Tag Archives: Islamic State

U.S. defense secretary in Iraq as troops battle for Tal Afar

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis gives a news conference after a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal/File Photo

By Idrees Ali

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Iraq on Tuesday just days after the start of an offensive to oust Islamic State from the city of Tal Afar, with talks focused on backing Iraqi efforts to stabilize areas recaptured from the militant group.

Prior to arriving, Mattis said the fight against Islamic State was far from over despite recent successes by Western-backed Iraqi government forces. The battle for Tal Afar would be difficult, U.S. officials said.

Iraqi security forces opened the offensive to take back Tal Afar on Sunday, their latest objective in the war following the recapture of Mosul after a nine-month campaign that left much of the city in ruins.

Lying 80 km (50 miles) west of Mosul in Iraq’s far north, Tal Afar is a long-time stronghold of the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents,

“ISIS’ days are certainly numbered, but it is not over yet and it is not going to be over anytime soon,” Mattis told reporters in Amman.

Mattis said that after retaking Tal Afar, Iraqi forces would move against the western Euphrates River valley.

Brigadier General Andrew Croft, responsible for coalition air operations over Iraq, said that between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians remained in Tal Afar. The plight of civilians was a big factor in the battle of Mosul as Islamic State tried to keep them areas it controlled to act as human shields against air strikes and artillery bombardments. Several thousand are believed to have been killed.

Croft said that over the past two or three months, he had seen a fracturing in Islamic State leadership.

“It just seems less coordinated. It appears more fractured, less robust, and sort of flimsy, is the word I would use… it is sporadic,” Croft told reporters.

Islamic State leaders fled Mosul during the fighting there and the whereabouts of its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, are unknown. Unconfirmed reports in the past few months have said he is dead.

Brett McGurk, U.S. special envoy to the coalition, said that while the battle for Tal Afar would be difficult, Iraqi forces had retaken 235 square km (90 miles) in the first 24 hours.

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mattis, who will meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defence Minister Arfan al-Hayali, will discuss the future of U.S. forces in Iraq after the recapture of the remaining cities under Islamic State, and the role they could play in stabilizing operations.

The officials said that while big cities like Mosul have been largely been cleared of Islamic State militants, there were concerns about the ability of Iraqi forces to hold territory.

Mattis said pockets of resistance remained in west Mosul, including sleeper cells. Iraqi security forces were capable of carrying out simultaneous operations, he added.

Islamic State is also on the back foot in Syria, where Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the U.S.-led coalition have captured swathes of its territory in the north and are assaulting its main Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

McGurk said about 2,000 Islamic State fighters remained in Raqqa and as much as 60 percent of the city had been retaken.

The jihadist group is now falling back deeper into the Euphrates valley region of eastern Syria.

Mattis said the next step for forces fighting Islamic State in Syria would be a move against the middle Euphrates valley, a reference to the militants’ stronghold in Deir al-Zor province southeast of Raqqa.

KURDISH REFERENDUM

A U.S. official also said Mattis would press Massoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, to call off a planned referendum on independence.

Iraq’s Kurds have said they will hold the referendum on Sept. 25 despite concerns from Iraq’s neighbors who have Kurdish minorities within their borders and a U.S. request to postpone it.

However, a senior Kurdish official said the Kurds may consider the possibility of a postponement in return for financial and political concessions from the central government in Baghdad.

McGurk said the Kurdish delegation’s recent visit to Baghdad was encouraging.

The Pentagon signed an agreement with Peshmerga forces last year to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and equipment.

The U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the memorandum of understanding would expire soon and suggested that Mattis could use it as a bargaining chip.

The United States and other Western nations fear the vote could ignite a new conflict with Baghdad and possibly neighboring countries, diverting attention from the ongoing war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Spain hunts for driver in van rampage, says Islamist cell dismantled

A man lights a candle at an impromptu memorial where a van crashed into pedestrians at Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain, August 19, 2017

By Angus Berwick and Andrés González

RIPOLL/BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Police were searching on Saturday for the driver of a van that killed 13 people when it plowed into a crowd in Barcelona and were trying to determine whether two other suspected Islamist militants linked to the attack had died or were at large.

The Spanish government said it considered it had dismantled the cell behind Thursday’s Barcelona rampage and an attack early on Friday in the Catalan seaside town of Cambrils.

