Tag Archives: Islamic State

U.S. forces capture Islamic State operative in Iraq: NYT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. Special Operations Forces captured a significant Islamic State operative in Iraq, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, the first suspected raid by a new force sent in recent weeks to target the jihadist group’s fighters and leaders.

The newspaper said the unidentified detainee was being interrogated by U.S. officials in a temporary facility in the Kurdish city of Erbil, but the defense officials it cited provided few other details. (http://nyti.ms/1LwtTTz)

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on details of the force’s missions but said any detention would be “short term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he would not comment because of “operational security reasons.”

Carter reiterated that if detentions took place they would be for “a very short time.”

“Anything having to do with Iraq would be in partnership with the Iraqi government,” he told reporters at the annual RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco.

Iraqi and Kurdish military spokesmen declined immediate comment.

(Reporting by Iraq newsroom; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in San Francisco; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Lisa Shumaker)

Report shows ISIS bomb supply chain stretches to 20 countries

The Islamic State is building and deploying improvised explosive devices on a “quasi-industrial scale” across Iraq and Syria, according to a new report that examines the group’s supply chain.

The organization has utilized bomb components that were manufactured in 20 countries across four continents, Conflict Armament Research said last week in a report on its 20-month study.

The bombs have become the organization’s “signature weapon,” according to the report, in large part because they can be built out of inexpensive components that can easily be purchased.

The report notes many IED parts are commercial goods like fertilizer, cell phones and other electronic elements, the sale of which aren’t as tightly scrutinized and regulated as firearms. That has allowed more than 700 items connected to Brazil, China, Switzerland, Japan, the United States and 15 other nations to end up in the Islamic State’s improvised explosive devices.

The study indicated 13 Turkish companies were connected to the supply chain, the most of any nation. India followed with seven companies and the United Arab Emirates was third with six.

The report does not accuse any of the 20 countries, or the 51 companies, of directly supplying the material to the Islamic State. It notes that all of the products were lawfully obtained by trade and distribution companies, who subsequently sold them to smaller commercial outlets.

Many of those smaller entities “appear to have sold, whether wittingly or unwittingly” the items to people in some way associated with the Islamic State, the report states, adding that those smaller sellers “appear to be the weakest link in the chain of custody.”

Conflict Armament Research found the Islamic State was able to obtain some products shortly after they were legally given to commercial entities, suggesting some issues with the process.

“The appearance of these components in possession of IS forces, as little as one month following their lawful supply to commercial entities in the region, speaks to a lack of monitoring by national governments and companies alike,” the report states. “It may also indicate a lack of awareness surrounding the potential use of these civilian-market components by terrorist and insurgent forces.”

Islamic State terrorist attacks killed 6,073 people in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey in 2014, according to the most recent edition of the Global Terrorism Index.

The organization was also linked to another 20,000 deaths on various battlefields, the index found, but it did not indicate how many of the 26,000-plus deaths were specifically from IEDs.

Iraqi forces try to cut Islamic State supply lines in western desert

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite militia began an operation on Tuesday to dislodge Islamic State militants from desert areas northwest of Baghdad and cut their supply routes between western Anbar province and the northern city of Mosul.

Efforts by the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition backing it to break jihadist control of large swathes of Iraq have shifted towards Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control. Government forces retook the key cities of Tikrit, Baiji and Ramadi last year.

The new operation, called al-Jazeera Security in reference to the desert area, was launched from west of the northern cities of Tikrit and Samarra, Iraqi security officials said.

“These operations will play a significant role in cutting all the supply routes in areas still under the terrorists’ control,” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, an Iraqi military spokesman, told state television.

The offensive is intended to drive the militants from open desert used to transport supplies and launch regular attacks on the government-controlled cities of Tikrit and Samarra, the officials said.

It seeks to prevent insurgents from moving from the western areas of Falluja and Thirthar towards Tirkit and Mosul in the north, said Colonel Mohammed al-Asadi, a military spokesman in Salahuddin province, where Tikrit is located.

“Iraqi army, federal police, counter-terrorism forces and Hashid Shaabi are participating in the military campaign and were deployed on the fronts with air support from the Iraqi and coalition air force,” Asadi said.

The Hashid Shaabi is a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias mobilized to combat Islamic State.

