Hundreds of Iraqi citizens organized on Monday dawn an open protest which marched at the Talibiya area near Sadr city entrance, Iraq.

Main streets were cut off, slogans and banners were raised in demand of authorities serving 300 convicted terrorists to capital punishment.

Felons convicted of terror acts, punishable by death according to Iraqi law, are estimated to be hundreds among an original three thousand who have been officially arrested. Despite receiving verdict, many death sentences await implementation.

Demonstrations came as a public response to authorities throwing back and forth different accusations as to which party is responsible for the delay in the delivery of the sentences.

What is more is that the Iraqi parliament is scheduled to have its first newfound legislation session, as to discuss the delay in implementation of death sentences and to issue official decrees relating to the heated subject. The parliamentary session is expected to hold Iraqi President Fuad Masum responsible for the hold up of executions.

Khalid Shwani, the official spokesman of Iraqi president, told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that Iraqi presidency does not desire to put any of the executions on hold– as to the evident delay, he explained that it is relative to constitutional procedures.

Shwani added that President Masum had authorized all findings regarding the death sentences and then redirected documents to the government, being it the party responsible for implementation.

Nonetheless, Iraqi law dictates that convicts receiving capital punishment are permitted to push forward for an appeal hence the delay, Spokesman Shwani added.

Shwani further defended Iraqi presidency citing national constitution, and that judicial authorities process thousands of case files concerning terrorists and those facing capital punishment.

Finally he added that the Iraqi government will be given directions as to lay facts concerning the cases before the public as to grant Iraqis access to judicial proceedings with full transparency.

Demonstrations at the Sadr city caused unprecedented traffic congestion, which caused road patrol to alter the many city courses as to mitigate the heavy traffic.

aawsat.com

In front-line villages of south Lebanon, the posters of Hizbullah members killed fighting Israel 10 years ago still stand, but have faded. Now rising up around them is a new generation of posters, bearing the faces of young fighters from the group killed in Syria.

They reflect Hizbullah’s shift from decades of fighting Israel, a cause that at one time earned it soaring popularity across Lebanon and the Arab and Muslim world, to the far less popular role of fighting in defense of Syria’s embattled president, Bashar Assad.

It is a venture that is proving costly for the group. The war in neighboring Syria is bleeding Hizbullah of fighters and experienced military commanders, and has left the group more vulnerable to accusations of complete subservience to Iran. So far, more than a thousand of the group’s fighters, including several founding members, have been killed in Syria, a toll higher than the one incurred by the group in nearly two decades of fighting Israeli occupation forces.

Hizbullah’s involvement in Syria has also changed the public discourse around the group in the Arab world in general and at home in Lebanon, where it continues to dominate politics but is much more publicly criticized. Public opinion is sharply polarized among those who see the group as dragging Lebanon into the Syria morass, and others who support it.

“I think that we’re seeing rumblings of discontent. I mean some families obviously aren’t happy. We’ve heard a lot of stories about families saying why are our kids dying in Syria, we can understand them dying in the fight against Israel but why are they dying in the fight in Syria,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

But whatever criticism of Hizbullah exists among Lebanese Shiites, it tends to remain inside the Shiite community. Public support for the group so far appears intact because the majority of Shiites still see supporting Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as crucial and vital to their interests.

That’s in part because of how Hizbullah frames the war to its supporters. The group has depicted itself as battling Sunni extremists intent on wiping out Shiites, arguing it must fight them in Syria to keep them away from Lebanon. It also calls the war an extension of its fight against Israel, saying that Syria is under attack from Western powers seeking to eliminate Assad as a “center of resistance” to Israel.

“Syria has been the worst imaginable piece of news for Hizbullah. A challenge that has transformed the party into something it does not want: the perception of a Sunni killer,” said Bilal Saab, a senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council.

It is difficult to measure sentiment within Hizbullah, a highly secretive and disciplined organization. On the 10th anniversary of the 2006 war with Israel, an Associated Press team gained rare access into the homes of slain fighters in south Lebanon, where relatives grieved but said they supported the group’s justifications for fighting in Syria.

In one home, the socks and boots stained with the blood of a Hizbullah fighter killed in 2006 are on display in the sitting room of his parents’ house. In another, the military uniform worn by a fighter killed in Syria lay on his bed, laid out carefully by his grieving mother.

“Khalil was my soul but I won’t hide my son and say, let other people send their children,” said Hanan Ibrahim, whose son Khalil was killed near Damascus on Dec. 27, 2013. “He should go (fight in Syria), and my other son too and if I had a third son I would also send him,” she said, speaking in her living room, decorated with a giant picture of her son Khalil on a front line in Syria.