Police arrested four people in connection with the attacks Barcelona and Cambrils, where a woman was killed when a car rammed passersby on Friday. Five attackers wearing fake explosive belts were also shot dead in the Catalan town.

“The cell has been fully dismantled in Barcelona, after examining the people who died, the people who were arrested and carrying out identity checks,” Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido told a news conference.

But authorities have yet to identify the driver of the van and his whereabouts are unclear, while police and officials in the northeastern region of Catalonia said they still needed to locate up to two other people.

Investigators are focusing on a group of at least 12 suspects believed to be behind the deadliest attacks to hit Spain in more than a decade.

In little more than a year, militants have used vehicles as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain.

None of the nine people arrested or shot dead by police are believed to be the driver who sped into Las Ramblas, leaving a trail of dead and injured among the crowds of tourists and local residents strolling along the Barcelona boulevard.

A Moroccan-born 22-year-old called Younes Abouyaaqoub was among those being sought, according to the mayor’s office in the Catalan town of Ripoll, where he and other suspects lived.

Spanish media reported that Abouyaaqoub may have been the driver of the van in Barcelona, but police and Catalan officials could not confirm this.

The driver in the Barcelona attack abandoned the van and fled on foot on Thursday after plowing into the crowd. Fifty people were still in hospital on Saturday following that attack, with 13 in a critical condition.

Many were foreign tourists. The Mediterranean region of Catalonian is thronged in the summer months with visitors drawn to its beaches and the port city of Barcelona’s museums and tree-lined boulevards.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in Cambrils and Barcelona, a statement by the jihadist group said on Saturday.

 

RAIDS

Police searched a flat in Ripoll on Friday in their hunt for people connected to the attacks, the ninth raid so far on homes in the town nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees near the French border.

The flat had been occupied by a man named as Abdelbaki Es Satty, according to a search warrant seen by Reuters. Neighbors said he was an imam, a Muslim prayer leader. His landlord said he had last been seen on Tuesday.

Scraps of paper covered in notes were strewn around the flat, which had been turned upside down in the police search.

Three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla have been arrested so far in connection with the attacks.

Apart from Abouyaaqoub, authorities are searching for two other people though it is not certain they are at large.

One or even both of them may have been killed in Alcanar, where a house was razed by an explosion shortly before midnight on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Catalonia’s home affairs department said.

Casting new doubts over the investigation, El Pais said late on Saturday that biological remains of at least three people had been found in the ruins of the Alcanar house. It was not clear whether they could be from the three suspects still sought by the police or if more people were there.

Police believe the house in Alcanar was being used to plan one or several large-scale attacks in Barcelona, possibly using a large number of butane gas canisters stored there.

The Spanish government maintained its security alert level at four, one notch below the maximum level that would indicate another attack was imminent, but said it would reinforce security in crowded areas and tourist hotspots.

Spanish media also said that security at the border with France was being beefed up.

 

TRIBUTES

Of the 14 dead in the two attacks, five are Spanish, two are Italians, two are Portuguese, one Belgian, one Canadian and one a U.S. citizen, emergency services and authorities from those countries have confirmed so far.

A seven-year-old boy with British and Australian nationality who had been missing since the attack in Barcelona was found on Saturday in one of the city’s hospitals and was in a serious condition, El Pais newspaper reported.

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia on Saturday visited some of the dozens injured whose nationalities ranged from French and German to Pakistani and the Filipino. They are being treated in various Barcelona hospitals.

The royal couple are expected to take part in a Catholic mass on Sunday morning at architect Antoni Gaudi’s famous Sagrada Familia church, a Barcelona landmark, in honor of the victims of the attack.

Barcelona’s football team will wear special shirts, bearing the Catalan words for “We are all Barcelona”, and black armbands in memory of victims when they play their opening league game of the season on Sunday evening against Real Betis.

 

(Additional reporting by Sarah White, Julien Toyer, Carlos Ruano, Rodrigo de Miguel, Alba Asenjo and Adrian Croft, Writing by Sarah White and Julien Toyer; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Edmund Blair and Lisa Shumaker)

 

Iraqi forces prepare to retake Tal Afar from Islamic State militants

Displaced Iraqis from Talafar are seen in Salamya camp, east of Mosul, Iraq August 6, 2017. Picture taken August 6, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid Al-Mousily

By Raya Jalabi and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Five weeks after securing victory in Mosul, Iraqi forces have moved into positions around the city of Tal Afar, their next objective in the U.S.-backed campaign to defeat Islamic State militants, Iraqi military commanders say.

