A Peshmerga Commander in the west of Kirkuk province told BasNews on Saturday, “On Saturday morning, Peshmerga forces launched a series of attacks on Mullah Abdullah and other areas in southwestern Kirkuk. After several hours, Peshmerga took control of the village and advanced to the bridge that has separated the two sides for months.”

Director of Kirkuk Police Sarhad Qadir told BasNews that the Peshmerga forces freed Mullah Abdullah village with the support of US-led coalition jets.

A Facebook page called “The Supporters of Peshmerga Commander Hussein Mansour” published a post on Friday morning quoting Hussein’s speech, “I assure all the people of the Kurdistan Region and Kirkuk that I am ready to sacrifice my soul for the protection of all of you, I am yours.”

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) official in Khanaqin Hemin Mansour told BasNews, “Mansour was martyred in today’s fight against IS militants.”

“Peshmerga forces are defending Kurdistan with strength. What has been seen in the latest clashes, is that a large number of IS insurgents have been killed and they have been defeated on all frontlines. The militants have lost their power,” said Mahmood.

“After destroying IS on the frontlines, Peshmerga forces have greater morale and desire to chase down the IS militants,” he added.

Source: BasNews

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi formed a unified counter-terrorism entity on Saturday, two days after a series of militant attacks killed at least 30 people in the peninsula.

Speaking on camera after a meeting with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). El-Sisi issued a decree naming Chief of Staff Osama Roshdy as head of the unit, which will deal with terrorist threats in parts of Egypt to the east of Suez – including the restive Sinai Peninsula.

Roshdy has been promoted to lieutenant-general.

Scores of Egyptian soldiers were killed in coordinated militant attacks in North Sinai on Thursday night. An exact death toll has not been confirmed by military officials, but media reports suggest at least 30 died in the attacks, including a number of civilians.

Speaking about the death toll, Tariq Khater, undersecretary for North Sinai in the health ministry, told Ahram Online that only the military can issue an official death toll.

Source:  ahram.org

An African Union official says African leaders have agreed to send 7,500 troops to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria.

The head of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, Samil Chergui, said on Saturday the move came after the council urged heads of state to endorse the deployment of troops from five West African countries to fight the terror group.

African leaders who are members of the 54-nation African Union are meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a two-day summit that ends on Saturday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon earlier said he support the AU’s move to send a force to fight Boko Haram.

Boko Haram is increasing its attacks as Nigeria prepares for February 14 elections. Thousands have been killed in the 5-year insurgency.

A US-led coalition air strike killed a chemical weapons specialist with the Islamic State group in Iraq who once worked for Saddam Hussein, US military officers said Friday.

The air raid carried out last Saturday near Mosul took out Abu Malik, whose training “provided the terrorist group with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability,” the military said in a statement.

Malik had worked at a chemical weapons production plant under Saddam’s regime and later forged an affiliation with Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, before joining the extremist IS group, according to Central Command.

“His death is expected to temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL’s ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against innocent people,” it said.

US officials had not publicly referred to Malik previously as a key figure.

“Based on his training and experience, he was judged to be capable of creating harmful and deadly chemical agents,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We know ISIL is attempting to pursue a chemical weapons capability, but we have no definitive confirmation that ISIL currently possess chemical weapons,” the official said.

The US-led coalition has carried out more than 2,000 air raids against the IS group in Syria and Iraq since August 8, including some bombing runs that targeted senior militants.

Source:  iraqinews

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, hailed as a moderate voice andwelcomed by officials in the Obama administration just this week, issued separate statements on its English and Arabic websites this week that appear to contradict each other.

A call for “a long, unrelenting Jihad” appeared on the Brotherhood’s Arabic language website Tuesday.

The statement, first reported Friday by the Washington Free Beacon‘s Adam Kredo, starts by invoking a passage from the Quran: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of God and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know but whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of God will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.”

On its English language website Friday, the Brotherhood struck a dramatically different tone in an article in which it “Reiterates Commitment to Non-Violence.”

“The Brotherhood should not have to – every day – reiterate its constants, its strategic stance and chosen path of civil peaceful struggle to restore legitimacy…,” it said.

It does when it posts a call to prepare for jihad invoking assembling the “steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of God.”

The English posting says Brothers who stray from non-violence “no longer belong in the Brotherhood, and the group no longer accepts them, no matter what they do or say.”

As the IPT has shown, offering mixed messages in Arabic and English is routine for the Brotherhood.
On Thursday, a speaker on a Brotherhood-affiliated television station warned foreign tourists and business interests to leave Egypt next month, or risk becoming a “target for the revolutionary punishment movements.” A similar statement was posted on Facebook.

The dueling statements come just after the four-year anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak and led to the Brotherhood’s rise to dominate Egyptian government in his wake. But that rule was short-lived, as President Mohamed Morsi was forced from office by Egypt’s army in July 2013, after millions took to the streets to protest the government’s performance.

This week, dozens of people were killed in protests marking the 2011 revolution. A delegation of exiled Brotherhood officials visited Washington this week, urging support to return Morsi to power.

It was in that context that the Arabic call for jihad was published. According to the Free Beacon, it invoked Brotherhood founding ideologue Hasan al-Banna, who “prepared the jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers…”

“For everyone must be aware that we are in the process of a new phase,” the statement concludes, “in which we summon what of our power is latent within us, and we call to mind the meaning of Jihad, and prepare ourselves and our children, wives and daughters, and whoever marches on our path for a long, unrelenting Jihad. We ask in it the abodes of the martyrs.”

