Category Archives: Islamic State

London schoolgirl who fled to join Isis wants to return to UK

Posted on by

Shamima Begum, 19, in refugee camp in Syria after fleeing last territory held by Islamic State

An east London schoolgirl who left the UK in 2015 to join Islamic State has been tracked down in Syria where she said has no regrets about joining the group, but now wants to come home as she is nine months pregnant.

Shamima Begum, 19, said she fled the jihadists’ last remaining enclave in Baghuz, eastern Syria, as she was tired of life on a battlefield and feared for her unborn child after her two other children died.

Continue reading...

‘Nothing left in Baghuz’: Isis families flee as war enters endgame

Posted on by

Small enclave of extremists holds out in Syria against intensive bombardment

Clamouring up dirt berms, clutching babies and blankets, the newest refugees of the Islamic State could well be the last.

Inside the nearby enclave they fled are perhaps no more than 500 people – nearly all of them fighters who are refusing to leave a two square kilometre corner of eastern Syria that is all that remains of the group’s so-called caliphate.

Continue reading...

‘The fighting was intense’: witness tells of two-day attempt to kill Isis leader

Posted on by

Foreign fighters reportedly executed after launching attack against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Fresh details have emerged of the coup attempt against Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with witnesses claiming foreign members of the terror group lost a two-day battle with his bodyguards before being rounded up and executed.

A witness who spoke to the Guardian after being smuggled from the last hamlet in eastern Syria held by Isis, said the clash took place in al Keshma, a village next to Baghouz in September, three months earlier than regional intelligence officials believed it had taken place.

Continue reading...

Isis leader believed to have fled coup attempt by his own fighters

Posted on by

Jihadist group placed bounty on head of foreign fighter after plot, say intelligence officials

The Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, survived a coup attempt last month launched by foreign fighters in his eastern Syrian hideout, intelligence officials believe, and the terrorist group has since placed a bounty on the main plotter’s head.

The incident is believed to have taken place on 10 January in a village near Hajin in the Euphrates River valley, where the jihadist group is clinging to its last sliver of land. Regional intelligence officials say a planned move against Baghdadi led to a firefight between foreign fighters and the fugitive terrorist chief’s bodyguards, who spirited him away to the nearby deserts.

Continue reading...

True aims of the Syrian Democratic Forces | Letters

Posted on by
Their military aim is the defeat of Islamic State and their political goal is secular democracy and autonomy in northern Syria, not the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, writes Rosa Gilbert of the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign

The Syrian Democratic Forces, the multi-ethnic secular forces in northern Syria primarily made up of the Kurdish YPG as well as other local Assyrian, Arab and Turkmen groups, have never sought the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad as your article suggests (British hostage Cantlie, seized by Isis in 2012, is alive, says Home Office, 6 February). Their military aim is the defeat of Islamic State and their political goal is secular democracy and autonomy in northern Syria as seen by the multi-ethnic, feminist, democratic socialist, commune-based society they have been constructing in the areas they have liberated from Isis. There have been no major battles with regime forces and in fact they have worked with the Syrian Arab Army in the Kurdish Aleppo district of Sheikh Maqsood, which was liberated from al-Nusra jihadists in 2016.
Rosa Gilbert
Co-secretary, Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Continue reading...

Escape from Syria: the boys stranded after Isis fall

Posted on by

The young children of an Islamic State fighter were abandoned in Syria after his death. But with the help of human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith and reporter Joshua Surtees, the boys have been reunited with their mother. Also today: columnist Gary Younge on the storm over Liam Neeson’s race comments

In 2014, Mahmud and Ayyub Ferreira were abducted by their father in Trinidad and taken to Syria to live under Islamic State rule in the so-called caliphate. After the death of their father and the liberation of the Isis stronghold of Raqqa, the boys, now aged 11 and seven, were abandoned before being picked up and taken into Kurdish custody.

Mahmud and Ayyub had been apart from their mother for four years but a combined effort from the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Guardian reporters, including Joshua Surtees, and the Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters tracked down Felicia Perkins-Ferreira in Trinidad and reunited the family.

Continue reading...

They say Boko Haram is gone. One mother’s terror tells another story…

Posted on by

Nigerian refugees are chased from homes as president stakes re-election bid on claims that Islamist group has been beaten

When Boko Haram stormed into Baga in a hail of gunfire on Boxing Day, Zara Abubakar was lying in bed, waiting for her two-week-old triplets, Maryam, Muhafat and Mohammed, to go to sleep so she could have a bath. Heart pounding, she shouted for her four other children playing in the yard to come in, covering the babies with her body. For hours they all lay inside, waiting for the battle to let up.

Then there was silence, followed by shouts of Allahu Akbar, and Baga mosque’s loudspeakers crackled into life. “Boko Haram made an announcement that they were not here for us but for the infidels [the military] and that they were now in charge,” Abubakar recounted, jogging one of the triplets in the crook of her elbow and another on her knee.

Continue reading...

