The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) has opened the first five-star hotel in its self-declared Caliphate. The Ninawa Hotel in Mosul, a favorite among visitors on TripAdvisor, is now open to all commanders who visit the region.
Hundreds of captive Yazidis have been shot and killed by Islamic State jihadis near Mosul, Iraq, according to sources from Yazidi and Iraqi officials, and local news outlets.
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees American-led airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), told reporters that that the jihadist group was on the defensive and losing territory in Iraq.
The White House, Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Iraqi Shiite Cleric, and the Iraqi government have come out against a proposed U.S defense bill that authorizes sending arms and funds directly to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Sunni tribal fighters in Iraq.
Turkish news outlet Hurriyet Daily News travelled to Iraq to interview Yazidi women and girls the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) had kidnapped and raped. These females managed to escape or be released after relatives paid a ransom. Now they reside in refugee camps in northern Iraq.
All but one of the members of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups—comprising representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities—have been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington. The lone member denied a visa was the only Iraqi Christian in the group, a Catholic nun.
“It is clear from talking with front line Kurdish Peshmerga that Canadian special forces have done more on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant than their coalition partners, including the U.S., and are going to play a critical part in the coming action to expel these fanatical hardliners from Mosul,” writes the Canadian National Post.
Reports from Australia indicate a disturbing number of doctors and nurses have chosen to support ISIS, as summarized by Albawaba News from the Australian Daily Telegraph.
Another Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) baby emerged on social media, which rightfully caused outrage and condemnation around the world.
Several conflicting reports have surfaced about the fate of the Islamic State’s self- declared “Caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who is believed to have been severely injured in a recent U.S. airstrike. Over the weekend and into Monday, reports have stated that Baghdadi’s health status varies from deceased, to complete paralysis, to only having sustained minor injuries.
(CNN)Be afraid — be very afraid. This is the warning the world deserves to hear. Because the leader of the free world refuses to look with clear eyes at the chief security challenges of the 21st century: the fruits of radical Islam.
Germany revealed that nearly 700 of its citizens had traveled abroad as of March to join Islamic extremist forces, Deutsche Welle (DW) reports.
The sectarian and factional chaos unleashed in Iraq by the ISIS invasion has neighboring tribes literally at each other’s throats, according to a report by the Associated Press. Some Sunni tribes initially welcomed the Sunni extremists of ISIS when they rolled across the border, thinking they might help change the balance of power in Shiite-dominated Baghdad. After watching ISIS turn northern Iraq into a torture chamber, some members of the al-Lehib tribe changed their minds, and ended up fighting alongside Iraqi military forces and the Kurds.
“Ethiopian demonstrators hurled stones and scuffled with police during a rally by thousands in the capital on Wednesday after a video showed dozens of compatriots being shot and beheaded by Islamic State militants in Libya,” according to eyewitnesses quoted by Reuters.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote an apology letter on Monday to Debbie Lee, the mother of the first Navy SEAL killed in Ramadi, Iraq, for downplaying the city’s importance.
Aymenn Al-Tamimi, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, reports that Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has established a bureaucracy to grant birth certificates and medical care to its residents.
Bashar Matti Warda, the Chaldean archbishop of Erbil, has had more firsthand experience than most with the atrocities of the Islamic State, a group that he describes as “a cancer” in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia declares that it’s met its military objectives in Yemen; Patriotism and nationalism surge in Saudi Arabia, but not in Iran
A dispute between the central Kurdistan government and its Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad has left some Kurdish security troops without pay for months.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) caliphatist group that has usurped territory in much of the Middle East, was seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, the Guardian reports.
A video has surfaced showing Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s spokesman Rafid Jaboori literally singing the praises of Saddam Hussein more than ten years ago, leading to Jaboori’s resignation from his position.
Twelve years on, former Iraqi prisoner-of-war Jessica Lynch is working as an inspirational speaker and an actress in Christian-themed films, including a new release called “One Church.” She was interviewed on WABC Radio’s The Rita Cosby Show over the weekend, where she expressed concerns about terrorism, the rise of ISIS in Iraq, and the persecution of Christians.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has come under fire from lawmakers and veteran groups for downplaying the strategic importance of Ramadi in Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, potentially falling to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
A suicide car bomb struck near the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, northern Iraq on Friday afternoon killing three people and wounding eight others. One of the wounded included an American woman, reported Rudaw News. The incident occurred at 5:40pm in the district of Ankawa, which is a predominately Christian area and a popular place for Westerners.
(Reuters) – A car bombing claimed by the Islamic State killed three people on Friday outside the U.S. consulate in Erbil, in a relatively rare attack in the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
