Tag Archives: Islamic State

Suspected Boko Haram members kill 18 people in northeast Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Suspected Boko Haram militants killed 18 people in northeast Nigeria on Friday, according to local witnesses and officials, the latest in an escalating number of lethal attacks in the region.

The knife-wielding attackers, moving under cover of night, targeted people in the town of Banki, 80 miles (130 km) southeast of the city of Maiduguri in Borno state, the epicenter of the eight-year conflict with Boko Haram, said a community leader and a local member of a vigilante group.

The attack on the town, which sits on the border with Cameroon, is the latest in a string of deadly Boko Haram raids and bombings that have undermined the Nigerian military’s statements that the insurgency is all but defeated.

The frequency of attacks in northeastern Nigeria has increased in the last few months, killing at least 172 people since June 1 before Friday’s attack, according to a Reuters tally.

The attack on Banki left 18 dead, according to Modu Perobe, a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a regional vigilante group. Abor Ali, a local ruler, confirmed the death toll.

Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency has left at least 20,000 dead and sparked one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, with tens of thousands already in famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations.

Some 8.5 million people in the worst affected parts of northeast Nigeria are now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, with 5.2 million people lacking secure access to food, the U.N. has said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Tom Brown)

Philippine troops in tough push in Marawi; three dead, 52 hurt

Philippine troops in tough push in Marawi; three dead, 52 hurt

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine troops have fought one of their toughest clashes against militants loyal to Islamic State in a southern town, and three soldiers were killed and 52 wounded, many by rebel bombs as they pushed forward, an officer said on Friday.

The Islamists shocked the country by seizing large parts of Marawi town in May. After more than 100 days of fighting, pockets of fighters remain dug in in the ruins.

The army made its push on Thursday, the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, and seized a bridge in what military spokesman Brigadier General Restituto Padilla described as some of the toughest fighting yet.

At least five militants were killed, he said.

“We are working to clear the remaining areas where the enemy is holding out,” Padilla said in a statement.

“Following a short pause early today, to give due respect to the solemnity and significance of this day, the operations will continue without any let up,” he said, referring to the Muslim holiday.

The military has expressed confidence the end is in sight for what has been its biggest security crisis in years, which started in May, but the latest casualties underscore the difficulty that they still face in the battlefield.

In all, 620 militants, 45 civilians and 136 soldiers and policemen have been killed in the fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and raised fears about Islamic State establishing a foothold in Southeast Asia.

The military has missed repeated targets and deadlines to crush the rebels in Marawi, a largely Muslim town on the southern island of Mindanao, raising questions about whether it can contain a wider rebellion.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who placed all of Mindanao under martial law until the end of the year after the militants occupied Marawi, has urged lawmakers to approve funds to beef up the army by 20,000 troops.

On Friday, Duterte said he saw no reason to lift martial law in Mindanao, citing violence in other parts of the island.

“The way it looks, there seems to be some spillover,” he said, without elaborating.

Muslim rebels in the south of the predominately Christian Philippines have for generations battled for greater autonomy but in recent years hopes for peace were raised with several factions engaged in talks.

But the Marawi fighting has dimmed those hopes.

For an interactive on battle for Marawi, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/PHILIPPINES-ATTACK/010041F032X/index.html

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Iran sends pilgrims back to haj in test for broader dialogue

Iranian pilgrims wait at the Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran as they depart for the annual haj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, in Tehran, Iran, July 31, 2017.

By Mahmoud Mourad and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

MECCA/LONDON (Reuters) – Iranian pilgrims returned to haj this year for the first time since a deadly crush in 2015, in what could be an important confidence-building measure for dialogue on other thorny issues between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Nearly 800 people were killed, according to Riyadh, when two large groups of pilgrims arrived at a crossroads east of Mecca. Counts by countries of repatriated bodies showed over 2,000 people may have died, including more than 400 Iranians.

Iran’s Supreme Leader has said his people would never forget that “catastrophe”, but President Hassan Rouhani suggested a trouble-free haj this year could help build confidence in other areas of dispute between the arch-rivals.

So far, Iranian pilgrims say they are satisfied.

“To be honest, the Saudis are doing a great job, working hard to deliver the best service,” said Pir-Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Emergency Medical Services.

“The 2015 incident happened because of mismanagement, but Saudis seem to have fixed that,” he told Reuters in a phone interview from Mecca.

