Category Archives: Islamic State

Fighting in Libya will create huge number of refugees, PM warns

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Fayez al-Sarraj says Khalifa Haftar’s attack on Tripoli ‘will spread its cancer through Mediterranean’

Hundreds of thousands of refugees could flee the fighting caused by Khalifa Haftar’s attempt to seize the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the prime minister of the country’s UN-recognised government has warned.

The warnings by Fayez al-Sarraj – who also claimed Haftar had betrayed the people of Libya – echo those given privately to the Italian government by its intelligence services, and are clearly designed to alert EU states to the possible consequences for European migration of a prolonged civil war in the country.

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Bring back children of Syria Isis fighters, Save the Children urges Australia

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Aid group publishes open letter to political leaders, asking them to act on their words if elected

Save the Children has called on Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten to publicly commit – if they win the election – to bringing home the children of Australian foreign fighters in Syria.

In a letter published on Saturday, the aid organisation demanded that the major parties pledge to “stop the war on children” and repatriate those who were brought to the Syrian conflict or were born there to Australians who chose to fight with Islamic State.

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Iraq seeks multibillion dollar fee to receive Isis prisoners

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Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria

Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.

Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria’s north-east, which one former senior US official described as a “volcano”.

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Latin Americans fear precedent set by legal justification for Syria intervention

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Countries fear that legal standard of states being ‘unwilling or unable’ to deal with terrorism could be used in Latin America

Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.

The Mexican government is spearheading an effort at the UN to bring greater transparency to the formal legal justifications presented by western powers for military operations in Syria and elsewhere.

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German police arrest 11 people suspected of plotting major attacks

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Prosecutors said suspects arrested for allegedly plotting ‘state-endangering crime’

German police arrested 11 people in pre-dawn raids on Saturday on suspicion they were planning major attacks with stockpiled weapons and explosives, a prosecution spokesman said.

One of the 11 was confirmed as a Tajikistan national, but officials disclosed few other details about the suspects, who were detained in the early hours in western and southern parts of the country.

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Isis defeated, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announce

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Kurdish-led group says last of militants cleared from stronghold of Baghuz

After almost five years, the battle to dismantle Islamic State’s brutal “caliphate” has ended with an announcement from US-backed forces that the militants have been driven out of their last stronghold of Baghuz.

Isis had held out for months against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the small oasis town on the Euphrates river, clinging on to an area of land less than 700 sq metres wide despite fierce coalition bombing. But on Saturday an SDF spokesperson, Mustafa Bali, tweeted that the town had been liberated.

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Kurdish forces dispute White House claim Isis is eliminated in Syria

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Announcement appeared to catch US allies off-guard as SDF spokesman says its fighters clashed overnight with Islamic State militants

The Trump White House has declared that the Islamic State no longer holds any territory inside Syria, but the claim was disputed by Kurdish-led forces on the ground who said clashes were continuing.

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, had briefed Donald Trump and that the Pentagon had confirmed that the last vestiges of the Isis “caliphate” had been eliminated.

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Foreign nationals suspected of Isis links ‘not wanted’ in Syrian camps

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Aid agencies struggle to cope with rise in new arrivals, with scores dying on the way to the settlements

An estimated 7,000 women and children from more than 40 nations, including the US, UK, Australia and Europe, are living in tense and chaotic conditions in camps in north-eastern Syria, where they are “not wanted” due to their supposed affiliation with Islamic State.

Among them are hundreds of unaccompanied or separated children, some just babies as young as five months, according to aid groups and other sources.

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France repatriates five orphaned children of jihadists from Syria

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French intervention likely to add weight to criticism of UK’s reluctance to do likewise

France has repatriated five orphaned children of French jihadists from camps in north-east Syria, where a five-year offensive against Islamic State is drawing to a close.

Among the children repatriated were the three sons of a French woman who died under Isis rule. Officials retrieved them from a camp in northern Syria where they were being held with as many as 3,000 other children of Isis families.

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Isis has my kids: I won’t stop till I get them home to the US – video

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Four years ago, Bashir Shikder’s wife Rashida flew from Florida to Syria with the couple’s young children to join Isis, ignoring anguished Bashir’s repeated pleas for her to return home. Now, after hearing news of his wife’s death, and that his children – Yusuf now nine, and Zahra, five – are being held by jihadists in the last corner of the terror group’s lands, Bashir travels to Iraq in the hope of crossing the border into Syria and rescuing them.

