The terrorist group ISIS reportedly has a new commander after an airstrike severely wounded their previous leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Iraqi government advisor Hisham al Hashimi told Newsweek that al-Baghdadi was injured during a March airstrike and has not been able to return to day-to-day leadership of the terrorist group. Hashimi said that Abu Alaa Afri has been running the group in al-Baghdadi’s absence.
“After Baghdadi’s wounding, he [Afri] has begun to head up Daesh [arabic term for ISIS] with the help of officials responsible for other portfolios,” Hashimi said. “He will be the leader of Daesh if Baghdadi dies.”
“He was a physics teacher in Tal Afar [northwestern Iraqi city] in Nineveh, and has dozens of publications and religious (Shariah) studies of his own,” the government adviser said. “He is a follower of Abu Musaab al-Suri [prominent jihadi scholar].”
U.S. military officials say it’s next to impossible for them to be able to confirm that al-Baghdadi was seriously wounded despite the claim of the Iraqi official. Al-Baghdadi was rumored to have died in an airstrike in November before releasing a new recording condemning those who oppose ISIS.
The news comes on the heels of ISIS releasing another video last Sunday showing them beheading Christians from Ethiopia.
On the heels of losing the key city of Tikrit to Iraqi forced backed by U.S. airstrikes, intelligence experts say that ISIS is suffering from infighting that is causing overall weakening in the ranks.
“The key challenge facing ISIS right now is more internal than external,” The Washington Post quotes Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, as saying. “We’re seeing basically a failure of the central tenet of ISIS ideology, which is to unify people of different origins under the caliphate. This is not working on the ground. It is making them less effective in governing and less effective in military operations.”
One of the problems is that ISIS recruits in Iraq feel that preferential treatment is being given to the ISIS recruits in Syria. Also the living conditions of ISIS recruits in rural areas are considered to be much less favorable than those in urban centers.
Also, the group has executed 120 of its own members for various perceived failures in loyalty, which has caused dissention among the ranks.
ISIS was driven out of Tikrit by a force of 30,000 Iraqi troops and militia which has also delivered a blow to the morale of the terrorist army.
Al Arabiya is reporting that a number of ISIS leaders have been killed by an American air strike.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was en route to the area of the strike but officials were not able to confirm if he was at the site of the strike during the attack.
Dozens of leaders and members of the group were killed in the strike. A hospital source said that at least 17 ISIS terrorists are dead and another 29 wounded; many of the wounded were in critical condition.
Local residents in al-Qaim said that many ISIS buildings and key institutions were struck by the strike. The terrorists locked down the city and said that all citizens were prohibited from leaving their homes after the attack.
ISIS reportedly called for reinforcements from Syria after the attacks to help evacuate the dead and wounded and also to try and strengthen their hold on the town.
ISIS has abducted at least 90 people from Assyrian Christian villages in the northeastern part of Syria.
The British-based Observatory for Human Rights say the terrorists conducted dawn raids on villages west of Hasaka, a town controlled by the Kurds. The Kurds had launched two major offensives against the terrorists on Sunday helped by U.S. airstrikes.
Kurdish leaders said that 14 terrorists were killed in their offensive.
ISIS refuses to admit they conducted the kidnappings although they posted pictures on social media showing the assault.
Assyrian Christians made up the majority of citizens of the region before the terrorists began their campaign. Those remaining in the village after the raid are packing and fleeing to Hasaka seeing safety.
It was her passionate faith in Christ that compelled her to care for the orphans of Syria.
It was that faith that kept Kayla Mueller at peace during her captivity at the hands of the brutal Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
“I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine, if this is how you are revealed to me, this is how I will forever seek you,” Mueller told the Prescott (Arizona) Daily Courier in 2013.
Pentagon officials confirmed Mueller’s death but said there is no way the woman was killed during an airstrike by Jordanian forces. The Defense Department’s spokesman said that she was clearly murdered by ISIS.
A letter from Mueller to her family was released to the press that further stated her leaning on God in her horrific situation.
“I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator b/c literally there was no else … + by God + by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall.”
President Obama told buzzfeed news that he had authorized a rescue mission to save Mueller but special forces were a day late.
ISIS claimed Friday that an American hostage was killed during Jordanian airstrikes on the terrorist group.
“The failed Jordanian aircraft killed an American female hostage,” said the message released through a Jihadist watchdog website. “No mujahid (fighters) was injured in the bombardment, and all praise is due to Allah.”
