ISIS

The Syrian regime has reclaimed a sliver of territory in southern Syria that was under the control of Islamic State, sealing its military victory in the strategic southern territories that rebelled in 2011 against Bashar al-Assadand fully reestablishing its hold over the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Syrian Observatory …

Suicide bombers struck an open-air market and other targets in the southern Syrian city of Sweida early Wednesday. The four attacks killed dozens of people and injured dozens more, local media say, in a region where the government has been fighting ISIS militants. Citing the Syrian regime’s state media agency, …

As U.S. military bases go, Um Jurius isn’t much to look at: a collection of armored vehicles, makeshift wooden benches covered with camouflage netting and groups of tents pitched in the sand. The fire base has sprung up in the past month in the northern Iraqi desert, just over a …

At least 11 Daesh terrorists were arrested Tuesday in different parts of Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, according to local police sources. Nineveh Police Chief Hamad Namis al-Jubouri told Anadolu Agency that security forces had managed to capture Hussein Salim Yassin Mustafa, who had been in charge of recruitment for the …

ISIS fighters are close to losing their small pockets in east Syria after being besieged in the two provinces of Hasaka and Deir Ezzor, particularly in areas located east of the Euphrates River. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by Italian, French and US forces, advanced in the southern al-Hasaka governorate …

Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State has executed thirty of its members in a Syrian region near borders with Iraq, a paramilitary leader in Anbar said on Tuesday. Speaking to BasNews website, Qutri al-Samarmad, a leader with tribal mobilization forces in Anbar, said “information by the intelligence and eyewitnesses from Syrian regions …

The United States is withdrawing assistance from northwest Syria as the Trump administration reviews hundreds of millions of dollars in stabilization aid to Syria, a State Department official has told CNN. The withdrawal of assistance comes as the US-led military coalition battles the remaining elements of ISIS in the Middle …

Iraq began voting Saturday in its first parliamentary election since declaring victory over Daesh, with the country hoping to shore up a fragile peace and rebuild. Polling stations opened around the conflict-scarred nation under tight security as fighters still pose a major security threat despite a sharp fall in violence. …

By Dr. Haytham Mouzahem* — Tunisian writer Hadi Yahmad recently published a book in Arabic about Tunisian jihadi Mohammed Al-Fahem. Born in 1990, Fahem traveled to Syria in late 2014 to join the “The Islamic State”(ISIS) — for him and his extremist cohorts, a dream come true. Fahem fled ISIS …

US satellites, surveillance aircraft, drones and ships have stepped up operations to monitor the movement of suspected Iranian anti-air and ballistic missiles inside Syria due to rising concerns they could be used to strike Israel in the coming days, according to half a dozen US officials CNN has spoken with …

Syrian government forces used warplanes, helicopters and artillery on Sunday to pound districts of the capital held by the Islamic State group, in a bid to enforce an evacuation deal reached with the militants earlier in the week. Two Palestinian refugees, a father and a son, were killed during the …

Iraq will not solve the crises it faces unless it maintains an inclusive political process, overcomes sectarian divisions and rids itself of foreign interference, the Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi told The National during a visit to Dubai. On the 12th of May Iraqis will cast their votes in the …

The Pentagon’s mission against the Islamic State in Syria remains open-ended despite President Trump’s promise of a quick U.S. withdrawal. Military leaders are focusing on pushing the once-powerful group out of the small foothold it controls in eastern Syria and ensuring that it cannot plot attacks against the United States, …

President Donald Trump, mulling how to end the US role in the Syrian conflict while having other countries “take care of it,” has maintained an unusual fixation: the jumbo jets owned by Persian Gulf monarchs. “Without us you wouldn’t last two weeks. You’d be overrun. And you’d have to fly …

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) went after President Trump for suggesting that we’ll be pulling our troops (about 2,000) out of Syria “very soon.” Trump, apparently referring to Russia and Iran (but who knows?), declared at a campaign-style rally, “Let the other people take care of it …

The Pentagon on Saturday identified a U.S. service member who died Friday from injuries he suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol in Syria a day earlier. Master Sgt. Jonathan Dunbar, 36, of Austin, is the second American service member killed in action in Syria since the …

Maxime Hauchard, a French terrorist sought by French and US authorities since emerging in a Daesh execution video in Syria, has been killed, sources close to the inquiry told AFP on Thursday. “The date and circumstances of his death aren’t yet known, but it appears he died in the summer …

Offensive ground operations against ISIS in eastern Syria have slowed down as hundreds of Kurdish fighters have left the battlefield to potentially assist Kurdish forces in Afrin, in western Syria, who are fighting the Turkish military. Interested in ISIS? Meanwhile, the U.S. is monitoring the build-up of a pro-Assad regime force massing in …

The shift from covert attacks to open fighting between Iran and Israel illustrates that the regime in Tehran feels emboldened enough to confront and provoke its enemy, according to analysts. Last weekend’s clashes involving an Iranian drone launched from Syria, a downed Israeli jet and retaliatory airstrikes may also signal …

Two British fighters believed to have been part of a cell of the Islamic State group that beheaded hostages should face trial, relatives of some of the cell’s alleged victims have said. Alexanda Kotey, and El Shafee Elsheikh were captured by Syrian Kurdish forces. They were two of the four …

Iraq’s armed forces have launched a large-scale military operation along a planned oil transit route in the north against a new militant outfit reportedly comprised of Daesh remnants and Kurdish mafia elements. Iraqi army and police forces, backed by the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, started …

