The Daesh terrorist group’s attempts to exploit residents and use them to carry out terrorist crimes continue unabated.

The group has used foreign nationals in three crimes inside the Kingdom, varied between manufacturing explosives to implementing suicide bombings.

Over the past two years, people from nine countries were involved with Daesh and worked with the group, but Saudi security forces managed to arrest them all and dismantle their cells.
The foreigners involved were Pakistani, Egyptian, Yemeni, Syrian, Jordanian, Algerian, Nigerian, Chadian and Filipino.

A statement by the Ministry of Interior said that terrorist Omar Saeed Mahdi Bahysami, a Yemeni national and member of Daesh, monitored Cpl. Muthhel Fahd Mohammad Al-Saloli, who was a member of the security patrols of Bisha, while he was entering a mosque to perform the dawn prayer.
When the corporal finished his prayers and was leaving the mosque, the terrorist first ran him over with his vehicle, then stepped out of the car and stabbed him in his neck until he died. The police arrested the terrorist and six other Yemeni nationals suspected to be involved in the crime.

With the arrest of Cpl. Al-Saloli, the number of Yemeni nationals accused of security and terrorist cases since 1432 stands at 360. Many of them are serving time in prison, while other are under investigation or being tried in the courts.
During the past two years, the terrorist group has used many residents in the Kingdom to do their work, including the dead Pakistani Abdullah Gulzar Khan, who set off the bomb that killed him in the parking lot opposite the American Consulate in Ramadan.

Before that, Daesh recruited Egyptian national Talha Hisham Mohammad Abdo, who was arrested by police while trying to explode an explosive belt at Al-Rida Mosque in Al-Ahsa with another suicide bomber named Abdulrahman bin Abdullah bin Suleiman Al-Twaijri. Al-Twaijri died when he blew himself up while the two were trying to get inside the mosque.

On the logistics support side, the terrorist group has recruited other nationalities. The Ministry of Interior announced in Shawal 1436 that police had arrested 431 terrorists belonging to four cells. They included Saudis and people from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Nigeria and Chad.

One of the most dangerous terrorists is the arrested Syrian national Yasser Mohammad Shafiq Al-Bazari, the man responsible for making bombs and explosive belts. He had turned his house into an integrated plant for making explosive belts. During a raid on his house, police found two belts prepared with explosives, in addition to barrels containing chemical mixtures. Filipino Lady Joy was found illegally living with him and helping him in sewing and preparing the belts.

arabnews.com

ISIS terrorists fled a northern Syrian stronghold using a civilian convoy as human shields in an effort to prevent coalition airstrikes from destroying their forces

The jihadis were filmed running away from Manbij by a drone launched by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Kurdish-led group recaptured the strategically important town less than 20 miles from the Turkish border and close to an important bridge across the River Euphrates.

According to images posted by the SDF, black-clad ISIS fighters can be seen surrounding the civilian convoy as it makes its way out of the besieged city.

The ISIS terrorists are believed to be travelling on motorbikes and in cars along with the civilians.

The nature of the column prevented US aircraft – who could have wiped out the retreating terrorists in minutes – from attacking because of the risk faced by civilians.

The SDF, backed by US airstrikes, waged a two-month long campaign against ISIS in Manbij, forcing the terror group to flee.

Since their removal, the SDF have found several locations around the city which ISIS had used as a makeshift prison and others which were used as a temporary bomb factory.

However, despite being supported by the US military, the SDF and their Kurdish YPG militia are at risk of attack by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin.

The US military had aircraft on standby to wipe out the fleeing ISIS fighters but called off the strike mission due to the risk of civilian casualties.

US Air Force jets from Inci

It is understood that many of the terrorists went north towards Turkey, which is only 20 miles away.

Colonel Chris Garver, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, said commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces made the decision to allow the convoy to pass. 

Garver said it was highly likely that there were human shields in each of the terrorist vehicles.

He said: ‘They kept throwing civilians to basically walk into the line of fire, trying to get them shot to use that potentially as propaganda, we think.’

Manbij is a key victory for the SDF and the coalition, because it lies on a major supply route between the Turkish border and the city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIS caliphate.

dailymail.co.uk

Russia’s use of an Iranian airbase to strike terrorist targets in Syria will strengthen the role of the two countries in the Middle East amid US policy mistakes in the region

Beginning on Tuesday, Russian bombers took off from the Hamadan base in western Iran for three consecutive days to strike terrorist targets in Syria.

