Tag Archives: Terrorism

Iraqi forces face fierce Islamic State combat in south Mosul

Iraqi army during battle against Islamic State

By Stephen Kalin

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces faced fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks.

An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighborhoods, disabling a number of car bombs.

Another officer, from an elite Interior Ministry unit fighting alongside federal police, said his forces were gaining ground in the Intisar district despite heavy clashes there.

Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.

Since the offensive began 10 weeks ago, U.S.-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Recapturing Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the group would be driven out of Iraq by April.

Elite forces pushed into Mosul from the east in October but regular army troops tasked with advancing from the north and south made slower progress and the operation stagnated.

After regrouping this month, they renewed the offensive on Thursday, advancing from the south, east and north of the city, which has been under militant control for more than two years.

The second phase of the operation will see U.S. troops deployed closer to the front line inside the city.

On Friday, a Reuters reporter saw a handful of Americans in their MRAP vehicles, that tower over Iraqi tanks, accompanying top commanders to meetings in a village just north of Mosul.

Although the militants are vastly outnumbered, they have embedded themselves among Mosul residents, hindering Iraqi forces who are trying to avoid civilian casualties. Despite food and water shortages, most civilians have stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected.

A civilian in the southeastern Wahda district, which is still under Islamic State control, said helicopters were visible overhead firing at Islamic State targets on the ground.

“One of them targeted a car carrying a rocket launching pad from which Daesh (Islamic State) was targeting counterterrorism positions in liberated areas,” he said over the phone.

NORTHERN FRONT

On the northern front, Iraqi forces have yet to enter Mosul itself but on Friday they were clearing just-recaptured areas on its periphery as well as trying to cut off Tel Keyf.

“The enemy had occupied this area and used it for resting and resupplying toward Tel Keyf and Mosul,” Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive told Reuters in the northern district of Sada, which was recaptured on Thursday.

“It (Tel Keyf) is surrounded from the other sides and by our forces here,” he said.

Jubbouri said the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces had killed 70 militants since late on Thursday and were using Apache helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers and fighter jets.

Mosul is bisected by the Tigris river, and Iraqi forces have yet to enter the western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways are likely to complicate any advance.

Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State’s access across the Tigris River.

A medical source in Mosul told Reuters a large number of wounded militants had been ferried across the river to the emergency hospital on the western side of city on Thursday.

The source said the militants were denying wounded and sick civilians access to the hospital.

More than 114,000 civilians have been displaced from Mosul so far, according to the United Nations – a fraction of the 1.5 million thought to still be inside.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

European cities ramp up security for New Year after Berlin attack

German policemen patrol

By Oliver Denzer and Geert De Clercq

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – European capitals tightened security on Friday ahead of New Year’s celebrations, erecting concrete barriers in city centers and boosting police numbers after the Islamic State attack in Berlin last week that killed 12 people.

In the German capital, police closed the Pariser Platz square in front of the Brandenburg Gate and prepared to deploy 1,700 extra officers, many along a party strip where armored cars will flank concrete barriers blocking off the area.

“Every measure is being taken to prevent a possible attack,” Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told Reuters TV. Some police officers would carry sub-machine guns, he said, an unusual tactic for German police.

Last week’s attack in Berlin, in which a Tunisian man plowed a truck into a Christmas market, has prompted German lawmakers to call for tougher security measures.

In Milan, where police shot the man dead, security checks were set up around the main square. Trucks were banned from the centers of Rome and Naples. Police and soldiers cradled machine guns outside tourists sites including Rome’s Colosseum.

Madrid plans to deploy an extra 1,600 police on the New Year weekend. For the second year running, access to the city’s central Puerta del Sol square, where revellers traditionally gather to bring in the New Year, will be restricted to 25,000 people, with police setting up barricades to control access.

In Cologne in western Germany, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed outside the central train station on New Year’s Eve last year, police have installed new video surveillance cameras to monitor the station square.

The attacks in Cologne, where police said the suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance, fueled criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to accept nearly 900,000 migrants last year.

The Berlin attack has intensified that criticism.

In Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank and Germany’s biggest airport, more than 600 police officers will be on duty on New Year’s Eve, twice as many as in 2015.

In Brussels, where Islamist suicide bombers killed 16 people and injured more than 150 in March, the mayor was reviewing whether to cancel New Year fireworks, but decided this week that they would go ahead.

