The Houthis are a small group of people who live in the north of Yemen, and they have been nursed by Iran to fight against Saudi Arabia and the Sanaa government as part of the Iranian project of planting regional agents similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, like reported by arabnews.com.

The leadership of the Houthis has been affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for more than 20 years — not recently as some people believe.

Over time, the Houthis became similar to other Iranian armed groups in the region who are trained in the use of arms, organization and propaganda. Iran chose the title and the slogan for the group. Ansarullah is the name of the Houthi militias, and they reiterate the same Iranian daily slogan: “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

But the Houthis are different from the Lebanese Hezbollah in that they are just a small group in Yemen, less than 5 percent of the population.

The Iranians have supported the Houthis with the help of the more developed Hezbollah, which manages Houthi affairs in Yemen. It benefits from its long military, social and propaganda experience in Lebanon and seeks to prepare the Houthis for controlling Yemen.

That is why the Houthis have shown more advanced activities in using weapons, including ballistic missiles, in the past three years.

The Houthis conduct a conscription policy in the areas under their control and do not hesitate to execute those who refuse to join their militia — or the families of defecting conscripts.

A Yemeni friend told me how the Houthis appoint local leadership in the areas they occupy and force conscription on boys between 11 and 17 years old, executing anyone who rejects the policy as part of an intimidation process to subjugate these tribal areas, which were not controlled by any authorities before.

My friend told me about the Houthis’ propaganda activities, which employ the same tactics as the IRGC by convincing children that by fighting Saudi Arabia they are fighting America and Israel. He also said that the Houthis distributed small radio sets because of the lack of electricity and TV sets in the countryside. The Houthis have closed 15 newspapers and 19 private and public TV stations, leaving only two loyal TV channels.

Iran transferred its experiences in conscription and propaganda to their Houthi followers in Yemen, and they trained them in funding  methods and creating other financial resources for the militia. The availability of funds is the secret behind the continuation of Houthis in their fight. Most of these are collected through checkpoints, which are used to levy taxes on individuals, vehicles and goods in areas under their control. They control the port of Al-Hodeidah, which is the main sea lane in Yemen, and all fuel-selling points.

Lebanese Hezbollah members took care of organization and planning for the Houthi group, which is structurally underdeveloped. Most of its middle leadership is illiterate. The most important challenge, given the small size of the group, is the spreading of influence through coalitions, control and conscription, and recruiting the youth using ideology and letting them intimidate people in the areas under their control.

The Houthi militia is very similar to Daesh group. Both of them are terrorist organizations, both in ideology and practice, and their philosophy is based on intimidation and total submission to the leadership.

We have already seen how Daesh in Syria and Iraq, despite its small size, managed to control densely-populated towns and big cities with millions of residents, like Mosul. It took an international military effort to liberate these towns and cities.

Taking on the Houthi organization with aerial bombardment only, and without a clear approach that studies the nature of the organization and its activities on the ground, will not eliminate the danger.

Small groups of IS militants who managed to escape fighting are roaming the northern Iraqi countryside, ambushing military convoys, like reported by middleeasteye.net

Whilst many observers further afield are celebrating the military defeat of the Islamic State group, remnants of the group are already proving an ability to survive in desert hide-outs, even staging deadly attacks on Iraqi forces.

Four Hashd al-Shaabi fighters were killed and a further two injured on Tuesday evening after a military convoy scouring villages south-west of Kirkuk for IS militants was ambushed by rogue elements of the now largely defeated group.

“The order came for several Hashd Turkmen Brigades to mobilise after intelligence reports detailing IS presence in rural areas between Hawija and Bashir were received,” the head of media for the Hashd al-Shaabi forces in northern Iraq, Jawdat Assaf, told MEE.

“Daesh were hiding in tall grasses beside the roadside and, when they saw the convoy approaching the village of Yaragun, they ambushed our forces, running out from the grasses and opening fire on the vehicles,” he said, using the Arabic name for IS.

