UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived on Monday to the Iraqi capital Baghdad on an official visit.

An informed source told “Shafaq News”, that “ Ki-moon will meet with Iraqi officials during his visit and will discuss with them a number of issues, including the war against ISIS terrorist organization and the situation of displaced people fleeing from their areas.”

Thousands of families have been displaced inside and to outside Iraq after ISIS and their allies dominated a lot of regions and cities in the north and west of the country, since mid of last year.

It is noteworthy that ISIS organization represents the biggest threat to Iraq since the fall of the former regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003 at the hands of US forces that left the country at the end of 2011

Arab leaders reiterated Sunday full political and financial support for the legitimate government in Libya.

They also vowed necessary aid to the Libyan army in its ongoing mission to eliminate terrorism and restore security in the country.

In the final communique of their the two-day 26th Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, Sunday, Arab leaders called for respecting Libya’s unity, sovereignty, and its territorial integrity, expressing their rejection to any outside intervention in its interior affairs.

They urged Libyan political parties to commit to dialogue and renounce violence and radicalism, demanding the UNSC to lift arms embargo on the Libyan government in order to enable the Libyan national army to fight terrorism in the country.

They stressed the importance of supporting the political process in Libya under the supervision of the UN special envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon, demanding the international community to bear its responsibilities towards preventing the sea and air flowing of arms to terrorist organizations.

Meanwhile, Arab leaders strongly condemned the brutal crime committed against innocent Egyptian citizens by the Islamic State militants in Sirte city, as well as recent terrorist explosions by the terrorist group in Qubbah district that killed dozens of Libyan and Egyptian citizens.

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been providing intelligence about Islamic State (IS) bases and weapons caches to coalition jets.

A Peshmerga source from the frontline told BasNews, “The Peshmerga send details about IS to coalition jets, which is used to destroy militants’ bases.”

“International coalition jets targeted IS bases and weapons stores in Gyara sub-district near Gwer, north of Erbil.”

The source added, “An IS base destroyed in the area contained a large cache of ammunition.”

International forces have developed strong cooperation with the Peshmerga forces on the frontlines against IS militants, seeing the Peshmerga as their ‘boots on the ground’.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces have repelled Islamic State (IS) attacks in Sinjar, northern Iraq, and liberated two elevated sniper positions in the town.

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) official from Mosul Ghayas Surchi told BasNews that on Saturday IS insurgents launched an attack on Peshmerga bases in Sinjar, but they were repelled, suffering significant losses.

“The Peshmerga killed over 25 militants and 10 of their bodies were left on the battleground,” said Surchi.

In addition Peshmerga forces freed two strategic positions on Sinjar bridge. The elevated sniper nests were used to attack Peshmerga bases.

IS are desperate for success against the Peshmerga forces on the Sinjar frontlines, but have failed to make gains against the Kurdish forces supported by coalition airstrikes.

About 500 Yazidi women have been rescued from ISIS out of an estimated 4,000 in captivity, according to the the Head of the Women’s Rights Defense Committee in the Kurdistan parliament.

Speaking on Sunday, Evar Ibrahim said 157 women of the 500 rescued are in bad psychological and physical condition and are receiving treatment in Duhok.

ISIS militants overran the predominantly Yazidi district of Sinjar in August 2014, sending hundreds of Yazidis fleeing up Mount Sinjar.

Hundreds more were captured, enslaved, or killed by militants.

“When ISIS entered Sinjar, they committed many crimes like beheading men and making women hostages in Kojo village,” Ibrahim said.

She added, “We as the committee asked the Iraqi Defense Ministry, Peshmerga Ministry and Interior Ministry of the Kurdistan Region to try to rescue the Yazidi women soon.”

Some of the women captives are believed to have been sold in Tal Afar, Iraq and in the ISIS-stronghold of Raqqa in Syria.

According to Ibrahim, “the cheapest price of the sold women was $10 and the most expensive was $100.”

