Islamist extremists suspected of attack which underlines growing insecurity in region
More than 70 soldiers are thought to have been killed in an ambush by suspected Islamic militants at a military post in western Niger.
The strike in In-Atès near the border with Mali on Tuesday night underlines the growing insecurity in a wide belt of poor and anarchic territory in west Africa and, if the death toll is confirmed, is the deadliest on Niger’s forces in recent memory.
Continue reading...Brutal winter, poor healthcare and limited food raises fears for welfare of infant, born to Sydney woman Rayan Hamdoush
An Australian woman has given birth to a baby boy in the al-Hawl camp in Syria, prompting revived calls for Australia to rescue 67 nationals still held in the camp.
Rayan Hamdoush, 24, from western Sydney, was pregnant when she entered al-Hawl. She gave birth to the boy on 30 November. The boy’s father, Samer Hajj Obeid, also from Sydney, is missing.
Continue reading...French president is rebuked by Trump over Nato criticism after row with Turkey about Kurds
Nato disunity was on full display on the opening day of the alliance’s summit in London as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, accused Turkey of colluding with Islamic State proxies while Donald Trump described Macron’s criticisms of Nato’s “brain death” as insulting and “very, very nasty”.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part threatened again to veto Nato’s defence plan for the Baltics unless Nato endorsed its own assessment that Syrian Kurdish fighters on Turkey’s borders were terrorists, a definition that Macron and the Pentagon rejected.
Continue reading...Humanitarian organisation says policy is not helping bring clarity or peace to Syria
The head of the international Red Cross has sharply criticised Britain’s policy of stripping the citizenship of people held in Syria after the fall of Islamic State, saying it is “not conducive” to long-term peace in the region.
Related: Rescue of all 60 children of the ‘caliphate’ urged as winter nears
Continue reading...Allan and Wilma Hyrons located in mountainous hinterlands of Sulu province, where they had been taken by an Islamic State-affiliated group
Philippine troops have rescued a British man and his Filipino wife who were abducted by gunmen at a southern beach resort last month and taken to the jungle hideouts of local militants allied with the Islamic State group.
Regional military commander Lt Gen Cirilito Sobejana said troops caught up with the Abu Sayyaf militant captors of Allan Hyrons and his wife, Wilma, in the mountainous hinterlands off Parang town in Sulu province and rescued the couple safely after a brief gunbattle.
Continue reading...Turmoil in Baghdad, paralysis in Beirut and flames of unrest in Tehran; it has been a bad few months for Iran at home and elsewhere in the Middle East, where more than a decade of advances are being slowed, not by manoeuvrings on battlefields or legislatures – but the force of protest movements.
Early last week, Iran went dark for four days by closing its internet connections down. Even for the country’s autocratic leadership, this was a drastic step. But such are the stakes for a regime that is increasingly facing obstacles across its hubs of Shia influence. And those who laud Iran’s rise, as well as those who fear it, sense it is at a loss over how to respond.
Continue reading...Homes for all the 60 British children still stranded in north-east Syria have been found in the UK as councils and relatives of the minors step forward to offer sanctuary, sources have revealed.
So far, three British orphans have arrived home and are understood to have been made temporary wards of court, but will not be placed into care after UK relatives contacted the Foreign Office and said that they wanted to house them.
Continue reading...Home Office unhappy with Foreign Office for potentially opening door to more Isis returnees
No other British children are expected to be repatriated from Syria in the foreseeable future, despite the announcement from the foreign secretary on Thursday that a small number of orphans who had been caught up in the conflict with Islamic State had been brought home.
Home Office officials view the repatriation of the children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as highly exceptional – and there is unhappiness with the Foreign Office for potentially opening the door to more Islamic State returnees.
Continue reading...Special repatriation prompts calls for ministers to allow all British children to return
Britain has taken the step of repatriating a small number of orphaned children from north-east Syria who had been caught up in the conflict with Islamic State, the foreign secretary has announced.
Dominic Raab said the UK government had assisted their return from the war-torn country in a special repatriation that prompted calls for ministers to go further and allow all British children stranded in Syria to come back.
Continue reading...US reportedly offering to rescue Australian families of Isis fighters trapped in Syria
Australia may be forced to accept three Islamic State fighters in Turkish custody as Ankara begins repatriating foreign fighters to their homelands.