The first vehicle in the convoy took the brunt of the assault, with four of its occupants killed and the other two injured. In the ensuing fighting, the Hashd forces killed five IS members, Assaf said.

Within a few hours, a video was circulated on Facebook showing bodies of several slain militants. Stripped to their underwear and thrown across the bonnet of a Humvee, these were driven into Bashir, the hometown of the slain soldiers, which lies some seven kilometres from Yaragun.

More than 100 Bashir residents have been killed battling IS, including 36 civilians caught up in fighting, and anti-IS sentiment runs high in the town, with a population around 4,000.

The hunt for remaining IS members in northern Iraq is being fronted by local Hashd units who know the terrain well. But so, too, do their enemy.

“These Daesh are people who come from the surrounding villages. After Hawija was finished, they had no place left to go so they started to move between the desert and their ruined and abandoned former villages,” shouted Commander Muslim Amerli, over the noise of a four-wheel drive bumping across a track winding for miles across the barren desert.

He was leading a two-vehicle patrol at dusk just hours before the ambush near Yaragun.

“They know the area very well and are operating from hiding places but, to be honest, they are just postponing their inevitable fate,” he said. “They are actually just waiting for the day they will be captured or killed.”

The ambush was the second attack in three days. Two nights earlier, and some 40 kilometres away, Amerli’s Brigade Sayyed Shorhadat had spotted 20 militants with two motorbikes in a rural area of Salah Ah Din province.

The militants had hoped to move unseen under the cover of darkness but the Hashd brigade have night vision equipment and opened fire. Three IS fighters were injured, and taken to a nearby hospital under armed guard, but the others managed to flee back into the barren landscape from which they had emerged.

“We have had fighting with the enemy every seven or eight days since the end of the Hawija operation but recently we have started spotting Daesh every few days,” said Captain Hamid Mohammed, speaking from a rural Hashd position.

“Daesh are hiding in secret places near the river and in the valleys, but they come out when they need to find food and other essential supplies.”

As the Iraqi winter sets in, making it increasingly hard for militants to live outside, Mohammed says his forces expect further clashes.

These are not former IS members now pretending to be civilians. They are active IS adherents who remain armed and dangerous, and still have access to weapons, ammunition and IEDs.

IS controlled the area for more than three years, during which time it buried secret stashes of ammunition for machine guns and heavy weaponry, along with additional weapons and IEDs in remote locations underground, which rogue militants are believed to be now utilising.

Tens of such ammunition caches have already been uncovered by the Iraqi forces, according to Assaf, but locating all these stashes in desert terrain and mountains requires time and manpower.

For now, militants are still sporadically laying IEDs on desert routes used by the Iraqi forces, returning to the pre-caliphate days of carrying out surprise attacks.

IS announced in a mid-October edition of its Al-Naba newsletter that territorial losses had reduced its role and power in the region to that of an insurgency.

This recent spate of IS attacks in northern Iraq, including two suicide bomb incidents in Kirkuk on 5 November, indicate IS’s Iraq-based adherents are now doing exactly this.

The ongoing challenge of securing desert terrain

These vast outlying areas around Kirkuk and Hawija have proved to be one of the hardest parts of northern Iraq to completely clear, and keep clear, of rogue IS fighters.

“This area was liberated two years ago but it’s very difficult to monitor,” said Amerli, standing on a hilltop outpost where the ground was scattered with empty bullet casings and dismantled IS IEDs. “But this is our locale so we know it very well. No other Iraqi forces are able to police this area like we can.”

The undulating barren expanse stretches for miles with few buildings or high spots that can be used as military outposts. At dusk, a lone farmer herds a large flock of sheep across a barren hillside.

Sporadically dotted across the desert are clusters of high-flying Shia flags that define Hashd-held military positions, mostly operating from the farmhouses of smallholdings, where animals still roam in the farmyards.