Militants attempted three car bomb attacks against the advancing Iraqi armed forces west of Tikrit, but they were intercepted by air strikes, Asadi said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement distributed online by supporters.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, editing by Larry King)

Russia calls for pact against chemical warfare by Islamic State

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday there was a growing threat from Islamic State militants waging chemical warfare in the Middle East and called for global negotiations on a new pact to combat what he called “a grave reality of our time”.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the appeal in a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a now largely moribund forum which clinched a major pact banning chemical weapons in the 1990s.

“However, we still face significant gaps related, in particular, to the use of chemicals for terrorist purposes,” Lavrov told the 65-member-state forum.

“This threat is getting extremely urgent in the light of newly revealed facts of repeated use of not only industrial toxic chemicals but also of full-fledged chemical warfare agents by ISIL (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States said last month.

A confidential report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

“It does not leave any doubt that chemical terrorism is emerging not as an abstract threat, but a grave reality of our time which could and should be addressed,” Lavrov said.

“There is a growing danger of similar crimes being committed on the territory of Libya and Yemen,” he said.

Lavrov said there were reports of militant groups gaining access to scientific and technical documentation on the production of chemical weapons, seizing chemical plants and “engaging foreign specialists to help synthesize chemical warfare agents”, without giving details.

He said launching negotiations would revive the Conference on Disarmament, whose members include U.N. Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, but which has not been able to clinch any disarmament agreements since “the last decade of the 20th Century”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S. waging cyber war on Islamic State, commandos active

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is waging cyber attacks against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and its newly deployed commandos are also carrying out secret missions on the ground, Pentagon leaders said on Monday, in the latest signs of quietly expanding U.S. activity.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the cyber attacks, particularly in Syria, were designed to prevent Islamic State from commanding its forces, and Washington was looking to accelerate the cyber war against the Sunni militant group.

“The methods we’re using are new. Some of them will be surprising,” Carter told a Pentagon news conference.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the cyber attacks were helping lay the groundwork for an eventual offensive operation to recapture the city of Mosul in Iraq from Islamic State.

Carter and Dunford, the Pentagon’s top civilian and uniformed officials, both suggested the attacks were aimed at overloading the militants’ networks. They declined to delve into specifics.

“We don’t want the enemy to know when, where and how we’re conducting cyber operations. We don’t want them to have information that will allow them to adapt over time,” Dunford said.

Dunford suggested Islamic State might not know why its computer networks were proving unreliable.

“They’re going to experience some friction that’s associated with us and some friction that’s just associated with the normal course of events in dealing in the information age. And frankly, we don’t want them to know the difference.”

U.S. COMMANDOS

The United States disclosed in January that a new, roughly 200-strong U.S. continent of special operations forces was “in place” in Iraq, poised to carry out raids against Islamic State and other secret missions, both in Iraq and in Syria.

Carter disclosed on Monday that the so-called “expeditionary targeting force,” or ETF, was already operating on the ground.

“The ETF is in position, it is having an effect and operating, and I expect it to be a very effective part of our acceleration campaign,” he said, without elaborating.

Its deployment represents increased U.S. military activity on the ground against Islamic State, exposing American forces to greater risk – something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly.

The force follows another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed forces battling Islamic State.

The U.S. military disclosed last week that those U.S. forces helped opposition forces recapture the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi from Islamic State.

The Pentagon said recapturing the town helped sever links between Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the two major power centers in Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

More knowledge about the group’s operations is expected to be discovered, Carter said.

“As our partners take control of Shadadi, I believe we will learn a great deal more about ISIL’s criminal networks, its criminal enterprise and what it does to sustain them,” Carter said, using an acronym for the group.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Susan Heavey and Richard Chang)

U.S. warns citizens to be ready to leave Iraq if Mosul dam collapses

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The United States warned its citizens to be ready to leave Iraq in the event of what it has said could be a catastrophic collapse of the country’s largest hydro-electric dam near Mosul.

Iraqi officials have sought to play down the risk but Washington urged its citizens to make contingency plans now.

A U.S. security message cited estimates that Mosul, which is northern Iraq’s largest city and under control of Islamic State insurgents, could be inundated by as much as 70 feet of water within hours of the breach.

Cities downstream on the Tigris River such as Tikrit, Samarra and the Iraqi capital Baghdad could be inundated with smaller, but still significant levels within 24-72 hours.

“We have no specific information that indicates when a breach might occur, but out of an abundance of caution, we would like to underscore that prompt evacuation offers the most effective tool to save lives of the hundreds of thousands of people,” the security message said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday precautions were being taken, but described the likelihood of such a scenario as “extremely small”.

