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Groundwork laid to defeat ISIS in Palmyra, Syria – Russian military

March 18, 2016

Groundwork laid to defeat ISIS in Palmyra, Syria –

Russian military

Published time: 18 Mar, 2016 15:09 Edited time: 18 Mar, 2016 16:10

Source: Groundwork laid to defeat ISIS in Palmyra, Syria – Russian military — RT News

© Mikhail Voskresenskiy / Sputnik

All conditions are in place to surround and defeat Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL) in Palmyra, Syria, Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the main operations department of the Russian General Staff, told reporters.

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“Everything necessary has been provided for the encirclement and definitive defeat of IS armed groups in Palmyra,” Rudskoy said, adding that the Syrian Army had already taken control over all dominant heights and major roads around the city. The terrorists’ logistical support has also been cut off.

The Syrian army and patriotic opposition fighters, backed by the Russian Air Force, are conducting a large-scale operation to liberate the city.

The Russian Air Force make an average of 20-25 sorties per day lending support to the operation aimed at liberating Palmyra, the spokesman said, stressing that Russia will continue to carry out airstrikes targeting IS and Al Nusra Front in Syria.

Last week, Syrian government forces and people’s militia groups backed by Russian airstrikes managed to come close to the city. On Thursday, they reportedly entered the Palmyra museum complex.

Russia is withdrawing most of its forces from Syria and ending its five-month anti-terror operation launched on September 30, 2015. The decision was taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 14, who said that the operation’s objectives have been largely achieved.

Russia’s backing allowed Syrian forces to free 400 populated areas and over 10,000 square kilometers [3,860 square miles], Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said when he reported to Putin on March 14, adding that terrorists had been forced out of Latakia and Aleppo provinces while Palmyra was “blocked.”

Russia also continues to monitor observance of the ceasefire with more than 70 drones.

On Thursday, Putin said Russia could deploy its forces back to Syria in a matter of hours in necessary, although he stressed that Moscow would not want to see such a development.

The Russian Defense Ministry reiterated there had been a sustained decrease in the number of ceasefire violations adding that Russia’s ceasefire monitoring center recorded only five such cases over the last 24 hours in comparison to “dozens of violations” recorded earlier.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: IS, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Middle East War, Putin, Russia, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey

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ISIS Massacre of Christians Not “Genocide,” Obama Administration Insists

March 17, 2016

ISIS Massacre of Christians Not “Genocide,” Obama Administration Insists

by Raymond Ibrahim March 17, 2016 at 4:30 am

Source: ISIS Massacre of Christians Not “Genocide,” Obama Administration Insists

According to the Obama administration, the Islamic State is committing genocide against certain religious minority groups — excluding Christian minorities. But ISIS is on record saying that its eradication of Christians is due to their religious identity.
The Obama administration’s rejection of the word “genocide” fits a familiar pattern.
When asked about the plight of Christians under ISIS, Colonel Steve Warren said “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”
Although Christians number 10% of Syria’s population, only 2% of refugees accepted into the U.S. from there are Christian. (The majority — almost 98% — are Sunni Muslims, the same sect to which ISIS belongs and thus are not persecuted.)

According to the Obama administration, the Islamic State is committing genocide against certain religious minority groups — excluding Christian minorities. During a February 29 press briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked: “Is the Islamic State carrying out a campaign of genocide against Syria’s Christians?” He replied:

Well, we have long expressed our concerns with the tendency of — well, not a tendency — a tactic employed by ISIL to slaughter religious minorities in Iraq and in Syria. You’ll recall at the very beginning of the military campaign against ISIL that some of the first actions that were ordered by President Obama, by the United States military, were to protect Yazidi religious minorities that were essentially cornered on Mt. Sinjar by ISIL fighters. We took those strikes to clear a path so that those religious minorities could be rescued.

Due to the obvious equivocation — it is unclear how Obama’s efforts “to protect Yazidi religious minorities” answers a question about persecuted Christians — the question was repeated: “But you’re not prepared to use the word ‘genocide’ yet in the situation [regarding Christians]?”

Earnest’s response:

My understanding is the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached.

What is this “very specific legal determination” that encompasses Yazidis but excludes Christians? The Islamic State’s treatment of Christians would seem to fit under the UN’s definition of “genocide“:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;…

ISIS is guilty of “killing members of the [Christian] group” and causing them “serious bodily or mental harm.” Although two separate videotaped mass executions (one of 21 Egyptian Christians and another of 30 Ethiopian Christians) were reported by the mainstream media, accounts of torture, rape, mutilation, crucifixion, and massacres of Christians are regularly reported on Arabic and alternate media.

The Islamic State has also been responsible for “deliberately inflicting on the group [Christians] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” ISIS has placed these “conditions of life” — more literally known in Islamic doctrine as the “Conditions of Omar” — on Christians. They included a number of humiliations and debilitations — from the suppression of Christian worship to the extortion of money (jizya) — a “protection” tax designed to “encourage” Christians to convert to Islam or flee.

