Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Iraq

Remains of 57 Yazidis killed by ISIS to be returned to Shingal

2024-01-10

[Rudaw] Tens of graves were dug outside the village of Hardan in the Yazidi heartland of Shingal (Sinjar) on Tuesday for the reburial of Yazidis killed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) whose dead bodies were identified in Baghdad a year after they were uncovered.

The identified remains, which were discovered across several mass graves, numbered 57 and are scheduled to be reburied in a special ceremony later in January.

Hardan village is located on the main road from Shingal and Tal Afar into Syria in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province. It was the site of heinous Islamic State (ISIS) crimes on the Yazidi ethnoreligious community in 2014, with many residents killed.

The remains whose identities were revealed were all males aged between 18 and 80 years old, according to Rudaw’s Adla Abubakir reporting from the site of the newly-dug graves.

More than half of the 366 people from Hardan village who had been captured by ISIS were rescued and 132 remain unaccounted for, according to data obtained by Rudaw from local Shingal authorities.

ISIS seized control of large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group committed genocide against Yazidis when they overran the ethnoreligious minority’s heartland of Shingal, killing around 5,000 Yazidi men, some of whom were put into mass graves. Around 7,000 women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved.

Exhumation of mass graves began in 2019 in Shingal. Progress halted during the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
pandemic and resumed in October 2020.

The exhumations are carried out by the Iraqi government in coordination with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and are overseen by the United Nations
...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly...
Investigation Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS (UNITAD).

Link

Iraq

Three suspected ISIS members arrested in Iraq

2023-09-04

31-08-2023
[Rudaw] Iraqi intelligence forces on Wednesday announced they had arrested three suspected Islamic State

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Iraq

Iraqi forces arrest senior ISIS leader

2023-06-19

[NPASYRIA] The Iraqi Security Media Cell (SMC) announced on Sunday the arrest of a senior Islamic State

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Iraq

Scores injured in a blast near a Nineveh market

2023-04-28

[Shafaq News] A blast from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) left six persons injured in Nineveh, a source reported on Thursday.

The source told Shafaq News Agency that the earth-shattering kaboom took place near a livestock market in Nineveh's district of Tal Afar this afternoon.

The blast, according to preliminary investigations, was caused by an explosive war remnant left behind by members of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems...
(ISIS) murderous Moslem group that took over swathes of Iraq's area in 2014.

Iraq is littered with landmines from decades of armed conflict. Millions were planted by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) during the Iran-Iraq War back in the 1980s. Countless more were planted by ISIS over 2014-15.

According to a 2020 report by the United Nations
...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
Mine Action Service, war remnants contaminate almost three billion square meters, including more than 250 million square meters in the Kurdistan region alone. This makes Iraq the most mined country in the world.

Long after wars have ended, these conflict relics continue to wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. It has been estimated that mines have killed at least 10,000 Iraqis and injured 24,000 in the past two decades.

Link

Iraq

Five members of the Islamic State die in airstrike in NInevah

2022-12-22

Five members of the Islamic State (#ISIS) extremist group, including a commander, were killed in an Iraqi airstrike in Nineveh's Tal Afar, spokesperson to the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi armed forces, Major-General Yehya Rasool, says.#ISIS #ISIL #terrorism #extremism #Iraq
— SHAFAQ News (@Shafaqnews) December 21, 2022

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Iraq

Counter-Terrorism service (CTS) announced carrying out a raid in Tal Afar

2022-12-19

The Counter-Terrorism service (CTS) announced carrying out a raid in Tal Afar, Nineveh upon the orders of PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. pic.twitter.com/Xa7w6ocAVb
— SHAFAQ News (@Shafaqnews) December 18, 2022

They got the Bad Guy:

#Security forces kill a person suspected to be involved in Kirkuk's Sunday bloody attack.#ATTACK #terrorism #ISIS #ISIL #Iraq #Syria

Read more: https://t.co/ymSn0FUuV7
— SHAFAQ News (@Shafaqnews) December 18, 2022

Clashes erupted between Iraqi security forces and a group of turbans who are believed to be involved in a kaboom that killed at least eight troops in Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

Earlier today, a blast from a roadside kaboom reportedly targeted a convoy for Iraq's federal police in the southwestern sub-district of Riyadh. The blast killed eight troops, including a major, according to a security source.

In the aftermath of the attack, a search campaign was launched in the vicinity of the attack's location to trace the perpetrators. The Force on duty identified the group of turbans believed to be members of the Islamic State

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Iraq

Six new mass graves discovered in Sinjar

2022-08-17

[Shafaq News] The front man for the investigation and evidence-gathering commission on crimes and violations committed by ISIS in the Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Suleiman, announced excavating the remains of 47 Yazidis who fell victim to ISIS in Sinjar.

