic State militants are gearing up for a campaign of bomb attacks on large crowds in France, host to next month’s Euro 2016 soccer championships, its spy chief has said.

Rare remarks by Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, to the parliament’s defense committee spelled out “a new form of attack … characterized by placing explosive devices in places where there are large crowds and repeating this type of action to create a climate of maximum panic.

“Clearly, France is the most threatened and we know that Daesh (Islamic State) is planning new attacks,” Calvar told the committee on May 10, according to a transcript of his testimony released to the media on Thursday.

The comments came six months after militants killed 130 people in coordinated assaults on cafes, bars, a soccer stadium and a music hall across Paris.

He said the militant group had the numbers to launch the new attacks, including some 645 French citizens or residents currently in Syria or Iraq, of which 400 were fighters. A further 201 were either in transit to or from the region, he said.

Euro 2016 starts on June 10 and runs for a month at 10 stadiums across France. About 2.5 million spectators are expected for 51 soccer matches involving 24 teams. There will also be “fan zones” for crowds watching games on big screens in major cities.

France’s police force is stretched after two militant attacks last year and regular street protests.

However, the government say all measures are in place to ensure it runs smoothly.

“We will not drop our guard,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls told RTL radio on Thursday when asked about Calvar’s comments.

In a reminder of the challenges facing security forces, a fake bomb left behind after a training exercise at Manchester United’s stadium in Britain forced the evacuation of the 75,000-seater ground and the abandonment of a match last weekend.

Referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, Calvar said Daesh was still using the same migrant routes through the Balkans to get its fighters into Europe.

However, with the group under pressure from U.S.-led air strikes in Syria it would want to hit back in Europe to show its supporters that it was still strong.

“It’s in a position where it would try to hit as quickly as possible and as hard as possible,” Calvar said.” It is facing military difficulties on the ground and so will want to divert attention and avenge coalition air strikes,” he said.

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus/Jeremy Gaunt)

Three bombings in Baghdad kill over 70 in worst violence so far

People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City, Iraq, May 17, 2016.

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least 72 people were killed and more than 140 wounded by three bombings in Baghdad on Tuesday, police and medical sources said, extending the deadliest spate of attacks in the Iraqi capital so far this year.

Islamic State claimed one suicide bombing which killed 38 people and wounded over 70 in a marketplace in the northern, mainly Shi’ite Muslim district of al-Shaab.

A car bomb in nearby Shi’ite Sadr City killed at least 28 dead and 57 wounded, and another car blew up in the mixed Shi’ite-Sunni neighborhood of al-Rasheed, south of the capital, killing six and wounding 21, the sources said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the arrest of the security official in charge of al-Shaab’s security after the attack, Abadi’s office said in a statement, without giving a reason for the detention.

Attacks claimed by IS in and around the city last week killed more than 100 people, the highest death toll in so few days so far this year, sparking anger and street protests over the government’s failure to ensure security.

Security had improved in Baghdad in recent years as sectarian tensions waned and the city’s perimeter was fortified. Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni militants who control parts of north and west Iraq, have not tried to take the capital but carry out increasingly regular suicide bombings there, hitting Shi’ite areas and government targets.

With the latest death tolls, fears are growing that Baghdad could relapse into the bloodletting of a decade ago when sectarian-motivated suicide bombings killed scores of people every week.

This has cranked up pressure on Abadi who is struggling to solve a political crisis or risk losing control of parts of Baghdad to Islamic State militants. Away from the capital, Iraq’s military is waging a counter offensive against the group.

Abadi has said the crisis, sparked by his attempt to reshuffle the cabinet in an anti-corruption bid, is hampering the fight against Islamic State and creating space for more insurgent attacks on the civilian population.

A spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command told state television the attacker in al-Shaab had detonated an explosives-filled vest along with a planted bomb. Initial investigations revealed that the bomber was a woman, he said.

Islamic State said in a statement distributed online by supporters that one of its fighters had targeted Shi’ite militiamen with hand grenade and a suicide vest. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the other two bombings.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Islamist militants exploit chaos as combatants pursue peace in Yemen

Followers of Houthi movement

By Mohammed Ghobari and Noah Browning

CAIRO/DUBAI (Reuters) – Islamic State efforts to exploit chaos may have brought Saudi-backed forces and Iran-allied Houthis tentatively closer at peace talks in Yemen’s civil war, but a deal seems unlikely in time to avert collapse into armed, feuding statelets.