Hizbullah’s popularity across the Arab world and in Lebanon had taken a major hit beginning in 2005, when it was accused by some of being behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with a massive bombing in Beirut. In 2008, the group briefly seized several Sunni neighborhoods of west Beirut after the government moved to close down its secret telecommunications network, pointing its weapons internally for the first time since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

Hizbullah’s involvement in the Syrian war has, according to its critics, left the group looking even more like an Iranian tool fighting for its own self-interest.

It is a far cry from back in 2000, when Hizbullah was celebrated across much of the Arab world, including among Sunnis, for its guerrilla campaign that eventually forced Israeli troops to pull out of a slice of southern Lebanon they had occupied for 18 years. And despite some criticism, the group was supported by the majority of Lebanese during the 2006 war with Israel, which began with a cross-border Hizbullah raid that kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, triggering a massive Israeli air and ground campaign.

The 2006 fighting killed about 1,200 Lebanese, including hundreds of civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. The war failed to neutralize the group’s rocket threat, and Israeli officials say Hizbullah’s improved missile arsenal is now capable of striking virtually anywhere in the country.

Israeli political and military leaders, however, say that the war succeeded in re-establishing Israeli deterrence and provided a decade of quiet on its northern front — and gleefully note that the group’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is still in hiding 10 years later.

Israeli officials also acknowledge that as a group, Hizbullah is amassing more combat experience and has more than replenished its arms via smuggling from Syria. That pipeline is one key reason why preserving the existing Syrian regime is seen as so existential for Hizbullah.

In the front-line village of Aynata, only few miles away from the Israeli border, residents vividly recall the 2006 war. The village was heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes and ground fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hizbullah fighters. Fourteen Hizbullah fighters and 28 civilians were killed.

Since Hizbullah began sending fighters to Syria in 2012, six other fighters from the village have died.

“What is common between these two wars is that they are existential wars against Hizbullah, and to be more precise, it is a war against Shiites,” said Hisham Khanafer, whose two younger brothers, Moussa and Abbas, were killed — one fighting Israel in 2006 and one in Syria last year.

Abbas, who was 25, had planned to marry his fiancee as soon as he returned from Syria. Moussa was 29, his third daughter born on the day he was killed.

Khanafer wears a yellow shawl, the color of the Hizbullah flag, with portraits of his slain brothers on each side. “Every war has a price,” he says.

Hizbullah first began sending fighters in small numbers to Syria in 2012, to help protect Shiite shrines near the capital, Damascus, and has gradually escalated its involvement, dispatching fighters to ever more distant places to shore up the battered forces of Assad. Nearly 30 Hizbullah fighters were killed in one single battle around the city of Aleppo near the Turkish border last month.

“For Israel, this is a dream scenario. All its enemies are killing each other in Syria… without them having to fire a bullet or place even one soldier in the line of fire,” said Yahya of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

She said although Hizbullah’s overall control is not as tight as it used to be, the group is nowhere near a breaking point yet.

naharnet.com

The bomb comes after two large-scale attacks killed more than 300 people last week

A suicide car bombing ripped through an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on Tuesday morning, killing at least 11 people, officials said, as government forces deployed in most of the Iraqi capital and closed off major roads around the city.

The developments came on the heels of two large-scale attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed more than 300 people last week. On Monday, visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help battle IS.

In Tuesday’s bombing, the explosives-laden pickup truck exploded during the morning rush hour at a vegetable and fruit market in the al-Rashidiya district, a police officer said. The blast killed 11 and wounded up to 32, and also damaged several cars, he added.

A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. The Sunni extremists, who consider Shiites heretics, swept across northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014, capturing large chunks of territory and plunging the country into its worst crisis since U.S. troops left at the end of 2011.

Last week, IS killed more than 300 people in two attacks. A massive truck bombing struck a bustling commercial area in a Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Karada, killing 292 people — one of the deadliest attacks since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. And last Thursday, an attack at a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad killed 37 people.

Iraqi government forces deployed across Baghdad on Tuesday, closing off main roads and snarling traffic. The Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, said the troops were “practicing for a planned military parade for a specific occasion.” Maan didn’t name the occasion, but the country is due to mark the anniversary of its 1958 overthrow of a Hashemite monarchy and the declaration of Iraq as a republic on Thursday.

