A British student who ran away to join the Islamic State group in Syria has died while being held in prison in the country, according to reports.
Ishak Mostefaoui, 27, who travelled to Syria in 2014 and had his British citizenship revoked, is said to have died either trying to escape custody or amid serious disorder in a jail in Hassakeh, which holds Isis prisoners from across the world.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch suggests involvement of security forces in deaths over recent months
At least 180 civilians have been killed in recent months in a single town in Burkina Faso, with evidence pointing towards the country’s often-accused security forces, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Between November 2019 and June this year, groups of dozens of dead bodies were found often tied and blindfolded, strewn along major highways, beneath bridges and across fields in the rural region, the report published on Thursday said. Most of the bodies were buried by residents while the remains of others were left unclaimed.
Continue reading...Hisham al-Hashimi backed action to tackle Iraq’s powerful militias, despite knowing risks
As Hisham al-Hashimi pulled up outside his Baghdad home on Monday night, a gunman strode purposefully towards the Iraqi official’s white four-wheel drive, drew a pistol and fired four shots through the driver’s window.
Each jolting flash was captured by security footage from a camera on Hashimi’s roof. So was the hitman’s escape on the back of a motorbike, and the helpless vigil of his three young children as their father’s body was dragged on to the driveway.
Continue reading...Isis planted mines across Sinjar and displaced the Yazidi community. Now a group of women are clearing the way for the return of their people
Behind Hana Khider is a large grey wall map, with the minefields her team have been clearing marked in green. “This is the place where Yazidis lived together,” she says. “It’s where I lived in my childhood; I have so many memories here, it’s very important to me.”
The place is Sinjar, or Shingal as Yazidis know it, on Iraq’s north-western border with Syria. Khider, 28, is speaking via video call from her office in the region.
Continue reading...The Afghan government is facing hard decisions over the futures of hundreds of detained radicalised women and their children
The “Daesh wives” from the Afghan branch of Islamic State look very young. Most are already mothers.
Hundreds of them have fled combat, airstrikes and near-starvation in eastern Afghanistan where the faction of Isis known as Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK) has been under fierce bombardment from Afghan and US special forces, as well as involved in violent clashes with rival militants the Taliban.
Continue reading...Amnesty records 200 state killings and forced disappearances in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, state members of internationally-backed G5 group
Hundreds of civilians have been killed by their own governments in Africa’s Sahel region since countries pledged a surge against militant groups at a regional meeting held by France in January.
Amnesty International said on Wednesday that it had documented 200 cases of unlawful state killings and forced disappearances in February and March in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which are members of the internationally backed G5 force set up to fight militants in the Sahel.
Continue reading...Woman who fled as schoolgirl to join Isis cannot fight fair appeal from Syria, lawyers say
Shamima Begum, the woman who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, cannot effectively challenge the government’s decision to deprive her of British citizenship while she is in a detention camp in northern Syria, the court of appeal has been told.
At the start of a two-day online hearing, her lawyers challenged a ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year that she has not been rendered stateless because she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.
Continue reading...Nineteen-year-old Soraya Ameri had just given birth when gunmen stormed the ward. She recounts her escape – and the desperate search for her daughter
Soraya Ameri’s premature baby daughter had been whisked off to an incubator and the new mother was lying down, exhausted and sore from her stitches, when the shooting started.
Gunmen – dressed in police uniforms – had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Ameri had just given birth. She was bundled into a safe room with others, one woman next to her in labour, but her baby was outside.
Continue reading...Attack still unclaimed, but US defies Afghan government, blames Isis and says negotiations with Taliban must continue
Gunmen who attacked a maternity hospital in Kabul came “with the purpose of killing mothers in cold blood”, systematically shooting every woman in labour and new mothers they came across, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières has said.
The attack on Tuesday morning, aimed at the youngest of children and most vulnerable of women, shocked even a country that has endured decades of bloodshed and tens of thousands of civilian deaths.
Continue reading...Ashraf Ghani orders resumption of anti-Taliban offensive after attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar
Gunmen attacked a hospital that houses a maternity clinic in Kabul, killing at least 16 people including two newborn babies, and a suicide bomber killed at least 24 others at a funeral on a morning of double tragedy for Afghanistan.