Ferocious conflict along Yemen’s northern border between Saudi Arabia and Iran-allied Ansurallah, a Shi’ite Muslim revival movement also called the Houthis, defied two previous attempts to seal a peace. But a truce this year and prisoner exchanges mean hopes for a third round of talks are higher.

The threat from an emerging common enemy may be galvanizing their efforts. Islamic State appears to be behind a dizzying uptick in suicide attacks and al Qaeda fighters continue to hold sway over broad swathes of the country that abuts Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Thursday the kingdom sought to prioritize fighting militants in Yemen over its desultory arm-wrestle with entrenched Houthi insurgents.

“Whether we agree or disagree with them, the Houthis are part of the social fabric of Yemen … The Houthis are our neighbors. Al Qaeda and Daesh are terrorist entities that must be confronted in Yemen and everywhere else,” Jubeir tweeted, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Now largely stalemated, the conflict has killed at least 6,200 people – half of them civilians – and sent nearly three million people fleeing for safety.

Despite the relative lull during talks, hostility continues. Saudi Arabia has pounded its enemies with dozens of air strikes. Houthis have responded with two ballistic missile launches.

If the parties seize the opportunity, an unlikely new status quo may reign by which Houthis and Saudis depend on each other for peace.

“This could mean a massive re-ordering of Yemen’s political structure, and the conflict so far has already produced some strange bedfellows,” said Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The Houthis ousted the internationally recognized government in 2014 in what it hailed as a revolution but which Sunni Gulf Arab countries decried as a coup benefiting Shi’ite rival Iran.

Pounding the Houthis and their allies in Yemen’s army with air strikes beginning on March of 2015, a Saudi-led alliance soon deployed ground troops and rolled back their enemies toward Sanaa, held by the Houthis.

A near-blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition and frontlines which ebb and flow across villages and towns have deprived nearly 20 of 25 million people of access to clean water and put yet more in need of some form of humanitarian aid.

“SURRENDER”

Of the countries where pro-democracy “Arab Spring” uprisings in 2011 ultimately led to outright combat, Yemen’s United Nations-sponsored peace process arguably shows the most promise.

Unlike with Libya and Syria, representatives of Yemen’s warring sides meet daily in Kuwait and argue over how to implement U.N. Security Council resolutions and share power.

But while keeping Yemen’s parties talking for this long was an accomplishment, getting them to live together in Sanaa and share power remains a distant dream.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi accused the Houthis of resisting a U.N. Security Council Resolution from last April to disarm and vacate main cities.

“There is a wide gap in the debate, we are discussing the return of the state … they are thinking only of power and demanding a consensual government,” he told Reuters.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam said on his facebook page: “The solution in Yemen must be consensual political dialogue and not imposing diktats or presenting terms of surrender, this is unthinkable.”

But a diplomatic source in Kuwait said that through the fog of rhetoric, a general outline of a resolution has been reached.

“There is an agreement on the withdrawal from the cities and the (Houthi) handover of weapons, forming a government of all parties and preparing for new elections. The dispute now only centers around where to begin,” the source said.

FEUDING STATELETS

All parties will be aware the danger of a collapse into feuding statelets is growing. The Houthis are deepening control over what remains of the shattered state it seized with the capital in 2014.

Footage of the graduation ceremony of an elite police unit last week showed recruits with right arms upraised in an erect salute, barking allegiance not just to Yemen but to Imam Ali and the slain founder of the Houthi movement – a move critics say proves their partisan agenda for the country.

Meanwhile the Houthis’ enemies in the restive, once independent South agitate ever more confidently for self-rule.

Militiamen in Aden last week expelled on the back of trucks more than 800 northerners they said lacked proper IDs and posed a security risk.

The tranquility amid the gardens and burbling fountains of the Kuwaiti emir’s palace hosting the talks have not impressed residents of Yemen’s bombed-out cities, who despair whether armed groups can ever be reined in.

“All the military movements on the ground suggest the war will resume and that both parties are continuing to mobilize their fighters on the front lines,” said Fuad al-Ramada, a 50-year old bureaucrat in the capital Sanaa.