PARIS PATROLS

In Paris, where Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people last November, authorities prepared for a high-security weekend, the highlight of which will be the fireworks on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where some 600,000 people are expected.

Ahead of New Year’s Eve, heavily armed soldiers patrolled popular Paris tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre museum.

In the Paris metropolitan area, 10,300 police, gendarmes, soldiers, firemen and other personnel will be deployed, police said, fewer than the 11,000 in 2015 just weeks after the Nov. 13 attack at the Bataclan theater.

Searches and crowd filtering will be carried out by private security agents, particularly near the Champs-Élysées where thousands of people are expected, authorities said.

Across France, more than 90,000 police including 7,000 soldiers will be on duty for New Year’s Eve, authorities said.

On Wednesday, police in southwest France arrested a man suspected of having planned an attack on New Year’s Eve.

Two other people, one of whom was suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in a separate raid, also in southwest France, near Toulouse, police sources told Reuters.

“We must remain vigilant at all times, and we are asking citizens to also be vigilant,” French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux told a news conference in Paris, noting that the threat of a terrorist attack was high.

In Vienna, police handed out more than a thousand pocket alarms to women, eager to avoid a repeat of the sexual assaults at New Year in Cologne in 2015.

“At present, there is no evidence of any specific danger in Austria. However, we are talking about an increased risk situation,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.

“We are leaving nothing to chance with regard to security.”

In Ukraine, police arrested a man on Friday who they suspected of planning a Berlin copycat attack in the city of Odessa.

(Additional reporting by Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt, Kirsti Knolle in Vienna, Teis Jensen in Copenhagen, Isla Binnie in Rome, Sarah White in Madrid, Robert Muller in Prague, Bate Felix and Johnny Cotton in Paris; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State claims responsibility for shootout at Jordanian castle

Jordanian policemen stand guard in the vicinity of Kerak Castle where armed gunmen carried out an attack, in the city of Karak, Jordan.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Islamic State militants claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a shootout at a Crusader castle in the southern Jordanian city of Karak in which at least nine people including a Canadian tourist were killed.

An Islamic State statement said four IS fighters undertook the operation on Sunday that ended in their deaths. Jordanian officials have not said who they suspect in the attack though security sources said the perpetrators were Jordanian nationals.

Jordanian police said late on Sunday that they had killed four “terrorist outlaws” after flushing them out of the castle where they were holed up after an exchange of fire that lasted several hours. Security forces were able to release around 10 tourists unharmed. At least 30 people were taken to hospital.

Interior Minister Salamah Hamad said on Monday at least five suicide belts were found, together with an ammunition cache, automatic weapons and explosives in a hideout in a house in the desert town of Qatranah, 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Karak.

The gunmen had fled to Karak after an exchange of fire with the police, Hamad said. Based on the quantities of explosives and weapons, “I don’t think the target was just Karak castle, it’s more,” he added. He would not elaborate, saying disclosing details at this stage could imperil national security.

Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011, but maintains a high level of vigilance.

However, it is among the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria and Iraq. Many Jordanians oppose their country’s involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Last November three U.S. military trainers were shot dead when their car was fired on by a Jordanian army member at the gate of a military base. Washington disputed the official Jordanian version that they were shot at for failing to stop, and said it did not rule out political motives.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Cairo church bombing kills 25, raises fears among Christians

A nun cries at the scene of the Cairo Church bombing

By Ahmed Mohammed Hassan and Ali Abdelaty

CAIRO (Reuters) – A bombing at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass, in the deadliest attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in years.

The attack comes as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fights battles on several fronts. His economic reforms have angered the poor, a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has seen thousands jailed, whilst an insurgency rages in Northern Sinai, led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State.

The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its supporters to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but exiled Brotherhood officials and home-grown militant groups condemned the attack. Islamic State supporters celebrated on social media.

“God bless the person who did this blessed act,” wrote one supporter on Telegram.

The explosion took place in a chapel, which adjoins St Mark’s, Cairo’s main cathedral and the seat of Coptic Pope Tawadros II, where security is normally tight.

The United States said it “will continue to work with its partners to defeat such terrorist acts” and that it was committed to Egypt’s security, according to a White House statement on Sunday.

The UN Security Council urged “all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities” to hold those responsible accountable.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned what he called the latest in a series of “brutal terrorist attacks” and said he was praying for the dead and wounded.

