Forty-eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group in the southern port city of Aden, officials said Sunday in an updated casualty toll.

“We have 48 dead and 29 wounded,” all soldiers, Abdel Nasser al-Wali, health department chief for Aden, told AFP, revising an earlier toll of 35 dead.

The bomber detonated his explosives belt as hundreds of troops had gathered to collect their monthly pay at a barracks in Al-Sawlaban near Aden’s international airport.

IS claimed responsibility.

“A martyr from the Islamic State denotated his explosives belt in Al-Sawlaban military camp in Aden during a gathering of the Yemeni army,” the IS-affiliated Amaq news outlet said.

Yemeni authorities have for months pressed a campaign against jihadists who remain active in the south and east of the war-torn country.

IS and its jihadist rival Al-Qaeda have taken advantage of a conflict between the government and the Huthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa, to bolster their presence across much of the south.

The two groups have carried out a spate of attacks in Aden, Yemen’s second city and headquarters of the internationally recognised government whose forces retook the port from the Huthis last year.

thepeninsulaqatar.com

Iran has proposed the formation of a bloc of Muslim countries to fight terrorism and boost economic cooperation that would include its regional rival Saudi Arabia.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told a security conference on Sunday that the two countries, along with Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan, should join together to promote “regional peace” and defend the Palestinians.

Shiite-majority Iran and mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia are bitterly divided, and support opposite sides in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in January after Iranian demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic facilities to protest the execution of a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric.

Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a 34-member “Islamic military alliance” against terrorism nearly a year ago, which excluded Iran.

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The US-led anti-Daesh coalition destroyed 168 oil tanker trucks belonging to the militant group near Palmyra, Syria, American Central Command announced Friday.

The strike Thursday was “the largest air strike of its kind to date”, the military said.

“The Coalition continues to forcefully prosecute the air war on ISIL (Daesh) revenue capability,” said coalition spokesman Col. John Dorrian. “When ISIL has access to large sums of money, they use it to conduct violent terror attacks against anyone who doesn’t share their barbaric ideology.”

The US military estimates the strike resulted in the loss of more than $2 million in revenue.

Central Command also released a video footage of airstrikes on the trucks.

The coalition targeted more than 1,000 Daesh oil tankers since last year, according to the Pentagon.

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The United States will send an additional 200 troops to Syria to assist rebel groups in capturing the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced.

Speaking at the annual IISS Manama Dialogue security gathering on Saturday in Manama, Bahrain, Carter said special forces trainers, advisers and bomb disposal teams will join the 300 U.S. troops already in Syria, the BBC reported.

Carter said the 200 extra troops will “continue organizing, training, equipping, and otherwise enabling capable, motivated, local forces” including Kurdish and Arab fighters to continue their efforts to seize Raqqa.

He added the troops would assist in an effort to bring “the full weight of U.S. forces around the theater of operations, like the funnel of a giant tornado,” onto the so-called Islamic State capitol, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“By combining our capabilities with those of our local partners, we’ve been squeezing ISIL by applying simultaneous pressure from all sides and across domains, through a series of deliberate actions to continue to build momentum,” Carter said, referring to the militant organization also known as ISIS and Daesh.

The U.S. plans to divide the Islamic State’s territory in Syria and Iraq, including its stronghold in Mosul, while also targeting the group’s leadership.

“Leaders of the terrorist group can no longer travel between Raqqa and Mosul without the risk of either being struck from the air or hunted down by the coalition’s Expeditionary Targeting Force,” Carter said. “In fact, since we began accelerating our campaign last year, we’ve killed the majority of ISIL’s most senior leaders.”

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Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that Israel is making efforts to prevent Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah from obtaining chemical weapons.

In doing so, Avigdor Lieberman appeared to suggest there is truth to reports of two Israeli military strikes in Syria in the last week.

The former Moldovan bouncer said in a meeting with European Union envoys to Israel that “we are first and foremost making efforts to maintain the security of our citizens and protect our sovereignty, and trying to prevent the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah.”

Lieberman said that the Israeli military had no intention of embroiling itself in the five-year civil war in neighboring Syria, but that he believed “the Iranians and Assad” must be out of the equation at the conclusion of the conflict.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported Tuesday that Israel “launched a number of surface-to-surface missiles from inside the occupied territories,” targeting a military airport in Damascus near to President Bashar al-Assad’s palace. The Israeli military also fired rockets at Syrian targets, causing loud explosions, last week, according to reports. The Israeli military did not confirm the strikes.

Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beitenu party, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, reiterated his comments Thursday, outlining three ways in which Israel would take action in the country.

“Our policies and our positions are very clear and are based on three red lines: We won’t allow any harm to the citizens of the State of Israel; we won’t allow any harm to the sovereignty of the State of Israel; and we will not allow the smuggling of high-quality advanced weapons and chemical weapons from Syria to Lebanon for Hezbollah,” Lieberman said, as reported by the Times of Israel.

The Israeli military and Hezbollah waged a month-long war on Lebanon and Israel’s shared border in 2006 that claimed the lives of hundreds on each side. Hezbollah is propping up the Assad regime in Syria alongside the forces of Iran, its financier.

It has also attacked Israel from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, an area that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Israel is suspected of assassinating key Hezbollah commanders operating inside Syria. The Israeli military remains on high alert because of the threat of renewed Hezbollah attacks and an outbreak of conflict on its northern border.

newsweek.com

The U.S.-led international coalition fighting against the Islamic State said it bombed a hospital in Mosul to support Iraqi forces battling on the ground.