ISIS seems further committed to expunging all physical traces of Christianity in the areas it conquers. It has demolished dozens of ancient churches; at least 400 churches in Syria have been destroyed since the war, as well as countless statues and crucifixes. ISIS has also desecrated Christian cemeteries and ordered the University of Mosul to burn all books written by Christians and decreed that all schools in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain that bore Christian names (some since the 1700s) be changed.

Then there are the numbers. In Iraq, Christians, who totaled 1.4 million in 2003, are now down to about 300,000. In Syria, Christians, who totaled 1.25 million in 2011, are now down to about 500,000.

The Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Ephrem in Mosul, Iraq, before it was captured by the Islamic State (left), and after.

Finally, ISIS is on record saying that its eradication of Christians is due to their religious identity.

Due to all these indicators, many groups and rights activists believe that ISIS’s treatment of Christians “fits the definition of ethnic cleansing,” in the words of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. A European Parliament resolution adopted in April 2015 stated that “Christians are the most persecuted religious group. … according to data the number of Christians killed every year is more than 150,000.”

Even so, the Obama administration’s rejection of the word “genocide” fits a familiar pattern:

When asked about the plight of Christians under ISIS, Colonel Steve Warren said “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”
Although Christians number 10% of Syria’s population, only 2% of refugees accepted into the U.S. from there are Christian. (The majority of refugees — almost 98% — are Sunni Muslims, the same sect to which ISIS belongs and thus are not persecuted.)
When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has repeatedly denied visas to solitary Christian representatives.
When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the war zone.
When persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution of 2013, the Obama administration, in the person of Ambassador Anne Patterson, counseled them not to.
When persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians asked for arms to join the opposition fighting ISIS, D.C. refused.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War in Christians (a Gatestone Publication, published by Regnery, April 2013), is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Foreign Policy, Genocide, Isis, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Middle East, Middle East War, Obama, Terrorism, USA

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Rivlin Tells Putin Iran Must Stay Off Syrian – Israeli Border

March 17, 2016

Rivlin Tells Putin Iran Must Stay Off Syrian – Israeli Border

By: David Israel Published: March 17th, 2016

Source: The Jewish Press » » Rivlin Tells Putin Iran Must Stay Off Syrian – Israeli Border

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin (L) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo by Mark Neyman/GPO

Israeli Presidents very rarely find themselves in a position to decide policy or negotiate with foreign powers — their role as heads of state is similar to that of the British monarchs, a symbol of government rather than the real thing. But on Wednesday President Reuven Rivlin found himself in the unexpected position of delivering a critical message to the leader of the second largest world power, President Vladimir Putin, and charting the start of a new relationship between Israel and Russia over Syria.

As the world discovered on Monday this week, President Putin announced that the war in Syria had been won and he was pulling the bulk of the Russian military contingency from the battlefield. It was a brilliant move on the part of the Russian leader, whose main achievement since the start of his involvement in Syria had been to wipe out the Western- and Saudi-funded rebels, leaving President Bashar al-Assad as the only viable alternative to the ISIS hordes. He outmaneuvered President Obama by several steps, and left Middle East leaders gasping with astonishment. This included Israel’s leadership. In fact, the original message President Rivlin was asked to deliver to Putin on his pre-scheduled state Visit Wednesday, was a call to coordinate the activities of the IDF and the Russian army in the Syrian Golan heights, along Israel’s north-eastern border.

On Monday night that message had to be scrapped and a completely new policy had to be charted on the spot, in advance of the Wednesday meeting in the Kremlin. “I felt that I was thrown into battle as the envoy of the prime minister, the defense minister and the chief of staff,” Rivlin related. His mission, outlined in a hurry on Monday night, was to draw Israel’s lines in the sand as far as the post-Russian Syrian arena was concerned.

In the end, those lines in the sand were not so hard to figure out, and Rivlin delivered the message succinctly: there will be no entry of Iranian forces into the Syrian Golan heights; there will be no transfer of advanced Russian weapons and technology into the hands of Hezbollah; there will be no Israeli retreat from the Golan heights. Those are the issues over which Israel, if pushed, would go to war.

According to reports in Israel’s media, Putin’s response was friendly and understanding — at least on the surface. He repeated his commitment to Israel’s security, if only, he joked, because so many Russians live and visit there. Putin then inquired about the steps Israel is prepared to take to advance peace with the Palestinian Arabs and President Rivlin responded with the list of efforts and gestures Israel has made since 1993 to reach peace, and promised that—short of national suicide—Israel would continue to try everything in its power to reach peace.

