A retreat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria would increase risks of terrorist attacks, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins warned on Friday.

“Paradoxically, the weakening of the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria area is a factor that increases the risk of attack,” Molins said.

“We can see in the history of terrorism when terrorist organizations are struggling in their own zone, they seek the opportunity to attack abroad,” he told Le Monde newspaper.

IS weakening could trigger a return to France of a large number of French jihadists and their families which, according to Molins, was “a worrying factor.”

About 700 French youth have already joined Islamist fighters in Iraq and Syria, according to official data.

France remains at high terror risk a month and a half after a man drove his truck into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice. A total of 86 people were killed in the attack. A few days later, two teenagers slaughtered a priest in a church in northern France. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for both attacks.

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Kuwaiti authorities have detained a state employee suspected of belonging to the Islamic State-linked “Cyber Caliphate Army”, and hacking official websites of foreign countries to spread militant ideology, local media reported on Friday.

The Arabic-language al-Watan and al-Qabas reported that the 26-year-old man identified as Othman Zebn Nayef was arrested after months of surveillance.

Al-Qabas quoted the interior ministry’s public information department as saying in a statement that Nayef confessed to being “a main member of the so-called Caliphate Cyber Army”, believed to be the electronic arm of Islamic State.

The English-language Arab Times, which carried a similar report, did not identify the department where he had worked, but said he was caught using his office computer to “hack official social media sites of some ‘friendly and sister’ countries to spread the extremist thoughts of the so-called Islamic State”.

The statement said Nayef’s arrest had helped capture two suspects in Iraq and one in Jordan on Thursday, but provided no further details.

Kuwait has waged a crackdown on Islamist militants since a suicide bomber killed 27 people in an attack on a Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Kuwait city in June 2015. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a separate report, al-Qabas said that around 150 Kuwaiti nationals and residents who hold no citizenship, known as Bidoon, were in Syria fighting within armed groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad, and that up to 11 have died in the fighting.

The newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying that some of those fighters have been trying to find ways to return home as they face “extortion” and robbery from fellow militants.

The Kuwaiti government, an ally of the United States, has stepped up its monitoring of individuals and charities suspected of collecting donations for militants linked to al Qaeda in Syria and in Iraq.

reuters.com

Ambulances enter besieged city day after evacuation deal, with reports fighters will head to Idlib ‘or sort out their situation with the regime’

Ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles entered Syria’s besieged town of Daraya on Friday as thousands of rebels and civilians prepared to leave before its surrender to government forces.

It was unclear exactly when residents and fighters would start leaving the devastated town near the capital Damascus that has been under rebel control since 2012.

An estimated 8,000 people remain in the town, despite a government siege lasting four years and regular government bombardment.

Daraya is located just a 15 minute drive from Damascus and is even closer to the government’s Mazzeh air base.

On Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA announced a deal had been struck for the evacuation of civilians and fighters in the town.

The agreement is regarded as a major defeat for the opposition and has provoked anger among supporters.

“Seven hundred armed men with their personal weapons will leave Daraya to head to the [rebel-controlled] city of Idlib, while thousands of men and women with their families will be taken to reception centres,” SANA said.

The rebels are largely from two groups, Ajnad al-Sham and the Martyrs of Islam. All will be told to surrender other armaments to the army.

A Syrian source on the ground said Thursday that the evacuation could take four days to complete.

A military source told AFP the army would enter Daraya, which was one of the first towns in Syria to erupt in anti-government protests in March 2011.

The civilians will go to regions under government control around Damascus, rebels will go to Idlib “or sort out their situation with the regime,” a rebel official told AFP.

Most of Idlib province, in northwest Syria, is held by the powerful Jaish al-Fatah rebel alliance.

Only one humanitarian food aid convoy has entered Daraya since government forces began their siege of the town in late 2012.

The aid convoy delivered by the Red Crescent entered Daraya in June, and contained enough food for a month, officials said.

A UN aid convoy carrying medicine but no food had entered Daraya earlier the same month.

The arrival of the food aid was followed by heavy government bombardment that residents said stalled distribution.

The bombardment was heavily criticised by the West, including France, which accused Damascus of “extraordinary duplicity”.

According to the UN, nearly 600,000 live under siege across Syria, most surrounded by government forces, although rebels and Islamists also use the tactic.

In several places, lengthy government sieges have prompted rebels to agree evacuation deals with the government, prompting activists to accuse Damascus of using “starve or surrender” tactics.

A plea for help

Middle East Eye published a passionate plea on 22 August, from 42 women living in and out of the besieged city, which urged the international community to intervene and halt the use of napalm on Daraya by pro-government forces.

The letter, headlined “On napalm and starvation: An open letter to the world from the women of Daraya,” chronicles how the Syrian government has besieged and bombed the city, including utilising napalm, a chemical weapon banned by international law.

The writers outline its use against civilians, including a napalm bombing on a hospital that put it “completely out of action”.

On top of napalm attacks, the women also detail how the government has bombed and cut off access to basic necessities such as food and electricity for years, using “starvation as a weapon”.

“At the start of 2013, the regime cut Daraya off from all basic services – electricity, water for drinking and household use and communications. Throughout the siege, regime forces have used starvation as a weapon. Now, children and adults alike are suffering from severe malnutrition,” it read.

