Islamic State (IS) militants have executed three young women in Mosul, accusing them of refusing temporary marriage, nikah, with other jihadists.

An eyewitness from Mosul told BasNews that the militants continue to abduct women with whom they want to have temporary marriage.

The source, that wanted to remain anonymous for reasons of safety, said that on Wednesday, IS arrested 13 women in different parts of Mosul. The insurgents executed three of them after they were transferred to Nimrud, east of Mosul.

The source claimed that out of the 13, the three that refused to have sex with the militants were executed.

BasNews has previously reported that jihadists have killed more than 150 women in Mosul for refusing to have sex with them.

At least three Armenian soldiers were killed and four wounded in clashes with troops from Azerbaijan on Thursday near the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, but the two sides gave conflicting death tolls and disputed who was to blame.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by its majority ethnic Armenians and is a regular point of friction between the two neighbours, who fought a war over it in the early 1990s.

Renewed violence this year along the border area has underlined the risk of a wider conflict breaking out in the South Caucasus, which is crossed by oil and gas pipelines.

The separatist region’s defence ministry said in a statement that three Armenian soldiers had died after Azeri commandos attacked their position. “The Armenian side forced the enemy to escape after a two hour clash,” the statement said.

Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry accused separatists of triggering the confrontation and said 20 Armenian soldiers had been killed or wounded.

Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh erupted in 1991 as the Soviet Union broke up, with some 30,000 people dying in the war before a ceasefire was called in 1994. Attempts at securing a lasting peace settlement have failed, despite mediation led by France, Russia and the United States.

Nagorno-Karabakh has run its own affairs with heavy military and financial backing from Armenia since 1994. Armenian-backed forces also hold seven Azeri districts surrounding the region.

Oil-producing Azerbaijan, host to global majors including BP , Chevron and ExxonMobil, frequently threatens to take the mountain region back by force, and is spending heavily on its armed forces.

Armenia, an ally of Russia, says it would not stand by if Nagorno-Karabakh were attacked.

An unidentified warplane attacked the presidential palace in Aden on Thursday, after forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi stormed a camp where a renegade commander had barricaded himself, a Yemeni official and residents said.

The aircraft dropped a bomb or fired a missile at the compound in al-Maasheeq district of the southern port city, where Hadi is based, the Yemeni official said, in a sharp escalation of Yemen’s months-long armed turmoil.

Residents said anti-aircraft guns opened fire at the plane, and smoke was seen rising from the area, but it was not immediately clear if Hadi was in the compound.

A Yemeni security source said the situation at the presidential palace “was under control and there was nothing to be worried about”.

Both the attack on Hadi’s compound and the fighting on the ground appeared to be part of a deepening power struggle between Hadi and the Shi’ite Muslim Houthi group, which controls the capital Sanaa and is allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The identity of the aircraft was not immediately known, but residents in Sanaa, which is under control of the Houthi group said they saw an unusually busy level of flights by military aircraft in the skies of the capital.

Earlier in the day, soldiers and militiamen loyal to Hadi fought their way into Aden’s international airport and stormed an adjacent military base, residents said.

General Abdel-Hafez al-Saqqaf had been holed up for days in the base after he refused an order by Hadi to hand over control of the Special Forces in the city to another commander, a senior security source said.

At least six people were killed in the clashes around the airport and the base, residents and a senior military commander said. They said Saqqaf’s whereabouts were not known.

In a statement in late afternoon, the Houthi-led Supreme Security Committee urged an end to the fighting in Aden, saying that both sides “are obliged to keep the peace and return to the negotiating table,” according to a statement carried by state news agency Saba.

In a report, the UN Human Rights Office documents testimonies from 100 people who survived attacks by the militant group in Iraq between June 2014 and February 2015.

The report documents abuses committed by the Sunni militants including killings, torture, rape and sexual slavery, forced religious conversions and the conscription of children.

The UN report also details cases of killings, torture and abductions allegedly carried out by Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias battling the Islamic State militants.

The UN is calling on the Iraqi government to ensure that all accusations are investigated in line with international human rights standards and to publicise the results of the investigations.

The Libyan army is close to retaking the eastern city of Benghazi from extremist militants, an army spokesman told Asharq Al-Awsat, as the Libyan air force stepped up strikes on Islamist positions in oil-rich areas in the east.

In comments to Asharq Al-Awsat, Col. Ahmed Abu Zeid Al-Mismari, spokesman for the Libyan army, which is affiliated with the internationally recognized government of Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thani, said: “Army forces are close to finalizing the Benghazi liberation operation.”

“[Despite] the lack of military equipment, army forces are making steady progress,” the army official said.
The internationally recognized parliament in Tobruk has allied itself with the Gaddafi-era army general Khalifa Haftar who last year launched a military campaign, known as “Operation Dignity”, to drive out Islamist militias from Benghazi.

