A Norwegian humanitarian group says a record 38 million people have been internally displaced in their countries worldwide, with 2.2 million Iraqis alone forced to flee from their homes in 2014 after the Islamic State group overrun their areas.

The study by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) was released Wednesday.

It says 11 million were newly displaced last year — mostly because of conflicts in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, accounting for 60 per cent of the new displacement.

The group says at least 1.1 million Syrians also fled their homes last year.

Syria has the highest number of internally displaced, with 7.6 million dislodged because of the conflict, now in its fifth year. That’s at least 35 per cent of the population.

“These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians,” said Jan Egeland, head of IDMC.

According to UN statistics, some 16.7 million people were living as refugees worldwide at the end of 2013.

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti Wednesday, home to the main US military base on the continent and just across the sea from war-torn Yemen.

Djibouti, a strategic former French colony and port that guards the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, is also a key contributing nation to the African Union force fighting Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab insurgents in neighbouring Somalia.

“Djibouti is making a very significant contribution, helping to push back against extremism,” Kerry said during a visit to a mosque with Djiboutian officials.

Kerry is making the first visit by a Secretary of State to Djibouti, and officials said he will thank the government for its help in supporting some 500 US citizens fleeing the civil war in nearby Yemen.

“He will be thanking the Djiboutian government for their efforts in Yemen in terms of the assistance to American citizens,” a US diplomat said.

Djibouti is home to Camp Lemonnier, the US military headquarters on the continent that is used for anti-terror operations in Yemen, Somalia as well as for other operations across Africa.

Kerry’s visit Djibouti ends the east Africa leg of a tour that has taken in Kenya and Somalia, where the fight against the Shebab insurgents has been a focus of talks.

As he did in Kenya, Kerry will discuss with Djiboutian officials “how to more effectively deal with the threat that Al-Shebab and others have posed in the region,” the diplomat added.

He is due to meet with President Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, and travel to Camp Lemmonier.

In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes against Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies on March 26 after they seized control of large parts of the country, sending thousands fleeing, many to Djibouti.

Djibouti is already stretched with the refugees it hosts: the tiny nation of some 850,000 people looks after some 28,000 mainly Somali refugees.

At its narrowest point, there are only some 30 kilometres (20 miles) between Djibouti and Yemen, across the Bab al-Mandeb straits, the key shipping channel at the entrance to the Red Sea that separates Africa from Arabia.

Before Djibouti, Kerry spent three days in Kenya, including a brief but symbolic trip Tuesday to the Somali capital Mogadishu, the most senior US official to visit since Washington’s doomed military intervention more than two decades ago.

After Djibouti, Kerry heads to Saudi Arabia later on Wednesday, before travelling onwards to France for talks on regional security, as well as to take part in commemorations marking the end of World War II in Europe.

Hezbollah’s leader said his Lebanon-based militant group will launch an attack inside Syria against al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in the mountain region along the countries’ border.

Local media and Syrian opposition have speculated that such an assault could start within days in the Qalamoun area, and Hezbollah fighters clashed with gunmen from the same Syria-based insurgent group, Nusra Front, in a different border zone on Tuesday.

The attack “will announce itself when it happens,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech. It would be in Qalamoun, but “as for its goal, place or where it will extend to.. This …we do not declare now.”

Lebanese officials have warned Hezbollah against launching a cross-border attack, which they say would drag Lebanon, which suffered a civil war in 1975-90, further into the Syrian conflict.

The Shi’a Muslim group is a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has sent hundreds of combatants to fight alongside his forces in the four-year civil war.

It has lost dozens of fighters, including several commanders, in battles in Syria.

A Hezbollah incursion could also put at risk the lives of Lebanese soldiers and police taken captive along the border last year by Nusra Front and the jihadist Islamic State group, officials say.

Fighting from Syria has spilled into Lebanon several times in recent years, with car and suicide bombings in Beirut, fighting in the northern city of Tripoli, and rocket attacks on Bekaa Valley towns close to the frontier.

Nusra Front fighters have regularly been active in areas close to the Syrian border and have targeted Hezbollah and Lebanese army positions in the past.

Casualties from Tuesday’s clashes, on the Lebanese side of the border near the mountain towns of Toufeil and Britel, were “very high,” a Hezbollah source told Reuters.

There was no immediate reaction from Nusra Front, which has recently been on the offensive in northwestern Syria and took the city of Idlib this month for the first time in the conflict.

Nasrallah played down the importance of recent setbacks for Assad’s forces, including the loss of Idlib. “Losing a round does not mean one lost the war,” he said.

Yemen’s rebels fired rockets and mortars into Saudi Arabia, killing at least two civilians and reportedly capturing five soldiers, prompting a Saudi-led military coalition to warn it would strike back.