Iranian pilgrims participated without incident in the symbolic stoning of the devil on Friday, the riskiest part of the haj because of the large crowds involved, an Iranian journalist accompanying them said.

All told, more than 2.3 million pilgrims are participating in the five-day ritual, a religious duty once in a lifetime for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey.

Rouhani said Tehran had sent pilgrims to haj based on Saudi promises of safety. He said he still lacked confidence in Riyadh but hoped it would build goodwill.

Iranian pilgrims arrive for the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. Picture taken August 30, 2017.

Iranian pilgrims arrive for the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. Picture taken August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

“If our pilgrims come back satisfied, and if Saudi Arabia’s behavior is within religious and international frameworks, I think the situation would be more convenient to resolve the issues,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Relations between Shi’ite-led Iran and Sunni power Saudi Arabia are at their worst in years, with each accusing the other of subverting regional security and supporting opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 after a prominent Saudi Shi’ite cleric was executed, prompting Riyadh to close the embassy.

Saudi Arabia and several other Arab governments severed ties with Qatar in June, citing its support for Iran as one of the main reasons. Iran accused Saudi Arabia of being behind deadly attacks in Tehran claimed by Islamic State, something Riyadh denied.

 

ID BRACELETS

Until now, no Saudi report on the 2015 crush has been published, and the bodies of dozens of Iranian victims remain unidentified.

Family members of 11 Iranians whose bodies are still missing are traveling to Mecca later this year for DNA tests, an Iranian official said.

This year, Iran issued its nearly 90,000 pilgrims blue electronic bracelets to help organizers trace and identify them.

An Iranian pilgrim shows bracelet on his hand during the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30,

An Iranian pilgrim shows bracelet on his hand during the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Dozens of Iranians clad in traditional white clothes and a distinctive red mark arrived in orange buses on Thursday at their encampment in Mount Arafat.

Pilgrims who spoke with Reuters, many with previous experience at the haj, say their facilities and treatment by the Saudi authorities are better than in past years and include air conditioned tents.

“The way that security handled the Iranian pilgrims until now has been good,” said Samir Shuahni, an Iranian journalist with the delegation.

“This is what I’ve noticed for the nearly month that I’ve been in Mecca and Medina: there is good cooperation and the pilgrims are moving freely.”

Iranians said the Saudi authorities had asked them not to hold a traditional Shi’ite prayer in an open space in Medina, citing it as a potential target for Islamic State militants.

Such restrictions have not troubled Iranians still in shock from the IS attack in Tehran which killed at least 18 people.

“I think that is reasonable,” said Mahdi Hadibeh, an Iranian photographer in Mecca. “Iranians are holding the ceremonies separately in their hotels.”

 

 

(Writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by Ralph Boulton)

 

Islamic State convoy in Syria appears to have turned back, U.S.-led coalition says

A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families begin to depart from the Lebanon-Syria border zone in Qalamoun, Syria August 28, 2017.

By Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A convoy of Islamic State fighters appears to have turned back after U.S.-led airstrikes thwarted its attempt to reach territory held by the militant group in eastern Syria, the head of U.S.-led forces fighting Islamic State said on Thursday.

More than 300 lightly armed IS fighters and about 300 family members were evacuated from Syria’s western border with Lebanon under a ceasefire agreement involving the ultra-hardline group, the Syrian army and the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah.

On Thursday they sought to move into IS-held territory from a new location after U.S.-led strikes on Wednesday stopped them joining forces with their jihadist comrades, a commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance said.

However, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of U.S.-led forces fighting Islamic State, told a Pentagon briefing that the convoy had turned back into Syrian government territory.

“When I walked into this conference about an hour ago, the buses were on the move. They had turned and had driven back into regime-held areas,” he told reporters via a video teleconference from Baghdad.

“We haven’t struck the convoy. But we have struck every ISIS fighter and/or vehicle that has tried to approach that convoy. And we’ll continue to do that,” he said.

The coalition opposes experienced combatants being moved to a battle zone in which it is active, and used warplanes on Wednesday to halt the convoy by damaging the road ahead. It also struck fighters on their way to meet the convoy.

A commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance said the convoy had headed north towards the town of Sukhna on Thursday after being halted in the desert and would try to reach Deir al-Zor province, close to the border with Iraq.

Two sources familiar with U.S. policy on Syria said the airstrikes did not signal a more aggressive military approach, and were intended to prevent the IS fighters in the convoy reinforcing their comrades in Deir al-Zor.