Turkey has so far sent up to 10 fighters back to Britain, the US and Germany, saying it cannot continue to house them, even as the governments have rejected taking their fighters back and have cancelled passports.
Continue reading...Hoda Muthana, 25, and son left in limbo in Syria after federal judge sided with Trump administration
A judge sided with the Trump administration on Thursday in ruling that an Alabama woman who joined the Islamic State group was not a US citizen, leaving the 25-year-old and her son in limbo in Syria.
Hoda Muthana, an American-born woman who left Alabama to join Isis in 2014, has said she “deeply regrets” joining the terrorist group and wants to return to the US with her young son.
Continue reading...Alleged militant deported as part of Turkey’s drive to expel foreign jihadists in its custody
An alleged American member of Islamic State, stranded for a second day on the border between Greece and Turkey after Turkey expelled him, is “not our problem”, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said.
The man, named by the Turkish news agency Demiroren as Muhammed Darwis B, is believed to be a US citizen of Jordanian descent. He was deported on Monday as part of Turkey’s controversial new policy to deport foreign jihadists in its custody.
Continue reading...Interior minister said repatriation of alleged terrorists would include those rendered stateless
Turkey will begin deporting foreign members of Islamic State in Turkish custody back to their home countries from next week, the country’s interior minister has said.
Ankara has repeatedly criticised European nations for refusing to take back any of the 1,200 foreign nationals currently held in Turkish prisons on suspicion of links to the terror organisation.
Continue reading...Unnamed senior figure hopes for ‘trove of intelligence’ from Rasmiya Awad after raid in Syrian border town
Turkey claims to have captured the sister of killed Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and is interrogating her and her husband and daughter-in-law, who were also detained.
A senior Turkish official told Reuters that Rasmiya Awad, 65, was seized on Monday during a raid near the Turkish-controlled northern Syrian town of Azaz. When captured, she was also accompanied by five children.
Continue reading...Exclusive: guidance says many factors, including rebellion and sisterhood, spur radicalisation
Women and girls who attach themselves to Islamic State are driven by a complex combination of factors beyond just love or marriage, including feelings of social exclusion and the appeal of sisterhood, according to research by a counter-extremism thinktank.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has put together guidance to help people working with women and girls who have returned from Isis-held territories.
Continue reading...Baghdadi died in a US raid on a compound near the village of Barisha in north-west Syria
The US began to receive intelligence on the whereabouts of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi about a month before the 26 October raid, according to Donald Trump. Intelligence officials were able to scope out his exact location – near the village of Barisha in north-west Syria – in mid October.
Continue reading...General Kenneth McKenzie says Isis will remain a threat as he shows footage of raid on leader’s Syria hideout
The US military has said it expects a retribution attack in the wake of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as it released the first footage of the raid by commandos on the Isis leader’s hideout.
The Pentagon showed brief black-and-white aerial footage on Wednesday night of the raid and the subsequent bombing of Baghdadi’s compound in northern Syria.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Martin Chulov describes how US special forces finally tracked down Baghdadi, who was killed in a raid at the weekend. Plus: Robert Booth on the criticism of the London fire brigade’s response to the Grenfell Tower disaster
US special forces finally caught up with the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on Saturday at a safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib, one of the few areas of the country still outside regime control. In a night-time raid, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children, according to Donald Trump.
The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, has followed the rise and fall of Isis in the past five years from close quarters. He tells Rachel Humphreys what Baghdadi’s death will mean to the terrorist organisation, which has lost almost all the territory it held at its peak.
Continue reading...Top Democrats reacted with anger to Donald Trump’s decision to go ahead with the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid without giving them advance notice, on grounds that they were not to be trusted with such highly sensitive information.
Related: Trump impeachment: Schiff expects battle over key witness John Bolton
Continue reading...The hunt for the Islamic State leader had lasted years until Iraqi officials got a break last month
Cornered in a dead-end tunnel, with a robot creeping towards him, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had nowhere left to run. Dogs barked in the darkness, a US soldier called out … and then came the thundering explosion that killed the world’s most wanted man – together with three terrified children he was using as human shields.
The US military finally caught up with the Islamic State leader in a remote hamlet of northwestern Syria, but not before he detonated a suicide vest strapped to his body as special forces troops disgorged from helicopters and crouched near the frugal stone house in which he was hiding.
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