Source:  Investigative Project on Terrorism

An Egyptian court on Saturday banned the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas and listed it as a terrorist organization.

Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood which the Egyptian authorities have also declared a terrorist group and have repressed systematically since the army ousted one of its leaders, Mohammed Mursi, from the presidency in 2013.

“The court ruled to ban the Qassam Brigades and to list it as a terrorist group,” said the judge of the special Cairo court which deals with urgent cases.

Egypt had previously banned Hamas from operating in Egypt.

Egyptian officials claim weapons are smuggled from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into Egypt, where they end up with militant groups fighting to topple the Western-backed Cairo government.

Islamist militants based in Egypt’s Sinai region, which has a border with Gaza, have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since Mursi’s political demise. The insurgency has spread to other parts of Egypt, the most populous Arab country.

Hamas on Saturday dismissed Egyptian media accusations for the group of standing behind deadly attacks in the Sinai Peninsula.

“Neither Hamas nor the Gaza Strip have anything to do with what happened in Sinai or any other place in Egypt,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement.

Barhoum termed claims by Egyptian media that Hamas was behind the attacks as “an attempt to demonize” the Palestinian group.

“Hamas does not interfere in the affairs of any Arab country, particularly Egypt,” he said.

The Palestinian faction has repeatedly denied accusations that it has carried out attacks in the North African state, saying it cannot act against Egypt’s national security.

Since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rose to power in Egypt in 2013 and was elected president, the country’s relationship with the besieged Gaza Strip has worsened.

In November, Egypt decided to create a one kilometer-deep buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula along the border with Gaza by clearing more than 800 houses, displacing more than 1,100 families, and destroying and neutralizing hundreds of subterranean tunnels.

Gaza, which has been under a brutal illegal Israeli blockade for almost eight years, relied heavily on smuggling tunnels across the Egyptian border to obtain vital supplies. The only border crossing between Egypt and Gaza has also been routinely closed, leaving many Palestinians stranded or without access to important medical treatment.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has also repeatedly condemned the militant attacks in Egypt and denied any involvement.

However, the Sisi regime has clamped down severely on Mursi supporters. The crackdown has left at least 1,400 people dead and more than 15,000 imprisoned, with hundreds sentenced to death in trials the United Nations described as “unprecedented in recent history.”

Source:  al-akhbar

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Friday said the 28-member Alliance will strengthen cooperation with the Arab countries to boost their defence capacities to fight terrorism.

“For NATO it is of great importance that we are able to work with partners all over the world but also in our neighbourhood to create stability,” he told a press conference while presenting his annual 2014 report here today.

“It is important to the East with Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova but it is also very important to the south including the Arab World,” he stressed.

Stoltenberg recalled that last December he visited Jordan to meet with Mediterranean Dialogue countries and later to Qatar to have a meeting with several Gulf countries.

“The more we can work with partners the better. The aim is to work together in defence capacity building, reform, connecting our armed forces, working against terrorism and improve their defence ability to create stability in their own region,” he said.

“It is much better in the long run to project stability by working with partners instead of deploying large number of forces,” said the NATO chief.

The year 2014 was a ‘black year’ for European security but NATO has been able to respond to the changing environment, he noted, and added that extremism close to NATO’s southern borders is fuelling terrorism in Allied countries, and that Russia’s actions have destabilized eastern Ukraine.

“This Annual Report demonstrates that we are adapting to deal with these changes, and to keep NATO strong,” said Stoltenberg.
He added that the Readiness Action Plan, agreed at the NATO Wales summit last year, is being turned into reality: “This will be the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

The 20-page report noted that “fighting in Iraq and Syria cost thousands of lives in 2014 and fuelled humanitarian and security challenges for the region and the world. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses a grave threat to the region and serious challenges for NATO’s members and partners.” “The Assad regime has contributed to the emergence of ISIL in Syria and its expansion beyond,” said the report.

Stoltenberg said that all NATO allies are contributing in one way or another in US-coalition fighting ISIL.
“I welcome that, even though I don’t believe that air strikes alone can solve the problem,” he said.
He said that the Iraqi government a few weeks ago asked NATO for help to improve their defence capacities.

“We are looking into their request,” he said. “NATO is playing its role in the fight against terror partly by exchanging information on foreign fighters who are real threat to all allied countries,” he added.
Turning to Afghanistan, he said 2014 was the final year of NATO combat operation in Afghanistan, the largest in Alliance history.

“While many challenges remain, we are determined to support Afghanistan to build on the gains that we have made with great effort and sacrifice. That is why we have launched a new mission, Resolute Support, to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces,” he said.

On Ukraine the report noted thee impact of the violence and insecurity caused by Russia and Russian-backed separatists has not been limited to Ukraine. “This violence can undermine the safety, stability and well-being of people around the world, as demonstrated by the tragic downing of Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH17 in July,” it warned.

NATO supports the sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU), the G7 and others as part of an international effort to address Russia’s destabilising behaviour, it said.

Stoltenberg announced that he will meet with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov at the sidleines of the security conference in Munich, Germany, next week to discuss NATO-Russia ties.

Source:  kuna.net.kw