According to The National newspaper’s Monday report, the 29-year-old man is on trial for his alleged terror plans.

“He scouted and inspected locations to execute his plan of planting explosives to kill foreigners in the country <…> He posted information that belonged to a terrorist organisation, to promote it and recruit members,” the court documents read, as quoted by the media outlet.

The terrorist organization in question is Daesh, the newspaper added. The case has been adjourned until March 14.

Daesh is a militant group which took over large areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014. It is outlawed in many countries, including Russia. The group gained notoriety for its human rights atrocities, and has offshoots in many countries.

In December, a man was sentenced to death in absentia in the United Arab Emirates for having links to the group.

sputniknews.com

state.gov

Forty state-run media outlets in Iran have come together to announce a $600,000 bounty for the death of Salman Rushdie, renewing the fatwa issued against him in 1989. Fars News Agency, which maintains a close relationship with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is reportedly putting up the largest amount—around $30,000 or 1 billion Rials.

There is still a $3 million reward for his death which was fixed in 1989 by Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Rushdie gained notoriety after writing the book The Satanic Verses in 1988. It sparked huge controversy across the Islamic world, with Rushdie being accused of blasphemy by Khomeini.

He was given police protection and went into hiding to avoid being killed, however some of the others involved in its publication were not able to survive the anger of those who opposed it.

Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was killed outside his office at Tsukuba University, while the Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, narrowly escaped with his life after being stabbed in Milan.

The book’s Norwegian publisher survived an assassination attempt in Oslo after being shot in the back three times.

The new reward appears to be the biggest effort since 1989 to kill the author.

albawaba.com

Islamic State claims attack in Shiite area of Syrian capital near shrine as death toll rises to 62.

Three bombs ripped through a Damascus suburb Sunday, killing as many as 62 people as the Islamic State Group appeared to take responsibility.

The Aamaq news agency, which is affiliated with the group, said two IS fighters detonated a car bomb before blowing up their explosive belts in Sayeda Zeinab, a Shiite neighborhood.

Residents said the attack was about a kilometer (0.6 miles) from one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines but did not damage it.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV initially said the blasts killed 22 people, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 31 were killed and dozens wounded.

The figure for the wounded has now risen to over 200, according to Syrian state TV.

Different figures are not uncommon in the chaotic aftermath of such attacks.

A triple explosion in Sayeda Zeinab killed 45 people last month.

Hezbollah, a Shiite group loyal to Iran and fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the country’s five-year-old civil war, maintains a large presence in the Sayeda Zeinab area.

Syrian state TV showed still images of people running, damaged homes and billowing smoke. It provided no death toll. State TV earlier said two of the blasts were car bombs while the other two were suicide attackers on foot.

The blasts came hours after two explosions in the central city of Homs killed and wounded as many as 57 people.

Homs, once dubbed the capital of the Syrian revolution, has been hit with a wave of explosions in recent months, killing and wounding scores of people.

timesofisrael.com

Iraqi tribesmen battled militants from the ISIS group in their Fallujah stronghold for a second day Saturday, a significant challenge to long-running extremist control of the city, officials said.

Fallujah is one of two Iraqi cities still controlled by ISIS, but residents — said to number in the tens of thousands — vastly outnumber the estimated 300 to 400 extremists inside it.

But ISIS has had plenty of time to assert its control over the civilian population and discourage dissent via arrests and executions.

“Armed confrontations between the sons of the Fallujah tribes and the Daesh organisation are continuing,” an army brigadier general said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.

The clashes are taking place in Al-Jolan in northwest Fallujah and Nazal in the center, the officer said, adding that the army was shelling ISIS positions on the outskirts.

There have been casualties among both the tribesmen and the extremists, the officer said, without giving a number.

Tribal leader Sheikh Majeed al-Juraisi said that fighting was continuing in both the center and north of Fallujah.

The tribesmen “are beginning to run out of supplies and need the support of the government,” he added.

There is “fear that they will completely run out and afterwards the Daesh organisation will arrest and massacre them.”

Seeking government support

In 2014 and 2015, ISIS executed dozens of members of the Albu Nimr tribe, which opposed the extremists’ seizure of most of Anbar province, including Fallujah.

Saadun Obaid al-Shaalan, who was elected by a local council to administer the Fallujah area, confirmed that the fighting was ongoing, saying that tribesmen had posted snipers on rooftops in the Al-Askari area of east Fallujah.

He said the tribesmen were in need of help and “we are trying to obtain that support” from the government.

Officials said the clashes began Friday as a fight between tribesmen and Al-Hisba, ISIS members charged with enforcing religious strictures in the city.