The coalition said Iraqi security forces on Tuesday were attempting to seize Mosul’s al-Salem hospital complex from the Islamic State in the city’s east, which is currently the goal of capture by government forces.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, Daesh, and ISIL, was using the hospital as a base of operations, and a command and control headquarters, the coalition said.

The Iraqi forces were able to capture the area, but on Wednesday faced several counter-attacks and six car bombings. Iraqi forces would then retreat “a short distance, under heavy enemy fire, to strengthen their position.”

“After Iraqi forces continued to receive heavy and sustained machine gun and rocket propelled grenade fire from ISIL fighters in a building on the hospital complex, they requested immediate support from the coalition,” Operation Inherent Resolve said in a statement. “In support of the Iraqi security forces, coalition aircraft conducted a precision strike on the location to target enemy fighters firing on Iraqi forces.”

Col. John Dorrian, U.S. spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told Rudaw the coalition is “not exactly sure” if there were civilian casualties.

“We saw no civilians observed in the area, we are not exactly sure,” Dorrian said. “But we did not observe any civilians in the area and we conducted the strike in the interest of protecting the Iraqi Security forces from firing that Daesh was doing from that building.”

The coalition said it complies with the international laws of armed conflict, adding that it “takes all feasible precautions during the planning and execution of airstrikes to reduce the risk of harm to non-combatants.”

Iraqi security forces, aided by the Kurdish Peshmerga, Shiite militias and a U.S.-led international coalition, began a ground offensive on Oct. 17 to capture Mosul away from the control of the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIS and ISIL.

“We will continue to strike ISIL military targets in support of our partners in order to defeat ISIL in Iraq,” the coalition said.

upi.com

The Islamic State group is calling on its followers to launch attacks in Bahrain, including those targeting American military personnel stationed on the tiny island ahead of a visit by the U.S. defense secretary.

The appeal for violence came in a video that also urges militants to attack the Sunni-ruled island’s Shiite majority amid a wider government crackdown on dissent there.

The slickly produced video surfaced as IS propaganda has waned as the extremists continue to lose territory in Iraq and Syria under the onslaught of a U.S.-led coalition campaign against them. Bahrain is part of that coalition.

In the IS video, images of Bahraini fighter jets are juxtaposed to footage of an airstrike hitting an IS-held area. It also shows clips of a Bahrain-based Gulf Air flight, the King Fahd Causeway linking the island to Saudi Arabia and other sites in the capital, Manama.

“Wherever the enemies of Allah are found, there is jihad. Below you are the malevolent (Shiites) and the apostate soldiers of tyranny,” one fighter says, according to a transcript provided by the U.S. jihadi-monitoring SITE Intelligence Group.

“The muzzles of your weapons should not miss those American bases where from military aircraft took off to pour their flames on the monotheists in the territories of Islam,” the militant adds.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, as well as a British naval base still under construction. Officials with the 5th Fleet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday, Bahrain’s government said it “remains vigilant against terrorist activities and extremism.”

“Authorities continue to take all necessary steps to preserve security and stability within the kingdom,” it read.

The video appeared timed for high-level meetings on the island.

A Gulf Cooperation Council conference attended by British Prime Minister Theresa May ended on Wednesday. Weeks earlier, Britain’s Prince Charles and wife Camilla visited the island.

This coming weekend, Bahrain will host the Manama Dialogue, where U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is scheduled to give the opening address. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is also due to attend.

Perhaps more troubling in the video to Bahrainis is the list of 14 purported fighters from the island who the Islamic State group says died as suicide bombers or fighters in Iraq and Syria. One of their names is similar to a man the government identified in January 2015 as having his citizenship stripped for belonging to the militant group. Bahrain also prosecuted a group of people last year it accused of forming a local Islamic State cell.

The video, like others from the extremists, seeks to cleave Sunnis from Shiites — something that’s particularly worrying in Bahrain.

It’s been five years since Bahrain’s 2011 Arab Spring protests, which saw Shiites and others demand more political freedoms from the ruling Al Khalifa family. The government put down the demonstrations with help from Saudi and Emirati troops, and later pledged to carry out reforms.

In the time since, sectarianism has grown on the island and the Sunni-dominated government is in the midst of a crackdown on unrest at a level unseen since 2011.

Authorities have suspended the country’s largest Shiite opposition group, Al-Wefaq, and doubled a prison sentence for its secretary-general. Human rights activists, Shiite leaders and others have been imprisoned, lost their citizenship or forced into exile.

Bahrain’s government meanwhile has insisted that no one “will, or can be, prosecuted for his or her political views.”

“The government is fully committed to community cohesion and upholding the principles of reconciliation and tolerance, and will not allow the disruption of that cohesion and peace to go unchecked,” the government’s statement also said.

stripes.com

Egypt has sent 200 military officers and advisors to Syria to help the regime with security coordination, Jordanian Assabeel newspaper reported yesterday.

Reporting the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which has close ties to Hezbollah, Assabeel said that the Egyptian military officers and advisors are distributed among a number of centres, including a centre in the headquarters of the Syrian regime in Damascus.

The newspaper said that this plan came after an official visit made by the Chief of the Syrian National Security Bureau Brigadier General Ali Mamlook and a senior intelligence delegation which visited Cairo.

At the beginning of November, the newspaper said, a group of Egyptian security and military officers moved to Syria as part of the security and military cooperation which included exchanging experiences in fighting terrorism.

It is also reported that Russia supports coordination and cooperation between the two countries.

middleeastmonitor.com