America’s Kurdish allies risk being wiped out – by Nato | David Graeber

Posted on by

Turkey is seen as the Kurds’ mortal enemy but it uses German tanks and British helicopters: this is an international outrage

Remember those plucky Kurdish forces who so heroically defended the Syrian city of Kobane from Isis? They risk being wiped out by Nato.

The autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava in Northeast Syria, which includes Kobane, faces invasion. A Nato army is amassing on the border, marshaling all the overwhelming firepower and high-tech equipment that only the most advanced military forces can deploy. The commander in chief of those forces says he wants to return Rojava to its “rightful owners” who, he believes, are Arabs, not Kurds.

Continue reading...

Australian jets may have killed 18 civilians in Mosul air strike, ADF admits

Posted on by

Christopher Pyne says the deaths, which occurred during operations between Iraqi and allied forces, are ‘deeply regrettable’

Australian Defence Force officials have admitted between six and 18 civilians were killed in a Mosul airstrike involving Australian jets, but said they could not determine if Australian or allied missiles caused the deaths.

The defence minister, Christopher Pyne, described the deaths as “deeply regrettable” but said the 12-month investigation into the strike on 13 June 2017 could not come to a conclusion over who was at fault.

Continue reading...

US-Kurdish patrol attacked in Syria as Erdoğan offers to step in

Posted on by

Turkish president tells Donald Trump he is ready to send troops into US-overseen areas

The threat of a growing security vacuum in Syria as a result of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops has been underlined by an attack on a joint US-Kurdish patrol, which reportedly killed five people and injured at least two American soldiers.

The attack on Monday, in which a suicide bomber drove a car into a checkpoint, emphasised the vulnerability of American troops since the US president declared he was withdrawing 2,000 soldiers from northern Syria on the grounds that Islamic State has been defeated.

Continue reading...

Mother of alleged Isis killer loses legal fight against Home Office

Posted on by

Judges rule decision to share evidence with US without death penalty assurances not unlawful

The mother of an alleged hostage killer for Islamic State has lost her legal challenge against a Home Office decision to share evidence with the US without seeking assurances that her son and another suspected jihadist terrorist would not face the death penalty.

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are accused of belonging to a group of Isis members, nicknamed the Beatles because of their British accents, responsible for killing a number of western captives.

Continue reading...

Children ‘still being tortured to confess to Isis links’ by Kurdish security forces

Posted on by

Nearly two years after raising the alarm, Human Rights Watch report reveals continued allegations of electric shocks and beatings on boys aged 14 to 17

Kurdish security forces in Erbil are continuing to torture children to confess their involvement with Islamic State, according to allegations in a report released by Human Rights Watch.

According to the organisation, which first raised the alarm about the mistreatment of child detainees by Kurdish security forces nearly two years ago, it has collected claims of the continued regular use of beatings and electric shocks to extract confessions, often prior to trials lasting a handful of minutes.

Continue reading...

Brain scans show social exclusion creates jihadists, say researchers

Posted on by
International studies of young Muslim men show that radicalisation follows a sense of isolation from society

For years western policymakers have tried to establish what causes individuals to be radicalised. Now a pioneering study has used medical science to gain fresh insight into the process – in the brains of potential jihadists.

University College London (UCL) researchers were part of an international team that used neuroimaging techniques to map how the brains of radicalised individuals respond to being socially marginalised. The findings, they claim, confirm that exclusion is a leading factor in creating violent jihadists.

Continue reading...

Two British special forces soldiers injured by Isis in Syria

Posted on by

Attack comes after Trump said he would withdraw US troops as ‘we have defeated Isis’

Two British special forces soldiers have been seriously injured in a missile attack by the Islamic State (Isis) in Syria. The incident is thought to have happened on Saturday morning and the soldiers were airlifted by US forces for medical treatment.

Rudaw, a Kurdish news outlet, reported that the British soldiers were hurt in an attack on a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) base in the town of Deir ez-Zor, in the east of the country.

Continue reading...

Terror plotter had 16 meetings with Prevent officers, court hears

Posted on by

Lewis Ludlow, who pleaded guilty to planning Oxford Street attack, faces sentencing

A Muslim convert plotted a terror attack on Oxford Street despite repeated attempts by authorities to deradicalise him, a court has heard.

The former Royal Mail worker Lewis Ludlow, 27, of Rochester, Kent, said he was filled with “animosity and hatred” when he swore allegiance to Islamic State, the Old Bailey heard.

Continue reading...

Mali attack: 37 civilians killed in armed raid on village

Posted on by

Children among victims in area hit by ethnic violence in which hundreds died last year

Armed men killed 37 Fulani civilians on Tuesday in central Mali, where ethnic violence cost hundreds of lives last year, the government said.

Violence between Fulani and rival communities has compounded an already dire security situation in Mali’s semi-arid and desert regions, which are used as a base by jihadist groups with ties to al-Qaida and Islamic State.

Continue reading...