A longtime stronghold of hardline Sunni insurgents, Tal Afar, 50 miles (80 km) west of Mosul, was cut off from the rest of the Islamic State-held territory in June.

The city is surrounded by Iraqi government troops and Shi’ite volunteers in the south, and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the north.

About 2,000 battle-hardened militants remain in the city, according to U.S. and Iraqi military commanders. They are expected to put up a tough fight, even though intelligence from inside the city indicates they have been exhausted by months of combat, aerial bombardments, and by the lack of fresh supplies.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate all but collapsed last month when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul after a brutal nine-month campaign. But parts of Iraq and Syria remain under its control, including Tal Afar, a city with a pre-war population of about 200,000.

Waves of civilians have fled the city and surrounding villages under cover of darkness for weeks now, although several thousand are estimated to remain, threatened with death by the militants who have held a tight grip there since 2014.

Thousands of troops stand ready at the frontline, awaiting orders from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to start the offensive, Iraqi army Major-General Uthman al-Ghanimi said this week.

TURKEY WORRIES

The main forces deployed around Tal Afar are the Iraqi army, Federal Police and the elite U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), Iraqi commanders told Reuters.

Units from the Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), some of which are trained and armed by Iran, are also likely to take part in the battle, as well as volunteers from Tal Afar fighting alongside government troops, they said.

The involvement of the PMF is likely to worry Turkey, which claims an affinity with the area’s predominantly ethnic Turkmen population.

Tal Afar experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has produced some of Islamic State’s most senior commanders.

Iraqi forces have already begun conducting air strikes aimed at “wearing them down and keeping them busy,” Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said.

The coalition’s targets on Friday included weapons depots and command centers, in preparation for the ground assault.

The war plan provides for the Iraqi forces to gradually close in on the city from three sides — east, west and south — under the cover of air and artillery strikes.

Major General Najm al-Jabouri told Reuters last month he expected an easy fight in Tal Afar. He estimated fewer than 2,000 militants and their families were left there and they were “demoralized and worn down”.

“I don’t expect it will be a fierce battle even though the enemy is surrounded,” al-Jabouri said.

Residents who left Tal Afar last week told Reuters the militants looked exhausted.

“[Fighters] have been using tunnels to move from place to place to avoid air strikes,” said 60-year-old Haj Mahmoud, a retired teacher. “Their faces looked desperate and broken.”

But Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said he “fully expects this to be a difficult fight”.

“Intelligence gathered shows clearly that the remaining fighters are mainly foreign and Arab nationals with their families and that means they will fight until the last breath,” said Colonel Kareem al-Lami from the Iraqi army’s 9th Division.

But Lami said Tal Afar’s open terrain and wide streets will allow tanks and armored vehicles easy passage. Only one part of Tal Afar, Sarai, is comparable to Mosul’s Old City, where Iraqi troops were forced to advance on foot through narrow streets, moving house-to-house in a battle that resulted in the near total destruction of the historic district.

Lieutenant Colonel Salah Abdul Abbas of the 16th Infantry Division, said they were bracing for guerrilla street-fighting fight, based on the lessons learned in West Mosul.

CIVILIANS HAVE FLED

The United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), estimates that about 10,000 to 40,000 people are left in Tal Afar and surrounding villages. Iraqi commanders say the number of people left inside the city itself, including militants and their families, is closer to 5,000.

However, aid groups say they are not expecting a huge civilian exodus as most the city’s former residents have already left.

On Sunday, 2,760 people fleeing Tal Afar and the surrounding area were processed by the IOM before being sent on to displaced persons’ camps.

“We were living in horror and thinking of death at every moment,” Haj Mahmoud, the retired teacher, said. He decided to make a run for it with his wife and four sons and has been living with them at the Hammam al-Alil camp ever since.

Residents spoke of fleeing in the middle of the night to avoid the militants, who shot anyone caught trying to escape.

“We escaped at night, during evening prayers,” said 20-year-old Khalaf. “All the IS fighters were praying at the mosque, so they didn’t catch us. If they had, they would’ve sprayed bullets into our heads”, like they did his neighbors.