First, for Russia, which has launched intensive air strikes in Syria since last September, using an Iranian airbase in addition to its domestic airfields and the Syrian Hmeimim airbase helps cut the costs of the military operations in Syria.

“The Iranian option allows lowering costs by saving kerosene and avoiding the need to refuel long-range bombers in the air,” Azhdar Kurtov, chief editor of the National Strategy Issues journal and a member at the Russian Institute for Strategic studies, told Xinhua Thursday.

Second, it implies deeper ties between Moscow and Tehran.

When a state allows using, even temporarily, its territory to armed forces of another state, Kurtov said, it demonstrates a greater confidence between them.

The deal will also deepen Iran’s involvement in the region, as it gives it an impetus to play a more active part in the settlement of the Syria crisis, in addition to the lifting of sanctions.

However, Kurtov said it is still too early to speculate about the contribution of this Moscow-Tehran cooperation model of air strikes to the political solution in war-torn Syria, as the efficiency of air strikes from Iran has yet to be assessed.

Meanwhile, he agreed that if they inflicted more damage to terrorists and forced them to retreat, then a solution to the Syria crisis could be found faster.

Furthermore, there is a “political component” behind the unprecedented move, which Kurtov believed is a demonstration to Washington that the United States is not the only power that could carry out military operations by using airbases in Middle East countries.

So far, the US has been not happy following Russia’s use of the Iranian airbase, but it has not yet taken any concrete action.

US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner on Wednesday said that such a move is “not helpful” to the situation in the war-torn country, and Washington is assessing whether Russia’s move violated UN Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied the accusations, saying that Russian warplanes were used with Iran’s consent within the framework of an “anti-terrorist operation on the territory of Syria at the request of the legitimate Syrian government.”

“As the US is directly responsible for conflicts in the Middle East, civil wars and the emergence of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, it has to take into account the fact that Iran and Russia are involved in active military operations aimed at rectifying the mistakes of U.S. policy,” said Kurtov.

bernama.com

Houthi militias and militias affiliated to ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh have lost nearly 1,654 fighters in one week, according to Al Arabiya news channel.

The news site reported that a further 2,000 have been injured.

These preliminary estimates confirm the advances made by Yemen’s national army and the Popular Resistance forces, which are loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. They have had the support of a Saudi-led coalition which has been targeting Houthi locations.

The coalition’s air strikes extended on Wednesday, with sites and  camps belonging to the Houthis and Saleh’s militias targeted in the centre of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

The Saudi-led strikes have destroyed strategic sites for the Houthis in Sanhan, Saleh’s hometown, as well as in Dhahian, a Houthi stronghold in Saada province.

middleeastmonitor.com

Russian Defense Ministry affirmed the destruction of munitions and fuel depots and command centers for ISIS in Syria in airstrikes that carried out by Russian long-range bombers that took off from airbases in Russia and Iran.

In a statement published on its website, the Ministry said Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers took off from airbases on the territories of the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran and carried out a group air strike on objects of the ISIS terrorist organization in the province of Deir Ezzor.

The ministry added that as a result of the strikes, 5 large depots with armament, munitions and fuel, 6 control centers, artillery positions and armored hardware of terrorists were destroyed and a large number of terrorists were killed.

The statement noted that Su-30SM and Su-35S aircrafts took off from the Hmeimim airbase in Lattakia and covered the long-range bombers, adding that all Russian aircrafts have returned to the airfield after accomplishing the combat task successfully.

sana.sy/

One of the witnesses to the foundation of the Islamic State organisation has told an American online magazine that many of the Dutch youngsters who came to help in the early days were ‘crazy’.

Abu Ahmad, a Syrian operative for the Islamic State who witnessed the group’s lightning expansion firsthand, spent months among its most notorious foreign fighters, according to the article on Foreign Policy.com.

He told the journalists he admired the foreign fighters whom he knew, mainly young men from Belgium and the Netherlands who had traveled to Syria to fight jihad. ‘These foreigners left their families, their houses, their lands and traveled all the way to help us here in Syria,’ Abu Ahmad said. ‘So to support us they are truly sacrificing everything they have.’

