Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) attacked a convoy for the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) while trying to escape the city of Manbij in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, military sources reported on Friday.

At least ten ISIS militants were killed in the SDF shelling, including the ISIS governor of Manbij Osama al-Tounsi.

“Al-Tounsi was trying to escape Manbij along with his family and a number of his escorts. Their convoy was hit with several artillery shells. They were all killed in the attack,” local media activist Nasir Taljbini told ARA News.

The convoy, consisting of three cars, was exiting the western gate of Manbij heading towards al-Bab city when the SDF forces bombed them.

“The operation was conducted after we received information that ISIS governor of Manbij Osama al-Tounsi is trying to flee the city,” a spokesman for the SDF told ARA News in Manbij.

The death of al-Tounsi while trying to escape Manbij indicates the collapse of ISIS in the city under the ongoing operation by the western-backed SDF troops.

aranews.net

Iraqi forces and allied tribal factions pressed on towards encircling the city of Fallujah on Saturday, making advances on the western and southern fronts despite heavy resistance from Islamic State [IS] militants.

The operation to retake one of IS’s most emblematic bastions was progressing well, the head of the Anbar Operations Command told The New Arab.

“The army, backed by local tribal forces, has liberated Falahat western Fallujah,” Major General Ismail al-Mahalawi said.

“Iraqi forces have advanced one kilometre [0.6 miles] towards Fallujah,” he added.

The forces faced resistance fierce resistance by IS militants, tribal leader Abdulrahman al-Halbusi told The New Arab.

“But the ground forces were backed by Iraqi air forces and received US-led coalition air support, both targeting IS with airstrikes,” Halbusi said.

Three kilometres from city centre

On Friday, Iraqi forces had moved within three kilometres [1.8 miles] of central Fallujah and consolidated positions in the south of the city.

“Daesh [IS] wanted the battle to take place outside the city but we have moved in, and retaken all this area in eight days,” operations commander Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi told AFP, standing on rooftop overlooking Fallujah’s southern neighbourhoods.

“Our troops are here,” he said pointing on his tablet computer to spots along one of the main streets in southern Fallujah, “That’s 3.1 kilometres [less than two miles] from the main official building in the centre.”

“We’ll be there, in the very centre, in days. Days, not weeks,” he said.

Plumes of smoke and dust rose up in Fallujah’s low and grey skyline as Special Forces carried out controlled detonations of bombs planted by IS and jets struck IS targets.

The operation to retake Fallujah, which lies only 50 kilometres [30 miles] west of Baghdad, was launched on 22-23 May.

The first phase focused on sealing the siege of the city and the counter-terrorism service has been leading a second phase that saw forces break into the urban centre of Fallujah.

Concern over the fate of tens of thousands of civilians has slowed Iraqi forces’ advance but the operation was meeting its goals, the operation’s commander said.

“More than 500 IS members have already been killed since the start of the operation,” al-Saadi told AFP.

“Fallujah is a very symbolic place for IS… but the battle is not different from other ones and when they are trapped, they try to run away just like they did before,” he said.

IS fighters have tried to leave the besieged city by blending in with the flow of displaced civilians who are attempting to escape by crossing the Euphrates south of Fallujah.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council which runs displaced camps in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah, more than 20,000 people have fled the fighting over the past three weeks.

alaraby.co.uk

Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraq’s Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.

“The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh,” Express UK quoted an Iraqi source as saying.

According to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting.

“The attack was carried out on the basis of precise intelligence information that led to strike its own that
site,” the paper quoted the source as saying.

The area is one of the group’s strongholds, the source said, adding that “Baghdadi and the other ISIS leaders arrived in Iraq from Syria with a convoy of cars”.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition said that he had seen the reports but had “nothing to confirm this at this time”, the report said.

In recent years there have been a number of reports of Baghdadi’s injury, and even death, but none have been confirmed.

Baghdadi was seriously wounded by an airstrike on March 18, 2015, that killed the three other men he was travelling with. He was said to be receiving treatment for spinal injuries after being wounded in that strike.

The injury left the terror chief incapacitated, with some claiming at the time that his injuries meant he would never again resume command.

In 2011 the US State Department named Baghdadi as a terrorist and offered up to USD 10 million for information leading to his capture or death.

Baghdadi became the leader of the militant group in 2010 but it was only in 2014 that ISIS declared the establishment of a “caliphate” – a successor of past Islamic empires – in its territory in Syria and Iraq.

Iran will continue its advisory support to Syria in its fight against terrorist groups, Iranian Defense Minister said Friday.

Taking firm and decisive action against terrorism is among Iran’s declared policies, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said at a meeting with the visiting Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij, Tasnim news agency reported.

“Based on the request of the legitimate government of Syria, we regard supporting the people and government of the country as our duty,” he was quoted as saying.

Iran’s support to the Syrian government is aimed at establishing peace, stability and security in the Middle East region, he said.

For his part, al-Freij hailed Iran’s continued support for the Syrian nation in its anti-terror campaign, and said such support would lead to the victory of the resistance against terrorists.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij arrived in Iran’s capital Tehran on Thursday to exchange views on the latest regional development and discuss ways to strengthen the fight against terrorism.

xinhuanet.com

alalam.ir

 

At a time were rumors on disputes flood the Moscow-Tehran relationship, concerning military operations in Syria, Russian and Iranian ministers of defense convene in Tehran Today to confer on Syrian affairs and field developments regarding the performance of Russian forces.

Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) revealed that after nine months of Russian interference in Syria, the Tehran meeting will chiefly discuss operations in Syria; especially the efforts of Russian air power. Battlefield developments in Iraq will be discussed as well.

The Iranian ministry of defense said that the meeting will title “Russian counterterrorism in Syria”. IRNA mentioned that the meeting will be held between Russian, Iranian, Damascus and Baghdad based committees for counterterrorism. The news agency said nothing on Iraqi contribution to the meeting, despite Iraq being cited among topics set up for discussions.

On the other hand, Iranian official media outlet for the Iran ministry of defense “Defa press” said that Russian minister of defense Sergei Shoigu and Syrian regime’s Fahd Jassem al-Freij will visit Tehran this Thursday after receiving an invitation by their peer Iranian Hossein Dehghan. The meeting is expected to discuss the regional latest military revelations.

This is considered Russian Shoygu’s second visit to Tehran in 2016, after his February visit when Iran announced that Shoygu and Dehghan discussing Russian-Iranian military cooperation.

On the other hand IRNA said that the Russian, Iranian and Syrian meeting will illustrate accomplishments reached, since Russia’s interference in September, 2015 in the regime-opposition clashes in Syria.

Reports reiterated rumored dispute between Russian and Iranian military administration concerning targets in Syria. Media outlets circulated that Soleimani visited Moscow at least twice after the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Russia’s partial withdrawal of forces last March.
Noteworthy, large numbers of Iranian forces deployed in Syria were lost with the kick-off of the Russian campaign led from the skies in the past few months.

Two weeks ago Iranian media critiqued Russian slacking in Syria after the reported death of Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC, deployed Aleppo and Khan Touman, troops piled up in numbers.

aawsat.com

farsnews.com

A Houthi commander was killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Yemen’s northwestern Hajjah province on Wednesday.

Taha Mahtouri was killed in a raid carried out by coalition warplanes on his whereabouts in the province’s al-Jar area near Saudi border, a local Yemeni source with the pro-government sources told Anadolu Agency.

The source said that Mahtouri was the second high-ranking commander of the Houthis in Hajjah province and had close ties with Iranians.

Yemen has been racked by chaos since 2014, when the Shia Houthi group and their allies overran capital Sanaa and several other parts of the country, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh.

In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.

In April, the Yemeni government and Houthis engaged in UN-brokered peace talks aimed at resolving the conflict in the poor Arab country, which has killed some 6,400 Yemenis — half of them civilians — and forced some 2.5 million to flee their homes.

albawaba.com

In a joint statement, Peshmerga forces and NGOs declared the town of Jalawla in Diyala Province safe after defusing nearly 900 bombs planted by jihadists.

Jalawla is a Kurdish town located in southern Diyala Province. The so-called Islamic State (IS) took control of the area in the middle of June 2014.

In November 2014, Peshmerga forces attacked the area from five fronts and liberated it from the insurgents.

While Jalawla was under the control of IS, hundreds of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were planted in the town.

After two years of searching for and defusing the bombs, a Peshmerga engineering team and some NGOs issued a statement to the Mayor of Jalawla, Ya’qub al-Luhaibi, declaring the town safe from IEDs.

“The Peshmerga engineering team and NGOs, who were working on defusing the bombs in Jalawla, sent me a joint statement announcing that the town is no longer under the threat of IEDs,” Luhaibi told Kurdistan24.

According to the report, the two groups together have defused almost 900 IEDs in and around Jalawla.

The people of the town have returned to their homes but complain about the lack of services as IS had largely destroyed the area in 2014.

“Thank God the security of Jalawla is protected by Kurdish Peshmerga forces, but the town needs services to recover to the time before Da’esh,” Samir Hassan, a Kurdish resident of Jalawla, told Kurdistan24 using the Arabic pejorative for IS.

Abu Ahmad, an Arab resident of the town, told Kurdistan24 that Peshmerga secured Jalawla and protect the entire town regardless of their ethnic and religious background.

“Peshmerga protects all of us with full respect for humanity,” said Abu Ahmad.

kurdistan24.net

A Bahraini man accused of a bomb blast in East Aker yesterday revealed that the bomb was aimed at police officers.

The bomb explosion, which occurred due to an error, killed an 18-year-old Bahraini boy and injured another.

The defendant was with the victims, and he told police that they were planning to target police officers.

He revealed that the bomb was carrying highly-explosive material. Police found another bomb with the same material, but it did not detonate and was eventually dismantled.

Two other defendants were also implicated in the same case, but they are at large and are being tried in absentia.

According to court files, the deceased, identified as Qassim Mohsin Ali, was a student who had just returned from Iran before the explosion.

The defendant told prosecutors that he had agreed with the 18-year-old boy and his co-defendants to meet at the place of the explosion.

“I was tasked to survey the area from the rooftop of a house. Suddenly I heard an explosion, so I went home. Then I learned that he (the 18-year-old boy) accidentally activated the bomb and it exploded,” the defendant had said.

The bombing occurred last July 15. All the defendants involved are Bahrainis. They have been charged with causing an explosion and possessing bombs.

newsofbahrain.com