“You can see this area is not technically under complete military control because that’s just not possible, but Daesh rarely venture here because they know we are constantly moving around the area,” said Amerli, gesturing out across the desert expanse.

Known amongst his men as a fearless commander who led an extraordinary resistance from his hometown of Amerli in 2014, which was besieged by IS for 89 days, Amerli admits to often roaming the terrain alone, even at night, scanning the horizon with night-vision equipment for any IS activity.

He shrugged off concerns about IS staging any kind of serious come-back, or taking control of any territory in the area.

“I don’t believe they can ever come back like before but I am expecting an increase in terrorist attacks,” he said. “And sure, they can attack us at any time around here but we are always ready for them. We are always waiting for them.”

Hunting down IS, one by one

Since the liberation of Hawija in early October, the Iraqi forces have not only been tracking down IS militants in the desert but also in Hawija’s outlying villages where former IS members have shaved their beards and are concealing themselves amongst civilians.

A senior Hashd al-Shaabi source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE that forces under the control of one military commander alone had tracked down and arrested 150 former IS militants in the Salah Ad Din and Hawija provinces, steadily working through a list of confirmed IS members, during the last month.

The town, which was IS’s last northern Iraqi stronghold, is surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of rural, desert and mountainous terrain into which militants fled in all directions as the Iraqi forces closed in. Military commanders heading the Hawija offensive knew these rogue elements would continue to cause problems after liberation.

“Just one military commander has arrested 150 but the Hashd has many commanders operating in these areas outside, so you can imagine how many more have been captured.”

Pretending to be ordinary civilians or being sheltered by family members, these men had been hoping to blend into post-IS Iraq and go undetected. The source said former IS members, who he described as dangerous criminals who continued to pose a grave threat to Iraq, could not be allowed to live freely in a country which they sought to destroy.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described Hezbollah on Thursday as a “first-class terrorist organization” that should lay down its arms and respect Lebanon’s sovereignty, like reported by aawsat.com.

“Hezbollah has kidnapped the Lebanese system,” Jubeir told a joint news conference in Riyadh with French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian.

He accused Hezbollah of destabilising the region, and said “consultations and coordination between peace-loving countries and Lebanon-loving countries are underway to try to find a way that would restore sovereignty to Lebanon and reduce the negative action which Hezbollah is conducting in Lebanon.”

He said discussions with his French counterpart focused on several issues, mainly Iran’s meddling and combatting terrorism.

Jubeir also said accusations by Lebanese President Michel Aoun that resigned Prime Minister Saad Hariri is detained are “rejected and baseless.”

He stressed it is up to Hariri to decide when to return home.

“Hariri lives in the kingdom by his own will and he resigned; regarding his return to Lebanon, it is up to him and his assessment to the security situation (in Lebanon)”, Jubeir told the press conference.

As for Le Drian, he expressed concern over Iran’s meddling, saying he discussed with the Saudi FM Tehran’s interference in the region.

He also said discussions focused on the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

Repercussions of a missile attack on Saudi capital Riyadh by Houthis last week are continuing in Yemen which may deepen crisis in the war-torn country, like reported by xinhuanet.com.

Senior military officials from the legitimate army said preparations have started to liberate Hodeida city in the west and the capital Sanaa coinciding with reports the Houthi-Saleh alliance has deployed missiles and forces to face a possible attack.

Yemen is facing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and the latest closure of its land, sea and air ports is making it worst.

Observers argued that duplicity of the Saudi-led coalition is a big obstacle to peace in Yemen.

Yaseen Al-Tamimi, a political writer and analyst, said the Houthi missile fired at Riyadh was a sign indicating the coalition has not ended strategic dangers coming from Yemen after three years of the war.

“Repercussions of the latest missile have transcended Yemen to make the country an open battlefield for a regional war that goes beyond the goals of the Saudi-led military intervention,” he said.

The Saudi-led coalition has accused Iran of supplying Houthis with the ballistic missiles which reached Riyadh.