But while some were truly devote, others he called the crazies. These were mostly young Belgian and Dutch criminals of Moroccan descent, unemployed and from broken homes, who lived marginal lives in marginal suburbs of marginal cities.

Most of these crazies, Ahmad said, had no idea about religion, and hardly any of them ever read the Quran.

To them, fighting in Syria was either an adventure or a way to repent for their ‘sinful lives’ in Europe’s bars and discos.

Police reports Research based on Dutch police records last year showed that more than half the Dutch Muslims who have gone to Syria and Iraq had psychiatric problems before they left, and one in five had serious behavioural issues or an official condition such as schizophrenia.

Police researchers analysed the records of 140 Dutch jihadis and the findings dispute the often quoted view that they are all intelligent youngsters driven by ideology. In fact, they often come from broken homes, have low levels of education and displayed behavioural issues as children.

A number have also been homeless for a time, the researchers found.

dutchnews.nl

The son of Osama bin Laden has called on Saudi people to join global jihad in a bid to overthrow the regime in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Hamza bin Laden delivered the message through a new audio message published by Al-Qaeda-linked As-Sahab media outlet on Wednesday

urged Saudi youth to join the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to “gain the necessary experience” in waging “intifada” to free the country from the Al-Saud family, SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Yemen is the ancestral home of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan in 2011 by an elite team of US Navy Seals after a decade on the run.

The audio message released on Wednesday was his fourth speech since August 2015, as he tries to assert his influence over the global terrorist network.

While Al-Qaeda has been headed by Ayman Al Zawahri since 2011, experts believe that Hamza is aiming for the top terrorist position.

The audio message has been released at a time when the Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as well as Sunni jihadists who have joined Aqap and Islamic State.

khaama.com

A Reaper observed an Islamic State team setting up a mortar and attacked with a Hellfire

It then used a second missile to destroy a mechanical excavator which was being used to help plant improvised explosive devices and tear up the carriageway of the main highway, in an attempt to hamper the Iraqi advance.

Operation Shader is the operational code name given to the British participation in the ongoing military intervention against the Islamic State.

The operation began in Iraq on the 26th of September 2014, following a formal request for assistance by the Iraqi government.

Prior to this, the Royal Air Force had been engaged in a humanitarian relief effort over Mount Sinjar, which involved multiple aid airdrops by transport aircraft and the airlifting of displaced refugees.

By October 2014, the intervention had extended onto Syria with the Royal Air Force only mandated to conduct surveillance flights over the country.

In December 2015, the House of Commons approved British airstrikes against IS in Syria. The UK is one of several countries directly involved in the ongoing Syrian conflict that started in March 2011, utilising Tornado, Typhoon and Reaper aircraft.

By June 2016, the Ministry of Defence had announced that over 1,000 personnel were engaged in theatre and that the Royal Air Force had conducted around 900 airstrikes, flying over 2,200 sorties, killing almost 1,000 Islamic State fighters.

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

At least eight people were injured in Aleppo’s Marea, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights

ISIS has reportedly fired rockets containing toxic gas into Marea, the latest rudimentary chemical attack by the extremist group against the rebel-held town outside Aleppo.

Local activist outlets, including the Marea Media Center, said Tuesday evening that there were several cases of suffocation in the beleaguered town after the ISIS strike, however there were no reports of any deaths.

“We have received several injured people suffering from suffocation, redness in the eyes and difficulty breathing,” a doctor in Marea’s Freedom Field Hospital told the pro-opposition Souriat News.

The unnamed medical practitioner added that the injured were “injected with cortisone shots, while the affected areas of their body were washed down with cold water.”

Shortly after the attack, images circulated social media showing the shells fired into Marea as well first responders with gas masks rushing to the scene of the strike.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights documenting violations in the war-torn country said that at least 8 people were injured in the toxic gas attack, including a woman and a young girl.

The exact substance packed into the projectiles fired into Marea remains in question, with ARA news reporting it was chlorine—which has been used repeatedly as a weapon in Syria—while other outlets and activists said only that it was a “toxic substance.”

Marea, which lies in a strip of opposition-held north of Aleppo hemmed in by Kurdish and ISIS front-lines, has been stricken by a number of chemical attacks launched by the transnational jihadist group.

The UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon revealed in report that its findings indicated a “non-state actor” hit the north Aleppo town with mustard gas on August 21, 2015, killing a young child.