There will be a meeting between Putin and Prime Minister Netanyahu soon, but until then, over in Jerusalem, they appreciated Rivlin’s unscheduled relief pitching.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Anti Semitism, IDF, Iran, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Israel, Middle East, Middle East War, Putin, Reuven Rivlin, Russia, Syria, Terrorism, Vladimir Putin

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France: Jihad Infecting Army, Police

March 16, 2016

France: Jihad Infecting Army, Police

by Yves Mamou

March 16, 2016 at 4:00 am

Source: France: Jihad Infecting Army, Police

Some police officers have openly refused to protect synagogues or to observe a minute of silence to commemorate the deaths of victims of terrorist attacks.
That police officers are armed and have access to police databases only intensifies anxiety.
In July 2015, four men, one of whom is a Navy veteran, were called in for questioning. They had planned to penetrate a Navy base in the south of France, seize a high-ranking officer, decapitate him, and then spread photos of the decapitation on social media networks.

According to a confidential memo, dated January 2015, from the anti-terrorist unit of the French interior ministry, France is already host to 8,250 radical Islamists (a 50% increase in one year).

Some of these Islamists have gone to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS); others have infiltrated all levels of society, starting with the police and the armed forces.

A leaked confidential memo from the Department of Public Security, published by Le Parisien, details 17 cases of police officers radicalized between 2012 and 2015. Particularly noted were the police officers who listen to and broadcast Muslim chants while on patrol.

Some of these police officers have openly refused to protect synagogues or to observe a minute of silence to commemorate the deaths of victims of terrorist attacks.

In addition, the police were alerted to a policewoman who incited terrorism on Facebook, and called her police uniform a “filthy rag of the Republic” while wiping her hands on it. In January 2015, immediately after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Vincennes, which had left 17 people dead, she wrote on her Facebook page: “Masked attack led by Zionist cowards… They need to be killed.”

That police officers are armed and have access to police databases only intensifies anxiety.

Although police headquarters in Paris claims that these cases are rare, they have decided to review on a weekly basis any behavior that oversteps the principle of separation of church and state, such as that of Muslim officers who appear to be leaning toward radicalization. Patrice Latron, who manages the office of the Paris police prefect, told Le Parisien that these phenomena are “very marginal.”

The police are not the only ones who are anxious; the French military is concerned as well. There are no statistics for the number of Muslim soldiers in the French armed forces, but it is commonly thought that there are many, and that they are vulnerable to Islamist influences, given that France in engaged militarily in Africa, against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and against the Islamic State in the Middle East. Since the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, however, France’s largest military operation has been on national soil: 10,000 armed soldiers are now deployed in France to protect synagogues, Jewish schools, train and subway stations, and also some mosques — to show Muslims that the French Republic does not see them as enemies. Their mission is no longer to be simply a complementary force but, as Le Figaro explained, to “deploy, on a permanent basis, interior military operations.”

As early as 2013, during the fifth national security parliamentary conference, Colonel Pascal Rolez, adjunct to the assistant director of the counter-intervention unit of the Defense Security Protection Department (DPSD), declared, “We are witnessing an increase in radicalization among the French military, notably since the Merah affair.” Recall that Mohammed Merah, a young French Muslim, murdered three French soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban, as well as murdering four French Jews at a school in Toulouse.

In 2012, Mohammed Merah, a French Muslim, murdered three French soldiers, as well as four French Jews at a school. Today, with many cases of French Muslim soldiers and police becoming radicalized, the security services worry about the risk of “having agents of security forces attack their colleagues.”

In order to identify members of the armed forces who are being radicalized, the DPSD takes into account changes in dress, recurrent sick leave, travel, or theft of supplies or materiel.

Since the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in Paris, the media have noted several indications of radicalization in the French army.

On January 21, 2015, the radio station RFI announced that about 10 French soldiers deserted and joined the Jihadist fight in Syria and Iraq. Jean-Yves Le Drian, Defense Minister, has confirmed this, although with the caveat that these are “extremely rare” cases. Apparently, one of these veterans holds the position of “emir” in Deir Ezzor in Syria, and leads a group of around 10 French combatants whom he has personally trained. The other French deserters are explosives experts or paratroopers; some come from commando units in the French Foreign Legion.

Also in January 2015, after the Paris attacks, police discovered that “Emmanuelle C,” a 35-year-old female gendarmerie (paramilitary national police) adjunct, had converted to Islam in 2011, and had a relationship with Amar Ramdani, who was wanted for weapons and drug trafficking. Ramdani is a confederate of Amedy Coulibaly, who perpetrated the murderous Montrouge and Hypercacher attacks in Paris. Ramdani had been observed by the police department’s intelligence division (DRPP) in the “public” area of the fort in Rosny-Sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis). This fort houses the gendarmerie’s scientific branch. As for Emmanuelle C, she was accused of having committed more than 60 security breaches of the suspect persons’ file (FPR). She was sentenced to one year of probation and expelled from the gendarmerie.

In July 2015, the press revealed that approximately 180 detonators and 10 bricks of plastic explosives had been stolen from an army depot near Marseille. The investigators naturally suspected internal complicity, as the perpetrators had seemed to be well informed. They are following two possibilities, Islamic terrorism or grand theft; the investigation continues.

On July 16, 2015, President François Hollande revealed that an attack on a French military base had been foiled. Three days earlier, four men, one of whom was a Navy veteran, were arrested. They confessed that they had planned to infiltrate a Navy base in the south of France, seize a high-ranking officer, decapitate him and spread photos of the decapitation on social media.

