Crisis In Iraq

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Nov 19,2014 A Dutch mother has returned to the Netherlands with her daughter after going to Syria to bring her back from the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. The mother, identified only as Monique, she went to ISIS-controlled Raqqa, found her daughter and brought her safely to Turkey, inspite Dutch police warned her not to go. The daughter, Aicha, ran away from home in February aged 18, and married Omar Yilmaz, a Dutch-Turkish jihadist who had once been in the Dutch military. Monique traveled to Syria in October to try and rescue her daughter, but it was in vain. Once Monique returned to the Netherlands, she received a “cry for help” from her daughter. “She wants to come home, but can not leave Raqqa without help”, says lawyer Landerloo. Monique asked Maastricht police to try and help in her quest to bring her daughter back to the Netherlands. However, they proved to be of little assistance, saying merely that it was too dangerous to travel t...

Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Nov 16,2014 The Islamic State militant group released a video Sunday that shows American aid worker Peter Kassig was beheaded in Syria. The video did not show the beheading but showed a masked man standing with a decapitated head covered in blood lying at his feet. Speaking in English in a British accent, the man says: "This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen." President Barack Obama confirmed Kassig 's beheading, saying Kassig "was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity." Kassig,a 26-year-old from Indiana was captured in eastern Syria while delivering relief supplies to refugees whose lives had been upended by war, His friends say he converted to Islam in captivity and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman and quietly worked to secure the former U.S. Army ranger's release. The video, which was posted on websites used by the group in the past, appeared...

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Oct 31, 2014 Dozens of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been crossed into the embattled Syrian border town of Kobane from Turkey on Thursday, to help push back Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants .who have defied U.S. air strikes and threatened to massacre its Kurdish defenders. The Iraqi peshmerga delegation crossed back into Turkey at nightfall after discussing with Syrian Kurds details of the expected deployment of a force According to the British-based monitoring group, a convoy carrying Peshmerga fighters arrived near the Turkish town of Suruc on Wednesday night. They, in turn, made contact with other Kurdish fighters who had flown in earlier that day. “The force is equipped with heavy guns including mortars, canons, rocket launchers, etc.,” the Guardian cites Safeen Dizayee, spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government, as saying on Thursday. The Kurdish troops have set up a temporary camp in a farming depo...

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Oct 30, 2014 Islamic state of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants executed 46 people and besieged 500 families in the Iraqi city of Heet, Al Arabiya News Channel’s correspondent to Anbar reported on Wednesday. ISIS militants targeted members of the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe, which had fought against them in Anbar, according to media reports. killing over 40 people on , including Iraqi army soldiers, in a city captured earlier in October. Anbar provincial council chairman Sabah Karhout said those killed were captured when the Islamic State group overran the town, located about 85 miles west of Baghdad, earlier this month The slayings took place on a main street in al-Bakir district in the town of Heet, which has been the scene of intense fighting by jihadis and local resistance groups in recent weeks. A photograph obtained by The Associated Press showed a line of the men's bodies by a small pool of blood as onlookers walked by. While ISIS did not claim ...

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Oct 21, 2014 Islamic State group fighters have seized earlier this week a cache of weapons airdropped by U.S.-led coalition forces that were meant to supply Kurdish fighters battling the extremist group. The cache of weapons included hand grenades, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, according to a video uploaded by a media group loyal to IS. The video appeared authentic and corresponded to the Associated Press' reporting of the event. Meanwhile, the IS released video footage on Tuesday showing one of its fighters showcasing the captured weapons near Kobane. The weapons included grenades and RPG shells. The air drops on Sunday were the first of their kind and followed weeks of US and coalition air strikes in and near Kobani, near the Turkish border. The US earlier said it had launched 11 air strikes overnight in the Kobani area. Senior administration officials said that on Sunday night three American C-130 aircraft dropped 27 pal...

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Oct 17, 2014 Iraqi pilots who have joined the Islamic State in Syria are training members of the group to fly three captured fighter jets, a group monitoring the war said Friday, Last August three fighter jets captured when it took control of military airports in Syria’s Aleppo and Raqqa, provinces., which are believed to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets, are capable of flying although it is unclear if they are equipped with missiles, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. U.S. Central Command said it was not aware of Islamic State flying jets in Syria. Rami Abdul Rahman, the monitoring group’s founder, claims former Iraqi officers who served under Saddam Hussein have been training the Iraqi militants to fly the aircraft, the BBC reported. “People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back,” Mr Rahman said. U.S. Central Command said it was not aware of I...

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Oct 18, 2014 Iraqi parliamentarians named two relatively unknown politicians to head its most sensitive security posts in Prime Minister Haidar al-Abbadi's government, on Saturday. Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, a Shia, was appointed interior minister, while Khaled al-Obeidi, a Sunni, was confirmed as defence minister. Al-Ghabban, a lawmaker with al-Abadi’s State of Law political bloc, was approved as minister of interior by a 197-63 vote. He holds degrees from universities in both Tehran and London and he is currently pursuing a PhD in political science in Baghdad. He was a long-time opponent of Saddam and was detained in 1979. Al-Obeidi, a lawmaker from Mosul, was selected for the post of defense minister, by a vote of 175-85. He had served as an officer in Saddam Hussein’s military and holds a PhD in political science. The ministries — interior and defense — are particularly important because each controls an array of security forces fighting t...