There have been fierce clashes in the southern outskirts of Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, Tikrit, as Iraqi forces battle to retake the town from Islamic State militants.

The advance of Iraqi forces into the city have been slowed by roadside bombs, and militants are currently locked in combat with Iraqi forces outside the town of al-Dour, south of the city, two local officials told AP.

They said that troops were shelling Islamic State bases in the city, but that little progress had been made.

Iranian news agency Fars reported that 50 Islamic State militants had been killed in today’s fighting.

Al Jazeera, citing state security sources, reports that among them is a senior IS commander, and other senior Isis figures have fled to the Hamreen mountains, which border Iraq and Iran.

It is the second day of the operation to retake the city, which Islamic State has held since last summer.

The operation, involving 30,000 troops and Shia militia, is being backed by Iraqi fighter jets, with fighting reported yesterday on fronts to the north and south of the city.

Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Al Quds force, is taking a key role in the operation, and is commanding forces on the ground, reports Al Jazeera.

It is the largest Isis stronghold that Iraq forces have attempted to retake from the extremist Sunni organisation, since it seized swaths of Iraq last June.

Recently, the US announced that Iraqi forces would launch an operation to retake Mosul, Iraq’s third city, from the group in April.

Forces from Libya’s internationally recognised government carried out air strikes on Maitiga airport in Tripoli and on an airport in Misrata town on Tuesday to retaliate against rival forces controlling the capital, a security official said.

Saqir El-jaroshi, air force commander for the recognised government, said the strikes were in response to attacks on Zintan airport by forces allied to the Libya Dawn group, which took over Tripoli last year and set up its own government.

A source at Maitiga airport in the Tripoli said the strikes had hit an area near the runway, but did not cause any major damage.

No timeline should be imposed on Iraqi forces planning an offensive to take back the key city of Mosul as the operation will require elaborate preparations, a senior US envoy said Monday.

“We’ve got to be very careful and we need to resist trying to put a timeline on it,” said John Allen, the retired US general appointed to coordinate the international coalition against the Islamic State group.

“We just need to be ready when the time comes,” Allen said.

A US military official recently said an eventual counteroffensive against IS jihadists in Mosul would likely come in April or May, prompting an angry response from the Iraqi government.

Allen said he agreed with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that Baghdad’s army would move when it was “ready.”

“That’s the bottom line,” said Allen, who once led American troops during the 2003-2011 US occupation of Iraq.

Allen said that recapturing towns from the IS militants would require more than just military action.

Once IS fighters are driven out of an area, the Baghdad government would need to be ready to send in police units, medical aid and to secure water and food supplies to a traumatized population.

“The point about Mosul, or the point about any aspect of the counter-offensive, is less about the timing than about the preparation,” Allen told an audience at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank.

“That preparation isn’t just about the clearing force,” he said, adding: “These populations have endured enormous abuse and deprivation.”

Allen noted that “as we sit here right now, the fighting is raging for possession of Tikrit,” where thousands of Iraqi forces and Shiite militia have launched an operation to take back the town north of Baghdad.

The fight for Tikrit will be a test for Iraqi troops but Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, is seen as a pivotal battle as it remains a bastion of the IS jihadists.

Allen said he was leading a group to Iraq next week to discuss reconstruction efforts for towns freed from IS control.

The violent battle between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and perhaps even outside the Middle East, can be expected to continue and perhaps escalate in the coming year, given the attempts by Syria and Iran to expand their areas of influence in southern Syria and the Syrian Golan Heights.

The declaration by Revolutionary Guards officials that Iran will respond to an Israeli operation might translate not only into Iranian support for Hizbollah operations, but also attempts to carry out terrorist attacks abroad, since there is full coordination between Iran and Hizbollah.

Israel’s goal, which at this stage is apparently the goal of Hizbollah and Iran as well, is to conduct the struggle for influence without being dragged into a war. This article discusses Israel’s methods for confronting Hizbollah, and examines how the strategy chosen by Israel to confront the challenge on the northern front affects the Hizbollah response.

January 2015 noted two events connected to the Mughniyeh family. One, for which Israel is believed responsible, was the assassination on the Golan Heights of Jihad Mughniyeh and senior Hizbollah and Iranian operatives, including an Iranian general from the Revolutionary Guards. The other was the publication of an article in the Washington Post asserting that the United States and Israel had cooperated in assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, the head of Hizbollah’s military wing and father of Jihad.