On March 6, 2016, a “radicalized” military veteran, Manuel Broustail, was arrested while getting off a plane in Morocco. According to the French newspaper, Presse Ocean, Broustail was carrying in his suitcase a machete, four kitchen knives, two pocket knives, a retractable baton, a black hood, and a gas canister. A French military veteran and convert to Islam, Broustail had previously been placed under long-term house arrest in Angers (Maine-et-Loire), days after the horrific attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were murdered. Discharged from the army in 2014, he had been under surveillance by French security agencies. The media seem concerned that such a person, carrying such weapons, could walk through airport security controls, board a plane and leave the country.

According to Thibaut de Montbrial, a terrorism specialist and president of the Center for Internal Security Studies, the risk is,

“having agents of security forces attack their colleagues. Someone in uniform attacks another person, wearing the same uniform. In France, such a scenario is not impossible. Security forces must keep this risk in mind.”

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: France: Jihad Infecting Army, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Police, Terrorism

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Palestinians: Laughing Their Heads Off

March 14, 2016

Palestinians: Laughing Their Heads Off

by Khaled Abu Toameh

March 14, 2016 at 5:00 am

Source: Palestinians: Laughing Their Heads Off

As in any comedy, there is a clown, and Biden was played for a fool by a Palestinian Authority leadership that finds that it pays to point its finger at Israel.
Here is a dirty little secret: the Palestinian attackers were not driven to murder Jews because of “settlements” and “checkpoints.”
Check their Facebook accounts: what fueled their hatred were the lies they had been fed for the past few years by President Abbas and other Palestinian leaders. Palestinian media outlets and spokesmen vomit poison against Israel.
And so the curtain rises on another act of the ceremonial, make-believe theater of the Middle East. In Abbas’s sneaky script, it is about settlements. In reality, it is about the refusal of the Americans to read, speak or even translate Arabic.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Ramallah last week, and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his top officials are laughing their heads off.

Why not laugh? Biden arrived in the region hoping to persuade the Palestinian leaders to issue a “condemnation” of the reign of terror, which they continue to describe as a “popular and peaceful uprising.” This in itself reeks of gallows humor.

But what Biden got was even funnier, from the point of view of Abbas and his friends.

The Palestinian president offered “condolences” over the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jaffa the previous day: “The President [Abbas] offered his condolences over the killing of the US citizen, while stressing at the same time that the occupation authorities have killed 200 Palestinians over the past five months,” according to a statement released by the PA leadership in Ramallah.

Abbas’s crocodile tears were shed for Taylor Force, a West Point graduate from Texas who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian during a rampage on the Jaffa beachfront promenade. Abbas is doubtless also upset because Israel has killed Palestinian stabbers and shooters.

Just before Biden arrived in Ramallah, Abbas’s Fatah faction praised the murderer of Force, calling him a “martyr.” But Fatah was quick to delete the posts to avoid embarrassing the Palestinian leadership during Biden’s visit.

It seems that the murder of an American visitor is condemnable, but the murder of some 34 Israelis since last October, including a pregnant woman and civilians, is somewhat less so.

Where was the condemnation of the wounding of nine Israelis in the attack that killed Taylor Force? Where was the condemnation of the attacks the took place on that very day in Jerusalem and Petah Tikva?

But Abbas explained everything to Biden: Israel was in fact fully responsible for the “violence and bloodshed” because of the “occupation” and “settlements.”

Here is a dirty little secret: the Palestinian attackers were not driven to murder Jews because of “settlements” and “checkpoints.”

Check their Facebook accounts: what fueled their hatred were the lies they had been fed for the past few years by President Abbas and other Palestinian leaders, concerning Jews “desecrating” Islamic holy sites and plotting to destroy them. No checkpoint snags, no settlement issues, no protests against construction of new apartments in Jerusalem for Jewish families.

Many of these Palestinians went for Israeli blood because they have been taught — by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other Palestinian groups — to hate Israel. And they do not give a damn whether that Jew lives in Jaffa or in the West Bank. They also do not give a damn if some of their victims are Arabs.

Yet the comedy continues. Biden is reported to have urged Abbas and the Palestinian leadership to stop the anti-Israel incitement in their official media and on social media. Abbas vehemently denied that this incitement was taking place, and indeed, explained that the US leader had gotten things mixed up entirely: it was Israel that was guilty of incitement against the Palestinians.

While Abbas was busy offering his condolences for the killing of the U.S. citizen, his ruling Fatah faction was busy glorifying Palestinian assailants who killed Israelis.

In one instance, Fatah published an announcement inviting Palestinians to mark the 38th anniversary of the “martyrdom” of Dalal Al-Mughrabi.

Al-Mughrabi was a Fatah member who participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel, in which 38 civilians were killed, including 13 children.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on March 10, hoping to persuade Abbas to issue a “condemnation” of the wave of terror attacks against Israelis. The next day, Abbas’s Fatah party invited Palestinians to commemorate the 38th anniversary of the “martyrdom” of Dalal Al-Mughrabi. Al-Mughrabi was a Fatah member who participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel, in which 38 civilians were killed, including 13 children.