Islamic State seized the dam in August 2014, raising fears they might blow it up and unleash a wall of water on Mosul and Baghdad that could kill hundreds of thousands.

The dam was recaptured two weeks later by Iraqi government forces backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, but the disruption of maintenance operations has increased the likelihood of a breach.

An Italian company has been awarded a contract to make urgent repairs to the dam, which has suffered from structural flaws since its construction in the 1980s and requires constant grouting to maintain structural integrity.

Iraq’s minister of water resources said earlier this month there was only a “one in a thousand” chance the dam would collapse, and that the solution was to build a new dam or install a deep concrete support wall.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Twin suicide bombing kills 70 in Baghdad’s deadliest attack this year

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State killed 70 people in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday in the deadliest attack inside the capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.

In a statement circulated online, Islamic State said it was responsible for the blasts: “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shi’ite Muslims.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition have driven Islamic State back in the western Anbar province recently and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.

But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, most recently on Thursday when two Islamic State suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Islamic State’s recent defeats: “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.

At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery, and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.

Security officials blamed Islamic State, and a news agency that supports the group said it had launched a “wide attack” in Abu Ghraib, 25 km (15 miles) from the center of Baghdad and next to the international airport.

Footage circulated online by the Amaq news agency appeared to show Islamic State fighters crouching behind dirt berms and launching the attack with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Reuters could not verify the video’s authenticity.

Security forces had mostly regained control by Sunday evening but officials said there were still clashes.

Baghdad-based security analyst Jasim al-Bahadli said the assault suggested it was premature to declare that Islamic State was losing the initiative in Iraq.

“Government forces must do a better job repelling attacks launched by Daesh. What happened today could be a setback for the security forces,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

COUNTER OFFENSIVE

Army and police sources said the militants had attacked from the nearby Islamic State-controlled areas of Garma and Falluja, driving Humvees and pickup trucks fixed with machine guns.

A curfew was imposed as a regiment of Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces was mobilized to retake the silo in Abu Ghraib and prevent the militants approaching the nearby airport, security officials said.

Iraqi army helicopters bombarded Islamic State positions in the and Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said at least 20 militants had been killed in the government’s counter offensive.

Fighters from the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, were mobilized to Abu Ghraib to reinforce regular government forces in the area, said Jawad al-Tulaibawi, a local Hashid commander.

Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also called on fighters loyal to him to be on alert to protect Baghdad. Shi’ite militias like Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ were seen as a bulwark against Islamic State’s sweeping advance in 2014 which threatened Iraq’s capital and its most sacred Shi’ite shrines.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles; Editing by Ros Russell)

Officials investigating another suspected case of ISIS using chemical weapons

Officials are investigating if the Islamic State used chemical weapons in a recent attack in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Security Council and officials from the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State are looking into Thursday’s events, the council tweeted on Friday.

According to the council, Islamic State militants used homemade rockets in an attack on the town of Sinjar, which is located about 80 miles west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Dozens of civilians and Peshmerga military forces subsequently vomited, experienced nausea or had trouble breathing and received treatment, the council tweeted. It did not say if anyone died.

Officials did not specify which chemical the Islamic State is believed to have used in the attack.

If the investigation does confirm a chemical weapon was used, the council said it would be the eighth time that the Islamic State used the substances in their attacks against Peshmerga forces.

The council tweeted last March that it believed the Islamic State used chlorine in a car bomb attack in Iraq in January 2015, saying soil and clothing samples contained evidence of its use.

The council has also tweeted it has evidence the Islamic State used mustard gas in prior attacks, saying some 35 Peshmerga forces were exposed during an August 2015 shelling near Erbil, Iraq.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also said it was concerned about chlorine gas being used in various attacks in Syrian villages in 2014.

An OPCW fact-finding mission into the attacks in Syria did not address who used the chlorine.

More than 190 countries have agreed to a 1997 United Nations treaty on chemical weapons, which prohibits their use or production and calls for nations to destroy their existing arsenals.

Four Egyptian Christians reportedly punished for mocking Islam

An Egyptian judge punished four Coptic Christian teenagers who were accused of insulting Islam by making fun of prayers in a video last year, the AFP news agency reported Thursday.

A lawyer for the teens told the news agency the quartet was mocking beheadings perpetrated by Islamic State extremists, and did not mean to insult the country’s most-worshipped religion.

However, they became the latest four people punished for blasphemy under Egyptian law.