This article discusses Israel’s methods for confronting Hizbollah, which is supported by Iran. It also examines how the strategy chosen by Israel to confront the challenge on the northern front affects the Hizbollah response.

According to published reports, the purpose of the attack in the Golan Heights was to strike a severe blow against the terror infrastructure established in the Golan by Hizbollah in coordination with the Revolutionary Guards and already in advanced stages.

The force attacked was among the organizers of this infrastructure. Foreign sources claimed that Israel was responsible for the action, and UN personnel testified that they saw Israeli drones circling in the area of the attack. In response to the action, a number of shells were fired from Syrian territory toward Mount Dov. This led to an Israeli response against Syrian army troops, which were still in the Golan Heights.

However, the more significant Hizbollah response, which came several days later, comprised the anti-tank missiles fired at an IDF convoy on Mount Dov, on the Israeli-Lebanese border, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven. Despite the attack, Israel chose to exercise restraint, and Hizbollah relayed messages through UNIFIL that it viewed the incident as closed.

The 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh was a different kind of action. Mughniyeh was believed responsible for a number of major attacks against the United States in Lebanon: attacks on the US embassy in Beirut and a Marine compound, airplane hijackings, and the taking of civilian hostages. He was also thought to be responsible for attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina and the Hizbollah force buildup following the Second Lebanon War.

According to recent reports, he was assassinated after lengthy surveillance by a joint CIA-Mossad operation. Hizbollah’s leaders have repeatedly declared that his death would lead to a painful response against Israel. However, this threat has not been carried out, and a number of attempts to strike at Israeli diplomatic missions and representatives abroad have failed. The one exception was the terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria in 2012. The courtroom revelation that Hizbollah was directly responsible for the attack led the European Union to include the group’s military wing in its list of terrorist organizations.

The manner in which both the older and younger Mugniyeh were attacked highlights various Israeli strategies for confronting terrorist organizations. In the recent Golan Heights attack, an aerial strike was carried out almost openly, a method used when a concrete threat to Israel is identified or when Israel is interested in sending a message to the other side, even if Israel does not take official responsibility for the attack.

The second method is to strike the terror infrastructures and terrorist leaders covertly, without leaving Israeli fingerprints. Such covert activity enables Israel and its adversary to deny the attack or to respond in limited fashion – if at all – in order to prevent escalation. It also prevents an inevitable stigma that the attacked side is the weaker party.

And indeed, in recent years Hizbollah, Syria, and even Iran have exploited the deniability option in order not to respond directly to operations for which Israel was believed responsible. These have included signature attacks, primarily on Syrian territory, to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry from Syria to Hizbollah, for which no clear proof of responsibility was discovered. In contrast, the overt targeted killing in the Golan Heights made it difficult for Hizbollah to take advantage of deniability and “forced” it to respond in order to restore its deterrent image, even if there was a risk of a flare-up.

It therefore responded in a manner that from its point of view was legitimate because it was similar to the method used in the attack (a missile for a missile, a patrol for a patrol) and because it took place in an area that is relatively convenient for Hizbollah, where it has a territorial claim against Israel. With its response, the organization sought to send a message that in the future, it would respond to an Israeli attack against it even in Syrian territory, including attacks on convoys transferring weapons.

Had it chosen another extreme response such as an attack abroad, it would have risked a strong reaction and even sanctions by the international community, especially by European countries, which since the incident in Burgas have had less tolerance for Hizbollah’s operations or for any terrorist attack on European soil.

It is still too early to assess the effect of the operation against the establishment of a Hizbollah infrastructure in the Golan Heights: Will it delay the opening of an active Iranian-Hizbollah front against Israel on the Golan Heights? Alternatively, will it spur the completion and activation of the infrastructure, as could be implied by the start of the “battle to restore the Golan Heights,” which began recently with the participation of Hizbollah forces, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and the Syrian army, and which is even named for the twelve casualties of the Israeli attack.

Note that despite the de facto decision by Hizbollah and Israel to end the violent interchange following the attack on the Golan Heights and Hizbollah’s counter-response, it is impossible to say whether Iran, with or without Hizbollah, will respond in the future, as Revolutionary Guards officials have threatened, in order to force Israel to pay a heavy price. In any case, it appears that in the confrontation with Hizbollah and Iran on the northern front, it is preferable, to the extent possible, to adopt the low signature covert warfare approach. This is because it allows both room to maneuver and deniability for both parties and thus minimizes the risk of escalation to the point of a war that neither party wants.

