Kurdish Intelligence: ISIS Leader Baghdadi Alive and Plans to Turn ISIS into Al-Qaeda on Steroid
Kurdish Intelligence: ISIS Leader Baghdadi Alive and Plans to Turn ISIS into Al-Qaeda on Steroid
An Iraqi Kurdistan intelligence chief has warned that the Supreme leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is almost certainly still alive despite several reports that he was killed in Syria in June and that he will turn ISIS into al-Qaeda on steroids.
It was reported that ISIS brides and family members are fleeing Iraq and Syria and attempting to return to their home countries. The civilian populations tormented, tortured, enslaved and barbarized by ISIS and government forces in Syria and Iraq have been accused of horrific reprisals against ISIS members and their families. ISIS now holds just 2.2 percent of territory in Iraq and 8.3 percent across the border in Syria. Iraqi and Kurdish forces have cleared 25,000 square miles from ISIS and liberated 4.82 million people from its rule, over 3 million in Iraq. After years of brainwashing and ISIS propaganda, 350,000 children who were living under ISIS control are now liberated and back in school.
Iran has reportedly sent thousands of Afghan Shi'a to Syria to back President Bashar al-Assad and his allies' in their six-year war against rebels and Islamist extremists.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that Israel is opposed to the cease-fire in Syria brokered by the US and Russia because it empowers Iran.
In a sign of Iran’s growing political clout in Iraq, at a ceremony commemorating a Revolutionary Guard commander recently slain in Iraq, al-Quds Commander, Major General, Qassem Soleimani, hailed victory in Mosul against the Islamic State praising Iraqi actors, as well as Iran’s material and combat support to Iraq, but omitted US military support that was crucial to the campaign.
In a worrying sign, the Jordanian Parliament on Sunday praised the terrorists who carried out a shooting attack at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that killed two Israeli police officers, less than a day after King Abdullah II condemned the attack.
Israeli security forces shot and killed a Palestinian militant they were seeking to arrest after he shot at them in the West Bank.
The Israeli army opened fire on a vehicle after an attempted ramming attack in Hebron. Fatah has called for a "day of rage" and demonstrations throughout the West Bank.
Egyptian police on Sunday fired tear gas at a rock-pelting crowd of residents on a River Nile island in Cairo, that left one person dead and 50 others injured.
A car bomb has struck a pro-government military base in Yemen's southeastern province of Shabwa Monday, leaving 8 soldiers dead.
Pakistani Major General Asif Ghafoor on Sunday announced the launch of Operation Khyber-4 under Radd-ul-Fasaad (RuF) to "wipe out terrorists" in the Rajgal Valley area of Khyber Agency.
It was reported on July 11th that US Forces killed ISIS leader Abu Sayed in a strike on the group’s headquarters in Kunar province, Afghanistan. Sayed was selected as the leader of ISIS-Khorasan after US forces killed Hafiz Sayed Khan last July and Abdul Hasib in April.
As Venezuela starts to deteriorate into civil war, at least one person was killed after gunmen attacked a crowd of voters in Caracas. The opposition had been holding an unofficial referendum to stop President Nicolas Maduro's drive towards dictatorship. The opposition has called for 24-hour national strike against President Maduro on Thursday.
Thousands of troops from NATO and partner countries are currently staging deterrence exercises in Romania.
NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, has urged the Turkish and German governments to resolve their differences over German government visits to Turkish military bases.
The Turkish parliament has for the fourth time approved a bill to extend state of emergency for another three months since last July's failed coup attempt. As the purge of secular opposition to the Islamist government continues Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has threatened to rip the heads off the traitors.
A Cameroonian naval vessel has sunk off the country’s Atlantic coast leaving 34 people missing and presumed lost.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday that five countries in East Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, face dire food insecurity after a third poor rainy season in a row.
On Sunday, it was reported that five park rangers were killed in a joint operation with the army to rescue an American journalist and three park rangers, who went missing in a wildlife reserve in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
US Intelligence officials have cautioned that the United Arab Emirates hacked into the Qatari government news and social media sites in late May to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani that set off the regional crisis.
The brother of Iran’s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, has been arrested amid escalating tensions between the government and the country’s Cleric judiciary ahead of Rouhani’s swearing-in ceremony next month.
Indian troops targeted a vehicle of the Pakistan Army moving along the Neelum River at Athmuqam on Sunday along the Line of Control (LoC) killing four soldiers.
A Tibetan student self-immolated in India after shouting “freedom”, injuring himself critically on Saturday. Self-immolation has regularly been used as a protest China’s illegal occupation of Tibet. China has conducted a massive military live-fire drill in Tibet to send a message to India.
The Japanese government has warned in a new draft report on regional security that China’s defense budget has grown threefold in a decade.
It was revealed that China flew Xian H-6 strategic bomber over the waterway between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa on Thursday to Japanese protests. China said that the H-6 strategic bombers were operating legally and that Japan should get used to their overflights.
On Saturday, two Chinese coastguard ships entered Japanese waters around two islands off the southwestern main island of Kyushu.
As well, in a first, two Chinese Navy frigates shadowed the HMCS Winnipeg during a freedom-of-passage exercise the conducted with US, Australian, and Japanese Navies late last month in the contested South China Sea over a period of 36 hours.
On North Korea, the report warned that Pyongyang's ballistic missile development has four characteristics: longer ranges, growing sophistication for a so-called saturation attack, pursuit of secrecy, and a wider variety of launch forms.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry threatened Friday that “Should the UNSC adopt another ‘resolution on sanctions,’ this will trigger corresponding measures by the DPRK… with its act of justice.” The Foreign Ministry reiterated that with the successful test-fire of the Hwasong-14 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that the North, “has fully demonstrated the will and capability of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) to annihilate the US in a single blow to the very heart of its mainland in case it fails to act with discretion.”
It was reported that gasoline and diesel prices surged in North Korea in the weeks after a Chinese state oil company suspended fuel sales. The price of gasoline sold by private dealers in Pyongyang and the northern border cities of Sinuiju and Hyesan reportedly jumped to $2.18 per kilogram or $2.92 per liter as of July 5th, up 50 percent from $1.46 per kilogram on June 21st.
South Korea has proposed inter-Korean military talks as early as this week to follow up on South Korean President, Moon Jae-in's offer to stop all hostile acts on the border.