The recent uptick in IS attacks beyond the front lines demonstrated the IS group’s ability to launch lethal attacks despite recent territorial losses in both Iraq and Syria, where it has established a self-proclaimed caliphate. IS militants still hold pockets of territory in northern and western Iraq.

According to Carter, who on Monday met with top Iraqi officials, the new American forces should arrive in the coming weeks. They will primarily be tasked with transforming an air base retaken this month from IS into a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — from Islamic State militants.

time.com/

Ayman al-Zawahiri blasted Riyadh and Gulf states in his latest audio recording

The leader of Al-Qaeda has accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the late 2015 assassination of Jaysh al-Islam chief Zahran Alloush, a prominent rebel figure with close ties to the Gulf kingdom.

In an audiotape released Monday, Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed Riyadh wanted to split insurgents in Syria while also slamming Gulf Sheikhs.

He blasted Saudi Arabia for “luring some to sign a document accepting pluralism,” a reference to the December 2015 Riyadh summit that brought together rebel groups to form a unified team to join negotiations for a Syria peace deal.

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front, rejected the Saudi-sponsored opposition conference, prompting an angry riposte from Jaysh al-Islam, one of the signatories to the final statement of the diplomatic meeting.

Zawahiri said that following the conference, Saudi Arabia sought to “expel mujahideen” from the ranks of rebels and then “killed Zahran Alloush.”

The Jaysh al-Islam leader was killed in a precision strike on December 25, 2015 that the Syrian regime claimed it conducted, although rebels say that Russia conducted the raid that killed one of the top Islamist rebel commanders in the war-torn country.

“[Riyadh] sought to split the ranks of the mujahideen with a false truce,” Zawahiri added, in possible reference to the since-failed cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the US that went into effect in late February 2016.

“The truce did not stop the jets of the Russians and the Nusayri Baathists from killing Muslims and burning their homes.”

The Al-Qaeda chief also directed his ire against “Gulf Sheikhs,” who he said were “corrupting jihad” in the Levant.

According to Zawahiri, “corrupted” jihadists “pant behind the Gulf sheikhdoms and the Saudi Arabian mirage to gain access to any government, even if they were subjected to the rule of ‘hotel strugglers’ from the secularist scum,” a derogatory reference to Western-backed Syrian opposition figures based in the region.

mmedia.me

Syrian rebels, islamic terrorists and other insurgents launched an offensive on Monday, bombing government-held neighborhoods in the northern city of Aleppo and killing eight people and wounding dozens, state media and opposition activists said.

They say hundreds of shells and rockets have been fired and that clashes were most intense near the old quarter and the famed citadel in Aleppo. Syria’s largest city and once its commercial center has been contested since the summer of 2012.

Government forces repelled an attack near the citadel, according to Syrian state TV and Al-Manar Television of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which has fighters in Syria fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces.

State TV said insurgents shelled government-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, killing at least eight and wounding about 80. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said opposition fighters fired 300 shells on government-held neighborhoods on Monday alone.

The city and its suburbs have witnessed intense shelling and fighting over the past days during which government forces were able to effectively cut the main route into rebel-held neighborhoods. The route, known as the Castello road, has been a lifeline to about 300,000 people in the rebel-held part of the city.

The fighting came despite an extended cease-fire, declared by the Syrian military and due to expire at midnight Monday.

Also in northern Syria on Monday, government air raids hit a diesel fuel market, killing at least eight people there, including a media activist, and setting several tanker trucks on fire, opposition activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees said among the eight killed in the strike in the northwestern village of Termanin was Ibrahim Omar, who used to report for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV. The Observatory gave a higher death toll, saying the raids killed 14 and wounded dozens. Conflicting reports of death tolls are common in the aftermath of attacks in Syria.

Amateur videos posted online showed firefighters trying to extinguish several burning tanker trucks. The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting.

Syria-based activist Ahmad Barbour said Omar had gone on his motorcycle to Termanin to cover the aftermath of an airstrike when a second one hit, killing him instantly. Barbour and the Observatory said the dead also included two civil defense workers.

“The area was hit be several air raids that were minutes apart,” Barbour said by telephone.

In the capital, Damascus, members of Prime Minister Imad Khamis’ newly elected government took their oath of office with Assad attending the swearing-in ceremony.

ap.org

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who arrived in Baghdad earlier Monday, announced that the U.S. is sending 560 additional troops to Iraq as part of a battle to liberate the City of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS).