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SDF launches assault on last Isis enclave in eastern Syria

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Direct clashes under way and airstrikes target weapons stores in Baghuz

Airstrikes have targeted Islamic State weapons stores as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched an attack against the jihadists’ enclave in Baghuz near the Iraqi border.

An SDF official, Mustafa Bali, said the attack began at 6pm local time and “direct and fierce” clashes were under way.

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Two more women held in Syrian camps ‘stripped of British citizenship’

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Reema and Zara Iqbal – whose husbands died fighting for Isis – said to have five children between them

Two more British women who are being held in Syrian camps with their young children have reportedly had their citizenship removed.

The move comes as the home secretary, Sajid Javid, faces increasing criticism over the case of Shamima Begum, the 19-year-old Londoner who was stripped of her British citizenship on his orders, after the death of her three-week-old son.

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Shamima Begum: Sajid Javid labelled ‘moral coward’ over baby death

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Former DPP accuses home secretary of treating UK like a ‘banana republic’ over decision to strip Isis bride of citizenship

Syrian camps: vulnerable children of Isis ignored by the outside world

Sajid Javid has been accused of moral cowardice and “treating the UK as a banana republic” in pursuit of his leadership ambitions following the death of Jarrah, the three-week-old son of Isis bride Shamima Begum.

A Church of England bishop and a former director of public prosecutions led the chorus of outrage directed at the home secretary as demand grew for him to review his controversial decision to strip the 19-year-old of British citizenship – a move that left her stateless and her baby in legal limbo.

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‘Find them a way to live’: the deadly plight of Isis refugee children

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Up to 3,000 children born to foreign nationals like Shamima Begum may be at risk in Syria

In a place the British government says remains too difficult for diplomats to reach, scores of its officials have been present for at least the past two years.

MI6 officers, as well as SAS troopers and commanders have formed strong ties with local Kurdish officials in north-eastern Syria, where two refugee camps teeming with the remnants of Islamic State (Isis) are located.

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Those responsible for Syria’s agony must be brought to book, starting at the top

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Despite Russia blocking attempts to investigate Assad’s war crimes, there are glimmers of hope

The final unravelling of the Islamic State’s evil caliphate exerts a horrible fascination. The jihadis committed many appalling crimes in Syria and Iraq – exploiting the chaos caused by the Syrian civil war – and were responsible, directly or indirectly, for murderous attacks in Britain and several other European countries.

Most people expect a reckoning. It is only right that Isis fighters who have been captured alive, and those who gave them aid and succour, should face justice as soon as possible.

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Shamima Begum baby death ‘a stain on conscience of UK government’

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Sajid Javid accused of appeasing populists by ordering UK citizenship to be revoked

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has come under fire for his decision to revoke the British citizenship of Shamima Begum, whose baby son has died in a Syrian refugee camp.

Begum, 19, left the UK in 2015 with two school friends to join Islamic State in Syria and said last month she wanted to return home. But Javid insisted he would do all in his power to prevent her coming back and ordered her citizenship to be revoked.

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Shamima Begum: baby son dies in Syrian refugee camp

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Three-week-old infant is the third child the teenager from east London has lost

The newborn son of Shamima Begum has died in a Syrian refugee camp. The baby boy, named Jarrah, was buried on Friday, three weeks after the east London teenager turned Islamic State devotee gave birth.

A Kurdish intelligence official said the infant had been taken to hospital in al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria with breathing difficulties several times in the past week. A friend of Begum said “the baby turned blue and was cold” before being rushed to a clinic inside the camp. Jarrah is understood to have been buried along with two other children who were burned in a fire on Thursday night.

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MoD claim of one civilian death in Isis raids ridiculed

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RAF says 4,315 Isis fighters were killed or injured in airstrikes and just one civilian

The Ministry of Defence claim that the RAF killed only one civilian in thousands of airstrikes against Isis has been dismissed as ludicrous and “stretching credibility”.

According figures released by the MoD following a freedom of information request by the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the RAF strikes between 2014 and January this year killed or injured 4,315 of the group’s fighters. It said 90% of those were killed.

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