Saudi Arabia’s state airline canceled flights into the border area of Najran as schools closed early amid the attack, the first by Houthi rebels, to target a civilian area in the kingdom since the start of the airstrikes. Meanwhile, hundreds of families fled the southern Yemeni city of Aden after the Houthis advanced into their neighborhoods, firing indiscriminately as they took over surrounding, towering mountains.

In the Saudi region of Najran, the Houthi shelling killed two Saudi civilians and damaged buildings, Yemeni tribal leaders said. The state-run airline, Saudia, said flights to and from the area would be suspended until further notice, without elaborating. It is the only carrier flying to Najran.

The tribal leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, also said the Houthis captured five Saudi soldiers in unclear circumstances. Saudi state television reported local schools closed early and aired footage showing cars burnt, smoldering houses and debris covering nearby roads.

In a statement, Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asiri said Saudi-led coalition forces continue to respond to the Houthi attack.

“What happened today is part of the chaos that the Houthi militias live with,” he said, adding that “all options are open” to the kingdom to ensure its security.

Asiri’s statement did not offer any details about casualties, nor did it mention the alleged abduction of the soldiers. Saudi Apache attack helicopters targeted Houthis near the border, said another military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists.

Last week, three Saudi troops and dozens of rebels were killed in the fighting there.The assault underscored how the Iranian-backed Houthis are still capable of launching major operations despite more than a month of Saudi-led airstrikes targeting them and their allies – military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudi-led coalition began bombing on March 26 in support of exiled President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi’s embattled government. The airstrikes and fighting on the ground have killed hundreds and displaced at least 300,000 Yemenis.

In Aden, residents said Houthis advanced into a large section of the city’s Tawahi district, forcing hundreds of families to flee to safer areas using boats. The residents said they had been trapped inside their homes for weeks.

Mona Abdel-Maged, among residents of the area reached by telephone, said a mortar shell had killed her husband, then a second shell killed six men trying to pull his body from the rubble. “After burying the dead, we would still find torn limbs and body parts in the streets. So we go back and bury them,” she said. Mona Mohsen, one of the residents, said panic and the sound of gunfire sent people rushing into the streets.

Aden is a major battleground in a war that the UN and others warn is pushing the impoverished nation into a humanitarian disaster

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said the war today is not only the war of the Syrians, but it is a defense for Lebanon, Palestine and the whole region as “we will remain assuming our responsibility in Syria.”

“We are in front of a psychological war which seeks to affect the determination and struggle of Syrians and to achieve, through rumors, what it has failed to gain during the 4-years universal war on Syria,” Nasrallah said in a TV speech broadcast on Tuesday.

He called on Arab and Islamic states to work for lifting the blockade imposed on the Yemeni people and delivering humanitarian aid to them.

“We are witnessing a big deception process by Saudi Arabia concerning Yemen and there is a clear Saudi failure due to the unity of the Yemeni people,” Nasarallah added.

Nasrallah said the threat of the terrorist groups in al-Qalamoun was not presupposed, rather it was real and imminent.

When the Islamic State (IS) captured Mosul in June of 2014, the event brought to the fore the power of the extremist group’s propaganda machine and how it had paved the way for its lightning advance across northern Iraq and its capture of the city, which took place seemingly overnight.
One of the most surprising things at the time was the feeble way the Iraqi Army had reacted to the onslaught. It was said back then, and widely circulated, that all it took to erode the morale of Iraqi soldiers and make them flee their posts so readily was receiving text messages on their cell phones from colleagues warning them that fighters from IS were approaching.
Since then the Iraqi government has been attempting to return morale and prestige to its armed forces, who were left humiliated and marginalized by this traumatic experience. Perhaps even more traumatizing was the event that has subsequently become known as the Camp Speicher Massacre, when it is estimated IS militants killed more than 1,000 Iraqi air cadets in June of 2014 when they captured Tikrit, where the training facility is situated.
Over the following months it did not seem like the Iraqi government was serious about rehabilitating the image of its beleaguered armed forces, instead seemingly satisfied with relying on the military efforts and strategies of Iran’s Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, a feared division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It was Suleimani who led the Iraqi Shiite volunteer forces who were spearheading the fight against IS in Iraq — and given free rein by Baghdad to operate parallel to the country’s army. And it was these volunteer forces, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, who were able to retake the city of Tikrit back from IS about a month ago. At the present time, plans are under way to retake the western Anbar province, large parts of which, including the provincial capital Ramadi, are under IS’ control, with the Tikrit offensive forming a benchmark on which the current plans are being modeled.
At the same time, reports have spread like wildfire regarding IS’ “victories” over the Iraqi Army, with the atmosphere of fear leading countless people to flee their homes in sheer panic. The Iraqi government, meanwhile, has attempted to deny the reports of the continued spread of the extremist group and its alleged massacres of Iraqi soldiers, branding these reports as mere psychological warfare. I have no doubt that much of what is being circulated is in fact subterfuge, but it is also clearly based on a modicum of truth.
What we have now in Iraq is a situation fueled by propaganda and counter-propaganda, all being exchanged in rapid-fire succession before a single Iraqi army bullet has even been fired in Anbar. What is doubly more dangerous is that all the misleading publicity campaigns and psychological warfare conducted by either side in this conflict are occurring in a country and within a context that provides a fertile breeding ground for incitement and provocation that can take many dangerous forms. Moreover, the Tikrit offensive has now cast a dark and foreboding shadow over what is about to happen in Anbar.

