Three African Christians have been kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
The group released photographs of the men bound and blindfolded along with pictures of their passports on various social media sites sympathetic to the terrorists.
The International Business Times says the three men were all migrants from other nations: Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana. A source told Reuters they were kidnapped in Noufiyah, an ISIS dominated town which was later confirmed by a government source.
ISIS has been attempting to strengthen their hold in parts of Libya, using the vacuum created by the governmental strife to swoop into areas not strongly controlled by the military. The terrorists have also attacked multiple foreign missions in Tripoli.
The capital city of Tripoli has been controlled by the rebel faction Libya Dawn since last year forcing the government to operate in exile.
Meanwhile, another kidnapping of Christians is believed to have taken place in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that Friar Antoine Boutros, pastor of the Shahba parish, was kidnapped on July 12th along with his driver. The two men haven’t been seen or heard from since that date.
The Friar had just finished celebrating mass when he disappeared.
When radical Islamic terrorists attempted to take over Mali in 2012, one of their initial steps was to destroy anything in the region that did not line up with their radical form of Islam. One of those locations was a United Nations world heritage site containing a series of Muslim tombs.
“We’re going to destroy everything before we apply Shariah in this city,” a terrorist spokesman said at the time.
Now, three years after the terrorists were driven out of the country by a combined African military force and French military action, there is a sign of restoration as masons have banded together to rebuild the tombs the terrorists destroyed.
The tombs were little more than piles of mud and rock when the terrorists completed their destructive actions. Now, a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country reported that 8 of 14 tombs have been finished and that the work on the remaining 6 are near completion.
“We have kept our promise. This is why we are here to say ‘no’ to extremism, and ‘yes’ to peace, development, and, at the same time, pay homage to the Timbuktu community,” said UNESCO’s director-general Irina Bokova told reporters.
The mason used traditional building techniques including local stone and banco, a mixture of clay and straw.
The city’s library, which contained ancient manuscripts and other artifacts, is also back in operation thanks to hundreds of residents who smuggled out the valued items from the library and hid them in homes and other locations to keep them from the terrorists.
Islamic terrorist group ISIS says their affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula fired a guided rocket at an Egyptian Navy vessel near Rafah that burst into flame.
The military confirmed a frigate had been pursuing ISIS terrorists near Rafah and had “engaged in gunfire” with the extremists and the ship experienced a fire but said no one had been killed.
The terrorists, however, released a series of photos that appear to show a rocket flying toward an Egyptian frigate, causing a massive explosion and fire. The terrorists claim everyone on board was killed.
The SITE Intelligence Group told the BBC the missile appeared to be an anti-tank missile. Witnesses say that other Egyptian military craft rushed to the side of the stricken vessel.
The attack is believed to be the first time the terrorist group has launched a missile attack on a ship. It raises concerns that they would attempt to disrupt shipping traffic through the Suez Canal.
ISIS has been particularly active in Egypt over the last four weeks. The group claimed the assassination of the country’s top prosecutor, killing 21 soldiers in the town of Sheikh Zuwaid and Saturday’s bombing of the Italian Consulate in Cairo.
FBI Director James Comey admitted to lawmakers that ISIS and other terrorist groups are using encryption methods as a way to avoid federal investigators.
“This is not your grandfather’s al Qaeda,” he told a Senate panel.
Comey said that ISIS has been effective in using social media outlets like Twitter where they have over 22,000 English-language followers.
“[It’s like a] devil in their pocket all day long that says ‘Kill, kill, kill,” Comey said. “There is simply no doubt that bad people can communicate with impunity in a world of universal strong encryption.”
“We cannot break strong encryption,” Comey told lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I think people watch TV and think the bureau can do lots of things. We cannot break strong encryption.”
Comey cited as an example the case of Usaamah Rahim, the Boston man killed when he attacked FBI and Boston Police as they tried to question him. The agents tracking him couldn’t see his exact plans because they went into an encrypted site.
The FBI calls that “going dark.”
“ISIL does something al-Qaida would never imagine: they test people by tasking them,” Comey told the senators. “Kill somebody and we’ll see if you are really a believer. And these people react in a way that is very difficult to predict. What you saw in Boston is what the experts say is flash-to-bang being very close. You had a guy who was in touch in an encrypted way with these ISIL recruiters and we believe was bent on doing something on July 4th. He woke up one morning, June 2nd, and decided he was going to go kill somebody.”
Islamic terrorists launched a day of violence in Nigeria against both Christians and Muslims on Sunday leaving more than 60 dead.
Boko Haram bombed a crowded mosque and Muslim restaurant in the city of Jos. Muslim community lawyer Ahmed Garba told Fox News that 51 people died in the twin attacks and were buried on Monday. An additional 67 were wounded and remain hospitalized.
A witness said that the bomber at the mosque appeared to be targeting cleric Sani Yahaya.
“He is a great Islamic scholar who has spoken out against Boko Haram, and that is why we believe he was the target,” Danladi Sani told The Associated Press.
The terrorists also attacked an evangelical Christian church in Potiskum along with a campaign of arson against villages that burned over 300 homes.
Boko Haram has ramped up violence in response to a call by ISIS terrorists for increased activity during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attacks and said that he will protect the rights of Nigerians to freely worship.
In the last week the terrorist group has killed over 300 people.
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram launched a surprise attack Wednesday night on villages in the north-eastern part of Borno state that has left at least 150 people dead.