Adel Al-Shuja’a, a politics professor at Sanaa University, said the talk about Iran is not objective because Saudi and UAE practices in Yemen are providing Iran with a good opportunity to increase its presence in the country.

“Well, it was not the first time Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh. They fired one when U.S. President Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May. The point is that the coalition and its backers are seeking to prolong war here,” Al-Shjua’a said.

“But whatever they escalate, they can’t ignore the humanitarian catastrophe and growing militancy. The international community will have no option but to end the suffering of the Yemeni people and terrorist threats.”

Internally, warlords inside the Houthi-Saleh alliance and the Hadi government represent a huge challenge to peace, observers said.

While the Yemeni people and others were waiting for the Houthi-Saleh alliance to take initiative and deescalate to prove their goodwill and care about the starving Yemeni people, all were surprised by the missile fired at Riyadh, observers said.

And warlords within Hadi’s government are to blame for failure to achieve a military victory by the legitimate forces, they added.

A senior official loyal to Hadi told Xinhua there are those who are against uniting or merging the forces under the legitimate government, a matter which is reflected on the security situation and the war course.

Iran is increasing its efforts to change the identity of Sunni-majority Syria, with the aim of establishing a long-term influence inside the country, like reported by chathamhouse.org.

It has brought in fighters from the Middle East region and beyond. The Lebanese Hezbollah was among the first to arrive, and Iranian revolutionary guards, Afghan, Pakistani, Yemeni and Iraqi Shia militias are among the fighters that Iran has been relying on in gaining control in Syria. It has also organized and trained the local Syrian para-militia known as National Defence Forces, whose members were first known as ‘Shabiha’, who became notorious for beating up protesters in the streets.

Local fighters proved unreliable for Iran, often seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of military or ideological goals. Iran has instead relied on imported fighters like Hezbollah and the Iraqi militia of Abou Fadel Al Abbas, whose religious and ideological motivations have made them more loyal.

Iran is also engaged in a process of demographic change, at least around the city of Damascus, aimed at surrounding the city with Iran loyalists. Shia in Syria comprise less than one per cent of the population – even large numbers of new arrivals cannot dominate. But they can change the balance of power. Iran is now installing loyalist Shia in areas around Shia shrines and surrounding Damascus, mainly the areas leading to Lebanon, so that Iran can secure a contiguous route for Hezbollah.

Residents of Damascus are speaking more and more about wealthy Shia buying properties in the city. New arrivals from Kefraya and Foua, the two Shia towns in Idlib that were part of a Qatari-brokered population exchange deal with the Sunni towns of Madaya and Zabadani, have now relocated to areas surrounding Shia shrines in both Sayyeda Zainab and Sayyeda Rouqayaa in the heart of the old city Damascus.

The latter shrine is for Ali bin Abi Taleb’s granddaughter, who died at four and was buried behind the Sunni Umayyad mosque. The shrine has now been expanded and turned into a hussainiyya, a Shia religious centre, with an architecture that is a replica of a mosque in Isfahan with blue tiles. Its construction has resulted in the demolishment and disfiguring of historical buildings that are hundreds of years old and are supposed to be on UNESCO’s heritage list.

Many of the area’s non-Shia residents are expressing anger about Iran’s imposition of Shia religious culture, and many Sunnis in Damascus say they are feeling increasingly isolated and powerless. Even Alawite loyalists to the regime are not happy. Although they want to see the Assad regime stay in power, they are not comfortable with the religious influence Iran is trying to enforce on Syria.

This religious influence has been a strategic aim for Iran. It has been building around existing shrines for decades, and has bought loyalty with money, changing the religious character of villages in Raqqa, Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. But among the Alawites, who are not so religiously conservative, Iran has not succeeded. In some Alawite villages, where there were attempts to build Shia religious shrines with Iranian money, people who tried to do so were expelled from the villages.