Khalaf said he fled five weeks ago with his two children and 40 other people from his village of Kisik. They walked for a full day to reach safety at a Peshmerga checkpoint.

“People in Kisik are completely trapped,” he said. “Those left tell us there’s no water, no food, no bread, no medicines – nothing.” Up until he left, 1kg bag of rice cost roughly $40.

Sultan Abdallah and his family escaped Kisik with Khalaf. They are now all living at the al-Salamiya refugee camp.

“We had spent three months with no food,” said Abdallah. He still has a brother, a cousin and an uncle left in Kisik, but he has not been able to speak to them since he left.

“You were forced to work for the militants to feed your family,” Abdallah said.

Saad al-Bayati fled Tal Afar five days ago with his family, fearing aerial bombardments. He is now living in the Hammam al-Alil camp with his wife and sick baby.

“I heard what happened in Mosul’s Old City, where whole families were killed by air strikes,” al-Bayati said. “I didn’t want to see my family buried under the rubble.”

(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles, Writing by Raya Jalabi, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Lebanese army, Hezbollah announce offensives against Islamic State on Syrian border

Lebanese army helicopters are pictured from the town of Ras Baalbek, Lebanon August 19, 2017. REUTERS/ Ali Hashisho

By Tom Perry and Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Lebanese army launched an offensive on Saturday against an Islamic State enclave on the northeastern border with Syria, as the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the frontier.

The Lebanese army operation got underway at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

A security source said the offensive was making advances with several hills taken in the push against the militants entrenched on fortified high ground, in outposts and in caves.

The operation by Hezbollah and the Syrian army targeted the area across the border in the western Qalamoun region of Syria.

Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV said that its fighters were ascending a series of strategic heights known as the Mosul Mountains that overlook several unofficial border crossings used by the militants.

A Hezbollah statement said the group was meeting its pledge to “remove the terrorist threat at the borders of the nation” and was fighting “side by side” with the Syrian army.

It made no mention of the Lebanese army operation.

The Lebanese army said it was not coordinating the assault with Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

SENSITIVE

Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardize the sizeable U.S. military aid the country receives.

Washington classifies the Iran-backed Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

“There is no coordination, not with Hezbollah or the Syrian army,” General Ali Kanso said in a televised news conference, adding that the army had started to tighten a siege of IS in the area two weeks ago.

“It’s the most difficult battle so far waged by the Lebanese army against terrorist groups – the nature of the terrain and the enemy,” he said, characterizing the 600 Islamic State fighters in the area as 600 “suicide bombers”.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Lebanese army would attack Islamic State from its side of the border, while Hezbollah and the Syrian army would simultaneously assault from the other side.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said that “naturally” there was coordination between the operations.

Last month, Hezbollah forced Nusra Front militants and Syrian rebels to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army.

The Lebanese army did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to assault the Islamic State pocket in the same mountainous region.

Footage broadcast by Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV showed the group’s fighters armed with assault rifles climbing a steep hill in the western Qalamoun.

The Lebanese Shi’ite group has had a strong presence there since 2015 after it defeated Syrian Sunni rebels who had controlled local villages and towns.

Many rebels, alongside thousands of Sunni refugees fleeing violence and Hezbollah’s control over their towns, took shelter on the Lebanese side of the border strip.

Hezbollah has provided critical military support to President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s six-year-long war. Its Lebanese critics oppose Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian war.

Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers of Syria’s war into Lebanon in 2014, when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.

The fate of nine Lebanese soldiers taken captive by Islamic State in 2014 remains unknown.

Hezbollah and its allies have been pressing the Lebanese state to normalize relations with Damascus, challenging Lebanon’s official policy of neutrality towards the conflict next door.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Richard Pullin and Andrew Bolton)

Iraq seeks international help to investigate Islamic State crimes

FILE PHOTO: Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks to reporters during a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily

By Riham Alkousaa

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iraq asked for international help on Wednesday to collect and preserve evidence of crimes by Islamic State militants and said it is working with Britain to draft a United Nations Security Council resolution to establish the investigation.

Britain, international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a woman from the Yazidi religious minority who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, have been pushing Iraq to allow a U.N. inquiry.

The 15-member Security Council could have established an inquiry without Iraq’s consent, but Britain wanted Iraq’s approval in a letter formally making the request. Iraq sent the letter, seen by Reuters, on Monday.