The chapel’s floor was covered in debris from shattered windows, its wooden pews blasted apart, its pillars blackened. Here and there lay abandoned shoes and sticky patches of blood.

“As soon as the priest called us to prepare for prayer, the explosion happened,” Emad Shoukry, who was inside when the blast took place, told Reuters.

“The explosion shook the place … the dust covered the hall and I was looking for the door, although I couldn’t see anything … I managed to leave in the middle of screams and there were a lot of people thrown on the ground.”

Security sources told Reuters at least six children were among the dead, with the blast detonating on the side of the church normally used by women.

They said the explosion was caused by a device containing at least 12 kg (26 pounds) of TNT.

Police and armored vehicles rushed to the area, as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the compound demanding revenge for the attack that took place on a Muslim holiday marking the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday and weeks before Christmas. Scuffles broke out with police.

A woman sitting near the cathedral in traditional long robes shouted, “kill them, kill the terrorists, what are you waiting for? … Why are you leaving them to bomb our homes?”

“EGYPTIAN BLOOD IS CHEAP”

Though Egypt’s Coptic Christians have traditionally been supporters of the government, angry crowds turned their ire against Sisi, saying his government had failed to protect them.

“As long as Egyptian blood is cheap, down, down with any president,” they chanted. Others chanted “the people demand the fall of the regime”, the rallying cry of the 2011 uprising that helped end Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Sisi’s office condemned what it described as a terrorist attack, declaring three days of mourning and promising justice. Al-Azhar, Egypt’s main Islamic center of learning, also denounced the attacks.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s biggest Christian community.

Copts face regular attack by Muslim neighbors, who burn their homes and churches in poor rural areas, usually in anger over an inter-faith romance or the construction of church.

The last major attack on a church took place as worshippers left a New Year’s service in Alexandria weeks before the start of the 2011 uprising. At least 21 people were killed.

Egypt’s Christian community has felt increasingly insecure since Islamic State spread through Iraq and Syria in 2014, ruthlessly targeting religious minorities. In 2015, 21 Egyptian Christians working in Libya were killed by Islamic State.

The attack came two days after six police were killed in two bomb attacks, one of them claimed by Hasm, a recently-emerged group the government says is linked to the Brotherhood, which has been banned under Sisi as a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood says it is peaceful. Several exiled Brotherhood officials condemned the bombing, as did Hasm and Liwaa’ al-Thawra, another local militant group.

Coptic Pope Tawadros II cut short a visit to Greece after learning of the attack. In a speech aired on state television, he said “the whole situation needs us all to be disciplined as much as possible … strong unity is the most important thing.”

Church officials said earlier on Sunday they would not allow the bombing to create sectarian differences.

But Christians, convinced attacks on them are not seriously investigated, say this time they want justice.

“Where was the security? There were five or six security cars stationed outside so where were they when 12 kg of TNT was carried inside?” said Mena Samir, 25, standing at the church’s metal gate. “They keep telling us national unity, the crescent with the cross … This time we will not shut up.”

(Additional reporting by Arwa Gaballa, Amr Abdallah, Mohamed Abdel Ghany, Amina Ismail, Mostafa Hashem in Cairo, Philip Pullella in Rome, Michelle Nichols in New York and; Yara Bayoumy in Washington; writing by Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed; editing by Ros Russell and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Obama to deliver speech defending his counterterrorism fight

President Obama

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will make the case on Tuesday that his counterterrorism policies have helped protect Americans from evolving international threats as he prepares to hand over the White House to a successor who has been critical of his approach.

Obama will deliver his final major speech on national security as president at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

He will argue that his administration has been successful in building coalitions and working with local governments to take out militant leaders and disrupt Islamic State and other groups without overextending the U.S. military, the White House said.

“This represents a more sustainable approach … one where we had a limited number of U.S. forces on the ground,” White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said on a call with reporters.

Some counterterrorism experts have pointed to the rise of Islamic State as an example of Obama being too slow to respond to an emerging threat.

While the United States has been successful in killing some key militant leaders, Obama’s “legacy has been tarnished by the way terrorist groups have regenerated and strengthened in the latter parts of his presidency,” said Robin Simcox, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump referred to Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as the “co-founders” of Islamic State during the presidential campaign, blaming them for the initial spread of the militant group.