The condolence message was also long enough for Fatah to praise Palestinian assailants, including Abdel Malek Abu Kharoub, who carried out a recent shooting attack in Jerusalem. In a post on its official Facebook account, Fatah hailed Abu Kharoub as a “hero and martyr.”

Of course neither Biden nor any of his advisors and aides saw these posts. They prefer to continue burying their heads in the sand and pretending that once the “peace process” is revived, everything will be fine.

So it is business as usual for Abbas and crew. As in any comedy, there is a clown, and Biden was played for a fool by a PA leadership that finds that it pays to point its finger at Israel.

In Arabic, a language in which Western leaders are perhaps not fluent, Palestinian media outlets and spokesmen vomit poison against Israel. Condemnation of attacks on Israelis would be rather unlikely in such a drama.

And so the curtain rises on another act of the ceremonial, make-believe theater of the Middle East. In Abbas’s sneaky script, it is about settlements. In reality, it is about the refusal of the Americans to read, speak or even translate Arabic.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Anti Semitism, Biden, Fatah, Hamas, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Israel, Kerry, Mahmoud Abbas, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Terrorism, USA

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Tanks for nothing! US-backed Syrian rebel division attacked & looted by Al-Qaeda affiliate

March 14, 2016

Tanks for nothing! US-backed Syrian rebel division attacked & looted by Al-Qaeda affiliate

Published time: 14 Mar, 2016 05:52

Source: Tanks for nothing! US-backed Syrian rebel division attacked & looted by Al-Qaeda affiliate — RT News

An Islamist Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra fighter © Hamid Khatib

In what could be one of the worst failures of the Pentagon’s program to arm Syrian rebels, several bases with American weapons, armored vehicles and US-trained fighters were captured by Al-Nusra Front. The jihadists and “moderate rebels” are blaming each other for the attack.

READ MORE: ‘Truce hasn’t changed anything, terrorists intensified attacks’ – Aleppo residents to RT

Division 13 of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which had received both US weapons and training, on Sunday said it was attacked by Al-Nusra Front militants – radical Islamist fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The jihadists looted the FSA group’s depots in the town of Maarrat Al-Nuuman in Syria’s Idlib province.

Read more

Though it has widely been reported that weapons and dozens of Division 13 fighters have been captured, there are conflicting accounts of how much the jihadists could actually carry. Some media reports claimed that the haul included US-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles, firearms and ammunition, and unspecified armored vehicles, including a tank. The rebel group’s chief has denied they have lost anti-tank missiles, telling AFP that only “light weapons” have been taken.

Moreover, up to 40 Division 13 fighters have been taken hostage and four killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said, though the remote “sources on the ground” routinely cited by the UK-based organization are often hard to verify.

Adding to the rebel group’s dismay, Al-Nusra was also the first to release an online statement – blaming Division 13 for provoking the attack. In turn, the rebels denied attacking Al-Nusra and accused them of an unexpected armed assault on a checkpoint, set up at the request of the local population.

The reason reportedly given by the US-backed group as to why they couldn’t have attacked the Islamists? Too weak for the job.

The feud between the militant factions, once close allies in fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, has been brewing for some time, according to AP. Al-Nusra has recently suppressed demonstrations and arrested protesters in the city of Idlib, and reportedly replaced the tricolor of the Syrian rebels with the black Al-Qaeda flag there.

On Friday, in Maaret al-Numan, motorcyclists waving the black flag of Al-Nusra threatened to fire on a protest, shouting “Allahu akbar” or “God is greatest.”

Read more

Interestingly, Al-Nusra has a history of looting US-backed opposition forces: last summer, jihadists kidnapped members of the US-trained Division 30, while in September a whole stock of US-supplied weapons and hardware was captured.

The Pentagon’s failed rebel-training program was canceled in October, after dozens of US-trained rebels abandoned Division 30 and handed the weapons they had been supplied to Al-Nusra upon crossing from Turkey into Syria.

However, the head of US Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, proposed to restart training for Syria’s so-called “moderate” rebels.

A month later, the US State Department admitted that some of the “moderates” had been successfully recruited by Al-Nusra in Syria.

READ MORE: ‘US created monster of al-Qaeda, yet believes Iran supported 9/11 terrorists’ (OP-ED)

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Middle East, Middle East War, Obama, Pentagon, Russia, Syria, Tanks for nothing, Terrorism, Turkey, USA

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Islamic Jihad calls for mass murder of Jews

March 13, 2016

Islamic Jihad calls for mass murder of Jews ‘inside their towns’ Islamic Jihad chief Ahmed al-Modallal leads mass demonstration, calls for more terrorist infiltrations.