Many reports, which included photographic and video evidence as well as eyewitness testimony, showed that following their victory in Tikrit, the Shiite Popular Mobilization forces engaged in what can only be described as acts of sectarian-fueled revenge over the city’s Sunni inhabitants. These human rights abuses are reported to have included mass killings as well as the ransacking and burning of homes.
The operation in Tikrit was certainly necessary; more of the IS-occupied territories in Iraq need to be taken back from the extremist group, a point on which there is broad consensus. However, the transgressions by the Popular Mobilization forces following their victory in Tikrit have now worked in IS’ favor.

As part of its own propaganda efforts in the battle for the “hearts and minds” of Iraqis, it is now making reference to these actions by the Shiite militias in a bid to drum up support for itself from Anbar’s majority-Sunni population. These are efforts, which could find some success in a restive region of the country that has felt marginalized ever since the US-led invasion in 2003. After all, IS, whose propaganda machine is already predicting a failure for Iraqi forces in the upcoming battle for Anbar, did not just fall out of the sky. Its emergence and dominion over large parts of Iraq is but a symptom of accumulated mistakes made over the previous decades, all representing shameful episodes for the country.
So, going hand-in-hand with the preparations for the impending Anbar offensive is a psychological battle being fought out by individual media outlets, a battle which can distort and exaggerate the current atmosphere for the benefit of the respective protagonists in the conflict.
It is now no longer possible to enter into a military conflict without prefacing it with this kind of psychological warfare conducted against the enemy. IS were trailblazers in this regard, but the Popular Mobilization has proved an apt pupil and quick study: The student is attempting to surpass the master.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said Tuesday Gulf leaders must stand up to Iran at a conference held amid growing regional tension.

Salman’s call came at a meeting of Gulf monarchs in Riyadh also attended by French President Francois Hollande, who said his country was “by the side” of Gulf nations.

In a clear reference to Iran, Salman spoke of the need to confront an external threat that “aims to expand control and impose its hegemony,” threatening regional stability and creating “sectarian sedition.”

Hollande, the first Western leader to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council summit, said France shared the dangers facing the region and he had come “to affirm the commitment of France to be by your side.”

The summit brought together leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

All but Oman are in the coalition that on March 26 launched airstrikes against the rebels and their allies who have seized large parts of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa.

President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi fled to Riyadh when the rebels advanced on his southern refuge Aden.

Concern has mounted over the air campaign, which has continued despite the coalition’s announcement late last month that it was moving to a new phase.

The U.N. says at least 1,200 people have been killed in Yemen since March 19. It has repeatedly warned the already impoverished Arabian Peninsula state faces a major humanitarian crisis. Saudi Arabia has said it is considering temporary halts in airstrikes to allow aid deliveries.

Hollande told the summit France supports coalition efforts “to ensure the stability of Yemen,” and backs Saudi Arabia’s position that talks between Yemen’s political forces must be held in Riyadh.

The Houthis reject such a proposal and Iran, which denies accusations of arming the Houthis, has called for negotiations at a neutral location.

The leaders at the summit welcomed Hadi’s decision to convene on May 17 in Riyadh a congress for “all the Yemeni parties who support the legitimacy, security and stability of Yemen.”

Hollande arrived in Riyadh from Qatar where he attended the signing of a 6.3 billion euro ($7-billion) deal between French aerospace firm Dassault and Qatari defense officials.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday Paris and Riyadh were also discussing 20 economic projects worth “tens of billions of euros.”

Hollande’s visit came as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to host GCC leaders for talks next week. Most GCC countries are also part of a U.S.-led coalition targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Security is high in Riyadh after ISIS threats to attack the kingdom, with members of the Royal Guard manning checkpoints, an armored car, and a sniffer dog checking vehicles.

Both Paris and Washington have sought to reassure the Gulf states about an international accord being finalized over Iran’s nuclear program.

Tehran denies trying to develop a nuclear weapon. “I know that Iran is at the heart of your preoccupations,” Hollande told the summit.

In its communiqué the GCC expressed hope that a final accord between Tehran and six major powers, including France and the U.S., would “guarantee the peaceful character of the Iranian nuclear program.”

The only other foreign leader invited to a GCC summit was Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2007.