Country’s president announces major security overhaul after authorities confirm they were warned about attacks
One of the attackers who carried out the devastating suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday had studied in the UK and Australia, the country’s defence minister has said.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the bombings, believed to be the most lethal ever conducted by the group.
Continue reading...Most who died were locals, but victims – including young children – came from across the world
Sri Lankan authorities have confirmed that 359 people were killed in a wave of suicide bombings on the island on Easter Sunday. Since then, the names and stories of those who died have begun to emerge. This list does not include all the victims, the vast majority of whom were Sri Lankans.
Continue reading...Bombings that killed more than 320 people have hallmarks of Isis, say security experts
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 320 people, the group’s Amaq news agency has said, with experts saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of the group.
It is the deadliest overseas operation claimed by Isis since it proclaimed its “caliphate” almost five years ago, and would suggest it retains the ability to launch devastating strikes around the world despite multiple defeats in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Death toll from Easter Sunday’s eight bomb blasts nears 300, with 500 others injured
The wave of bombings on Sunday targeting churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka is among the worst terrorist attacks carried out worldwide since September 11, in which 2,977 people died.
On Monday, police said the death toll had surged overnight to 290, with the number expected to rise further. About 500 people were injured, according to reports.
Continue reading...Hamdaniya has been reclaimed from the extremists who made it a hotbed of violence
The church ceiling was still scorched and some cherished relics missing, but after five years of war and exile, their tormentors were finally gone.
When the men and women of Iraq’s oldest Christian town gathered for Easter mass this weekend, they did so knowing that the Islamic State extremists who had chased them away were not coming back. Their battlefield defeat two months ago meant the people of Hamdaniya (also called Qaraqosh) could once again celebrate without fear.
Continue reading...New Zealand prime minister unhappy that details of Lousia Akavi’s abduction were made public by the aid agency
The revelation that a New Zealand nurse has been detained in Syria for five years has prompted tensions between the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the New Zealand government, with the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, criticising the aid agency for releasing details of the woman’s abduction.
On Monday the New York Times, in conjunction with the ICRC, revealed that New Zealander Louisa Akavi, 63, had been abducted along with two Syrian colleagues on 13 October 2013.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Once a magnet for would-be jihadists worldwide, Islamic State’s dominion collapsed amid infighting and paranoia
On a midwinter night in early January, the most wanted man in the world entered a home in a forsaken town near the Syrian border for a rare meeting with his surviving aides.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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