alalam.ir

Government forces have regained control of a major town in the coastal province of Latakia two weeks after losing it to insurgents.

Troops regained control of Kinsabba on Saturday after an offensive under the cover of Russian airstrikes.

Syrian journalist Eyad al-Hosain, who is embedded with the troops, said government forces now control of Kinsabba and its hills. He wrote on his Facebook page that the battle lasted 12 hours.

Syrian government forces first captured Kinsabba in February after it was held by rebels for weeks.

Insurgents, including members of al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, regained control of the town in July 1.

Latakia province is a stronghold of President Bashar Assad.

ap.org

alalam.ir

CIA director John Brennan said recent attacks in Saudi Arabia bore the hallmarks of Islamic State, and that the militant group was a very serious threat to the kingdom, Reuters reports.

Suicide bombers struck three cities across Saudi Arabia earlier this month, killing at least four security officers in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks on the penultimate day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Those attacks bear the hallmarks of ISIL,” Brennan said at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution think tank, using an acronym for Islamic State.

The explosions struck in Jeddah, Qatif and a security headquarters in the holy city of Medina, an attack Brennan described as “unprecedented”.

The attacks were not claimed by any group although the Saudi government believes Islamic State is responsible after detaining 19 suspects linked to the five attackers.

Brennan said that while al Qaeda still posed a threat to Saudi Arabia, which had launched a fierce crackdown on the militant group in the early 2000s, Islamic State posed a greater danger to the kingdom.

Islamic State militants have carried out similar bombings in the U.S.-allied, Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom in the past year, targeting minority Shi’ites and Saudi security forces.

panarmenian.net

US officials sign deal to give Peshmerga units some $415m for ammunition, food, pay and medical equipment

The United States has signed a deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq to provide the Kurds with further military and financial support in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

A senior Pentagon official signed an agreement with Kurdish officials on Tuesday to give vetted members of the Peshmerga units, Iraq’s Kurdish military forces, some $415m for ammunition, food, pay and medical equipment, among other things.

US officials have not confirmed suggestions by some Kurdish officials that the money can be used to buy heavy military equipment.

They have insisted, however, that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi supports the US’ efforts to boost the Peshmerga.

“We’re working hard to support those efforts; we’re doing that though through the command and control of the Iraqi government,” Mark Toner, the US State Department deputy spokesman, told reporters.

While the Peshmerga are on the frontlines in the fight against ISIL, also known as ISIS, they say they have been at war without the right weapons and regular pay cheques.

“I have a lot of friends who still have not paid their rent for the last three months of last year. They owe so much money to the grocery shop and the bazaar,” said Delawer Haider Hosheet, a Peshmerga sergeant.

The accord comes amid preparations to retake the Iraqi northern city of Mosul from ISIL, the armed group’s last major hub in the country.

As well as sending 560 more troops to help Iraqi forces in the fight to recapture Mosul, the US Defense Secretary Ash Carter has also promised additional air power to the country.

“Apache helicopters, absolutely is, is a capability that we’ve not used in support of the Iraqis so far,” Carter told NBC Nightly News.

“Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has indicated that he understands that as we go towards Mosul, which is the next big objective in this campaign … his forces will benefit greatly from the support of American apache attack helicopters.”

Some analysts in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, however, do not think the US-Kurdish deal is constitutional.

Hussein al-Shatab, a former Iraqi military officer and defence strategist, says “there might be under-the-table agreements between the US defence secretary and Iraq’s defence minister, which has allowed such a deal to go through”.

US officials reject that suggestion, saying they are focused on helping Iraq reclaim all of its territory from ISIL.

aljazeera.com

Fighting in Yemen killed at least 44 people in a 24-hour period to Wednesday, military officials said, as the UN’s peace envoy arrived in the capital to meet rebels.

Saudi-backed government forces clashed with the Shiite Houthi rebels and fighters loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh in battles across western Yemen.

The UN’s mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, landed at Sanaa airport on Wednesday afternoon ahead of meetings with Houthi and Saleh representatives.