“The criminal Crusader coalition aircraft bombarded a site outside the city of ar-Raqqah today at noon while the people were performing the Friday prayer,” ISIS said. “The air assaults were continuous on the same location for more than an hour.”
The woman, Kayla Mueller, was taken by the terrorists in 2013. The woman had moved to Syria to help children who were orphaned or separated from their families by the civil war.
She is the fourth American to die at the hands of ISIS. Sources say it’s very possible the terrorists actually executed her so they could blame her death on Jordan through social media outlets.
The White House said American intelligence officials are investigating the claim.
A report from a former vice chief of staff for the Army regarding ISIS that was mostly negative had one bright spot from a military standpoint: the top chemical weapons expert for the terror group was killed in an airstrike.
Retired General Jack Keane told new members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Abu Malik was killed last Saturday in an airstrike near Mosul. Malik was a chemical weapons engineer for Saddam Hussein who joined al-Qaeda and then ISIS after the fall of Saddam.
“His death is expected to temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL’s ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against innocent people,” US Central Command said in a statement.
But the news was tempered by Gen. Keane’s view that ISIS has begun to “dominate” in multiple countries.
“After U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011, ISIS emerged as a terrorist organization in Iraq, moved into Syria in 2012. Is it possible to look at that map in front of you and claim that the United States policy and strategy is working? Or that al-Qaeda is on the run? It is unmistakable that our policies have failed,” Gen. Keane said.
“In my view, we became paralyzed by the fear of adverse consequences in the Middle East after fighting two wars,” he added. “Moreover, as we sit here this morning, in the face of radical Islam, U.S. policymakers refuse to accurately name the movement as radical Islam. We further choose not to define it, nor explain its ideology, and most critical, we have no comprehensive strategy to stop it or defeat it.”
The Pentagon has announced that three major ISIS leaders have been killed in the last few weeks and that the airstrikes are having a “significant impact” on the terrorist organization.
General Martin Dempsey granted an interview to the Wall Street Journal where he said the highest ranked terroristed taken out in the airstrikes is Haji Mutazz, deputy to ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“We believe that the loss of these key leaders degrades ISIL’s ability to command and control current operations against Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), including Kurdish and other local forces in Iraq,” Kirby told the Journal.
“While we do not discuss the intelligence and targeting details of our operations, it is important to note that leadership, command and control nodes, facilities, and equipment are always part of our targeting calculus.”
General Dempsey said that the U.S. is not attacking the group as if it was a nation despite their attempts to claim they are a new country.
“It is in the context of how to fight a network,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman added. “It is not a country. They have claimed it, but they are not. They are a network, so they have finances, they have logistics and they have leaders.”
A new report from the United Nations says that ISIS has stored enough weapons to continue their fight for at least two more years.
The report says that the supply estimate is taking U.S. airstrikes into account.
“According to different sources, the amounts of Iraqi small arms and ammunition captured by ISIL are sufficient to allow ISIL to continuing fighting at current levels for six months to two years,” the report states. “ISIL should have few problems maintaining state-of-the-art materials seized from the Iraqi Government, as most were unused.”
The terrorists have seized Iraqi and Syrian weapon caches from cities in the Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces.
“Both ISIL and [Al Nursa Front] have seized military assets from conventional armies,” the report says. “The scale of these seizures can be grasped by noting that ISIL, in June of 2014, captured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition sufficient to arm and equip more than three Iraqi conventional army divisions.”
The report says that in addition to the weapons, ISIS makes about a million dollars a day from oil sales and over $45 million in the last year from kidnapping ransoms.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been severely wounded in one of the airstrikes aimed at stopping the advance of the terrorist group.
Iraqi officials said Sunday that al-Baghdadi was struck during a U.S. airstrike on a convoy near the town of Qaim in western Iraq.
In addition to the wounding of the group’s leader, several key ISIS officials were killed in the attack including al-Baghdadi’s right hand man, Auf Abdulrahman Elefery. Twenty terrorists total were killed in the airstrike on the ISIS leader.
Baghdadi was an Islamic preacher who radicalized after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He later received training from al-Qaeda and lead the ISIS breakaway from al-Qaeda with designs to be the main Islamic terrorist group in the world.
Officials say that airstrikes over the weekend killed over 50 ISIS terrorists in addition to the strike that wounded al-Baghdadi. President Obama has said he will send an additional 1,500 troops to the region to “train” the Iraqi army.