Three of the teenagers received five-year jail sentences, according to the AFP report, while a 15-year-old was ordered to a serve an indefinite amount of time in a juvenile detention facility.

Their lawyer told AFP he is planning to appeal.

Egypt ranks 23rd on the World Watch List published by Open Doors USA, a group that monitors Christian persecution in countries around the world. The roughly 10 million Christians among Egypt’s 87.3 million residents face persecution from Islamic extremists and must cope with “relatively restrictive legislation related to religious affairs,” according to the organization.

AFP reported it’s also illegal to insult Christianity and Judaism in Egypt.

The Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians last February, according to Open Doors USA.

Trapped between Iraq frontlines, refugees illustrate their predicament

ERBIL (Reuters) – They are trapped between two worlds – one they want to leave and the other to which they are denied entry.

For three months, more than 500 men, women and children have been living in no-man’s land in northern Iraq, caught in the crossfire between Kurdish forces and Islamic State.

Their dilemma illustrates the wider predicament in which Sunni Arabs find themselves in the new order emerging from the conflict, which has displaced millions and is redrawing internal boundaries in both Iraq and Syria.

Stranded between frontlines in the Sinjar area, the group of Sunni Arabs wants to leave Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, but is being denied passage by the Kurds, who have staked out their territory in the north and fear infiltration.

In telephone interviews with Reuters, three men from the same village, including an elder, explained that if they turned back Islamic State would kill them for trying to escape.

With nowhere to go, the group has settled around 500 meters from Kurdish positions, living in tents made out of empty sacks and taking cover in makeshift trenches when Islamic State fires mortars at the peshmerga.

“The mortars are better than hunger,” said 48-year old farmer Mahmoud. “You can hide from mortars, but the hunger won’t go away.”

Cold, malnutrition and lack of medical care claimed the lives of a child and an elderly woman in the winter months, and two men were killed when they stepped on a mine, the three villagers said. Another infant died during childbirth last week, according to several members of the group.

Some are suffering from skin conditions because they are not able to wash, and the water they drink from wells in the no-man’s land is dirty, so they lay out containers to collect rain when it falls.

For the first two months food was smuggled to them from inside Islamic State territory, but the militants have now mined the route. They now depend on the goodwill of Arab tribes living on the Kurdish side of the frontline who recently bought them basic supplies the peshmerga allow through. They supplement that with edible plants that grow around them.

The peshmerga occasionally give bread from their own provisions to the displaced children when they are hungry and wander up to the berm, but say they cannot let anyone through the front line unless they receive orders from above.

Their commander, Fareeq Jamal, said it was not his decision who was excluded, but “anyone who is present in the area where terrorists are present is under suspicion”.

The Kurds have managed to keep their autonomous region relatively safe from Islamic State, but the militants have carried out several bombings in the region’s capital since 2014 and security services say they have thwarted other plots.

At a briefing in Geneva last week, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Kurdish authorities to ensure the group’s safety and access to basic humanitarian aid.

“If the Kurdish authorities have security concerns about this particular group, they should vet people on an individual basis in a safe location, in full transparency and in accordance with the law,” said Rupert Colville.

“If any wrongdoing is found to have taken place, those responsible should be charged and tried according to the law. Where it is found that an individual has not committed any crime and there are no legitimate security concerns which warrant his or her continued detention under the law, then he or she should be immediately released.”

The Kurdish region has taken in around half of the 3.3 million Iraqis who have been internally displaced over the past two years, putting huge strain on its resources. The number will only increase as Kurdish forces take on Islamic State in their remaining strongholds.

The group of villagers has been stranded since Kurdish forces routed Islamic State from the Sinjar area last November and they fled their village of Golat.

Even if they could return there, the displaced Arabs say they are too afraid of being attacked by local Yazidis who accuse them of complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against their community by Islamic State.

The Yazidi minority was hounded by Islamic State militants who consider them devil-worshippers and killed and captured thousands as they overran the Sinjar area in the summer of 2014.

“You know what Daesh did to them,” said Mahmoud. “As far as they’re concerned, any (Sunni) Arab is either Daesh or related to Daesh.”

Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the peshmerga ministry, said the entire village had sided with Islamic State, and there might be a backlash from Yazidis.

The displaced Arabs insist only one person from their village joined Islamic State and say he is now in Mosul. “If there were a Daesh (member) amongst us we would execute him ourselves,” said Mahmoud. “Each one of us would put a bullet through his head”.

(editing by Janet McBride)