American troops have started to draw down from Iraq following Baghdad’s declaration of victory over the Islamic State group last year, according to Western contractors at a U.S.-led coalition base in Iraq. In Baghdad, an Iraqi government spokesman on Monday confirmed to The Associated Press that the drawdown has begun, …

It’s below zero degrees on the vast dirt hillside above Totah but through the mist and freezing rain, I can see the Syrian general’s target, a small Isis-held village across a valley of mud. There’s a crash of artillery fire from his Shilka guns, and you wait several seconds before …

The United States is expressing concern about Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria and top officials are appealing for restraint and fears that the conflict could spread. At Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. understands Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns” and is “committed to working with …

Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militia opens yet another front in the seven-year Syrian conflict, and risks giving ISIS breathing room just as it was being suffocated. Turkey has long warned that it will not tolerate control of much of its border with Syria by the “terrorist” …

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday committed the United States to an indefinite military presence in Syria, citing a range of policy goals that extend far beyond the defeat of the Islamic State as conditions for American troops to go home. But a crisis unfolding on the Syria-Turkey border …

Isis has been defeated in Iraq and Syria. The caliphate declared in 2014, which was once the size of Great Britain, is no more. Its de facto capitals, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, were captured after long and bloody sieges in the second half of 2017. But Isis was always …

Some of the anti-regime fighters who had evacuated from Western Ghouta under a deal with the Assad regime began arriving in Idlib and Daraa provinces, according to local sources. The first group of evacuees comprising 108 group members, including 21 women and 29 children werebrought to a camp early Saturday in …

Eight French jihadists, including a Muslim convert suspected of involvement in the 2015 Paris attacks, have been captured in Syria by Kurdish fighters. Thomas Barnouin, 36, described as a “jihadist commander”, was detained near the Iraqi border earlier this month with two other French converts named as Romain Garnier, 33, and Thomas …

U.S military or coalition forces will not go after the remaining Islamic State militants fleeing to western Syria, a British military official said Wednesday. Following the success U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq – who lost 98 percent of the territory they once held – the fighters …

A suicide attack on an office of the Afghan Voice news agency and a neighboring cultural center in Kabul killed dozens on Thursday, officials and witnesses said. Police spokesman Basir Mojahid told NBC News that at least 25 people had been killed and 32 others injured. The attack occurred during …

A Belarusian-Israeli convert to Islam was convicted Wednesday of attempting to join the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria. Valentin Vladmir Mazlevski, 40, who was arrested nearly a year ago while trying to travel to Syria via Turkey, was convicted by the Nazareth District Court of contact with a foreign agent, attempting …

The Islamic State’s so-called caliphate ends 2017 in tatters. But after a year in which U.S.-backed forces drove ISIS militants from strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the group is far from defeated. Analysts warn that ISIS is retreating into what some call a “virtual caliphate” from where it will attempt …

Yezidi fighters in Iraq allegedly forcibly disappeared and killed 52 civilians from the Imteywit tribe in June 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. Relatives of victims told Human Rights Watch that on June 4, 2017, Yezidi forces detained and then apparently executed men, women, and children from eight Imteywit families …

The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals on Tuesday issued tough rulings in a range of cases related to state security, handing out jail sentences ranging from three to 15 years. The court also issued fines ranging between Dh50,000 and Dh1 million in cases related to promotion of terrorism, espionage …

The defence minister, Marise Payne, has announced Australia will scale back its operations in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The country’s six super hornets will head home from the Middle East, marking the end of Australia’s airstrike operations. Payne said the decision follows discussions with the Iraqi government …

Egyptian officials say security forces have clashed with extremist militants near the airport of the northern Sinai city of el-Arish, killing five of them a day after a missile hit the facility during a visit by the defense and interior ministers. The officials said an army captain was killed in …

Iraq’s top Shiite cleric on Friday called on the powerful Shiite militias that helped reconquer the Islamic State’s territory to choose between politics and arms, backing a key demand of the prime minister. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani stopped short, however, of rescinding a religious edict he made in June 2014 urging Iraqi …

The “Third International Conference Against Fighting ISIS Propaganda” kicked off in Baghdad on Wednesday, less than a week after Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq. Over 120 international experts and advisors, representing 42 countries, are taking part in the conference, which would witness ten 10 discussion sessions on …

A significant quantity of weapons supplied by Western and Gulf states to opposition factions battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conflict were transferred to the Islamic State, according to a study funded by the European Union and Germany’s foreign ministry. The leakage of the supplies “significantly …

US military advisers and their local Syrian partners killed 21 ISIS terrorists and captured 17 more during a battle near a key strategic base Tuesday, two US military officials told CNN. A military official with the US-led coalition fighting ISIS told CNN that a convoy of about 10 vehicles was …

Standing under clear skies at an air base in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his troops the good news: They had all but secured victory in the Middle East country’s six-year civil war. “The task of combating armed gangs here in Syria … has been largely resolved — brilliantly …

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday made a surprise visit to Russia’s Khmeimim air base in Syria, announcing an imminent drawdown of Russian forces in the wake of his declaration of victory in its intervention in the Syria war. In his first visit to the air base since Russian warplanes …

The former chief executive of LafargeHolcim, the world’s largest cement maker, and five other top officials are being formally investigated as part of a government inquiry into whether the company helped finance the Islamic State militant group and other armed factions while operating a factory in Syria. The expanding investigation …