Suleiman told Shafaq News agency that the remains were found in six mass graves in Sinjar, noting that guns and bullets were found at the same sites.

The remains were transferred to the forensic medicine department in Baghdad to be examined and to determine the identity of the victims.

For his part, the head of the Eyzidi Organization for Documentation, Khairy Ali, said that the concerned teams will hopefully be able to excavate the Alo Antar mass grave, near Tal Afar, which includes more than 2000 Yazidi victims killed by ISIS in 2014.

It is worth noting that only 30 out of 108 mass graves were discovered and excavated in Sinjar.

Link

Terror Networks

Islamic State Names New Leader, Confirms Death of Predecessor

2022-03-11

Islamic State Names New Leader, Confirms Death of Predecessor #World https://t.co/aXeBXXeXJH
— Naharnet (@Naharnet) March 10, 2022

he Islamic State jihadist group confirmed the death of its leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi in a statement Thursday and named Abu Hasan al-Hashemi al-Qurashi as his replacement.

IS jihadists have "pledged allegiance" to "Abu Hasan al-Hashemi al-Qurashi as an emir over believers and the caliph of Muslims," the group's spokesperson said in an audio recording.

The recording confirmed the death of the former IS chief along with the group's ex-spokesman.

"Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi and the official Islamic State group spokesman... Abu Hamza al-Qurashi... were killed in recent days," the new spokesperson said.

The former leader blew himself up in early February during a U.S. raid in northwest Syria, according to Washington, in an area controlled by rival jihadists.

Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, who led IS from 2019, was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. He replaced IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US raid in October that year.
Read the rest at the link

Link

Iraq

Adrift after Enslavement, Yazidi Teen Says She Can't Go Home

2022-02-11

Adrift after Enslavement, Yazidi Teen Says She Can't Go Home #MiddleEast https://t.co/3SRVSOvyD4
— Naharnet (@Naharnet) February 10, 2022

Roza Barakat's tormentors have been defeated, but the horrors she endured still hold her captive.

She was 11 years old when she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State group, along with thousands of other Yazidi women and girls taken when the militants overran northern Iraq in their brutal 2014 campaign.

Torn from her family in the town of Sinjar, the enclave of the ancient religious Yazidi minority, she was taken to Syria, sold multiple times and repeatedly raped. She bore a child, a boy she has since lost. Now, at 18, she speaks little of her native Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji.

With the defeat of IS in 2019, Barakat slipped into the shadows, opting to hide in the turmoil that followed the worst of the battles. As IS fighters were arrested, their wives and children were packed into detention camps. Barakat was free, but she couldn't go home.

"I don't know how I'll face my community," she told The Associated Press, speaking in Arabic, as she nervously played with the ends of her long dark braid, the red polish on her dainty fingers fading.

For years, her IS captors told her she would never be accepted if she returned. "I believed them," she said.

Barakat's tale, corroborated by Yazidi and Syrian Kurdish officials, is a window into the complicated realities faced by many Yazidi women who came of age under the brutal rule of IS. Traumatized and lost, many struggle to come to terms with the past, while the Yazidi community is at odds over how to accept them.

"What do you expect from a child who was raped at 12, gave birth at 13?" said Faruk Tuzu, co-chair of Yazidi House, an umbrella of Yazidi organizations in northeastern Syria. "After so much shock and abuse they don't believe in anything anymore, they don't belong anywhere."

The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.

Barakat spoke to the AP from a safe house run by Tuzu's group just a few days after the leader of the Islamic State group, believed to have played a key role in the enslavement of Yazidi women, was killed in a U.S. raid in northwestern Syria.

She shrugged off the news, saying it doesn't make a difference.

IS first sold Barakat to an Iraqi from Tal Afar, a man older than her father. She shudders as she recounts how he "made me call his wife 'mother.'" After a few months she was sold to another man.

Eventually, her IS captors gave her a choice: Convert to Islam and marry an IS fighter, or be sold again. She converted, she says, to avoid being sold. She married a Lebanese they chose for her, a man who ferried food and equipment for IS fighters.

"He was better than most," she said. At 13, she gave birth to a son, Hoodh. At the peak of the militants' self-proclaimed "caliphate," they lived in the city of Raqqa, the IS capital.

Once, she begged her husband to find out what happened to her older sisters who had been taken just like her. She had lost hope that her parents were still alive.

Some weeks later, he told her he found one of her sisters, holding up a photo of a woman in Raqqa's slave market where Yazidi girls were sold.

"How different she looks," Barakat remembers thinking.

Read the rest at the link

Link

Iraq

Large quantities of military equipment seized in al-Anbar and Nineveh

2021-06-28

[SHAFAQ] A force from the military intelligence seized large quantities of explosives and ammunition in al-Anbar and Nineveh governorates.

