A Turkish hospital in Istanbul admitted four ISIL commanders, who were wounded in military operations in Libya, media reports said.

I vertici dell’Is sanno che per rafforzare il neo-califfato le armi non bastano. È indispensabile un’efficiente strategia di comunicazione, di cui Dabiq, la rivista ufficiale del gruppo, è parte integrante.

Taliban have confirmed a visit of their representatives to China but reject China’s mediation in peace talks.

At least 18 people were killed and 44 others wounded in fierce clashes in Libya’s second largest city of Benghazi, medical sources said on Tuesday, as a new round of peace talks is going on in Geneva.

Since late Saturday, Libya’s National Army has started new assaults against the armed Islamist groups around the “Crescent” region, or the oil ports in eastern Libya, using long-range missiles and heavy weaponry. Local witnesses said that both Sidra and Ras Lanuf oil ports were under attack.

Army warplanes were also seen bombing the Islamist-occupied areas in Benghazi.

Benghazi Medical Center and al-Jala hospital reported that at least 18 people were killed and 44 injured, including four non-combatants.

Since the removal of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has been deadlocked in turmoil with two rival governments and two parliaments, which are backed by secular and Islamist forces respectively.

The armed forces loyal to the two sides have been engaged in intense battles since last May, leaving at least 1,000 people killed and more than 100,000 displaced.

Although an UN-brokered cease-fire between Libya’s rival factions was announced last week, deadly clashes have not ended across the country.

On Monday, the second round of UN-facilitated Libyan peace talks kicked off in the Swiss city of Geneva. The meeting aims at bringing the oil-rich North African country back from the brink of a full-fledged civil war and forming a unity government.

However, the armed Islamist alliance Libya Dawn, a major player in Libya’s politics, earlier quitted the talks, blaming others for not abiding the truce.

The head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, Bernandino Leon, branded the first day of the meeting as “positive,” but he also admitted that “it takes time to end the crisis.”

Source:  punchng.com

 

French security forces have raided a small town in the south which is known as a centre for the jihadi recruiting networks that have sent hundreds of French youths to fighting in Syria and Iraq.

The raid in the town of Lunel began at around dawn today.

At least six young people from the town of about 27,000 have died in Iraq and Syria in recent months. In December the head of the local Muslim union, who also manages a mosque there, refused to condemn the 10 departures and accused President Francois Hollande of acting as a jihadi recruiter.

Two French officials confirmed the raid, but did not immediately have the number of people arrested in Lunel.

The French government says a total of 3,000 citizens have links to the extremist fighters, with important contingents among both the Islamic State group and its al Qaida rival Nusra Front.

Security officials have grown increasingly tense, especially since the January 7-9 terror attacks in Paris which left 20 people dead, including three gunmen.

One of those gunmen claimed allegiance to Islamic State in a posthumous video. Another had ties to a jihadi network that sends Frenchmen to Iraq to fight American forces during the war, and his brother was reportedly trained by al Qaida’s Yemen branch.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country opposes the idea of a Kurdish-controlled autonomous government in northern Syria, local media reported on Tuesday.

In recent years, Turkey has enjoyed burgeoning trade and energy ties with the Iraqi Kurdish region, while at home Ankara has started a peace process with its sizeable Kurdish minority with an ultimate goal of disarming PKK rebels.

Source: thepeninsulaqatar.com

Hezbollah MP Nawaf Musawi decried the delay in receiving weapons and equipment promised to the Lebanese Army, more than a year after the announcement of a $3 billion Saudi military grant.

“Why the delay in supplying the Lebanese Army with the needed weapons and appropriate ammunition when it is being exposed [to attack]?” Musawi said during a memorial service in the southern town of Abassieh.

He said that despite “bureaucratic complexity,” which has been used as a pretext for the arms shipment delay, Western countries are able to deliver weapons and ammunition to those fighting Islamist militants, just like it did when it sent weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan without passing through the bureaucratic channels.

“The Lebanese Army today cannot find who stands beside it but its people and its resistance … that’s why everyone must be in one position,” he said, stressing that Lebanese together can “achieve victories over both enemies.”

Lebanon has yet to receive anticipated French weapons financed by a $3 billion Saudi grant announced in December 2013.

Lebanon has also held off on accepting an offer of military weapons from Iran after protests by Tehran’s local and Western opponents.

Musawi also called on Lebanese to join forces to face the challenges that encounter their country “in the presence of a government that has no potential to meet their needs.”

Musawi said a recent Israeli airstrike that killed six Hezbollah members in Qunaitra in Syria’s Golan Heights was not a “spontaneous [act] as much as it symbolizes the nature of the conflict that we – as people, Army and resistance – are engaged in a battle that has been imposed on us in Syria and in Lebanon.”

“No one has the right anymore to be confused about the battle in Syria, which is not a conflict between the rebels and the Syrian regime or between the opposition and authorities, but what is happening there is a war waged by the enemies of the resistance who are clearly the Israelis and their takfiri allies.”

He said the Qunaitra attack, which took place in front of U.N. eyes, had been coordinated between takfiris and the Israeli enemy.”

“So when the takfiri groups fail [in an] attack, the Zionist enemy steps in to confront the resistance face to face, and this is what happened in Qunaitra.”

Simultaneously, Musawi said, the Lebanese Army is exposed to attacks by Islamist militants, referring to the latest battle between the military and “takfiris” on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek.

“This is why Lebanese must overcome their political divisions and their differences of opinion because the aggression against them does not exclude anyone.”

Source:  albawaba