“We request assistance of the international community to get benefited from international expertise to criminalize Daesh terrorist entity,” wrote Iraq’s foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the letter, which was translated from Arabic.

Daesh is another name for Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

Britain’s mission to the United Nations said on Twitter that it was working with Iraq on a draft resolution. It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote in the council.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants’ capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign.

Parts of Iraq and Syria remain under Islamic State control, especially along the border.

“I hope that the Iraqi government’s letter will mark the beginning of the end of impunity for genocide and other crimes that ISIS is committing in Iraq and around the world,” Clooney said in a statement.

“Yazidis and other ISIS victims want justice in a court of law, and they deserve nothing less,” Clooney said.

The Yazidis beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State militants consider the Yazidis to be devil-worshippers.

U.N. experts said in June last year that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy them through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

The Iraqi government said in the letter that it was important to bring Islamic State militants to justice in Iraqi courts.

 

(Reporting By Riham Alkousaa; editing by Grant McCool)

 

Iraq acknowledges abuses committed against civilians in Mosul campaign

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said on Thursday a unit of the security forces committed “abuses” against civilians during the offensive to oust Islamic State (IS) insurgents from the city of Mosul.

His government began an investigation in May into a report by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that included images of apparent torture taken by a freelance photographer embedded with the Interior Ministry’s elite Emergency Response Division (ERD).

“The committee has concluded … that clear abuses and violations were committed by members of the ERD,” a statement from Abadi’s office said. It added that the perpetrators would be prosecuted.

Spiegel’s photos showed detainees accused of affiliation with Islamic State hanging from a ceiling with their arms bent behind them, and the journalist wrote of prisoners being tortured to death, raped and stabbed with knives.

The ERD was one of several government security forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition that drove IS out of Mosul, the northern city the jihadists seized in 2014 and proclaimed their “capital”, in a nine-month campaign that ended in July.

The ERD initially denied the Spiegel report and accused the German weekly of publishing “fabricated and unreal images”.

The photographer said he had initially intended to document the heroism of Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State but that a darker side of the war had gradually been revealed to him.

The soldiers with whom he was embedded allowed him to witness and photograph the alleged torture scenes, he said. He has now fled Iraq with his family, fearing for his safety

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” effectively collapsed with the fall of Mosul but parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under its control, especially in border areas.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Spanish police shoot five suspects dead after van rampage kills 13 in Barcelona

Spanish police shoot five suspects dead after van rampage kills 13 in Barcelona

By Andrés González, Angus Berwick and Carlos Ruano

BARCELONA (Reuters) – Spanish police shot dead five would-be attackers after confronting them early on Friday in a town south of Barcelona where hours earlier a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds, killing 13 people and wounding scores of others.

Islamic State said the perpetrators had been responding to its call for action by carrying out Thursday’s rampage along Barcelona’s most famous avenue, which was thronged with tourists enjoying an afternoon stroll at the peak of the summer season.

Bodies, many motionless, were left strewn across the avenue and authorities said the toll of dead, which included several children, could rise, with more than 100 injured.

Hours later in the early hours of Friday, as security forces hunted for the van’s driver, police said they killed five suspects in Cambrils, 120 km (75 miles) south along the coast from Barcelona, to thwart a separate attack.

The five men attempted to drive into tourists on the Cambrils seafront, police said. Their car overturned and some of them began stabbing people. Four were shot dead at the scene and the fifth was killed a few hundred meters away, police said.

Police said they had arrested a Moroccan and a man from Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla, though neither was the driver of the van. He was seen escaping on foot and was still at large. A third man was arrested in the town of Ripoll on Friday.

Police said later they had made a fourth arrest in connection with the attacks but gave no details.

A Spanish woman was killed in the Cambrils incident while several other civilians and a police officer were injured. Police destroyed explosive belts the men had been wearing, though they turned out to be fake.

Of the 130 people injured in both attacks, 17 were in a critical condition and 30 were serious, an emergency services spokesman said.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, the day before the van plowed into the tree-lined walkway of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas avenue, one person was killed in an explosion in a house in a separate town southwest of Barcelona, police said.

A judicial source said investigators believed a cell of at least eight people, possibly 12, may have been involved in the Barcelona and Cambrils operations and that it had been planning to use gas canisters.

