Isis women driven by more than marriage, research shows

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.

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Visual guide to the raid that killed Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

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.

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Baghdadi raid video released as US general warns of Isis reprisal attacks

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.

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How the US caught up with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi | podcast

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.

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Pelosi slams Trump for cutting Democrats out of loop on Baghdadi raid

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

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Nowhere left to run: how the US finally caught up with Isis leader Baghdadi

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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Killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gives Trump lifeline amid political battle

President’s supporters framing the impeachment hearings as an unpatriotic attack on a leader keeping America safe

The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has given Donald Trump a lifeline in the midst of a battle for his own political survival and he has grabbed it with both hands.

Trump’s fifty minute television appearance on Sunday to announce the successful mission began with a sombre announcement before drifting into something more rambling and vainglorious, foreshadowing how he will use it for political ends, and as a club to swing at his political enemies pushing for his impeachment.

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Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid – video

Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US special forces raid in the north-west of Syria. According to the president, the Isis leader died 'running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way'. Trump made the announcement in Washington hours after tweeting: 'Something very big has just happened!'

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death comes as new order takes shape in Middle East

In aftermath of Isis’s toxic mix of chaos and intolerance, new spheres of influence are being demarcated

Reports of his death had been frequent – and exaggerated. But not this time. Even as US forces were flying to Iraq the remains of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in Syria in the early hours of Saturday, a debate about his legacy was stirring.

For more than five years, Baghdadi, who was known by birth as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, was the most wanted man on the planet – a figure who had turned an already potent post-invasion insurgency in Iraq into a formidable terrorist juggernaut that changed the course of history.

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Donald Trump confirms Isis leader died in US raid – video

The US president has said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, was killed in a raid by US special forces in north-west Syria. Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest after running into a dead-end tunnel, killing himself and three of his children, Donald Trump said

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Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and why is his death important?

Self-declared caliph was operational leader of Isis and symbol of its Islamic credentials

Baghdadi is thought to have been born in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971. Though a weak student, whose poor eyesight disqualified him from joining the Iraqi military, he rose to command al-Qaida’s Iraqi division and then broke away to form Islamic State (Isis).

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US plans to send tanks to Syria oil fields, reversing Trump troop withdrawal – reports

  • Tanks to come from units already in Middle East, report says
  • Trump has said US ‘secured oil’ despite withdrawal

The US is reportedly planning to deploy tanks and other heavy military hardware to protect oil fields in eastern Syria, in a reversal of Donald Trump’s earlier order to withdraw all troops from the country.

The most likely destination for US armoured units is a Conoco gas plant near the city of Deir Ezzor, the site of a February 2018 clash between US special forces and Syrian regime-backed militias fighting with Russian mercenaries.

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UK man who fought Isis found guilty of terror offence in retrial

Aidan James, 28, is first Briton to stand trial for travelling to Syria to join battle against Isis

A British man who trained to fight with Kurdish units against Islamic State has been found guilty of a terrorism offence in a retrial at the Old Bailey.

Aidan James, 28, from Formby in Merseyside, was found guilty of training in weapons with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) in Iraq.

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Britain makes move to bring home Isis children stranded in Syria

Whitehall sources are working with local agencies to bring back minors born to Islamic State fighters

British officials have taken the first steps to repatriate children stranded in Syria by liaising directly with agencies on the ground to identify unaccompanied minors for “safe passage” back to the UK.

Whitehall sources have confirmed they are working with “various agencies” in north-east Syria – believed to include the International Committee of the Red Cross – to kickstart the process of transferring children of British parents linked to Islamic State back to the UK.

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‘We Syrians are being used as political tools… yet again’

Despite last week’s US-brokered truce, fighting continues on the Turkish-Syrian border

It’s an unusually hot autumn in the plains of southern Turkey, where in some places nothing but wire fencing is all that separates this country from the chaos that has engulfed Syria over the last eight years.

Cotton, pistachio and olive trees grow on both sides of the border. But plumes of black smoke are only rising above towns on the Syrian side.

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Afghanistan mosque bombing: death toll rises

State blames Taliban for blasts targeting worshippers during Friday prayers

Police and local residents were searching for bodies in the rubble of a mosque in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, after bomb blaststhat killed at least 69 people during Friday prayers.

The explosives had been placed inside the mosque in the Jawdara area of Haska Mena district.

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Belgium to evacuate Isis suspects from Syria detention camps

Other European states also preparing to repatriate citizens accused of Isis links via safe zone

Belgium and other European states are preparing to evacuate citizens accused of having links to Islamic State from detention camps in north-eastern Syria through a newly declared safe zone being carved out by Turkish forces along the border.

Belgian officials informed family members of detainees held in two camps on Friday that they would attempt to take advantage of a five-day ceasefire to retrieve nationals allegedly tied to the terror group. The Guardian has learned that other European states, including France and Germany, are also looking at ways to take advantage of the window declared by US vice-president Mike Pence on Thursday to repatriate women and children.

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Fighting continues on Syria-Turkey border despite ceasefire

Artillery fire and ground clashes reported in violation of US-brokered five-day truce

Fighting is continuing on the border between Syria and Turkey in defiance of a supposed five-day ceasefire negotiated between the US and Turkey.

Intermittent artillery fire and ground clashes were heard in the border town of Ras al-Ayn on Friday morning, one of the two main targets of the nine-day-old Turkish offensive, as the Turkish military and Syrian rebel proxies struggled to wrest control of the town from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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Pence and Erdoğan agree on ceasefire plan but Kurds reject ‘occupation’

  • Mike Pence strikes deal with Turkish president in Ankara
  • Agreement appears to cement key Turkish objectives

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has agreed with the US vice-president, Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation on Kurdish-led forces in north-east Syria for the next five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw, potentially halting the latest bloodshed in Syria’s long war.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters would pull back from Turkey’s proposed 20-mile (32km) deep “safe zone” on its border, Pence told reporters in Ankara on Thursday evening after hours of meetings with Turkish officials.

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Biden warns Isis fighters will strike US over Syria withdrawal

Former vice-president said at Democratic debate ‘they are going to damage’ the US and blasted Trump for abandoning Kurdish allies

The former US vice-president Joe Biden warned during a Democratic debate on Tuesday night that Islamic State fighters would strike the US as a result of Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of American forces in northern Syria.

“We have Isis that’s going to come here,” Biden said. “They are going to damage the United States of America. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

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