Jihad

Iraqi and Kurdish officials have met to plan the long-delayed Battle of Mosul, an effort to push ISIS out of the city they have been using as their base of operations in Iraq.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has scored military gains as it battles the Taliban for territory in Afghanistan, securing their hold with a brutality that is considered shocking even by the standards of the Afghan insurgency, reports the New York Times (NYT).

Iranian troops, allied Hezbollah fighters, and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s army have reportedly joined forces to launch a ground offensive, backed by Russian airstrikes, to seize key areas from rebels in Syria.

Ömer Çelik, a senior official in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warned Wednesday that “Kurdish militia in northern Syria appeared intent on creating a de facto zone of control in the region.”

Yazidis who suffered under the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Sinjar have filed a genocide case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Netherlands.

Turkish media is reporting the first arrests directly in relation to Saturday’s twin bombings in the capital, Ankara: two suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who tweeted about the event before it occurred.

General Qasem Soleimani, who heads Iran’s Quds Force—the Iranian special forces unit designated with spreading the Tehran regime’s caliphatist revolution worldwide—has now arrived in Syria along with thousands of Iranian troops, according to reports.

The leader of the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaeda offshoot, reportedly called on jihadists to intensify attacks on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect of Shiite Islam in retaliation for Russia’s military intervention.

The Iranian parliament has rejected the formal, legal text of the President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, negotiated in July by the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and the Tehran regime. Instead, the majilis approved their own version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), creating a situation where the Iranian government simple hasn’t signed onto the nukes-and-trade deal that Obama, Democrats and the GOP leaders has obligated the United States to uphold.

Turkey’s prime minister suspects Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists carried out the deadly bombings at peace rally in the Turkish capital of Ankara over the weekend that killed nearly 100 people and injured another 250.

The leader of al-Qaeda linked group al-Nusra Front is encouraging jihadists in the Caucasus to attack Russia. His call follows similar condemnation of Russia from rival jihadi group the Islamic State (ISIS) and a number of Saudi clerics.

Turkey is banning relatives of those killed or wounded in Saturday’s twin bombing of a peace protest in Ankara from assembling and protesting the government, citing “sensitivities at this time.”