But the standoff shows the tangled nature of a war theater divided into several overlapping conflicts, and where the engagement of local, regional and global powers is further complicated by a mosaic of alliances and enmities.

Six years into Syria’s civil war, in which Islamic State has seized swathes of land, the jihadist group is on the retreat across the region, losing ground to an array of foes.

In Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has rapidly gained ground this year as the army advanced eastwards, backed by Russia and allied Iran-backed militia including Hezbollah, towards its besieged enclave in Deir al-Zor.

But in the north, the United States — which opposes Assad, Iran and Hezbollah — has led a coalition backing Kurdish and Arab militias as they assault Islamic State’s former Syrian capital of Raqqa.

 

NASRALLAH VISITED DAMASCUS

Hezbollah-affiliated media have reported that the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal, close to the border with Iraq, is the final destination for the convoy.

Hezbollah has been one of Assad’s closest allies in the war and it trumpeted the departure of Islamic State, after that of two other militant groups, from the Lebanon border as a “day of liberation”.

On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Assad had only reluctantly agreed to the evacuation after Nasrallah visited Damascus to request it, a rare public acknowledgement that he had traveled outside Lebanon.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, said it was “unacceptable” to ferry more jihadist fighters from another battlefront in Syria to the edge of Iraqi territory, prompting a statement from Hezbollah defending the move.

Iraq has formed a dedicated intelligence operations room to monitor and track the jihadists, a senior Interior Ministry official told state media, saying the convoy included “elite commanders” of Islamic State.

After it was blocked from moving eastwards on Wednesday, the convoy headed north within government territory to try to move into Islamic State land from a new location, the commander in the pro-Assad alliance said.

The commander added that the convoy would head on again after an exchange of dead combatants and prisoners. The bodies of an Iranian killed in the fighting and two other dead fighters were to be swapped for 25 wounded IS fighters traveling with the convoy, the commander said.

In Tehran, the country’s Revolutionary Guards said on their website that the dead Iranian, whom they identified as Mohsen Hojaji, would be returned at an unspecified date for a funeral and burial.

 

LIFE ON BUSES “GETTING KIND OF HARD”?

The fighters retained light weapons but left heavier arms in their enclave after being evacuated from western Lebanon following heavy fighting there.

“I would imagine life getting kind of hard on those buses after two and a half days or more, largely cooped up in those buses driving around in the desert,” Townsend said.

Such deals have increasingly been used by the Syrian army and its allies to press besieged rebels to surrender their enclaves and to relocate to insurgent-held territory elsewhere, but this is the first such deal involving Islamic State.

In the process, Islamic State revealed the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers it took captive in its border enclave in 2014, as well as surrendering a Hezbollah prisoner.

An official in the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which is helping with the exchange, has entered Islamic State territory to accompany the prisoner back to the government-held area, the commander in the pro-Assad military alliance said.

Hezbollah-aligned al Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon reported on Thursday that some IS leaders in eastern Syria did not want members of the group who had surrendered territory to be welcomed back into their self-declared caliphate.

 

 

(Reporting by Leila Bassam and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Idrees Ali, David Alexander and John Walcott in Washington, and Dubai Newsroom, Writing by Angus McDowall, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

 

Heavy civilian casualties in Raqqa from air strikes: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises after an air strike during fighting between members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, August 20, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

GENEVA (Reuters) – Civilians caught up in the battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa are paying an “unacceptable price” and attacking forces may be contravening international law with their intense air strikes, the top United Nations human rights official said on Thursday.

A U.S.-led coalition is seeking to oust Islamic State from Raqqa, while Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian air force and Iran-backed militias are also advancing on the city.

Some 20,000 civilians are trapped in Raqqa where the jihadist fighters are holding some of them as human shields, the world body says.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said that his office had documented 151 civilian deaths in six incidents alone in August, due to air strikes and ground-based attacks.

“Given the extremely high number of reports of civilian casualties this month and the intensity of the air strikes on Raqqa, coupled with ISIL’s use of civilians as human shields, I am deeply concerned that civilians – who should be protected at all times – are paying an unacceptable price and that forces involved in battling ISIL are losing sight of the ultimate goal of this battle,” Zeid said in a statement.

“…the attacking forces may be failing to abide by the international humanitarian law principles of precautions, distinction, and proportionality,” he said.

The U.S.-led coalition has said it conducted nearly 1,100 air strikes on and near Raqqa this month, up from 645 in July, the U.N. statement said. Russia’s air force has reported carrying out 2,518 air strikes across Syria in the first three weeks of August, it added.