To some extent, both regime loyalists and the Syrian opposition are wary of Iran’s efforts to change the religious identity of Syria, worried about it bringing in a Shia kind of extremism. Both sides reject it, and at least in Damascus, many prefer Russia to Iran. The ex-Soviet country has no interest in imposing any extremist religious ideology or changing the social fabric of Syria, already damaged by the war.

Recent events in Saudi Arabia are sending shockwaves throughout the Middle East. It is locked into a collision course with Iran after a missile was fired against Riyadh. The Yemen based Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has blamed Tehran for supplying the rockets to the Houthis, a charge that Iran denied, and in the midst of all of this, MBS has launched an anti-corruption campaign targeting the Kingdom’s business and political elite, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

Many top officials within Saudi Arabia have been arrested, but some critics say that the Crown Prince is getting rid of adversaries to the throne. From the Saudi government’s point of view, around a hundred billion dollars was embezzled with bribes and money laundering, and over two hundred Emirs, businessmen, and ministers have been detained. Many of the names that have been detained are from the old guard. There is also a power shake up going on within the royal family, and this consolidates the new Crown Prince’s power whether it is for anti-corruption or other reasons.

Hours before the arrests were made, the Saudis intercepted a ballistic missile over Riyadh that was launched from Yemen. The Saudis accused Iran for being behind the launch, but the Houthis don’t have the capabilities for owning, using, or developing a ballistic missile. Throughout the past couple of years, the Houthis have been sending missiles in Saudi Arabia, but these missiles have very little capacity, and limited capabilities compared to the weapons the Saudi-led coalition has used in the Yemen conflict. Riyadh has said that Iran was behind the missile launch, but Iran denies these allegations. As a result, Saudi Arabia continues to increase the airstrikes in Yemen, and has put a $330-million-dollar bounty on Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, as well as killing other Houthi leaders within the past few days, and this has led to escalation on all fronts between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Another major development was the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Riyadh, and the Saudis have advised its citizens not to travel to Lebanon, and for those who are there, to leave as soon as possible. The Saudis are working on all fronts, and on all of these fronts whether it is on Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, and Bahrain, it is accusing Iran of being behind all of this which sounds strange given the fact that the Saudis export a form of Islam that is puritanical compared to something you would not see in modern society, and this ideology is called Wahhabism.

For example, Iran supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Saudis do not want to see Hezbollah participate in Lebanese politics. Hezbollah also came out with a statement that accused Riyadh of detaining Prime Minister Hariri against his will and it also accused Saudi Arabia of declaring an act of war by taking Hariri to Riyadh to resign as Prime Minister of Lebanon. So basically, there is a grasp for power between Iran and Saudi Arabia being played inside countries like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and now Lebanon.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri went to Saudi Arabia and resigned from his post on Al Arabiya, but he hasn’t returned home. Lebanon is currently in a bizarre state of affairs. Last Saturday when Hariri was summoned to Riyadh and announced his resignation on Saudi state TV, the Lebanese people faced a very weird situation where the official position from Beirut has been for the return of Hariri to Lebanon. All of the Lebanese political parties including Hezbollah have held a consistent position on this.

In addition, the Lebanese government wants Hariri back to submit his full resignation in Lebanon so then the public, President Aoun, the speaker, and the political parties can hear directly from him about what is taking place and why there has been little communication between the Prime Minister and the Lebanese people. So far, Lebanese Security Forces have found no evidence of a threat to Hariri’s life, and the ridiculous accusations being made by the Saudis could have reflected Hariri’s father’s assassination as well.

The reality on the ground is that the Saudis have funded DAESH ever since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, as we know from the Wikileaks documents, Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and the Defense Intelligence Agency document of 2012 that the Saudis supported the extremists in order to overthrow the Assad Government. However, Hezbollah was one of the most effective forces in the fight against DAESH, and we are close to seeing the end of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

If there was a driver for instability in the Middle East, it should be made very clear to many Middle East analysts that it is clearly the Saudis. What is being done to the Lebanese Prime Minister is quite unprecedented given the fact that he resigned in Saudi Arabia on Saudi state TV without the Lebanese people even aware of what was going on, and Hariri holds dual citizenship as a Saudi and a Lebanese just like his father Rafic Hariri.