Hundreds and possibly thousands of Kurdish Yazidi women and girls have been forced to marry or been sold into sexual slavery by the ISIS according to Amnesty International.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Shiite militia, is operating in Yemen on the side of the Houthis with the aid of Iran, a senior Saudi diplomat claimed.
Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir made the claim in an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. “We have reports that the Iranians are providing weapons, training and advisers to the Houthis. We have reports of Hezbollah operatives being in Yemen.”
According to Al-Jubeir, when the Houthis captured Sanaa one of the first things they did was to release captured members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah.
“This is really a war to defend the legitimate government of Yemen and to protect the Yemeni people from being taken over by a radical militant group that is aligned with Iran and Hezbollah.”
Al-Jubeir said the coalition would do “whatever it takes to achieve that objective.”
“The fact that the Houthis are supported by Iran is not a good thing and we are determined to make sure that Yemen does not succumb to the aggression committed by them or any of their allies.”
To a question from Blitzer that there were reports of some Houthi rebels backed by Iran targeting Saudis in the Kingdom, Al-Jubeir said: “We are preparing for all eventualities, inside the Kingdom as well as outside the Kingdom. We are determined to defend Yemen, defend the legitimate government of Yemen, and degrade and destroy the capabilities of the Houthis.”
He said the Yemeni government tried repeatedly over the past year to reason with the Houthis, to negotiate with them, to go through a political process to resolve their differences peacefully. “Every time agreements were reached the Houthis reneged on every single one of them — 67 agreements to be precise,” said Al-Jubeir.
The Saudi diplomat welcomed US support. “We’re very appreciative of the support whether it’s political, logistical or intelligence,” he said. “We are working very closely with the US, consulting very closely … as well as with our other coalition allies.”
Responding to a question about whether there would be a ground invasion, Al-Jubeir said: “We will see what happens when the time comes. So far we are focused on the air war.”
On Iran’s nuclear issue, he said everybody in the region is worried about it. “We have been assured by the (Obama) administration that all paths leading to a nuclear weapon by Iran will be cut off. We have been assured that there will be very intrusive inspections that will ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear capability and we hope that this pans out,” he said.
Al-Jubeir said everybody wants a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear program “but it has to be a serious and solid agreement that is verifiable.”

The heads of Arab League countries meeting in Egypt have agreed to create a joint Arab military force.

The League has been meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh amid a crisis in Yemen, but it is unclear yet whether the force would be deployed there.

A Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out air strikes in Yemen for five days.

The strikes are in support of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who has fled amid gains by Shia Houthi rebels who the Saudis say are backed by Iran.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said: “The Arab leaders have decided to agree on the principle of a joint Arab military force.”

The Arab League will work with military representatives of its members to organise what has been described as a voluntary force.

Analysts say it is unlikely all 22 members will join the proposed force.

Egyptian officials quoted by Associated Press said the force would comprise some 40,000 elite troops, supported by war planes, naval vessels and light armour.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi added that the Saudi-led offensive against the Houthis would “continue until the militia withdraws and surrenders its weapons”.

Boko Haram extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, and scared hundreds of people from polling stations in the northeast, but millions voted across Nigeria Saturday in the most closely contested presidential race in the nation’s history.

In electoral violence elsewhere, three people including a soldier were shot and killed in political thuggery in southern Rivers state, and two car bombs exploded at polling stations in the southeast but no one was injured, according to police.

All the Boko Haram attacks took place in northeastern Nigeria, where the military Friday announced it had cleared the Islamic extremists from all major centers, including the headquarters of their so-called Islamic caliphate.

Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote, and for the first time there is a possibility that a challenger can defeat a sitting president in the high-stakes contest to govern Africa’s richest and most populous nation.

The front-runners among 14 candidates are President Goodluck Jonathan, a 57-year-old Christian from the south, and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, 72, from the predominantly Muslim north.

Voters also are electing 360 legislators to the House of Assembly, where the opposition currently has a slight edge over Jonathan’s party. Voting for 13 constituencies was postponed until April because of shortages of ballot papers, electoral officials said.

Nigeria’s political landscape was transformed two years ago when the main opposition parties formed a coalition and for the first time united behind one candidate, Buhari. Dozens of legislators defected from Jonathan’s party.

Polling will continue Sunday in some areas where new machines largely failed to read voters’ biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. That includes some areas of Lagos, a megacity of 20 million and Nigeria’s commercial capital on the Atlantic coast.

Even the president was affected. Three newly imported card readers failed to recognize the fingerprints of Jonathan and his wife. Biometric cards and readers are being used for the first time to discourage the kind of fraud that has marred previous votes.