“Meanwhile ISIL fighters continue to prevent civilians from fleeing the area, although some manage to leave after paying large amounts of money to smugglers,” Zeid said. We have reports of smugglers also being publicly executed by ISIL.”

U.S.-led warplanes on Wednesday blocked a convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families from reaching territory the group holds in eastern Syria and struck some of their comrades traveling to meet them, a coalition spokesman said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; writing by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Iraqi PM Abadi declares victory over Islamic State in Tal Afar: statement

Members of Iraqi army are seen during the war between Iraqi army and Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) against the Islamic State militants in al-Ayadiya, northwest of Tal Afar, Iraq August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

By Raya Jalabi and Ahmed Rasheed

ERBIL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over Islamic State militants in Tal Afar and the entire province of Nineveh on Thursday.

Tal Afar became the next target of the U.S.-backed war on the jihadist group following the recapture of Mosul, where it had declared its “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province.

“Tal Afar has been liberated,” Abadi said in a statement. “We say to the Islamic State fighters: wherever you are, we are coming for you and you have no choice but to surrender or die.”

Iraqi forces had been waiting to clear the small town of al-‘Ayadiya, 11 km (7 miles) northwest of Tal Afar, before declaring complete victory in the offensive. Islamic State militants had retreated to the town.

Divisions from the Iraqi army and federal police, backed by units from Shi’ite paramilitaries, retook al-‘Ayadiya on Thursday, military officers told Reuters, after several days of unexpectedly fierce fighting.

However, pockets of resistance remained and Iraqi forces were still working to clear the remaining militants from the town.

“We have to make sure that no more terrorists remain hiding inside the town’s houses,” army Lieutenant Colonel Salah Kareem told Reuters.

Hundreds of additional troops were sent into al-’Ayadiya on Wednesday, as Iraqi forces came under increasing pressure to clear Islamic State fighters from their final position in the group’s former stronghold.

Iraqi forces had faced an unexpectedly tough battle in al-‘Ayadiya, fighting house-to-house in the center of town.

They had come under pressure from top commanders to finish the offensive before the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid, which begins on Thursday evening.

No militants had been allowed to escape from al-‘Ayadiya, Abadi said in his statement.

Up to 2,000 battle-hardened militants were believed to be defending Tal Afar against around 50,000 government troops last week. It was unclear how many rertreated to al-’Ayadiya.

Mosul was flattened in nine months of grinding urban warfare before it was recaptured in July.

Its recapture in July effectively marked the end of the caliphate, but the group remains in control of territory on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border.

“We pledge to you, our people, that we will continue to liberate every inch of Iraq,” Abadi said in his statement.

(Reporting by Raya Jalabi and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Alison Williams)

After 100 days, Philippine army says ‘last stand’ near for Marawi fighters

Government troops walks past damaged buildings and houses after 100 days of intense fighting between soldiers and insurgents from the Maute group, who have taken over parts of Marawi city, southern Philippines August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Froilan Gallardo

By Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) – One hundred days after militants loyal to Islamic State took over parts of a southern Philippine city, the military is confident the end is in sight for what has been its biggest security crisis in years.

After a lightning strike on May 23 on Marawi City, the Dawla Islamiya rebel alliance has held out against daily artillery bombardment and air strikes by jets and bombers, and its snipers remain placed in the rubble of the city’s business district.

But now, says Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of the military’s Marawi task force, rebel-held areas are shrinking, and there are signs the fighters are low on food and ammunition, and starting to flag.

“Hopefully, the Marawi siege is going to be over within the next few weeks,” he told reporters.

“Their strength continues to decline. We are inflicting casualties on them almost every day.”

The military has, however, missed repeated targets and deadlines to crush the rebels, whose strength and resolve it accepts it has under-estimated. The conflict in the southern region of Mindano has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and killed nearly 800 by government count – 133 soldiers and police, 45 civilians and an estimated 617 militants.

Residents say they fear the bodies of many more civilians could be in the rubble of the lakeside city. Estimates of civilians trapped in the fighting at one point were over 2,000, although authorities say 1,728 have been rescued.

The Red Cross says it is investigating the whereabouts of 179 missing people.

The protracted occupation has heightened concerns that Islamic State’s radical ideology may have gained a deeper foothold in the southern Philippines than was previously imagined, and raised questions about whether the military can contain a wider rebellion.