(Writing By Noah Browning; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Air strikes on Syrian camp kill 28 near Turkish border

A boy carries his belongings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Fardous district

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Air strikes on a camp housing Syrians uprooted by war killed 28 people near the Turkish border on Thursday, a monitoring group said, and fighting raged in parts of northern Syria despite a temporary deal to cease hostilities in the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included women and children and the death toll from the air strikes, which hit a camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada, was likely to rise.

Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of the city of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday. But fighting continued nearby and President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a “regime of calm” in the city that came into effect at 1 a.m. (6.00 p.m. ET on Wednesday) for 48 hours, after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed Islamist insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where al Qaeda’s Syrian branch Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al-Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an Islamist insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman.

A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the jihadists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, an IS-affiliated news agency, said Islamic State militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles.

Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

“FINAL VICTORY”

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on “attaining final victory” and “crushing the aggression”.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighborhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Twenty rockets fell on government-held parts of Aleppo on Thursday, state media said.

But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighborhood said.

Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend toward calm. “From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to,” Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city’s main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

“Although we’re seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement,” the North Syria Director for aid organization Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

“We aren’t going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term,” Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat al-Rashdeen al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.

Syria’s foreign ministry said in response to today’s fighting: “The criminal violations of the regime of calm in Aleppo reveal without a doubt the true face of the armed terrorist groups supported by Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and other states, and that they only want blood and fire for Aleppo without caring if they kill Syrians and destroy their country.”

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Iraq’s all-female combat unit seeks revenge on Islamic State

Iraqi Kurdish female fighter Haseba Nauzad (2nd R), 24, and Yazidi female fighter Asema Dahir (3rd R), 21, aim their weapon during a deployment near the frontline of the fight against Islamic State militants in Nawaran near Mosul, Iraq,

By Emily Wither

NAWARAN, Iraq (Reuters) – When Islamic State swept into the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in 2014, a few young Yazidi women took up arms against the militants attacking women and girls from their community.

“They took eight of my neighbors and I saw they were killing the children,” Asema Dahir told Reuters last month at a checkpoint near a front line north of Mosul.

Dressed in military fatigues, the 21-year-old is now part of an all-female unit in the Kurdish peshmerga forces, which have played an important role in pushing back Islamic State in northern Iraq.

The killing and enslaving of thousands from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community focused international attention on the group’s violent campaign to impose its radical ideology and prompted Washington to launch an air offensive.

It also prompted the formation of this unusual 30-woman unit made up of Yazidis as well as Kurds from Iraq and neighboring Syria. For them, only one thing matters: revenge for the women raped, beaten and executed by the jihadist militants.

Dahir said she was stunned by the brutality of the militants, some of whom were neighbors and others from outside the area.

“They killed my uncle and took my cousin’s wife who had only just married eight days earlier,” she said, her piercing eyes clouding over. The bride, like thousands of other Yazidi women, is still being held by the militants.

For matching Wider Image pictures, please click on: http://reut.rs/1SNahZe

During the firefights that raged across Sinjar in 2014, Dahir said she killed two Islamic State fighters before being shot in the leg. Reuters could not independently verify the fighters’ personal accounts.

Well-worn photographs of children and families tucked into the edge of mirrors or pressed onto walls in the women’s spartan barracks are reminders of what they have sacrificed to join the fight.

Haseba Nauzad, the unit’s 24-year-old commander, lost her marriage. She was living with her husband in Turkey when Islamic State swept through northern Iraq and announced its so-called caliphate over areas that included traditional Kurdish lands.

“I saw them raping my Kurdish sisters and I couldn’t accept this injustice,” Nauzad said.

Her husband wanted to pay human smugglers to take them to Europe along with more than a million others fleeing conflict in the region, but she insisted on going home to fight the Islamists.

“I put my personal life aside, and I came to defend my Kurdish sisters and mothers and stand against this enemy,” she said. She has lost contact with her husband since he arrived in Germany.

In a conservative society where women are often expected to stay at home, these women say gender does not keep them from entering battle.

“If a man can carry a weapon, a woman can do the same,” said Nauzad. “The men are inspired to fight harder when they see women standing in the same battlefield as them.”

The women in the unit are convinced Islamic State militants are scared of women fighters “because they think if they are killed by a woman, they will not go to heaven,” said Nauzad.

“This story encourages more women to join the fight.”

(Writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by Ralph Boulton)

U.S. says it, allies to do more to combat Islamic State

A F/A-18E/F Super Hornets of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron 211 (VFA-211) lands on the flight deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier

By Phil Stewart

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday that Washington and its allies had agreed to do more in their campaign to defeat Islamic State, but that more risks lay ahead.

He made the comment following talks in Germany with defense ministers and representatives from 11 other nations participating in the alliance.

He said the United States greatly regretted the death of a Navy SEAL in an attack by the jihadist group in northern Iraq on Tuesday. He named the man as Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating.

“These risks will continue… but allowing ISIL safe haven would carry greater risk for us all,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“…We also agreed that all of our friends and allies across the counter-ISIL coalition can and must do more as well, both to confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria and its metastases elsewhere.”

The talks included ministers from France, Britain and Germany and were planned well in advance of Tuesday’s attack, in which Islamic State fighters blasted through Kurdish defenses and overran a town.

The elite serviceman was the third American to be killed in direct combat since the U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State, and is a measure of its deepening involvement in the conflict.

Offering new details about Keating’s mission, Carter said the SEAL’s job was to operate with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to train and assist them north of the city of Mosul.

“That part of the peshmerga front came under attack… and they found themselves in a firefight,” Carter said.

In mid-April the United States announced plans to send an additional 200 troops to Iraq and put them closer to the front lines of battle to advise Iraqi forces.

In late April, President Barack Obama announced he would send an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria, greatly expanding the U.S. presence on the ground there to help draw in more Syrian fighters to combat Islamic State.

Carter said the risks extended to pilots flying a U.S.-led campaign of daily air strikes. “Every time a pilot goes up in an airplane above Syria or Iraq they’re at risk,” he said.

The Islamist militants have been broadly retreating since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the largest city in the western region. Last month, the Iraqi army retook the nearby region of Hit, pushing the militants further north along the Euphrates valley.

But U.S. officials acknowledge that the military gains are not enough.

Iraq is beset by political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis and the Shi’ite Muslim-led government’s fitful efforts to seek reconciliation with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Ralph Boulton and John Stonestreet)

Talks closer to a Syrian truce to Aleppo

US Secretary of State Kerry gestures next to UN Special Envoy on Syria de Mistura during a news conference in Geneva

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Lesley Wroughton

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday talks were closer to extending a Syrian truce to Aleppo, the divided northern city where a sharp escalation of violence in recent weeks has torpedoed peace talks.

Kerry was in Geneva for talks with other dignitaries to try to revive the first major ceasefire of the five-year Syrian war, which was put in place in February with U.S. and Russian backing but has since all but collapsed.

Syria announced temporary local truces in other areas last week but has so far failed to extend them to Aleppo, where government air strikes and rebel shelling have killed hundreds of civilians in the past week, including more than 50 people in a hospital that rebels say was deliberately targeted.

The Aleppo fighting threatens to wreck the first peace talks involving the warring parties, which are due to resume at an unspecified date after breaking up in April when the opposition delegation walked out in anger.

“We’re getting closer to a place of understanding, but we have some work to do, and that’s why we’re here,” Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

After meeting Jubeir and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, Kerry said he hoped for more clarity in the next day or so on restoring the nationwide ceasefire. The United States and Russia had agreed to keep extra staff in Geneva to work on it.

“Both sides, the opposition and the regime, have contributed to this chaos, and we are working over the next hours intensely in order to try to restore the cessation of hostilities,” Kerry said. De Mistura said he would travel to Moscow for talks.

The civil war in Syria has killed hundred of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and provided a base for Islamic State militants who have launched attacks elsewhere.

The fighting has drawn in global powers and regional states, while all diplomatic efforts to resolve it have foundered over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad, who refuses to accept opposition demands that he leave power.

The United States and Russia have taken the leading roles in the latest diplomatic initiative, which began after Moscow joined the war last year with an air campaign that tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, its ally.

So far, Syria has announced a “regime of calm” — a temporary local truce — in the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus and the countryside of northern Latakia province, from Saturday morning. The Latakia truce was for three days and the Ghouta truce, initially for 24 hours, was also extended by another 48.

Both are areas where there has been heavy fighting, but Aleppo remains the biggest prize for Assad’s forces, who are hoping to take full control of the city, Syria’s largest before the war. The nearby countryside includes the last strip of the Syria-Turkish border in the hands of Arab Sunni rebels.