The violent battle between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and perhaps even outside the Middle East, can be expected to continue and perhaps escalate in the coming year, given the attempts by Syria and Iran to expand their areas of influence in southern Syria and the Syrian Golan Heights. The declaration by Revolutionary Guards officials that Iran will respond to an Israeli operation might translate not only into Iranian support for Hizbollah operations, but also attempts to carry out terrorist attacks abroad, since there is full coordination between Iran and Hizbollah.

Israel’s goal, which at this stage is apparently the goal of Hizbollah and Iran as well, is to conduct the struggle for influence without being dragged into a war. For its part, the Iran-Hizbollah axis fears an Israeli operation against the Assad regime, which might bring about its fall. In addition, in their view, another war between Israel and Hizbollah could be devastating for Lebanon, after Hizbollah was able to expand its influence over the Lebanese government’s foreign and defense policy and restore its standing as the defender of Lebanon.

Israel too prefers to keep its distance from the turmoil in the region and avoid a situation that deteriorates into a war against Hizbollah in Lebanon. Therefore, calming and control mechanisms should be created, with the involvement of Western and Arab mediators, to assist in moderating the responses in the event of mutual attacks and more than usual tension, and to stop the slide into a war that neither side desires.

Australia is to send more troops to Iraq to help train local security forces in their battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said.

The deployment of 300 soldiers to the Taji military base north of Baghdad will be part of a joint Australia-New Zealand training mission.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said on Tuesday his country would send 143 of its own troops as part of the mission.

The deployment comes a day after Australia declared that its citizens travelling to Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city which is controlled by ISIL, would be jailed for nine years unless they have a legitimate reason for the trip, such as visiting their family.

Abbott repeatedly stressed that the troops would not be engaged in fighting, in an attempt to allay concerns that Canberra is getting sucked into a new foreign combat operation.

‘Death cult’

Abbot said additional deployment has been prompted by planned attacks previously thwarted by security forces that have been linked to ISIL.
“The death cult has been reaching out to our country with about 100 Australians fighting with Daesh and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq and about another 150 here at home supporting these extremists,” Abbott said, using an alternative name for ISIL.

“So this commitment is a matter of domestic as well as international security.”

The troops’ mission, Abbott said, will be to help teach the Iraqis how to fight ISIL, which has infiltrated large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria and declared a self-styled caliphate on territories under its control.
“We don’t expect to be doing the Iraqi’s fighting for them,” Abbott said.
“This is a training mission, not a combat mission. Nevertheless, it is a mission which is necessary, because obviously in the face of the initial death cult onslaught, the Iraqi regular army melted like snow in summer.

“That’s been a disaster for the people of Iraq, millions of whom now live in a new dark age.”

The soldiers are expected to head to Iraq in May as part of a two-year mission, which will be reviewed after 12 months, Abbott said.

Australia already has 170 special forces troops in Baghdad advising and assisting Iraqi security forces.

Another 400 Australian air force personnel are supporting Australian air strikes against ISIL targets in northern Iraq from the al-Minhad Air Base outside Dubai.

Source: Al Jazeera

General Khalifa Hafter has been appointed as Commander General of the Libyan National Army (LNA) by House of Representatives (HoR) President Ageela Saleh Gwaider. He has also been promoted to Lieutenant General.

Its Libya Herald’s understanding that the appointment of Hafter has been made unilaterally by HoR President Ageela Saleh Gwaider within what he sees as his powers as Supreme Commander of the Libyan National Army.

However, there is opposition to Hafter’s appointment within the HoR and a rejection of Saleh’s interpretation of his powers enabling him to appoint Hafter.

In February, the Deputy of the HoR Defence and National Security Committee, Mosab Al-Abed, told Libya Herald that the HoR was not going to appoint Hafter as General Commander of the LNA.

Abed felt that Saleh could only make the decision in tandem with his two deputies and that the HoR’s president and deputies power as Supreme Military Commanders had lapsed. Abed was concerned about the loss of civilian oversight over the army.

On another level, whilst Hafter is a very divisive figure in Libyan society in general, he is particularly opposed by the GNC-Libya Dawn coalition who have referred to him as a ‘’war criminal’’.

His appointment could add to the polarisation of Libyan politics and could hinder UN-led efforts to resume the Libyan political dialogue.

