Residents, livestock suffer from ISIS oil fires
(Reuters) Shepherds herd blackened flocks through the Iraqi desert. Locals cough and wheeze under vast clouds of smoke, and NASA images show oil threatening to encroach on the Tigris River, a major water source.
Lit by Islamic State as they fled Iraqi forces in August, huge oil fires are still raging across northern Iraq, bringing a litany of problems in their wake.
A toxic cloud has hung for months over the town of Qayyara, just 60 km (40 miles) from Mosul where Iraqi forces are battling to defeat the militant Sunni group. It is an eerie reminder of the group’s rule of the area as traumatized residents begin to rebuild.
More than 250 square km (155 square miles) were covered in smoke for more than 21 days, according to satellite images published in November. Follow-up photos this month show oil “very close” to a tributary of the Tigris though a little less smoke as some fires have been extinguished.
Oil fires release deadly substances into the air, soil and water sources, as seen when retreating Iraqi forces lit more than 650 oil wells in Kuwait in 1991 causing a major environmental disaster.
“The smoke hurts our children, hurts us and, as we get older, it’s only going to cause us more problems,” said Sarhan Misin, 20, who works in a sweet shop just off Qayyara’s main road, adding he has begun suffering coughing fits and shortness of breath.
A doctor at the local hospital, asking not to be named for fear of reprisal by Islamic State, told Reuters he had seen many more patients with respiratory problems in recent months, though was not able to give numbers.
A shepherd herding sheep near a military checkpoint and bombed-out bridge said the oil fires were to blame for the deaths of 10 of his once-60-strong flock. The wool of the remainder turned an oily black.
“When it started, we washed them and they came back to this dark color immediately,” said Hamid Achman, 40, a former policeman turned shepherd after his brother, also a policeman, was killed by Islamic State.
ISIS using online recruiters for German prospects
Reuters) Islamic State is using “headhunters” on social media and instant messaging sites to recruit disaffected young people in Germany, some as young as 13 or 14, the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency said on Thursday.
Hans-Georg Maassen also drew parallels between the militant Islamist group and past radical movements such as communism and Adolf Hitler’s Nationalist Socialists which also tried to lure young people keen to rebel against their parents and society.
“On social media networks there are practically headhunters who approach young people and get them interested in this (Islamist) ideology,” Maassen told foreign reporters in Berlin.
Maassen cited the case of a teenage German-Moroccan girl identified as Safia S., who is accused of stabbing a policeman at a train station in Hanover last February, and a 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy who tried to detonate two explosive devices in the western town of Ludwigshafen in December.
About 20 percent of an estimated 900 people from Germany who have been recruited by Islamic State to join the fight in Iraq and Syria are women, some as young as 13 or 14, he said.
German authorities are monitoring 548 Islamists deemed to be a security risk, but German law does not allow for their arrest until they have committed a crime, Maassen said.
He said he was satisfied that police and security officials had communicated well over the case of the failed Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri, who killed 12 people on Dec. 19 by ramming a truck through a Berlin Christmas market.
The case sparked criticism because German authorities had identified Amri, who was imprisoned in Italy for four years, as a security risk and had investigated him for various reasons, but he was never taken into custody.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Wednesday the cases of all those deemed a security risk in the aftermath of the Berlin attack would be reviewed.
Maassen said European intelligence agencies were also seeing the radicalization of other segments of society through social media, with growing numbers of people who were not previously politically active attracted to far-right groups.
Such people had their views reinforced in so-called “echo chambers” on the Internet, Maassen said.
“We’ve seen this with Islamic State, but now we’re seeing this with so-called ‘good citizens’ who are being radicalized, and we worry that this radicalization could be transformed into a willingness to commit violent acts,” Maassen said.