The deadliest attack was on the village of Kakawa where the Islamists killed 97 people including women and children.
“The terrorists first descended on Muslim worshippers in various mosques who were observing the Maghrib prayer shortly after breaking their fast,” eyewitness Babami Alhaji Kolo said to AFP news agency. “They… opened fire on the worshippers who were mostly men and young children. They spared nobody. In fact, while some of the terrorists waited and set most of the corpses on fire, others proceeded to houses and shot indiscriminately at women who were preparing food.”
The attacks on Wednesday followed Tuesday assaults on two towns where 48 men were shot after finishing prayers.
The two villages attacked are on the outskirts of the town of Monguno which the military recently recaptured from the terrorists.
“They were praying in the mosque when Boko Haram attackers descended on the village. They waited till they finished the prayers. They gathered them in one place, separated men from women and opened fire on them,” a Monguno resident told the BBC. “Many died, some escaped. They then set the village on fire. I saw five victims with bullet wounds who managed to escape. They were brought to [Monguno] on wheelbarrows, before they were transferred to vehicles that took them to hospitals.”
ISIS terrorists smashed cultural artifacts from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra according to a statement from the terrorists and from Syrian state media outlets.
Terrorists caught a man smuggling six ancient statues through Aleppo province and then destroyed the statues after he was taken to an “Islamic court” in Manbij.
“An IS checkpoint in Wilyat arrested a person transporting several statues from Palmyra,” the group said in an online statement. “The guilty party was taken to an Islamic court in the town of Minbej, where it was decided that the trafficker would be punished and the statues destroyed.”
The statues “appear to be eight statues stolen from the tombs in Palmyra. The destruction is worse than the theft because they cannot be recovered,” Maamoun Abdelkarim, Syria’s Antiquities Director, told the London Guardian.
Also reported destroyed was a 2,000 year old statue of a lion that was outside the museum in Palmyra discovered during a 1977 archaeological mission.
“IS members on Saturday destroyed the Lion of al-Lat, which is a unique piece that is three metres [10ft] tall and weighs 15 tonnes,” Abdelkarim told AFP. “It’s the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra’s heritage.”
Abdelkarim said the items destroyed by the terrorists were “priceless.”
A woman whose son died while fighting alongside Islamic terrorists has come out swinging against radicalization of westerners with a new organization called Mothers For Life.
Christianne Boudreau lost her 22-year-old son when Damien became radicalized by Islamist propaganda and then died while fighting with al-Nusrah, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Now she is working to help other parents spot the signs of radicalization in their children.
“If I knew back then what I know now, I may have seen it before my son left,” Boudreau told Fox News. “There are things that only a mother will notice. Maybe your child will disconnect and separate from their social group, or start saving money, whereas they never did before. It is only getting harder, as ISIS is encouraging recruits to hide their religion, so it is really important to pick up on other changes.”
Boudreau said her son was raised Christian but converted to Islam a few years before joining the terrorists. She said he claimed he had been “wasting his life and had no direction” before the Islamists came along and provided him with a “purpose.”
She says the group is needed because of the stigma that can be placed on families if their children leave for the terrorist groups.
“How can families reach out for help if they are afraid people will come after them?” Boudreau said. “That’s why something like Mothers for Life was needed. To show that parents aren’t always to blame, but that we need to do whatever we can to stop this. We need the politicians to start to listen. We need them to help with outreach and with prevention.”
Boudreau hopes that by going public with other mothers who have lost their sons they can stop another mother from suffering in the way they’ve done in losing their child.
Nigerian military officials have announced the arrest of a businessman who actively participated in the kidnapping of almost 300 schoolgirls by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
Military spokesman Major General Chris Olukolade said that Babuji Ya’ari was the leader of a “terrorist intelligence cell” for Boko Haram. Olukolade had been pretending to be a member of the Youth Vigilante Group so he could provide information to the terrorists and mislead officials.
“The arrest of the businessman … has also yielded some vital information and facilitated the arrest of other members of the terrorists’ intelligence cell who are women,” Olukolade said in a statement Tuesday night.
In addition to the kidnapping, Ya’ari has been a coordinator of attacks in the city of Maiduguri and helped plan and carry out the 2014 assassination of the emir of Gwoza.
Also arrested was a woman named Hafsat Bako who managed payroll for the terrorist operatives. The Nigerian defense ministry said she was paid about fifty American dollars for each job.
The BBC has reported some of the Chibok girls kidnapped in Nigeria are being forced to fight by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.
The broadcaster reported that Amnesty International said they were aware of 219 of the still missing girls who have been forced into fighting with the terrorists.
“The abduction and brutalisation of young women and girls seems to be part of the modus operandi of Boko Haram,” Netsanet Belay of Amnesty said.
A girl who escaped the terrorists told the BBC that Boko Haram would kill Christians in front of them as a way to cause fear in the girls. The girl said that when she refused to marry a terrorist, they killed the men.
‘They were Christian men. They [the Boko Haram fighters] forced the Christians to lie down. Then the girls cut their throats’, the unidentified teen told the BBC.
“(The girls) told us: ‘You women should learn from your husbands because they are giving their blood for the cause. We must also go to war for Allah.’’
Reports last week say that two teenage girls who were forced to commit suicide bombing attacks in Nigeria were Chibok girls captured by Boko Haram.