Later on Friday, residents and tourists returned to Barcelona’s famous Las Ramblas promenade where hours earlier a white van had zigzagged at high speed through pedestrians and cyclists, leaving bodies and injured writhing in pain in its wake.

The injured and dead came from 34 countries, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines, Catalan emergency services said. Spanish media said several children were killed.

As Spain began three days of mourning, people laid flowers and lit candles in memory of the victims along the promenade. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Spain’s King Felipe visited Barcelona’s main square nearby to observe a minute’s silence.

Defiant crowds later chanted “I am not afraid” in Catalan.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said the attackers had carried out the operation “in response to calls for targeting coalition states” – a reference to a U.S.-led coalition against the Sunni militant group. Spain has several hundred soldiers in Iraq training local forces in the fight against Islamic State.

There was no immediate indication though that Islamic State had directed or organized the attack, although some of those responsible for similar attacks in Europe have been inspired by the jihadist group.

Islamist militants have staged several attacks across Europe in the past 13 months, killing over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm.

In March 2004, Islamist militants placed bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people.

BODIES ON THE GROUND

Police said the two men detained on Thursday had been arrested in two towns, Ripoll and Alcanar, both in the region of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital.

The explosion was also in the town of Alcanar. One person died and another was injured in that incident, police said.

A man was also found dead in a car which had driven into a police checkpoint in Barcelona, though the police could not immediately confirm it was connected with the van attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking after media reports that some Germans were among those killed, said Islamist terrorism “can never defeat us” and vowed to press ahead with campaigning for a general election in Germany in September.

Last December, Berlin suffered a similar attack when a truck plowed into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12.

Italy said two of its nationals were killed and three injured while Belgium said one Belgian had died. German television channel ZDF reported three Germans among the dead.

France said 26 of its citizens were hurt, and 11 of them were in a serious condition. Australia said at least four of its nationals were injured, with broadcaster ABC saying a seven-year-old boy was unaccounted for.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said the ministry was assisting “a small number” of Britons.

Foreign leaders voiced condemnation and sympathy, including French President Emmanuel Macron, whose nation has suffered some of Europe’s deadliest militant attacks.

In a message to the cardinal of Barcelona, Pope Francis said the attack was “an act of blind violence that is a grave offence to the Creator”.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the attack showed the European Union’s system of migrant relocation was wrong. “It is dangerous. Europe should wake up,” he said. “We are dealing here with a clash of civilizations.”

Authorities in Vic, a small town outside Barcelona, said a van had been found there in connection with the attack. Spanish media had said that a second van was hired as a getaway vehicle.

(Additional reporting by Sarah White, Andres Gonzalez, Silvio Castellanos, Alissa de Carbonnel, Ali Abdelaty and Ahmed Aboulenein, Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Mark Bendeich, Nick Tattersall and Richard Balmforth)

Nigeria’s freed Chibok girls to return home ‘fully recovered’

Nigeria's freed Chibok girls to return home 'fully recovered'

By Paul Carsten

ABUJA (Reuters) – More than 100 girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in the Nigerian town of Chibok in 2014 are ready to return to normal life after being released and receiving psychological and medical treatment, the government said on Friday.

Some 270 girls were originally abducted by the Islamist group but 82 were freed in May this year after mediation, adding to 24 who were released or found last year. The girls have been receiving psychological and medical care in the capital, Abuja, as part of a government rehabilitation program.

“All the 106 girls are now fully recovered, ready for re-integration with their families and the larger society, and to go back to school,” Aisha Jummai Alhassan, minister of women affairs, told a news conference.

“They are now stabilized and most of their traumatic stress disorder symptoms have been overcome and previously frequent incidents of flashbacks, insomnia and nightmares have now been successfully brought under control,” she said.

Some of them underwent surgery, and a prosthetic limb was provided for a girl who lost a leg while in captivity. Four babies were also said to be in good health.

Of the 270 girls who were originally taken, about 60 escaped soon afterwards but around 100 are still believed to be in captivity. Alhassan said negotiations to secure their release were ongoing.

Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced more than two million during an eight-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria.

The Chibok case provoked global outrage and a celebrity-backed campaign to raise awareness of the girls’ plight, but aid groups say Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands more adults and children, many of whose cases are neglected.

