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WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Islamic State’s last bastion in Syria will be “gone” by the end of the day. He showed off maps that illustrate the dramatic shrinking of territory held by the jihadist group in the period from his election in 2016 and now. In one map shown by Trump to reporters in Washington and then again at a rally to factory workers in Lima, […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — The Islamic State group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a weekend shooting that killed two people in Canada’s Toronto. The group’s propaganda agency Amaq said the attacker was “one of the soldiers of the Islamic State”. “He carried out the attack in response to calls to target nationals of countries of the coalition” fighting IS in Syria and Iraq since 2014, it said. © Agence France-Presse
SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook on Monday said new detection tools wielded by its counterterrorism team are quickly detecting and removing extremist propaganda for the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda. The leading social network ‘took action’ on 1.9 million pieces of IS or al-Qaeda-linked content in the first three months of this year — nearly double the amount from the previous quarter, according to vice president of global policy management Monika Bickert and […]
by Ali Choukeir Agence France Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday he would stand for re-election in May at the head of a new coalition, buoyed by victory over the Islamic State group. Abadi’s newly created “Victory Alliance” will face the “State of Law” bloc of Nuri al-Maliki, his predecessor, key rival and Shiite Dawa party co-member who now holds the post of vice president. The 65-year-old Abadi was […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced since early December by fighting in northwestern Syria, where the regime is waging an offensive against jihadists, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Russian-backed regime forces launched an offensive at the end of 2017 on the edge of Idlib province, the last in the country still fully outside the government’s control. Idlib province is almost entirely controlled by a jihadist outfit known as Hayat Tahrir […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — An explosion at a base for Asian jihadists in northwestern Syria’s Idlib city on Sunday killed 23 people including seven civilians, a monitor said. Extremist groups fighting in Syria count thousands of Asians among their ranks, including many from central Asian states and members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority of China’s Xinjiang province. “A large explosion on Sunday evening hit the base of the Ajnad al-Qawqaz faction in Idlib,” said […]
NASIRIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq hanged 38 jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda for terrorism offences on Thursday in the southern city of Nasiriyah, provincial authorities said. It was the largest number of executions in Iraq on a single day since September 25 when 42 people were put to death in the same prison. “The prison administration executed on Thursday in the presence of Justice Minister Haidar al-Zameli, in Nasiriyah prison, 38 […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A US-led coalition will forge ahead in its fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq until a UN peace process makes further headway, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Monday. “We’re not just going to walk away right now until the Geneva Process has traction,” he told reporters. “You need to do something about this mess now, not just fight the military part of it and then say […]
by Rouba El Husseini Agence France Presse BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — A car bombing by the Islamic State group killed at least 75 displaced civilians who had fled fighting in eastern Syria, a monitor said Sunday, as the cornered extremists try to defend their last strongholds. Syrian government troops meanwhile moved closer to the border town of Albu Kamal, the last urban zone still held by IS jihadist holdouts in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia said Tuesday its submarine deployed in the Mediterranean fired three ballistic missiles to destroy a command post of the Islamic State group in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. “A missile strike with three Kalibr missiles destroyed a command post with large numbers of militants and armed vehicles and also a large weapons and ammunition depot,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement posted on Facebook. It said the strikes […]
United States Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday praised the Philippine military for upholding human rights in a five-month battle against pro-Islamic State group militants in Marawi. This was after President Rodrigo Duterte declared the end of the nation’s longest urban war in the city in Mindanao, where troops battled to flush out the militants who attacked in May in what authorities said was a bid to establish a Southeast Asian caliphate. Mattis, who was […]
by Maya Gebeily and Gihad Darwish Agence France Presse RAQA, Syria (AFP) — US-backed fighters battling to oust the Islamic State group from Syria’s Raqa were nearing the “final week” of their assault, the campaign’s commander told AFP on Sunday. The Syrian Democratic Forces have captured around 90 percent of IS’s one-time bastion and are closing in on the jihadists in a pocket of territory near Raqa city centre. Captured by IS in 2014, the […]