By Dalit Halevi

First Publish: 3/13/2016, 12:22 PM

Source: Islamic Jihad calls for mass murder of Jews – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva

Islamic Jihad terrorists during Gaza “victory” parade

Flash 90

A senior Islamic Jihad official called upon followers to carry out mass murder of Jews “inside their settlements”, during a mass demonstration the group held on Friday.

The Islamic terror group, which killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting attacks across the country, is now pushing for a new wave of attacks.

Ahmed al-Modallal spoke at the rally, rejected condemnations by the United States and European Union, saying that “The Americans and Europeans won’t stop this intifada, which will continue to strike at the heart of the occupation”.

Al-Modallal called upon the Islamic faithful in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to organize mass attacks “in the heart of [Israeli] settlements”.

“We call on our people in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to send out groups to block the Occupation’s roads and settlers, and to strike at the settlements with thousands [of terrorists]; let the arms of the Mujahedeen strike at the heart of the settlers, so that these criminals will know they will never be safe on Palestinian land.”

In the past few weeks terrorists have attempted on numerous occasions to target Jewish families in their homes in the Samaria region, marking a relatively new tactic in the ongoing wave of terrorism.

In one case, a father fought off two terrorists who attempted to slaughter his wife and children inside his home in the town of Eli. Other infiltrations have been thwarted in Yitzhar and Kedumim.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Anti Semitism, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jews, Terrorism

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Breaking news : Al Qaeda gunmen kill 16 in Ivory Coast beach attack

March 13, 2016

Al Qaeda gunmen kill 16 in Ivory Coast beach attack GRAND BASSAM, Ivory Coast

By Ange Aboa and Joe Penney

Sun Mar 13, 2016 3:55pm EDT

Source: Al Qaeda gunmen kill 16 in Ivory Coast beach attack | Reuters

Soldiers stand guard in front of the Etoile du Sud hotel in Bassam, Ivory Coast, March 13, 2016.

Reuters/Luc Gnago

Gunmen from the North African branch of Al Qaeda killed 16 people, including four Europeans, at a beach resort town in Ivory Coast on Sunday, the latest in a string of deadly attacks across West Africa.

Six shooters targeted hotels on a beach at Grand Bassam, a weekend retreat popular with westerners about 40 km (25 miles) east of the commercial capital Abidjan, before being killed in clashes with Ivorian special forces.

“Six attackers came onto the beach in Bassam this afternoon,” said Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara during a visit to the site. “We have 14 civilians and two special forces soldiers who were unfortunately killed.”

A French man was killed in the attack, according to a French foreign ministry spokesman. The nationalities of the other dead was not yet known, but four were European, one officer said during a briefing attended by a Reuters reporter.

The reporter saw the bodies of three white people at Grand Bassam’s Chelsea Hotel and another in the Hotel Etoile du Sud next door.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson, who declined to be further identified, said the department was not aware of any U.S. citizen being injured or killed in the attack “at this time.”

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has carried out other recent attacks in the region, claimed responsibility for Sunday’s shootings, according to the U.S.-based SITE intelligence monitoring group, citing an AQIM statement.

Gunmen all dressed in black opened fire around lunchtime while people were eating and drinking at the beachside bars and restaurants or swimming in the ocean.

“I saw seven dead that I filmed. There were four attackers,” said Dramane Kima, who showed the video of the bodies to Reuters.

He also took pictures of grenades and ammunition clips that he believed had been left behind by the attackers.

Security forces moved to evacuate the area surrounding the beach. Bullet holes riddled vehicles nearby and some windows had been shot out.

“They started shooting and everyone just started running. There were women and children running and hiding,” said another witness, Marie Bassole. “It started on the beach. Whoever they saw, they shot at.”

GROWING THREAT

Barely two months ago, Islamist fighters killed dozens of people in a hotel and cafe frequented by foreigners in neighboring Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. Gunmen also attacked a hotel in the Malian capital Bamako late last year.

Both of those attacks were claimed by AQIM, raising concern that Islamist militants were extending their reach beyond their traditional zones of operation in the Sahara and arid Sahel region.

Though previously untouched by Islamist violence, Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy and the world’s top cocoa producer, has long been considered a target for militants. It has been on high alert since the Ouagadougou attacks.

French President Francois Hollande on Sunday pledged support, denouncing Sunday’s shootings as a “cowardly attack”.

“France will bring its logistical support and intelligence to Ivory Coast to find the attackers. It will pursue and intensify its cooperation with its partners in the fight against terrorism,” Hollande said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Joe Bavier, Writing by Edward McAllister, Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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VIDEO: Jihadis SHOOT Westerners at Popular Ivory Coast Beach Resorts Shout ALLAHU AKBAR, Women, Children SHOT DEAD

ByPamela Gelleron March 13, 2016

http://pamelageller.com/2016/03/islamic-terror-video-jihadis-shooting-westerners-at-ivory-coast-beach-resorts-popular-men-women-children-shot-dead.html/

Video :

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Al Qaeda, GRAND BASSAM, Islam, Islamic invasion, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Ivory Coast, Terrorism

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Islamic State Closing in on Germany

March 13, 2016

Islamic State Closing in on Germany Stabbing Is First ISIS-Inspired Attack on German Soil

by Soeren Kern March 13, 2016 at 5:00 am

Source: Islamic State Closing in on Germany

Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
“Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.
Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

The incident occurred at the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26, when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a six-centimeter kitchen knife.