A United Nations human rights committee called in July for Nigeria’s government to step up efforts to rescue all women and girls abducted by Boko Haram and ensure they returned to school without stigma.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Two killed on Gaza-Egypt border in confrontation between Hamas and rival Islamist militants

Two killed on Gaza-Egypt border in confrontation between Hamas and rival Islamist militants

GAZA (Reuters) – A Hamas security man and a member of a rival Islamist militant group were killed on Thursday in a confrontation in the Gaza Strip near the Palestinian enclave’s border with Egypt, security sources said.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has stepped up patrols in the border area with the declared aim of preventing the movement of so-called Jihadist Salafis between the territory and the Sinai peninsula, where Islamic State has been battling Egyptian troops for years.

“A security force stopped two persons who approached the border. One of them blew himself up and was killed. The other was wounded,” the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said in a statement.

It said several Hamas security men were hurt, and hospital officials told reporters that one of them died of his wounds.

Security sources said the militant killed in the blast was a member of a Salafi group.

Hamas has been pursuing improved relations with Egypt, which keeps its border crossing with Gaza largely shut and has accused the group in the past of aiding militants in the Sinai. Hamas has denied those allegations.

Gaza’s Salafis are proponents of global holy war endorsed by Islamic State and al Qaeda. Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has shown little tolerance for Salafi movements, detaining many of their members and raiding homes in searches for weapons.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem and Sandra Maler)

New life amid the ruins of Mosul’s maternity hospital

New life amid the ruins of Mosul's maternity hospital

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL (Reuters) – As yet unnamed twin babies lie in an incubator in a run-down room in Mosul’s main maternity hospital. Less than two weeks old, they are two of seven newborns crammed into a makeshift premature baby ward.

Born just three weeks after Iraqi forces declared that they had finally recaptured the last part of the city from Islamic State, the twins won’t know what it’s like to grow up under the jihadists’ draconian rule. But they are lucky in more ways than one – had they been born months earlier, their chances of survival would have been slim as the hospital’s neo-natal wings had been burned down by the militants.

Al-Khansa Hospital in East Mosul may be a shell of its former self but it is still the city’s main government-run maternity facility. Last month alone, despite severe shortages of medicines and equipment, it delivered nearly 1,400 babies.

When Islamic State took over Mosul in 2014, the hospital stayed open – but residents were only allowed to use a quarter of it.

“We had all these fighters and their wives coming in and giving birth here,” said hospital administrator Dr Aziz, adding that he had lost count of the number of militants’ babies delivered in his facility. “Mosul’s local residents always came second.”

As Iraqi Forces began their campaign to liberate the city from Islamic State control last year, the militants took over al-Khansa, kicking out patients and sometimes shooting at staff to make them leave.

“We kept it open as long as we could,” Aziz said.

Islamic State turned the hospital into a warehouse to store medical supplies – mainly glucose injections and cough syrup. As their defeat looked imminent, they started fires and detonated explosives throughout the hospital.

“They knew exactly what to blow up and how to do the most damage,” Aziz said, walking through the charred remains of the operating theaters.

SHORTAGES OF EVERYTHING

Al-Khansa reopened just weeks after East Mosul was cleared of militants in January. But its needs are still dire.

“We have shortages of everything,” said the hospital’s director, Dr Jamal Younis. “Beds, equipment, medicines.”

At present, the hospital can only handle births and deaths, Younis said. For anything in between, patients have to travel to facilities miles away – an impossible expense for most.

In a hot and crowded room, Um Mohammad sat with her grandson, only a few months old and barely able to move. She said she had been waiting there for 15 days, trying to find $25 to pay for blood tests.

She has been living in a camp since an air strike flattened her house in West Mosul, killing her daughter and five of her grandchildren.

“I can’t take him back to the camp without treatment or a diagnosis,” she said, “but I don’t have the money.”

Al-Khansa has yet to receive funds for reconstruction from the Health Ministry. Instead it had been relying on NGOs and donations from residents and staff – most of whom have not been paid for more than two years, since Baghdad cut salaries to choke off funding to Islamic State.

“When the city was under Isis control, we were forced to come into work every day or they would punish us – seize our houses, beat us, threaten our families,” said Aziz.

“But now, even though we’re still unpaid and the walls have fallen down, we’re happy to come in every day to help our community.”

(Reporting by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)