The only country with whom Lebanon can geographically have a war with is Israel, and there have always been a multitude of tensions between the two sides for decades. Nobody can disagree that there is a competition between Riyadh and Tehran for dominance in the Middle East, but it is by no means a footnote to have a Prime Minister of a country resign in a different country whose whereabouts are unknown. This has resulted as a front against Lebanese sovereignty, but the big picture cannot be complete if we don’t say that the interference is not just from Saudi Arabia, but from Iran and other regional players in the Middle East as well.

The Lebanese public is very concerned about escalation, but there is also a national unity within the government and the Lebanese people that because Lebanon is so small and has had a long track record of foreign interference, there needs to be a national unity where escalation is unnecessary and there is no appetite for yet another civil war. The political parties in Lebanon do not want to turn against each other and the only way forward is national unity.

Lebanon could become the next victim of the Iranian-Saudi powerplay in the Middle East. We have already witnessed the destruction in Yemen, Iraq, as well as Syria that the divisions in the region are far more complex and broad than we make it out to be. Even though a direct war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is unlikely, there is a psychological war of words between the two powerhouses.

The Saudi rhetoric of declaring war against Lebanon is not helpful to diffusing tensions, and now that Hariri has resigned, Saudi Arabia has declared a war on Hezbollah, but a war against Hezbollah is also a war against the Lebanese people because Hezbollah has had a long history of combatting foreign aggression, they have also been an effective fighting force in fighting against DAESH. Hezbollah has also cooperated with the Lebanese Army to protect the Lebanese people from foreign aggression.

At this point, Hariri is still Prime Minister because President Aoun has not accepted the resignation, and the Future Movement has said repeatedly to order Hariri back to Lebanon. At this point, the Lebanese people and the government are united, nobody has declared a war on Saudi Arabia, and there is a psychological war of words that could lead to further escalation between Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Houthi-Saleh militias have killed over 300 children and injured more than 1804 others in Taiz governorate, due to shelling during the period from April 2017 till September 2017, according to a recent report and like reported by aawsat.com.

In its recent report, Taiz-based Yemeni Coalition for Monitoring Human Rights Violations indicated that militias also targeted residential areas in Taiz by mortar and howitzer shelling, latest of which was the attack on Onswa village, northwestern Taiz city, where 5 children were killed and 2 others injured.

Military expert staff Colonel Waleed al-Sharaabi, confirmed that Houthi-Saleh militias targeted Onswa village with mortars. The village is occupied by civilians only and there are no military locations, warehouses, or barricades in it with the nearest military facility 8 kilometers away to the north.

“The shelling is a deliberate targeting of civilian objects and unarmed civilians. The incident in Onswa is a blatant murder,” asserted Sharaabi.

Militants have been besieging Onswa for more than two years from three sides: al-Qarae and Azzeba mountains, and other military sites the village overlooks including: in al-Khamseen street, Waesh mountain and al-Shaibani yard, according to the report.

The report warned that the villagers were under constant shelling and snipers were targeting anyone trying to leave or enter the village through safe corridors.

The coalition called upon Houthi-Saleh militias to immediately cease all hostilities against civilians, particularly children in Taiz and other zones.

It also requested that Houthi-Saleh militias apply article three mentioned in the four Geneve conventions, and 1977 protocol of non-international armed conflicts.

In addition, the coalition requested the National Commission to investigate alleged human rights violations, asking for an immediate investigation into the Onswa attack.

It finally called upon local and international organizations to pressure Houthi-Saleh militias to immediately cease all atrocities against children in Yemen.