The troops will be stationed at the key recently recaptured Qarayyah airfield, which is about 25 miles south of Mosul. It will be a key staging area for the upcoming U.S. and Iraqi effort to retake the city of Mosul from the terror group.

The additional U.S. troops will assist the Iraqis troops on the base with logistics and give advise, Carter told the press.

During his visit, Carter met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi where they disucssed U.S. support to Iraq in the latter’s war against terrorism.

The recapture of Qarayyah, one of the biggest air bases in Iraq, is seen as a breakthrough in the mission to liberate Mosul, and comes just weeks after Iraq declared it had regained full control of Falluja, IS’ main stronghold in the country, as the militant group loses more ground.

U.S. President Barack Obama approved the deployment, which brings the new troop cap will to 4,647.

kuna.net.kw

alalam.ir

ISLAMIC STATE terrorists staged an Olympic-style competition for terrified civilians as part of a public relations offensive

Surreal photographs captured in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar show fighters from the jihadist group encouraging children to join in party games as part of a spectacle described by witnesses as “very silly”.

Youngsters – some aged just five – can be seen playing musical chairs and tug-of-war, with winners reportedly taking home bags of sweets.

And despite the group’s grim record of perpetrating massacres on European soil, some participants wore Manchester City and Celtic football shirts.

Local sources opposed to the faltering regime claim the event was a desperate attempt to maintain a facade of normality in ISIS’ diminishing heartlands despite crushing defeats at the hands of Western forces.

The jihadists initially gained notoriety with mass public executions and brutal propaganda videos – but the series of images from Tal Afar show an altogether softer public image.

An anti-ISIS dissident said the death cult, also known as Daesh, had leafleted locals and coerced them into joining in the warped PR stunt.

They said: “The games are very silly – running around chairs to music and tug-of-war. The ISIS fighters begin all the games but then get people to join in. Who would dare say no?

“It is a good idea to let the ISIS fighters win too. How knows what might happen otherwise? Your head could be the next one in the dirt.”

The revelations come in the wake of a renewed Western offensive on Mosul, ISIS’ de facto capital in Iraq.

British medical student Rowan Kamal Zine El Abidine was among those who died on Thursday after coalition war planes bombed an ISIS base in the city.

The source added: “They want everyone to come and see the performances – the men and children, that is.

“The women stay away because they do not wish to be seen doing anything that might be deemed inappropriate in public.”

express.co.uk

Saudi security authorities are tightening the noose around Daesh terrorists by pursuing those involved in the recent terrorist blasts and uncovering the coordination between them after the security men’s vigilance thwarted the destructive impact that the terrorists wanted to achieve.

Security Spokesman of the Ministry of Interior Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said he does not rule out the existence of contacts between the perpetrators of the recent terrorist bombings in Jeddah, Qatif and Madinah, as the substance used in making the explosive vests was the same in the three blasts.

Furthermore, there is evidence of the existence of coordination between them, especially between the Qatif and Madinah incidents, as both attacks took place at Maghreb prayer time.

Maj. Al-Turki further said that there are suspicions that the 12 Pakistanis, who it was announced were detained on Thursday, have connections with the Jeddah blast.

Al-Turki said one of the perpetrators of the Qatif blast, Abdulrahman Saleh Muhammad Al-Imir, had been detained twice earlier for taking part in riots demanding the release of detainees involved in terror cases.

On announcing the detention of 12 Pakistanis, the number of those involved in terror crimes in Saudi Arabia, and are holding Pakistani nationality has reached 41.

Imams of mosques in the majority of the region’s countries have dedicated their Friday sermons to denouncing terrorism and violating the sanctity of the Prophet’s Mosque.

They warned terrorists that they would not achieve their goals in Saudi Arabia and the other regional countries.

bernama.com

A prominent commander and Emir of the ISIS in Manbij was reported dead in an attack by the Syrian forces on Saturday.

Abu Khalid al-Tunisi, ISIS Emir (prince) of Manbij, was killed along with a number of his escorts when the Syrian fighters hit his car in Manbij city, military sources reported.

The Tunisian militant has been leading ISIS operations in Manbij city on the Syrian-Turkish border after the group’s military commander was killed in earlier clashes with the Syrian forces.

“The death of Abu Khalid al-Tunisi was confirmed after our forces bombed his car in Manbij city,” a spokesman said. “At least four ISIS militants were accompanying al-Tunisi when we targeted their car with an artillery shell. They were all killed.”

The Syrian Forces have recently recaptured the entire countryside of Manbij, including over 110 villages and farms, after heavy fighting with ISIS militants.

abna24.com