Members of the Al-Juraisat, Al-Mahamda and Al-Halabsa tribes joined the fighting as it escalated.

Fallujah, which lies about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, is the only Iraqi city apart from ISIS’ main northern hub Mosul still under extremist control.

Anti-government fighters took control of the city in early 2014 during unrest that broke out after security forces demolished a protest camp farther west, and it became a key ISIS stronghold.

Several large town in the north are also held by the extremists, including Tal Afar and Hawijah.

ISIS launched a sweeping offensive that overran swathes of northern and western Iraq in June 2014, but security forces and allied fighters have pushed the extremists back with support from US-led airstrikes.

Tribesmen have played a key role in holding the extremists back in several areas, including Haditha in Anbar, Amerli in Salaheddin province and Dhuluiyah in Diyala.

And Sunni Arab tribesmen from Anbar province helped drive back ISIS’ predecessor organisation Al-Qaeda in Iraq after joining forces with U.S. troops from 2006.

ekurd.net

Footage allegedly showing a Hezbollah sniper taking out Islamic State (Isis) militants has turned out to be gameplay footage from video game Medal of Honor.

The video, which was picked up by Iranian state TV and has since been circulated on media outlets in the Middle East, shows a sniper taking out several targets at long range with a series of headshots. Iranian media claimed that the highly-skilled shooter, who takes out six enemies in under two minutes, was a member of Hezbollah using an Iranian Arash rifle to eliminate Isis members.

However, it’s now been noted that the footage bears a striking resemblance to a video uploaded to YouTube in 2012 showing gameplay footage from first-person shooter Medal of Honor. Upon closer inspection, you can even see the icon at the bottom of the screen that appears in the game when a player successfully executes a headshot. Plus, the footage was quite clearly shot on a mobile phone pointed at a television.

Here’s the footage in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=nkQ-ij3LTTM

Now, compare this to the gameplay footage uploaded to YouTube in 2012. Pretty similar, isn’t it?

This isn’t the first time video game footage has been mistaken for real life. In October 2015, an Egyptian news station broadcast what it claimed to be Russian air strikes on Isis targets which turned out to be footage from 2010 Activision game Apache Assault. In July 2014, RT.com used images from Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain in a piece about child soldiers.

While embarrassing, at least these gaffes are testament to how far video game graphics have come in recent years.

ibtimes.co.uk

Canadian military will assist the Kurdish fighters in the north of Iraq to retake Mosul from Daesh, Canada’s Armed Forces Chief of the Defense Staff said on Friday.

“In the month and maybe even years to come, as the Mosul battle develops, Canada will be with the Kurdish forces on key terrain to ensure that ISIL [Islamic State] is contained,” Vance stated at the Conference of Defense Associations.

The general added that the Canadian forces will also continue to work on the coalition’s train, advise and assist mission at “critical terrain” in the north of Iraq.

On Thursday, Ottawa announced that it concluded airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, which is had been conducting since 2014.

Now Canada will continue supporting the US-led coalition by providing aircraft for refueling and surveillance purposes.

sputniknews.com

AFP reports that Daesh claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Aden, Yemen, that killed 14 soldiers at a military training camp.

Troops loyal to embattled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi were in the midst of a training session with Sudanese forces in collaboration with the Saudi-led coalition at the Ras Abbas camp. A man disguised as a solider joined them and then “detonated his explosive vest among soldiers,” a military source said to AFP.

After the attack, the Yemeni conscripts evacuated the camp. Training has been put on hold.

The Aden and Abyan Province branch of Daesh released a statement that they carried out the attack, but put the death toll at 20 soldiers.

Another attack occurred a day earlier in Aden, claimed by Al-Qaeda militants. On Tuesday, a failed attack on the convoy of Aden’s general and police chief left four militants dead.

As Yemen is embroiled in a turbulent war between embattled President Hadi and the Houthi rebels, militant extremist groups such as Daesh and Al-Qaeda are gaining group in the southeast of the country. Both militant groups have carried out an increasing number of suicide attacks in major cities over the past few months.

albawaba.com

The risks of a western-Russian clash in the Middle East are as high today as they were back at the height of the Cold War.

In 1973, an Arab-Israeli war almost led to a nuclear confrontation between two superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union put their strategic forces on high alert after Israel breached the fragile ceasefire on both the Egyptian and the Syrian fronts. The crisis, however, soon abated in favour of a diplomatic solution. This episode represented the height of the Cold War (1945-1991) in the Middle East. For decades, the two competing superpowers armed and supported state and non-state actors in the region to further their interests, and to block the adversary’s geopolitical machinations.