Support for far-right groups has grown in Germany following the arrival of more than a million migrants and asylum seekers over the past two years, many of them young Muslim men fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
ISIS troops fight each other over food
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) One Islamic State militant was killed and two others were injured in western Mosul as the trio fought over a foodstuff load, yet another indication of growing divisions within the group as it loses more ground to Iraqi government forces.
A local source told Alsumaria News on Thursday that the trio had a heated argument over the handling of an amount of foodstuff at the centre of the town of Tal Afar.
The source added that the argument grew fiercer and developed into an armed fight which left one member killed and two others wounded. He said disputes have flared among IS members as conditions in the town grow more difficult amid ammunition and food shortages. The situation is even harder for civilians who are enduring a scarcity of food supplies, some of which the extremist group offers for expensive prices to secure more finances.
Iraqi government forces, backed by a U.S.-led international military coalition and popular militias are preparing for a new phase of operations to retake Mosul from IS militants. Since their launch in October 2016, operations have managed to retake almost all of districts in the east of the city. Islamic State still controls a majority of territory in the west.
The group has reportedly sustained severe personnel losses and ceded more space to advancing government forces since a second phase of operations began late December. Reports of serious rifts within the group’s ranks have become common since then.
ISIS abduct 150 kidz to use as cannon fodder
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Member of State of Law Coalition Nahla al-Hababi announced on Thursday, that the Islamic State group is forcibly recruiting children, after its defeat in the battle against security forces from army, police, al-Hashd al-Shaabi and tribal fighters.
In a press statement, Hababi said, “The Islamic State group abducted 150 children from Tal Afar, and forcibly recruited them in the so-called ‘Cubs of Caliphate’.”
“The Islamic State is training children that were abducted from Tel Afar, Yazidi families and Mosul’s families to kill civilians and security members using booby-trapped vehicles and explosive belts,” Hababi added.
“The government and United Nations should prepare a rehabilitation program for these children,” she explained.
Hababi also emphasized the importance of the presence of rehabilitation centers and specialized psychiatrists to help these children.
7 die in roadside bombing in Kirkuk
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) Seven civilians were killed and eight others were wounded when a roadside bomb killed them in Salahuddin’s northern mountainous region of Hamreen, a security source has said.
The source told Alsumaria News that the group was fleeing Islamic State stronghold town of Hawija, Kirkuk.
Islamic State militants, having taken control over several Iraqi cities in 2014 to proclaim a so-called “Islamic Caliphate”, have deliberately targeted civilians who attempted to escape the group’s domains, according to aid groups and news reports.
Kirkuk’s Hawija is one of the few remaining IS pockets in Iraq, and the group has been sustaining serious losses in Mosul, its biggest bastion in Iraq, since security forces, backed by an international military coalition and popular militias, launched a wide-scale operations last October to retake the city.
Since the start of operations in Mosul, at least 178.000 civilians fled their hometowns in Mosul and Kirkuk, according to the |raqi displacement ministry, and the United Nations estimates that military operations against the extremist group could force at least one million out of their homes.
The UN had estimated more than 3 million people internally displaced in Iraq, and news reports have shed light on food and medicine shortages at refugee camps.
ISIS executes 12 in Palmyra
(Reuters) Islamic State militants put at least 12 people to death in execution-style killings in the ancient city of Palmyra, which they re-captured from the government for a second time in December, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday.
The jihadist group beheaded four of the people – state employees and teachers – outside a museum, the group said. The eight others – four of them government soldiers and four of them rebel fighters captured elsewhere in Syria – were shot.
Some of the killings took place at an ancient Roman theater in Palmyra, where Islamic State last year put at least 25 government fighters to death, the Observatory said.
Islamic State captured Palmyra for a second time from the government in December. Government forces and their militia allies, backed by Russian air power, took the city back from Islamic State in March, after first losing it in 2015. |
The Afghan Taliban will hunt down and punish anyone who takes part in next month's national assembly, where the possibility of long-term US military bases in Afghanistan will be discussed, the group warned in a statement on Wednesday.