Afterward, Jonathan wiped sweat from his brow and urged people to be patient as he had been, telling Channels TV: “I appeal to all Nigerians to be patient no matter the pains it takes as long as if, as a nation, we can conduct free and fair elections that the whole world will accept.”

Nigerians exercised extraordinary restraint, waiting hours in heat that rose to 100 degrees (37 degrees Celsius) in some places. Many remained for more hours after voting ended to witness the ballot count, determined to do their part to try to keep the elections honest.

“The high voter turnout and the dedication and patience of Nigerian voters is, in itself, a triumph of Nigerian democracy,” said the national counter-insurgency spokesman, Mike Omeri. He praised the bravery and commitment of military and security agencies that he said made the elections possible.

Struggling with blackouts that are routine, some officials counted ballots by the light of vehicles and cellphones.

Earlier, before dawn, Boko Haram extremists invaded the town of Miringa in Borno state, torching people’s homes and then shooting them as they tried to escape the smoke. Twenty-five people died in the attack, Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima told a news conference in the city of Maiduguri.

“They had sent messages earlier warning us not to encourage democracy by participating in today’s election,” said Mallam Garba Buratai, a Miringa resident who witnessed the attack.

Nigeria’s home-grown Islamic extremists say democracy is a corrupt Western concept and point to the endemic corruption as a reason to do away with it in favor of an Islamic caliphate.

Another 14 people were killed in extremist attacks on the town of Biri and Dukku, in Gombe state, according to police and local chief Garkuwan Dukku.

Among the dead was a Gombe state legislator, Umaru Ali, said Sani Dugge, the local campaign director for the opposition coalition.

Two voters were killed in Boko Haram attacks on polling stations in the twin Gombe towns of Birin Bolawa and Birin Fulani, according to police. Witnesses said the gunmen yelled that they had warned people to stay away from polling.

In four other northeast towns in Yobe state, gunmen drove in and fired into the air, frightening people to flee into the bush and disrupting any voting, police said.

Thousands of people, among more than 1.5 million forced from their homes by the Islamic uprising, lined up to vote at a refugee camp in Yola, capital of northeast Adamawa state and home to as many refugees as its 300,000 residents.

Refugee Elzubairu Ali does not know when she will be able to return to her home.

“We have to wait for the time when the Nigerian army will totally wipe them (Boko Haram) out before we can go back,” she said after voting.

Yola resident and university lecturer Abdullahi Sani said, “I’m longing for a change, a positive change to affect the life of humanity, to protect their reputation, their lives and property . and to eradicate corruption finally.”

The failure of Jonathan’s administration to curb the insurgency, which killed about 10,000 people last year, has angered Nigerians in the north.

International outrage has grown over another failure — the inability to rescue 219 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram nearly a year ago. The extremists have abducted hundreds more people since then, using them as sex slaves and fighters.

Nervous foreign investors are watching as Nigeria is Africa’s largest destination for direct foreign investment though its oil-dependent economy is hurting from slashed petroleum prices.

The Islamic uprising has exacerbated relations between Christians like Jonathan, who dominate the oil-rich south, and Muslims like Buhari, who are the majority in the agricultural and cattle-herding lands of the north. The population of 170 million is almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

Some 1,000 people were killed in rioting after Buhari lost to Jonathan in the 2011 elections. Thousands of Nigerians and foreign workers have left the country amid fears of post-election violence.

In 2011, there was no doubt that Jonathan had swept the polls by millions of votes.

Now the race is much closer. Results are expected 48 hours after voting ends. If no clear winner emerges, a runoff will be held.

It has been reported that the famous ‘Star Wars’ film sets in Tunisia are facing potential threat from Islamic State (Isis) militants and so they are being patrolled by 1,500 troops.

The move of heavily guarding town of Tataouine, which inspired sci-fi director George Lucas to name the planet Tatooine from the Star Wars series, comes amid fears the film locations in North Africa are under threat from jihadists travelling to Libya, the Daily Star reported.

Mohammed Sayem, a tourism official in the city of Tozeur, has denied the rumours, saying that this information is false and without foundation and doesn’t reflect the reality.

Meanwhile, Colonel Mokhtar Hammami of the National Guard added that he can tell without a shadow of a doubt that all is normal, in fact, they’ve seen a big influx of foreign tourists and Tunisians.