The presence of foreigners among the fighters is fanning fears that Mindanao could become a draw for extremists from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and those being pushed out of Syria and Iraq.

Armed forces chief Eduardo Ano said strategic gains had been made against the Islamist militants in the past week, including retaking the police headquarters and the city’s central mosque.

All routes in and out of Marawi had been sealed off, he said on Tuesday, and the hard core of about 50 rebels were preparing for their “last stand” and would have to decide whether to surrender, or be martyred.

NO WAY OUT

“That’s our main goal: No way out, no way in,” Ano said.

“If they want to go to heaven as they declared, we will give them the chance.”

The Marawi fighting has been the biggest security crisis of the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, who declared martial law in Mindanao until the end of the year, and has urged lawmakers to approve funds to beef up the army by 20,000 troops.

On Wednesday, he said the conflict was by no means “the beginning and the end” of an extremism problem that stemmed from decades of separatist unrest.

Experts say the ability of two hardline groups from different parts of Mindanao – the relatively new Maute group, and the more established Abu Sayyaf – to carefully plan each step of the takeover of a city illustrates the ease in which extremists could organize and rally around Islamic State’s agenda.

The military says key to countering that will be whether it can kill or capture the main leaders, who it believes are still inside a conflict zone of about half a square kilometer (0.2 sq miles) in size.

One challenge will be securing what are believed to be dozens of hostages. Failure to do that could be a disaster for a military already criticized for the massive destruction caused by air strikes that have had mixed results. In two instances, the bombs have hit ground troops.

Duterte said the reason why the battle had gone on so long was because of the government’s desire to keep hostages safe and to avoid bombing a mosque where rebel leaders were believed to be taking shelter.

“It would have just created more animosity and outright hostility against the government,” he said.

Rodolfo Biazon, a former lawmaker and military chief, said that after Marawi is retaken, the government should seek more than a military solution and try to stop rebels from regrouping, by targeting recruitment and tackling radical ideology at the grassroots level.

“Remove the community support, and it will not last long. This should be the primary effort,” Biazon said.

“All Islamic radical groups should be targeted not physically alone, but psychologically by removing the water from the fish.”

(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Lebanon finds soldiers’ bodies after retaking Islamic State-held area

A Lebanese Army soldier looks through binoculars in Ras Baalbek, Lebanon August 28, 2017. REUTERS/ Hassan Abdallah

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon has identified the bodies of six of its soldiers found along the Syrian border in an area held by Islamic State until three days ago, sources in the president’s office said.

The Lebanese army launched an offensive this month which ended with Islamic State militants leaving their last foothold along the border on Sunday.

Since then the army has found 10 bodies in the area. DNA tests confirmed that six of those belonged to Lebanese soldiers, the sources and local media reported on Wednesday.

Islamic State militants had for years held territory along the border, and captured 10 Lebanese soldiers in 2014 when they briefly overran the town of Arsal, one of the worst spillovers of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.

The militants and their families left the border area on Sunday under a ceasefire deal.

The agreement included IS militants identifying where they had buried the soldiers’ bodies, Lebanese army chief General Joseph Aoun said on Wednesday.

“I had two choices: either I continue the battle and not know the soldiers’ fate, or I submit to the situation and find out. Their souls are my responsibility,” he told reporters.

It was not immediately clear if all six belonged to those captured in 2014, however – one of the bodies discovered is believed to belong to a soldier killed in the recent fighting.

Of the 10 captured in 2014, one was killed shortly after and footage of his execution was published by the militants.

Another is believed to have joined Islamic State. His whereabouts is unknown.

 

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by John Davison and Raissa Kasolowsky)

 

Iraqi forces face tough resistance from IS in final Tal Afar battle

Members of Iraqi Army fire mortar shells during the war between Iraqi army and Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) against the Islamic State militants in al-Ayadiya, northwest of Tal Afar, Iraq August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

By Thaier Al-Sudani, Kawa Omar and Ahmed Rasheed

AL-‘AYADIYA/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces said they faced tough resistance on Monday from Islamic State fighters driven out of the city of Tal Afar to a small town where they had “nothing to lose” by fighting to the end.

An advance by the Iraqi army and Shi’ite paramilitary groups into al-‘Ayadiya was being slowed by snipers, booby-traps and roadside bombs, military officials told Reuters.

“The offensive started from two fronts in a bid to distract Daesh fighters,” army Lieutenant Colonel Salah Kareem said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“A total of four suicide bombers driving vehicles rigged with explosives attacked our troops under sniper cover. We had to slow down to avoid high casualty rates among our soldiers.”