According to police, the attack happened so quickly that the 34-year-old officer, who was rushed to the hospital, was unable to defend himself. After her arrest, police found that Safia was also carrying a second, larger knife.

“The perpetrator did not display any emotion,” a police spokesperson said. “Her only concern was for her headscarf. She was concerned that her headscarf be put back on properly after she was arrested. Whether the police officer survived, she did not care.”

On March 3, Hanover Public Prosecutor Thomas Klinge revealed that Safia had travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015 to join the Islamic State, but that her mother had persuaded her to return to Germany on January 28.

Last month, Safia S., a 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent, stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover, in what appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

According to police, the stabbing was premeditated: unable to join the Islamic State in Syria, Safia had determined to carry out an attack against the police in Germany.

Safia is being charged with attempted murder. She is also being charged with a terrorism offense. According to prosecutors, by travelling to Turkey to join the Islamic State, the girl violated Section 89a of the German Criminal Code, “Preparation of a serious violent offense endangering the state.”

The newspaper, Die Welt, reported that Safia had been part of the local Salafist scene since 2008 — she was only seven years old at the time. She had appeared in Islamist propaganda videos alongside Pierre Vogel, a convert to Islam and one of the best-known Salafist preachers in Germany. In those videos, Vogel praised Safia for wearing a headscarf to school and for being able to recite verses from the Koran.

Safia’s brother, Saleh, is reportedly being held in a jail in Turkey, where he was arrested for trying to join the Islamic State.

Until now, the only other successful Islamist attack in Germany took place at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011, when Arid Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, shot and killed two United States airmen and seriously wounded two others. Uka was later sentenced to life in prison.

On February 4, 2016, German police arrested four members of an ISIS cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in Berlin. In coordinated raids, more than 450 police searched homes and businesses linked to the cell in Berlin, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee shelter with his wife and two children in Attendorn — arrived in Germany in the fall of 2015. Posing as an asylum seeker from Syria, the Algerian, identified only as Farid A., is said to have received military training with the Islamic State in Syria.

Also arrested were: a 49-year-old Algerian living in Berlin under a fake French identity; a 30-year-old Algerian living in Berlin with a valid residence permit; and a 26-year-old Algerian, allegedly with ties to Islamists in Belgium, who is living in a refugee shelter in Hanover.

The men allegedly were planning to attack Checkpoint Charlie, the iconic Cold War crossing point between East and West Berlin. They also allegedly were planning to attack the Alexanderplatz, a large public square and transportation hub in the center of Berlin.

On February 8, German police arrested an alleged ISIS commander who was living at a refugee shelter in the small town of Sankt Johann. The 32-year-old jihadist, known only as Bassam and posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, had entered Germany in the fall of 2015. German intelligence authorities were unaware of the man’s true identity until the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, interviewed him after receiving a tip from other Syrians at the shelter. Bassam said the accusations against him are false: “I want to learn German and work as a cook,” he said.

In a February 5 interview with ZDF television, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe. “The terror risk is very high,” he said.

On February 4, the Berliner Zeitung quoted Maaßen as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 warnings that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently living in Germany. Some of the jihadists are known to have entered Germany using fake or stolen passports.

Maaßen also revealed that the BfV knows of 230 attempts by Salafists to canvass German refugee shelters in search of new recruits. In a recent interview with the Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, Maaßen said that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014; 5,500 in 2013; 4,500 in 2012, and 3,800 in 2011.

Although Salafists make up only a small fraction of the estimated six million Muslims living in Germany today, intelligence officials warn that most of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young Muslims who, at a moment’s notice, are willing to carry out terrorist acts in the name of Islam.

In an annual report, the BfV described Salafism as the “most dynamic Islamist movement in Germany.” It added:

“The absolutist nature of Salafism contradicts significant parts of the German constitutional order. Specifically, Salafism rejects the democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality and the fundamental right to physical integrity.”

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Maaßen warned: “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.”

On February 16, more than 200 German police raided the homes of 44 Salafists in the northern city state of Bremen. The Interior Minister of Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said he had ordered the closure of the Islamic Association of Bremen (Islamischen Fördervereins Bremen) for the alleged recruiting of jihadists for the Islamic State:

“It is rather apocalyptic that we have people living in the middle of our city who are prepared, from one day to the next, to participate massively in the terror of the Islamic State.”

In December 2014, authorities in Bremen shut down another Salafist group, the Culture and Family Association (Kultur- und Familieverein, KUF), after some of its members joined the Islamic State.

More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to Die Welt, based on the most recent data compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. Around 130 others have been killed on the battlefield, including at least a dozen suicide bombers.