Sources in the watchdog told AFP that it was the first confirmed use of the internationally proscribed weapon since the start of the Syrian war in 2011.

mmedia.me/lb

A dark red-brown car pulls up in front of the headquarters of a jihadist organisation in a northern Syrian town.

Inside are four men, all except the driver holding machine-guns. One has a long beard and wears a black balaclava folded into a square on his head, with a black shawl draped over it.

As they vanish into the building past two armed guards, a commander whispers: “You have just seen Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.”

What would have looked like an unremarkable moment in Kafr Hamra in April 2013 was the first in a chain of events that would lead to the declaration of a global caliphate.

Watching it unfold was jihadist fighter “Abu Ahmad”, who on condition that his identity is protected, sensationally shared his account of this pivotal encounter with Foreign Policy.

World’s most wanted

Al-Baghdadi is now the leader of the Islamic State and the most wanted man in the world, with repeated attempts to kill him failing to confirm any success.

He has called for IS to march on the West and establish an Islamic State in Europe. In 2015, he allegedly took hostage Kayla Mueller as his wife and repeatedly raped the US aid worker. She was later reportedly killed either by IS or during an air strike on the jihadists.

Back in 2013, this malevolent figure had been leader of al-Qaeda affiliate Islamic State of Iraq (Isil) for three years, and had reportedly assisted in the creation of the Nusra Front in Syria.

But he had greater ambitions. He wanted to combine al-Qaeda’s Iraqi and Syrian affiliates into one, sprawling organisation that could terrify and subordinate the world.

The meeting

For five days after he first spotted al-Baghdadi, Abu Ahmad paid close attention to what was happening at the headquarters of Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen (MSM) in northern Syria.

The jihadi leader and his deputy, Haji Bakr, arrived each morning in the same car, before leaving at sunset.

Abu Ahmad, a disillusioned insider who has only now told his story for the first time, asked around and discovered that some of the world’s most prominent jihadists were gathered in a room within these walls.

They sat on mattresses and pillows on the ground, eating roasted or grilled chicken and french fries with tea and soft drinks.

There was MSM emir Abu al-Atheer; Egyptian jihadi commander Abu Mesaab al-Masri; senior Chechen jihadi Omar al Shishani from Georgia; Libyan jihadi leader Abu al-Waleed al-Libi; two Nusra intelligence chiefs; and an emir from Libyan Katibat al-Battar group, Abed al-Libi.

The charismatic Al-Baghdadi was on a mission to convince these men to sign up to his cause.

Al-Baghdadi’s argument

Al-Baghdadi had announced on April 8 his determination to bring about the end of Nusra and the ISI, gathering them under one name, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis).

But the emirs he was trying to persuade had sworn allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as al-Qaeda leader.

Al-Baghdadi said he too had sworn allegiance, and he was acting under al-Zawahiri’s covert orders.

He told them the jihadists needed to stop hiding in the shadows and mark out their own territory. While the other leaders thought this would make them a target, al-Bahgdadi insisted the militants needed borders, institutions and structure to attract Muslims from across the world and achieve their goal of total domination.

The emirs were finally convinced, swearing allegiance on condition that he had the support of al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahiri and co-operated with jihadist groups Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.

On al-Baghdadi’s request, they then brought him foreign fighters, who also pledged themselves to his cause. The magnetic new caliph had set the ball rolling.

Islamic State is formed

When Nusra Front leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani saw what was happening, he was alarmed at the surge of his supporters to al-Baghdadi’s cause.

He warned his fighters not to sign up until al-Zawahiri had decided who should lead the jihad in Syria. Most ignored him, with thousands flocking to follow their new leader.

Al-Zawahiri issued a statement that Isil should be abolished and al-Baghdadi confine his group’s activities to Iraq. But it was too late.

Al-Baghdadi’s new soldiers ordered the few remaining Nusra Front loyalists out of their Aleppo base and seized other buildings and weapons across northern Syria.

It was a dramatic split in the ranks of the anti-government rebels, heralding the decline of al-Qaeda and the rise of Isil.

The following year, hundreds of fighters were killed as Isil clashed with Nusra, and thousands of citizens were displaced. In February 2014, al-Qaeda rejected any links with the jihadist superpower.

By June, the group was proclaiming a global caliphate, and had taken on a name to reflect its purpose: Islamic State.

nzherald.co.nz