Recently, insurgents’ militias committed another crime when one of its snipers killed a handicapped child in Taiz without any apparent reason.

Locals told Asharq Al-Awsat that the sniper killed Zakaria Abdul Hamid Hamad, 16 years, in al-Morabaa area, northeast Han mountain in west Taiz.

Sources indicated that the child instantly died after he was shot in his back, describing it as an “unprecedented crime”.

Kurdish authorities in northern Syria on Sunday said they had handed over Chechen families, who were found in Raqqa city when it was retaken from the Islamic State (IS) last month, to Russia, like reported by kurdistan24.net.

In a press conference held in the Syrian north-eastern Kurdish city of Qamishlo, 13 women and 29 children were released to a delegation representing the Russian and Chechen governments.

The delegation was led by Ziyad Sabsabi, a representative of the President of the Chechen Republic, and General Kim, the chairman of the reconciliation committee at Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in Syria.

Officials representing the Kurdish authorities in northern Syria said the move was part of a framework to strengthen ties between the administration and the countries whose captives are being kept by the YPG, the Kurdish military of Syria’s Kurdish areas known as Rojava.

“We, as a self-ruling administration, are coordinating with European, Asian, and Arab states to eliminate the threat of terrorism,” Abdulkareem Omar, a Syrian Kurdish official told Kurdistan 24.

“For example, we repatriated Indonesian families a few months ago,” he said.

The conference was also attended by the YPG spokesperson Nuri Mahmoud, in addition to Abdulkareem Omar, the foreign relation officer for the Rojava administration.

“We are officially handing over IS families to the Russian state,” Mahmoud told reporters.

Among the IS families being handed over was a Chechen woman who told Kurdistan 24 she followed her husband to Syria after he joined the jihadist group and gave birth in Raqqa.

“Two years ago, my husband came to Syria, and I joined him a little later,” she said.

The families were transported to the Qamishlo airport to be extradited back to Russia.

According to Russian officials, the children will be released but the women will face charges and be judged.

Iraqi army forces killed and arrested 12 Islamic State  militants northwest of Mosul, a commander in Nineveh province was quoted saying, according to iraqinews.com.

Baghdad Today quoted Emad al-Bayati, head of the army’s Nineveh Operations’ media, saying that border security troops engaged with the militants at Yaaribi border area with Syria, killed seven and arrested five others after setting up an ambush.

He added that the troops seized the militants’ weapons and took the arrested ones for interrogation.

Iraqi troops, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, took over Mosul from Islamic State militants early July, ending more than eight months of operations. Since then, security forces have launched efforts to clear the city from dormant IS cells and occasionally sustained attacks from militants, while arresting others among refugees.

Mosul was the birthplace of the Islamic State’s self-styled “caliphate” when the group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared its establishment in a famous sermon from Mosul’s Grand Nuri Mosque.

Iraq forces are currently working on seizing back the group’s last haven in Iraq: the western Anbar city of Rawa on the borders with Syria.

The war against IS has so far displaced at least five million people.

Two suicide bombers detonated a car packed with explosives in Yemen’s southern city of Aden on Tuesday, killing at least six people, witnesses said according to reuters.com.

Dozens of other people, including civilians, were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside a camp used by a local security force organized by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Witnesses described a huge explosion that shook the al-Mansoura district in northern Aden, destroying at least one building and shattering windows in others.

Ambulances rushed to the scene to evacuate the wounded. Pictures circulating on social media showed several young men in military uniform being carried away.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes as a civil war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi drags on with no sign that it will end soon.

Islamist militants have exploited the fighting to try to recruit more followers and expand their influence in the country, which sits near main shipping lanes.

The camp attacked on Tuesday was occupied by a local force called the Security Belt, in al-Mansoura.

The Security Belt was set up by the United Arab Emirates to help restore security to the port city, the temporary capital of Hadi’s government after the Saudi-led coalition helped local fighters drive the Houthis out of Aden in 2015.