The Security Media Cell said in a statement that the Military Intelligence Departments in the Ministry of Defense, the Military Intelligence divisions in the al-Jazeera and Western Nineveh Operations Commands, received intelligence information regarding large quantities of explosives in Rawa district in al-Anbar, Tal Afar district, and Tal Abtah district, west of Nineveh.

According to the statement, the force seized more than a thousand tools used in explosives, 175 BKC kits, 11 rocket launchers, 10 Juhannam rockets, five mortar shells, 10 kilograms of C4, and six improvised bombs.

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal squads detonated the seized material under the direct supervision of their commands.

Link

Iraq

Military Intelligence seizes ammunition and explosives in Nineveh and al-Anbar

2021-04-26

[SHAFAQ] The Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense seized weapons, ammunition, and military equipment in two separate operations in Nineveh and al-Anbar.

A statement of the Directorate issued today, Sunday said, "in coordination with the Intelligence of the west Nineveh Operations Command, a force from the Military Intelligence detachments in the 15th Division in cooperation the second regiment of the 73rd Infantry Brigade seized 23 120mm mortar shells, three IEDs, and a UAV missile, in al-Abra village of Tal Afar sub-district, western Nineveh."

"EOD squads detonated the ammunition on-site without damages," the statement said.

Another statement of the Directorate said that Military Intelligence in the 10th division, cooperating with the second regiment of the 39 Infantry Brigade and coordinating with the al-Anbar Operations Command's military intelligence, seized four 120mm and 60mm mortar shells and two bombs in al-Tharthar desert in al-Anbar. EOD squads successfully destroyed the seizures on-site, the statement said.

Link

Iraq

Iraq hangs 21 terrorism convicts in latest mass executions

2020-11-17

[THEBAGHDADPOST] Since defeating ISIS terrorist group in 2017, Iraq has sentenced hundreds of citizens to death for their alleged affiliation to the bad boy group. Rights groups accuse Iraq's judiciary of carrying out rushed trials.

Iraqi authorities on Monday hanged 21 convicted snuffies and murderers at the notorious Nasiriyah prison in the country's south, according to an interior ministry statement.

The men had been convicted under a 2005 counter terrorism law, which carries the death penalty

. Authorities did not give details about specific crimes, but the interior ministry statement said some of those executed were involved in two suicide kabooms that killed dozens of people in the northern town of Tal Afar.

Since declaring victory over the ISIS bad boy group in 2017, Iraq has put hundreds of suspected jihadists on trial and carried out several mass executions.

An Nahar adds:

They were hanged in Nasiriyah prison in Dhi Qar province, the only one in Iraq that carries out capital punishment.

It is known for holding condemned ex-officials of the Saddam Hussein regime, which was toppled by the 2003 US-led invasion. Saddam himself was hanged in December 2006.

Iraqis fearfully refer to Nasiriyah jail as al-Hout, or the whale, a vast prison complex that "swallows people up".

Since declaring the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group defeated in late 2017, Iraq has condemned hundreds of its own citizens to death for membership in the jihadist faction. But only a small proportion of the sentences have been carried out, as they must be approved by the country's president, currently Barham Saleh. Police sources confirmed to AFP that Saleh had signed off on Monday's executions.

Iraq's courts have also tried dozens of foreign nationals for alleged IS membership, condemning 11 French citizens and one Belgian national to death. Those sentences have not been carried out.

Iraq ranks fifth among countries that carry out death sentence
...the barbaric practice of sentencing a murderer to be punished for as long as his/her/its victim is dead...
s, according to ~~Amnesia~~ Amnesty International, which documented 100 executions in the country in 2019. That amounts to one out of seven executions across the world last year.

- CRAMPED CONDITIONS, RADICALIZATION -
Amnesty and other advocacy groups accuse Iraq's justice system of corruption, of carrying out rushed trials using circumstantial evidence and failing to allow the accused a proper defense or access to lawyers. They also condemn cramped conditions in detention centers, where cells built to hold around 20 detainees are often packed with 50, a source working in the jails told AFP.

Those arrested for petty crimes are often held with hardened jihadists, which has facilitated radicalization in the past, experts said.

Iraq's government has declined to provide figures on detention centers or prisoners, including how many are facing terrorism-related charges, although some studies estimate 20,000 are being held for purported IS links.

Some facilities have shut down in recent years, including Baghdad's Abu Ghraib complex that became infamous for prisoner abuse during the U.S.-led occupation.

Others were rocked by riots and prison breaks that allowed detainees accused of "terrorism" to escape.

Many women whose husbands, brothers or sons were suspected jihadist fighters still live in displacement camps around the country. They have very little freedom of movement, even to access health care or schooling for their children, with NGOs condemning the settlements as "prison camps."

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