The Cold War came to an end when the Soviet Union ceased to exist on Christmas Day 1991. Yet since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, and especially after the 2008 conflict between a resurgent Russia and Nato-backed Georgia, many pundits have begun to circulate the notion that a new Cold War between Russia and the West is imminent. It took another tense eight years, and the fracturing of Syria and Ukraine, for Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to describe the strained relationship between his country and the West as a “new Cold War”. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany last weekend, Medvedev said he sometimes found himself wondering whether this was 2016 or 1962.

In 1962, the infamous Berlin Wall stood as the dividing line between the East and the West. Intellectuals, politicians and military strategists spent the second half of the 20th century pondering how a conflict might unfold across the European frontline, and what its trigger might be.

In 2016, the Berlin frontline and the Cold War, is reincarnated atop the restless ridgelines and on the open fields across the Syrian-Turkish border. The risks of a Western-Russian clash in the Middle East are as high today as they were back at the height of the Cold War, making it absolutely necessary to understand the dynamics, friction points and possible triggers of this renewed global conflict against the backdrop of an already complex war in Syria.

In early October 2015, the Russians began a fierce areal bombardment campaign to support unprecedented mass-scale operations by the Syrian Army. The stated aim was fighting terrorism, but the stakes were much higher. Facing Western sanctions and political isolation since 2013, Russia was seeking to reassert its status as a global power, no less able to project its influence and fight terrorism around the world than its old time adversary the US.

There were, however, many local and regional complicating factors. The mountains north of Latakia, Syria’s gateway to the Mediterranean, not only sheltered extremist factions, but were also home to a concentration of the Turkmen minority in Syria. Turkey, a Nato member, was watching restlessly as both its rebel allies and Turkic militants came under a relentless assault. Tensions came to a head on November 24 when a pair of Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian bomber over northern Latakia. The incident was the first direct confrontation between Russia and a Nato member since the Cold War.

Putin exploded following the incident. He labelled the Turkish action a “stab in the back”, from those who “support the terrorists”. Russia introduced economic sanctions against Turkey, and moved the state-of-the-art S-400 air-defence system into its airbase in Latakia. In addition, the Russians amped up the number of their fighter jets and bombers positioned in Syria, and deployed the “Moskva” missile cruiser, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, to its shores.

But the most direct form of Russian retaliation against Turkey was the intensification of the air campaign, especially near the Turkish border, which enabled the Syrian Army to recapture the city of Salma, the impervious rebel capital of Latakia province since 2012. From there, the Syrian Army continues to push north, and it’s now standing a mere four kilometres short of the Turkish border.

Putin did not stop there. He found an unlikely ally in the PYD, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, and its military arm, the YPG — the Kurdish local protection militias in Syria. Back in October, the YPG had formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an allegedly American concoction aimed mainly at fighting Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Few, however, imagined that the Kurds might play a double game, aligning themselves with both global powers at the same time. Both Russians and Americans had backstabbed them in the past. During the early years of the Cold War, the Soviets backed a Kurdish insurgency in northern Iraq against the country’s pro-Western monarchy. Then it was US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s turn to incite another insurgency; this time it aimed to pin down the forces of a pro-Soviet regime in Baghdad, thus preventing Iraqi military aid to Syria in the 1973 war. Both episodes ended in thousands of Kurds being slaughtered.

The current battle for Aleppo began in the first week of February, right after the failed peace talks in Geneva between the Syrian government and the Riyadh-based opposition. The Kurds were excluded from the talks due to vehement Turkish opposition. Turkey was never comfortable with the rising power of the Kurds south of its border; it saw the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which had fought the Turkish state for decades. Now, the Turks had to look on as the Kurds advanced under close Russian air support, routing groups loyal to Turkey in northern Aleppo. The Kurdish offensive coincided with another by the Syrian Army, which completely cut off the rebel supply route to the city of Aleppo. Turkish artillery support to the rebels in both Latakia and Aleppo was unable to reverse the tide.

Many analysts saw the resurgence of political and military tensions between Russia and the West following the annexation of Crimea and eruption of conflict in eastern Ukraine as the starting point of the new Cold War. In Ukraine, however, a direct confrontation between Russia and Nato is highly unlikely. And while there are direct tensions between Russia and many Nato members, especially the Baltic States, they are mostly psychological ones stemming from a long history of Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe.

In Syria, however, the combination of the Russian air defence umbrella and bombing raids, and the push towards the Turkish (Nato) border by both the Syrian Army and the Kurdish locals have turned the war-ravaged country into the primary frontier of a renewed confrontation between Russia and the West. Northern Syria, as opposed to eastern Ukraine, is the place where the risks of a Cold War turning hot are clear and present.