In a February 19 interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, the head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said that up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. He added that further jihadist attacks in Europe were to be expected:

“Europe is now facing the greatest terrorist threat in more than ten years. We expect that ISIS or other Islamist groups will carry out an attack somewhere in Europe, with the aim of achieving high losses among the civilian population. In addition, there is the threat posed by lone-wolf attackers. The growing number of foreign fighters presents the member states of the EU with completely new challenges.”

A recent poll conducted by YouGov for the news agency, Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), found that 66% of Germans expect the Islamic State to carry out a jihadist attack on German soil in 2016. Only 17% of those surveyed believe there will be no attack; 17% said they did not have an opinion.

Speaking at a gathering of international police in Berlin on February 25, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the spy chief, warned that Germany is not an island: “We have to assume that we will become the target of jihadist attacks, and we need to be prepared.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Germany, Isis, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Terrorism

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Chilling revelations: Diyarbakır, city of the dead and missing (RT EXCLUSIVE)

March 12, 2016

Chilling revelations: Diyarbakır, city of the dead and missing (RT EXCLUSIVE)

Published time: 12 Mar, 2016 09:22

Source: Chilling revelations: Diyarbakır, city of the dead and missing (RT EXCLUSIVE) — RT News

An RT crew has visited Diyarbakır, the unofficial capital of the Turkish Kurds, to throw light on the gruesome consequences of Turkey’s crackdown on the Kurdish population. RT’s William Whiteman talked to the relatives of one of the victims.

RT took an exclusive look into the mass killings of civilians allegedly committed by the Turkish military, filming the mourning of those who lost their loved ones as a result of the ongoing crackdown.

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Friday prayers in Diyarbakir have also become a manifestation of the deep divide between the locals and the Turkish government.

In a further effort to quash Kurdish descent, Turkish authorities now require imams to read government-approved sermons. Thousands of local Kurds are protesting this move by boycotting the city’s main mosque and holding prayers in a nearby park.

The imam speaks in both Kurdish and Turkish, condemning the government’s actions.

RT’s William Whiteman witnessed Turkish military helicopters flying overhead in Diyarbakir, while the explosions and gunfire of the continuing military operation could be heard.

In the city’s Sur district, Turkish security services have continuously waged a military operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliated groups, as part of the ongoing government operation across the region.

Whiteman spoke to the weeping mother of 17-year-old girl Rozerin Cukur. She was killed in a military bombardment of Sur while she was visiting the district with friends in early January. With access to the area now cut off by the fighting, her body has never been recovered. Sadly, she is one of many such cases.

Rozerin’s father, Mustafa, could be found at a nearby memorial for the missing dead.

“We saw the news of her death reported on state TV and the internet. The reports included Rozerin’s ID information, discovered beside her body,” the father told RT.

Through hunger striking, the families here have managed to pressure the government into returning just two of the missing bodies. But the condition they were in was appalling.

“Of the bodies that have been recovered, parts of their flesh and internal organs had been eaten by a stray dog,” Mustafa said. “The bodies were riddled with thousands of bullet holes. It seems that the military continued to shoot them long after they were dead.”

“They were only identifiable through DNA testing,” Mustafa claimed.

RT spoke to the co-presidents of the local Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) branch about the plight of these families.

“Of the local residents killed in Sur, 14 bodies are yet to be recovered. They have been lying in the open for a long time, first under the siege, and now under the curfew,” Ömer Önen, co-president of HDP office of Diyarbakir, told RT. “Without the bodies, the families have been unable to hold funerals.”

Önen explained that by denying the people in Diyarbakir the right to give their loved ones a traditional Islamic burial, the Turkish government is violating human rights and the sanctity of religious traditions.

Every Saturday in Diyarbakir, the families of people who disappeared during the peak of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in the 1980s and ‘90s gather to demand information on their missing loved ones. Now they are being joined by the families of new victims, with Rozerin’s parents among them.

Previously RT showed exclusive footage from the city of Cizre, destroyed by Turkish government forces during an anti-Kurdish military operation that ended there only two days ago.

The Turkish government offensive on the mostly Kurdish southeastern regions of the country was launched back in July of 2015 with strict 24-hour curfews imposed on several Kurdish towns.

On Friday RT requested comments on the ongoing anti-Kurdish crackdown in Turkey from aid groups and rights organizations, such as HRW, MSF International, the ICRC, the OHCHR, and Amnesty International. There has been no answer so far.

In the meantime, Turkey has claimed it will continue its operations against Kurdish militia – to ensure peace in the region.

“We will continue our operations to eliminate the PKK. This is necessary to ensure peace in the region,” said Efkan Ala, the Turkish interior minister.

Washington says Ankara has the right to fight terrorists, but only within international law.

“While we have certainly acknowledged Turkey’s right to defend itself against terrorists, and the PKK is a terrorist organization that we have recognized [as such], we have also, and I’ve said it many times from this podium, called on [Turkey] to do so in accordance with the international law and obligations that they [Turkey] have,” US State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: city of Cizre, Islam, Middle East, Middle East War, PKK, Terrorism, Turkey

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