Iraqi forces have in recent days recaptured almost all of the northwestern city of Tal Afar, long a stronghold of Islamic State. They have been waiting to take al-’Ayadiya, 11 km (7 miles) northwest of the city, before declaring complete victory.

“Our intelligence shows that the most diehard Daesh fighters fled Tal Afar to al-‘Ayadiya,” Kareem said.

He said continuous air strikes and round-the-clock drone surveillance had prevented them fleeing to neighboring Syria.

“They have nothing to lose … they will fight to the last breath,” Kareem said.

Islamic State mortar rounds and sniper fire struck close to the advancing forces. The army hit back with tanks, heavy machineguns and mortars.

Up to 2,000 battle-hardened militants were believed to be defending Tal Afar against around 50,000 government troops last week. It was unclear how many were left in al-‘Ayadiya.

Many motorcycles carrying the Islamic State insignia had been abandoned at the side of the road outside al-‘Ayadiya.

CALIPHATE IN RUINS

If the fight for the town is proving surprisingly tough, the bigger battle for Tal Afar was easier than expected for Iraqi forces.

The city’s dramatic and rapid collapse after just eight days of fighting lent support to Iraqi military reports that the militants lack sturdy command and control structures west of Mosul.

Civilians who fled Tal Afar in recent weeks told Reuters of harrowing conditions in the city, where people had been surviving on bread and dirty water for months. Some militants had looked “exhausted” and “depleted”, residents said.

Tens of thousands of people are believed to have fled in the weeks before the battle started. A Reuters team saw no sign of civilians in the neighborhoods it toured on Saturday and Sunday.

Tal Afar became the next target of the U.S.-backed war on the jihadist group following the recapture in July of Mosul, where it had declared its “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Mosul’s collapse effectively marked the end of the caliphate, but the group remains in control of territory on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border.

(Writing by Raya Jalabi; editing by Andrew Roche)

Kabul mosque attack: four-year-old called to safety

Ali Ahmad, 4, sits with his father as they pose for a photograph at their house after he survived a suicide attack at a mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan August 27, 2017.

By Sayed Hassib

KABUL (Reuters) – A four-year-old boy photographed in a Kabul mosque last week as police desperately tried to call him to safety during an attack by Islamic State gunmen is back with his family but still suffering nightmares, his father said.

Ali Ahmad was with his grandfather in the Shi’ite Imam Zaman mosque on Friday when at least two attackers in police uniforms stormed in, one exploding a suicide-bomb vest and the other firing indiscriminately at the hundreds of worshippers inside.

A picture by Reuters photographer Omar Sobhani showed Ali standing alone in the courtyard of the mosque as policemen taking cover behind a doorway called and waved to him. He survived the attack but his grandfather was among at least 20 killed.

Afghan policemen try to rescue four-year-old Ali Ahmad at the site of a suicide attack followed by a clash between Afghan forces and insurgents after an attack on a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 25, 2017.

Afghan policemen try to rescue four-year-old Ali Ahmad at the site of a suicide attack followed by a clash between Afghan forces and insurgents after an attack on a Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

Sayed Bashir, Ali’s father, was nearby but not in the mosque for the initial blast and ran to check on his family.

“Right after the explosion I thought everything was finished,” he said. “I called my father’s mobile phone number and my son answered and said: ‘They killed grandpa’. He wanted me to bring the car and get him.”

“We were running everywhere in search of my son but the police were stopping us and didn’t let us get close,” Bashir said.

Bashir called the number again and was speaking to Ali when another explosion went off.

“I lost hope. I said to myself that everything was finished. I tried the number again but it was switched off,” Bashir said.

In fact, Ali had run around behind the mosque, disregarding the policeman frantically signaling to him in the courtyard. He was rescued soon afterwards but the effects of the attack may take much longer to heal.

Bashir, a building worker who lives in a district with many Shi’ite families, said Ali was still traumatized and having difficulty coming to terms with what happened.

“After the incident, my son has some problems. He’s scared a lot at night,” he said.

The attack, the latest in a series targeting Shi’ite mosques, was claimed by Islamic State Khorasan, the local branch of the group which takes the name of an old region that included what is now Afghanistan.

According to the United Nations, at least 62 civilians have been killed and 119 injured in six separate attacks on Shi’ite mosques this year.

 

(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Robin Pomeroy)