A Russian military official, General Sergei Kuralenko, said talks were under way on extending the regime of calm to Aleppo.

CIVILIANS KILLED

The opposition accuses the government of deliberately targeting civilians in rebel held parts of Aleppo to drive them out, and says the world must do more to force Damascus to halt air strikes.

For its part, the government says rebels have been heavily shelling government-held areas, proving that they are receiving more sophisticated weaponry from their foreign supporters, which include Arab states and Turkey.

A British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has reported scores of civilians killed on both sides, although more in rebel-held territory.

Syrian state television said on Monday that a missile had hit the surroundings of Aleppo University Medical Hospital, and several civilians were injured by rebel mortar attacks on the residential area of Jamiyat Hay al Zahra in western Aleppo.

The rebel-held local council of Aleppo city announced a state of emergency in areas it runs due to the intense bombardment. About 350,000-400,000 people are believed to remain in rebel-held parts of what was once a city of 2 million.

Mohammad Muaz Abu Saleh, a senior councillor in the rebel Aleppo governate council, said residents were not abandoning opposition-held areas, despite the intense bombardment.

“Those who wanted to leave Aleppo have fled,” he said. Those who have stayed behind “have decided to stay under all circumstances of shelling and siege. Aleppo will remain populated with its people not leaving.”

Amar al-Absi, a resident of a rebel-held area, said: “There was heavy shelling throughout the night. In my neighborhood, Salah al-Deen, a missile hit a building that was empty and it was leveled but there were no casualties.”

In the countryside north of Aleppo, other rebel groups have been fighting against Islamic State fighters, who are not party to any ceasefire.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said the militants had gained control of the villages of Doudayan, Tel Shaer and Iykda from rival rebels in the northern Aleppo area near the border with Turkey.

They said they were able cut the supply routes of other rebels in the area, despite Turkish artillery shelling to aid the rebels against Islamic State.

The Observatory said the militants had staged a counterattack to regain ground lost from other rebels in to-and-fro fighting that has seen no major gains for any side.

Turkey said it had shelled Islamic State positions across the border and attacked them with drones on Sunday, killing 34 militants in retaliation for cross-border strikes. The death toll could not be confirmed.

Turkey, a NATO ally, is part of a U.S.-led coalition launching air strikes against Islamic State, but is also strongly opposed to the main Kurdish militia in Syria, Washington’s closest ally on the ground. It is one of the leading opponents of Assad and backers of rebels opposed to him.

Another major supporter of the rebels is Saudi Arabia, whose Foreign Minister Jubeir blamed the latest escalation on the government, condemned it as a “violation of all humanitarian laws” and called for Assad to step down.

“He can leave through a political process, which we hope he will do, or he will be removed by force,” Jubeir said alongside Kerry.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Bombs in Baghdad kill 14, including some Shi’ite pilgrims

Car bomb attack in Baghdad May 2, 2016

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three bombs went off in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, including Shi’ite Muslim worshippers conducting an annual pilgrimage inside the capital, police and medical sources said.

The largest blast, which Islamic State said it was behind, came from a parked car bomb in the Saydiya district of southern Baghdad that killed 11 and wounded 30, the sources said.

At least a few of the casualties were pilgrims passing through the area on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad who died in the 8th century.

Explosives planted on the ground in Tarmiya, 25 km (15 miles) north of Baghdad, killed two and wounded six, while a roadside bomb in Khalisa, a town 30 km (20 miles) south of the city, left one dead and two wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the smaller attacks.

Islamic State militants fighting Iraqi forces in the north and west regularly target security personnel and Shi’ite civilians whom they consider apostates.

The group said in an online statement distributed by supporters that a suicide bomber had targeted pilgrims in the Dora neighborhood adjacent to Saydiya. It said the attack was part of an offensive launched recently in apparent revenge for the killing of a senior leader.

Islamic State’s al Qaeda predecessor was blamed in the past for such attacks on Shi’ite pilgrims, including blasts in 2012 that left 70 people dead nationwide.

Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but there has been a string of blasts in recent days, including a suicide attack on Saturday that killed at least 19 people.

Monday’s blasts come as Iraq struggles to emerge from a political crisis over reforming its governing system which saw protesters hold an unprecedented sit-in over the weekend in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Toby Chopra)