The envoy met this week with President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in the Saudi capital to prepare for a resumption of talks between the two sides in Kuwait on Friday.

Kuwait City has already hosted more than two months of UN-backed negotiations that have failed to make any real headway.

The talks, aimed at ending a war that the United Nations says has killed more than 6,400 people since March 2015, were suspended at the end of June.

Fighting has persisted across Yemen despite a truce that came into force on April 11.

On Wednesday pro-government forces seized a mountain base from Houthis in Nahm, northeast of Sanaa, said military spokesman Abdullah Al-Shandaqi.

Eight loyalists and 17 rebels were killed in the battle, he told AFP.

A Saudi-led coalition operating in Yemen since March 2015 supported the assault with air strikes, said military sources.

Four soldiers and four rebels also died during battles in Marib province, east of Sanaa, when pro-government forces repelled a rebel attempt to seize a hill overlooking their base, a government source told AFP.

Further north, coalition air strikes against a rebel convoy killed seven rebels in Jawf province, said the army.

In the oil-rich southern province of Shabwa, four soldiers died during battles that saw the army make “slow progress” against rebels, said Col. Motleq Jawhar, an infantry commander in the region.

arabnews.com

Despite the fact that the Islamic State (IS) has significantly been weakened in Iraq, the group yet has a large number of militants, equipped with heavy arms, in its bastion of Mosul, says a Kurdish Peshmerga commander.

After recapturing Fallujah in the west of Baghdad, followed by the liberation of Qayarah airbase in southern Mosul, the Iraqi army promised the defeat of IS in Mosul to happen in the near future.

Peshmerga commander Jafar Mustafa believes that the seizure of these areas are of strategic importance, with keeping in mind that a Qayara subdistrict is some 60 kilometers far from Mosul, a distance which is mostly covered with IEDs that could decelerate the advance towards Mosul.

Also, a large number of IS jihadists are yet in central Mosul who are equipped with heavy arms, Mustafa said, noting that, however, the territorial gains against IS can continue with a close cooperation between the Peshmerga force, Iraqi army and US-led coalition

“After all, we need to take into consideration that IS will possibly make a shift in its military tactics,” the Kurdish commander said, suggesting that the group may focus its military capacity on Mosul as they are losing ground in other areas.

basnews.com

Russian Tu-22M3 strategic long-range bombers have destroyed a number of militants, large Daesh camp, ammunition depots and tanks in Syrian on July 12, the Russian Defense Minsitry stated.

sputniknews.com/

Five families were forced to watch their loved ones get beheaded in a packed street by Islamic State (IS) after extremists accused them of being spies.

The executioner, who did not hide his identity by wearing only a baseball cap, black clothes and boots as he carried out the savage slaughters, killed five civilians on Sunday in Syria’s northeastern Raqqa province.

The victims were captured by the terror group in Tabqa on Saturday, and after being found guilty of communicating with Kurdish troops by their internal Sharia Court of Raqqa, were sentenced to public death.

IS’ police had arrested the five young men in the city of Tabqa in the Raqqa countryside the day before they were publicly slaughtered for being accused of supplying information to forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeastern Syria.

‘They were publicly beheaded after the Sharia Court of Raqqa convicted them of spying for hostile YPG troops,’ a local source told AhlulBayt.

‘They were beheaded in front of a large crowd that included their family members,’ the source said.

The Raqqa countryside is not an Islamic State stronghold, and Kurdish YPG fighters and allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been battling for the territory having all but driven IS out of the area.

The powerful Kurdish YPG fighters and allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have recently launched a battle for Raqqa countryside and expelled IS from large territories in the northern countryside.

Despite this, Raqqa has essentially become the IS capital.

It is here the jihadi Bulldozer – a 20 stone executioner – has been beheading victims.

He has been become infamous for swinging around a 4ft sword in military gear and a balaclava before fatally bringing it down on civilians’ heads in the Raqqa streets.

ekurd.net/