The Libyan army would be able to completely retake the city from Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia and the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries (an alliance of jihadists led by Ansar Al-Sharia) within a few weeks, maintained the spokesman.

Army forces on Tuesday seized Benghazi’s Sanyat Aziza district following fierce clashes with Islamists in which heavy and medium weapons were used.

Random shells fell on the Al-Laithi district of Benghazi, causing damage to a house and a mosque. There were no casualties, official media reported on Tuesday.

Since the removal of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the North African country has been marred by violence and power struggles. The elected government of Thani fled to the eastern city of Tobruk last year after an array of Islamist militias, known as Libyan Dawn, occupied the capital Tripoli and reinstated the Islamist-majority General National Congress (GNC).

As the two rival governments fight for power and oil share, Islamist groups that have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continue to spread across the country.

In comments to Asharq Al-Awsat, Libyan air force commander Brig. Gen. Saqr Jarushi said military jets have stepped up airstrikes on ISIS and Libyan Dawn positions in the eastern “oil crescent” region, home to the country’s biggest export terminals, denying claims that foreign countries were involved.

“[Libyan] air force is constantly striking the positions of ISIS and the [Libya Dawn] militias out of its bases in the Brega province in order to provide protection for oil ports,” the military official said.

Meanwhile, at least 12 militants affiliated with the Tripoli-based GNC were killed in clashes with ISIS militants in the coastal city of Sirte on Wednesday.

A US drone strike killed a Pakistani Taleban leader and two others on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Taleban said on Thursday, in the latest attack by an unmanned aircraft targeting the Afghan bases of Pakistani Taleban leaders.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed Thursday’s strike on the border between Pakistan’s Kurram agency and Afghanistan.

The strike killed Pakistani Taleban commander Khawray Mehsud, who possessed “great militant skills,” the Taleban said in a statement.

“He was very close to martyred (Pakistani Taleban) chief Hakimullah Mehsud and was his personal bodyguard,” it added.

The Pakistani Taleban are allied with the Afghan militants of the same name and share a similar extremist ideology.

But they operate as a separate entity, focused on toppling the Pakistani state.

The strikes come amid warming relations between the traditionally hostile neighbours, each of whom has accused the other of harbouring insurgents to act as proxy forces.

Relations improved after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was elected last year. Pakistan is supporting potential peace talks between the Afghan government and Afghan Taleban.

Diplomats hope that Pakistan will be able to pressurise the Afghan Taleban to join peace talks, by threatening their bases in the country.

But Pakistan also wants to see action against Pakistani insurgents hiding in Afghanistan.

China confirmed an agreement to sell the HQ-9 air defense missile system to Turkey on Tuesday, during the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition in Malaysia, China Daily reports.

A representative of China National Precision Machinery Import & Export Corporation said it was well-known that the Chinese FD-2000 system, a HQ-9 model for export, was chosen for the contract with Turkey in 2013.

The representative said in an interview with China Central Television that the FD-2000 is one of the most important products the corporation brought to the LIMA, Asia’s largest defense and security exhibition.
Besides the FD-2000, Chinese military industry businesses also brought the F-22P frigate and LPD dock landing ship to the exhibition.

When Turkey chose the China National Precision Machinery Import & Export Corporation to co-produce a $4 billion long-range air and missile defense system in September 2013, China sold air defense weapons to a NATO member for the first time.

According to a report from CCTV’s website, the winning Chinese FD-2000 system beat the US Patriot, the Russian S-400 and the French-Italian Eurosam Samp-T.

Turkish analysts said their choice of a Chinese firm was for technological reasons as well as cost effectiveness. The contract enables Turkey to have its own long-range missile defense system for the first time, according to CCTV.

Air forces loyal to Libyan army commander Khalifa Haftar on Thursday targeted Mitiga International Airport in capital Tripoli, an airport official has said.

“The military plane targeted the airport runway with two rockets,” airport spokesman Fawzi al-Miladi told The Anadolu Agency.

Al-Miladi said the airport’s anti-missile system had intercepted the rockets, preventing any material damage.

The Mitiga airport, which lies under the control of Libya’s Tripoli-based government, has been repeatedly targeted by Haftar’s forces over the past two weeks.

Thursday’s airstrike comes hours after the UN mission in Libya declared the bombing of airports in Libya to represent “an obstacle to a peaceful settlement” of the country’s ongoing crisis.

Libya’s warring camps have intermittently bombed airports lying within one another’s territories.

Libya has remained in a state of turmoil since a bloody uprising ended the decades-long rule of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in late 2011.

Since then, the country’s stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of government, each with its own institutions and military capacities. Vying for legislative authority are the Tobruk-based House of Representatives – which backs Haftar’s forces – and the Islamist-led General National Congress, which convenes in Tripoli.

The two assemblies support two rival governments respectively headquartered in the two cities.