“For more than two months, the residents of Daraya have lived with daily, continuous bombing by regime forces. We have counted the weapons used: 1,805 barrel bombs and 729 high-explosive earth-to-earth missiles. These have set fire to agricultural land and the crops that represented the sole food source for the besieged residents of the city,” the letter added.

middleeasteye.net/

Turkey is fighting Kurds under the excuse of combatting the Islamic State group (ISIS) in northern Syria, Kurdish politician Idris Nassan told ARA News on Thursday.

The Rojava Self-Administration in northern Syria said in a public statement that the main goal of Turkey’s intervention into Syria’s Jarabulus is to ‘eliminate our democratic project’.

According to the Kurds, the Jarabulus operation is the result of an agreement between the Syrian government and Turkey.

The Rojava administration compared the ongoing Syrian-Turkish cooperation against the Kurds to the Adana agreement in 1998, which was signed between Ankara and Damascus against the Kurds, which led to expelling of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, which led to his eventual arrest in 1999.

“The Turkish operations in Jarablus don’t target ISIS, because its clear ISIS has withdrawn from the city before the Turkish-backed rebel groups launched the operation to take Jarabulus,” said Nassan, a former official in the Kobane administration.

“Turkey is fighting the Kurds under the excuse of fighting terrorism; they aim at taking over the whole region west of the Euphrates, and maybe going further towards Raqqa to stop Kurdish hopes of making a federal or autonomous region in northern Syria,” he told ARA News.

Kurdish officials suggest that the Jarabulus operation took place after a Turkish outreach towards Russia, Iran and Assad.

“These critical developments are taking place due to regional and international agreements between Turkey, Russia, US, Iran and the Syrian regime against Kurds,” Nassan argued.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called on Kurds on Wednesday to move back across the Euphrates river, in a press conference with Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara, in a clear sign of support to Turkey.

“The US Vice President Joe Biden was clear when he asked to Kurds to withdraw to the east of the Euphrates, threatening them to lose,” Nassan told ARA News. “The American VP Joe Biden was clear when he asked Kurds to withdraw to eastern of Euphrates otherwise they will lose the American support.”

However, the Kurdish politician emphasized that Kurdish forces of the People Protection Units (YPG) had already declared they will withdraw from the Euprhates if the fighting against ISIS is finished there. “And the local fighters of the Manbij Military Council will protect the liberated regions, so the local people are already administrating themselves there,” he said.

In the meantime, the co-head of the Democratic Union Party in Syria (PYD) Salih Muslim said that Turkey is entering a Syrian quagmire, and ‘will be defeated as Daesh’.

aranews.net/

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) retreated from the areas in southern Jarablus town in northern Syria  and near the Turkish border after they were ordered by the US-led global coalition to go back to the eastern bank of the Euphrates river  on Wednesday, August 24.

A source from Jarablus confirmed to BasNews that the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces entered the town and controlled the surrounding areas previously controlled by the SDF.

The source revealed that the SDF has withdrawn from those areas after confrontations erupted with the opposition forces in some villages in the south of the town. They had also received orders from the coalition to move back to the boundaries previously drawn for them in an agreement between Turkey and the coalition.

According to local sources, after the clashes, the Turkish-backed forces completely controlled the town of Jarablus with massive support from the Turkish and US warplanes.

Spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the US-led coalition against IS said earlier today in a statement on Twitter that “the Syrian Democratic Forces have moved east across the Euphrates to prepare for the eventual liberation of Raqqa, Syria”.

The Turkish army, equipped with tanks and jets and backed by the US-led coalition warplanes, launched an offensive into the Syrian territories on Wednesday, aiming to drive the IS militants out of the border town of Jarablus and prevent further gains by Kurdish forces as well.

As Ankara is saying, the Turkish intervention is to secure its southern border areas with Syria.

basnews.com

At least nine more Turkish tanks entered northern Syria on Thursday as part of an operation aimed at driving Islamic State out of the border area around Jarablus and stopping Kurdish militia fighters from seizing territory, Reuters witnesses said.

A senior Turkish official said there were now more than 20 Turkish tanks inside Syria and that additional tanks and construction machinery would be sent in as required.

“We need construction machinery to open up roads … and we may need more in the days ahead. We also have armored personnel carriers that could be used on the Syrian side. We may put them into service as needed,” the official said.

The deployments are part of “Operation Euphrates Shield”, in which Syrian rebels backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes on Wednesday entered Jarablus, one of Islamic State’s last strongholds on the Turkish-Syrian border. It is Turkey’s first major U.S.-backed incursion into its southern neighbor.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday the operation was targeting both Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG militia, whose gains in Syrian Kurdistan northern Syria have alarmed Turkey.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of Kurdish militants who have fought a three-decade insurgency on its own soil, putting it at odds with Washington, which sees the group as an ally in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkey which still denies the constitutional existence of its own Kurds fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syrian Kurdistan — similar to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq — would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds.

Washington regards the Kurdish YPG, the PYD military wing, as key ally against Islamic State and the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and has provided them with air support as well as the military advisers. The Kurdish militia has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday that YPG fighters were retreating to the east of the Euphrates river, a red line for Turkey, foreign ministry sources in Ankara said.

Speaking during a visit on Wednesday to Turkey, a key NATO ally with the alliance’s second-biggest armed forces, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also tried to soothe Turkish concerns about Kurdish territorial gains in Syria.

He said there should be no separate Kurdish entity in northern Syria and the country should remain united. Kurdish militia fighters would not receive U.S. support if they failed to pull back east of the Euphrates as promised, he said.

Syrian Kurds have established three autonomous zones, or Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan (northern Syria) in 2013.  On March 17, 2016 Syria’s Kurds declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan.

ekurd.net/

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