Source:  Libya Herald

The Afghan military forces launched a rescue operation in southern Zabul province on Monday night to free the 30 Hazara passengers who were kidnapped by unknown masked men, an Afghan security official, on condition of anonymity, said.

The operation was launched in Khak-e-Afghan district of Zabul and is still underway. So far, 36 insurgents have been killed and 50 others injured.

Leading the operation is Kandahar Police Chief Gen. Abdul Raziq, Military Commander of Atal 205th Corps Maj. Gen. Abdul Hamid Hamid, and Zabul security officials.

This comes after the 25-member mediation team of Zabul elders were in talks with the insurgents on Saturday on releasing the abducted passengers, but to no prevail.

Zabul’s acting Governor Mohammad Ashraf Nasiri had warned that if negotiations between the tribal elders and the armed masked men did not triumph that military action will be taken.

In an attempt to identify the armed masked men Nasiri had recently blamed the abduction on local Taliban, the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants and the Chechens.

There has been no clarification on who the armed masked men are and who their affiliation is, but speculations from security officials battling against the masked men indicate that they are Daesh.

The 30 passengers, specifically belonging to the Hazara ethnic minority, were abducted last week from Shah Joy district of Zabul as they were on their way to Kabul on the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Senior Nigerian military official Major General Chris Olukolade said the operation against Boko Haram, backed by the multi-national Joint Task Force, is progressing and achieving its intended goals.

Olukolade, director of defense information, said the Joint Task force is also adjusting its maneuvers to counter what seems to be a new Boko Haram fighting strategy of using guerilla warfare suicide bombings.

This comes as latest reports say Boko Haram gunmen attacked an island on the Niger side of Lake Chad Monday, with locals reporting heavy casualties.

Olukolade said the multi-national Joint Task Force will defend any coalition member against Boko Haram attacks.

“The offensive on the terrorists is continuing as planned and achieving required results. All the identified cells have been either bombarded or assaulted on the ground, and those operations that have been completed are undergoing cordon and search by troops with the view to recovering all arms in their (rebels) possession, and also apprehending anyone of the rebels who might be hiding, and recovering all arms that may be in their possession,” he said.

Olukolade said the military is aware that, as the insurgents retreat from the onslaught, they are adopting new tactics in the form of suicide bombings and guerrilla warfare.

He said one explanation for the recent military successes against Boko Haram is training coupled with adjustment in military tactics.

“This has been the pattern of their operation. Before now, they have decided to adopt the style of ISIS, wanting to hold on to territories. What they were doing [lately] has been more of guerrilla warfare. And we are adjusting our tactics to contain them accordingly,” Olukolade said.

Olukolade said Boko Haram will not be able to divide the coalition by its cross-border attacks.

“This coalition is also meant to confront that type of situation in a sense that any [of] these countries that come under attack the joint task force will go after them and assist wherever in containing them,” Olukolade said.

Meanwhile, Boko Haran militants Monday released a video showing the beheading of two men the group accused of spying.

The six-minute video has similarities to those produced by the Islamic State group and also features the black IS flag flying in the upper right-hand corner.

The video, entitled Harvest of Spies, shows masked militants with long knives standing behind two men forced to kneel on the ground. Before his beheading, one of the men identified himself as Dawoud Muhammad of Baga city in northeastern Nigeria. He said he accepted the equivalent of $25 from a police officer to spy.

The video does not show the moment of the killings. Instead, militants are seen placing the men’s separated heads onto their prone bodies.

In a message read by his representative during the twenty-fourth session of the Egypt’s Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, the head of Egypt’s al-Azhar University, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyib called for measures to deal with the grave threats posed by Takfiri terrorists, including DAESH (ISIL), saying: “These Takfiri groups aspire to dominate not only Western countries, but rather the entire world.”

The Egyptian scholar called for action against terrorists and emphasized that conferences should continue to be held and that divisions in the Muslim world should be abandoned. He emphasized that Muslim unity is essential. “We would like to expose the lies of the Takfiri terrorists and warn the world of their dangers,” he explained.

Shaykh al-Tayyib  that some Arab countries secretly and covertly support terrorism and others do it openly. These countries should put an end to their actions as soon as possible. The Arab-funded channels of sedition which incite people to kill others who are must be closed down otherwise these countries will be considered hostile.

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar called for an Arab-led deterrent force to fight these Takfiri groups and stressed that al-Azhar University is prepared to provide aid to all countries to spread the [true] Islam.

Source:  abna24.com