In the capital, soldiers raced out of the hospital carrying infants wrapped in bloodstained blankets to waiting ambulances, after the attackers rampaged their way through the wards.
Continue reading...‘Profoundly radicalised’ man was apparently scouting for targets to attack, police say
Spanish police working with the FBI and the Moroccan intelligence officers say they have arrested a “profoundly radicalised” Islamic State follower who was apparently scouting for targets to attack in Barcelona during the country’s strict coronavirus lockdown.
The Guardia Civil said the man, a Moroccan citizen, was arrested in the Catalan capital following a surveillance operation.
Continue reading...Series of recent attacks raises concern the group is staging a comeback in the country
Islamic State militants have killed at least 10 Iraqi militia members in a coordinated overnight assault near the central city of Samarra, adding to concerns that the group, which once controlled large areas of the country, is staging a comeback.
The Iraqi military and the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shia militias allied with the government, confirmed the attack in separate statements. It was the deadliest in a series of attacks in recent weeks that come as the country’s economic crisis deepens and the authorities try to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Continue reading...Police say villagers were killed, most beheaded or shot, after some refused to join extremists
An Islamist extremist group in northern Mozambique has killed dozens of villagers in its most bloody attack.
More than 50 people were massacred in an attack in Xitaxi in Muidumbe district after locals refused to be recruited to its ranks, according to police cited by local media. Most were either shot dead or beheaded.
Continue reading...Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, from Maida Vale, was one of most wanted militants in Europe
Spanish police have arrested a former British rapper turned Islamic State extremist, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, one of the most wanted militants in Europe, in a counter-terrorism swoop on Tuesday.
British and other sources confirmed his identity a few hours after the national police agency in Madrid said it had arrested an Egyptian national and two other men in a flat in the southern Spanish city of Almeria.
Continue reading...Fresh calls for Australia to repatriate its citizens amid fears the camp is vulnerable to a Covid-19 outbreak
Forty-seven Australian children remain trapped in the abject al-Hawl camp in north-east Syria, as the region braces for a potential Covid-19 outbreak.
Syria has reported only a handful of cases, and there are none confirmed in the camp housing 68,000 women and children, most of them family of Islamic State fighters, but there has been little Covid-19 testing across the war-torn country.
Continue reading...Local communities flee as boundaries with Lake Chad become a war zone following ambush in which almost 100 soldiers died
The Chadian army that lost nearly 100 soldiers to a Boko Haram ambush a week ago has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone, heightening fears that civilians will suffer an escalation in violence.
President Idriss Déby travelled to the region to announce the Wrath of Boma operation, named after the island where Boko Haram launched a seven-hour assault that Déby said was the worst the country’s military had ever suffered.
Continue reading...Alan Henning, from Greater Manchester, was beheaded by Isis militant Jihadi John in 2014
A British charity that employed the murdered aid worker Alan Henning failed to properly safeguard him and other other volunteers on convoys to war-torn Syria, a government report has found.
Henning, 47, was beheaded by the Islamic State militant known as Jihadi John after being held captive for nine months in Syria along with other western hostages in 2014.
Continue reading...Unconfirmed reports of deaths as inmates overwhelm SDF guards in city of Hasakah
Several members of Islamic State have escaped from prison after militants sparked a riot and seized control of part of a large jail in north-east Syria, Kurdish and US military sources have said.
Prisoners broke down walls and tore off internal doors during the unrest on Sunday night at Ghouiran prison in the city of Hasakah, overwhelming guards from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s Kurdish-led ground partner in the fight against Isis.
Continue reading...Isis gunmen held hostages for hours while Afghan special forces tried to end siege
Gunmen and suicide bombers have killed at least 25 worshippers, including women and children, and injured many others in an early morning attack on a Sikh Gurdwara in the heart of Kabul.
The attack lasted hours as the gunmen held hostages on Wednesday while Afghan special forces and international troops tried to end the siege in a complex that is home to many families, as well as a place of worship.
Continue reading...Supreme court says UK broke law because it did not get assurance that men would not face death penalty
The government’s decision to cooperate with US authorities over the prosecution of two alleged Islamic State executioners without assurances that they would not face the death penalty was unlawful, the supreme court has ruled.
In a unanimous judgment that will have repercussions for US-UK relations, the court’s seven justices said the home secretary’s agreement to provide evidence about El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey breached data protection rules.
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