In the ongoing vicious game of power, all players have a motive to escalate, and the triggers are abundant. The Turks do not want their border to fall to unfriendly hands, and have threatened military action to stop the town of Azaz, the last rebel-held outpost north of Aleppo, from falling to either the YPG or the Syrian Army. The Syrian government wants to reach its border with Turkey, in order to reestablish its authority. Saudi Arabia wants to join the fray, claiming its intent to launch a ground offensive against Daesh with US support. The Americans, on their part, seem ambivalent about the recent development in Aleppo, merely urging restraint on all parties involved. The Russians want to exact revenge on Turkey, and to demonstrate the superiority of their weapons vis-à-vis Turkey’s Western-supplied military. Putin, above all, wants to outflank Nato; he needs to show the alliance as inept and unable to defend its members, let alone “contain” Russia.

If Russia and Turkey end up clashing over Latakia, Aleppo, or both, one critical question stands out: Will Nato implement Article 5 of its charter and confront Russia in defence of Turkey? Or will the Western powers choose diplomacy to avoid a clash with the nuclear-armed great power over an ever-entangled Middle East? The next few days may very well hold the answer.

gulfnews.com

In the wake of the bomb attack in Ankara, Turkey has carried out airstrikes on PKK positions in Iraq. Turkey claims two bombers were involved in the car bombing – one a Syrian and the other a PKK militant.

Turkish warplanes carried out airstrikes on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq late on Wednesday, according to security sources. Senior commanders were believed to be among up to 70 people hit in the Zap, Avasin and Haftanin camps.

Following a car bomb attack in Ankara that left 28 people dead on Wednesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “Turkey will not shy away from using its right to self-defense at any time, any place or any occasion.”

Without specifying the form of the retaliation, Erdogan’s office issued a statement saying, “We will never take a step back in our rightful struggle against all terrorist organizations.”

Turkish artillery shelled positions of Kurdish fighters in Syria for the fifth day in a row on Wednesday. Erdogan said Turkey would never accept the creation of a Kurdish stronghold in northern Syria, adding that there was “no question” of Ankara ending its shelling.

In a separate incident, at least six people were killed in an alleged PKK attack on a military convoy in southeast Turkey on Thursday.

Bomber identity

A Syrian national, identified by his fingerprints, has been accused of carrying out Wednesday night’s bombing in Ankara. Salih Necar was thought to have entered Turkey with refugees from Syria. The car used in the bombing had been rented out in the western Turkish city of Izmir about two weeks ago.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed during a news on Thursday that there had been two bombers involved in Wednesday’s Ankara blast.

“The attack was carried out by the PKK together with a person who snuck into Turkey from Syria,” Davutoglu said. Authorities have detained nine people in connection with the attack, he added.

PKK leader Cemil Bayik was quoted on Thursday as saying he did not know who was behind the bombing.

“We don’t know who did this. But it could be an act of retaliation for the massacres in Kurdistan,” Cemil Bayik told the Firat news agency, which is seen as close to the PKK.

Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party leader Saleh Muslim on Thursday denied Turkish allegations that the group was involved in the Ankara bombing.

“We deny any involvement in this attack,” Saleh Muslim said.

Rebel fighters cross into Syria

Up to 2,000 rebel fighters have crossed the Turkish border back into Syria in the last week, according to the rebel group that runs the border-crossing of Bab al-Salam.

“We have been allowed to move everything from light weapons to heavy equipment mortars and missiles and our tanks,” Abu Issa, a commander in the Levant Front, told Reuters news agency.

There were also reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of hundreds of militants crossing the Turkish border into Syria on Wednesday. They are suspected of returning to Syria to help rebels in the face of gains made by Kurdish forces.

The UK-based observatory reported that at least 500 rebels crossed looking to make their way to Azaz “to help the insurgents in the face of gains made by Kurdish forces in the north of the province,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the observatory.

The Kurdish fighters, who have the support of the United States, have taken advantage of Russian airstrikes to take control of territory near the Turkish border in recent weeks.

Syria aid deliveries

Meanwhile, trucks carrying aid arrived in four besieged towns in Syria on Wednesday in what the United Nations described as a test for Syria’s warring sides ahead of a truce planned to come into force on Friday.

The Red Crescent said trucks laden with supplies entered Moadimayet al-Sham, near Damascus “carrying 8,800 sacks of flour, 4,400 food parcels, high-energy foods and medical equipment.”

Media reports said three trucks entered Madaya, which is besieged by government troops, in Damascus province and the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, said aid trucks had reached the Shiite towns of Fuaa and Kafraya, in northwestern Idlib province, which are surrounded by rebels.

“Dozens of trucks will follow” for Madaya, Fuaa and Kafraya, El Hillo added. “We are about the finish the process.”

dw.com