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has chided Obama for not speaking out more bluntly against “radical Islam.” He has also voiced support for waterboarding captives.

Obama signed an executive order after taking office in January 2009 that banned waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” or EITs. Such executive orders can be rescinded by a president’s successors.

Many lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, as torture.

Some former officials from President George W. Bush’s  administration and the CIA officials have defended waterboarding and other EITs, denying they are torture and saying they elicited valuable intelligence.

Rhodes said Obama’s national security speech had been planned long before the Nov. 8 election and was not aimed specifically at the incoming Trump administration.

Rhodes said, however, that Obama would argue the administration’s decision not to use waterboarding had actually improved national security.

“We’ve actually been strengthened because it’s easier to get other nations to cooperate with us,” Rhodes said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Islamic State urges supporters to stage new wave of attacks

Islamic State flag

CAIRO (Reuters) – A newly identified spokesman for Islamic State urged sympathizers around the world to carry out a fresh wave of attacks, singling out Turkish diplomatic, military and financial interests as the Islamists’ preferred targets.

Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer, whose role as the group’s mouthpiece was disclosed for the first time on Monday, also told Islamic State fighters to stand their ground in the town of Tal Afar, where they are threatened by Iraqi forces bearing down on the city of Mosul, the group’s last major Iraqi stronghold.

In a defiant online message, Muhajer described Islamic State’s military losses this year as setbacks and said an array of forces in Iraq and Syria had failed to defeat the jihadists.

He said Islamic State supporters would target “the secular, apostate Turkish government in every security, military, economic and media establishment, including every embassy and consulate, that represents it in all countries of the world.”

“Destroy their vehicles, raid them … in their shelters so they can taste some of your misery and do not talk yourselves into fleeing,” Muhajer said in an audio recording posted online.

He called on supporters of Islamic State to “redouble your efforts and step up your operations” around the world.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the recording.

Islamic State identified Muhajer as its new media spokesman in a recording posted on Al Furqan, a media outlet linked to the group. It gave little information about Muhajer, an obscure figure not widely known in the media or to experts.

The United States confirmed in September that Islamic State’s previous spokesman, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, had been killed in a U.S. air strike on Aug. 30 in Syria.

Turkey appeared to have been chosen as a target because it has backed rebels in Syria against Islamic State, threatening to drive IS fighters from the town of al-Bab and backing rebels who crossed into Syria and took the border town of Jarablus from the jihadists. Most recently, Turkish warplanes destroyed 12 Islamic State targets on Saturday.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty and Asma Alsharif; Writing by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Russia says will treat as terrorists rebels who refuse to leave Aleppo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will support the operation of the Syrian army against them.

“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov said. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”

Russia and the United States will start talks on the withdrawal in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sent his proposals on routes and timing of the withdrawal, Lavrov said.

“We believe that when the Americans proposed their initiative for militants to leave eastern Aleppo, they realized what steps they and their allies, who have an influence on militants stuck in eastern Aleppo, would have to take.”

He added that a United Nations resolution on a ceasefire would be counterproductive because a ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova,; writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Car, knife attack at Ohio State injures 11; suspect’s background probed

A girl is led to an ambulance by emergency personnel following an attack at Ohio State University's campus in Columbus, Ohio.

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – A car and knife attack by an Ohio State University student that injured 11 people on Monday before the suspect was shot dead by a police officer is being investigated as a possible terror attack, a U.S. congressman and another government source said.

The suspect, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was shot and killed by a police officer with less than two years on the force after driving into a group of people and then jumping out of the vehicle and stabbing people with a butcher knife at the school’s Columbus campus, said Monica Moll, director of public safety for Ohio State University.

The assailant was an 18-year-old immigrant from Somalia and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, two U.S. government sources said. Ohio State University Police Chief Craig Stone told a news conference that Artan might have been as old as 20.

The officials said they could not speak on the record because of the ongoing investigation.

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said intelligence agencies were assisting in the investigation.

“It bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalized,” Schiff said in a statement.

Another U.S. official, who asked not to be named because of the ongoing investigation, told Reuters that U.S. agencies are investigating the Columbus attacker’s background and motivations, but cannot clearly say yet whether he had any ties to suspected militant cells or groups.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident by Lisa Monaco, his homeland security adviser, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

A spokesman for Columbus’ Somali community spoke out against the attack.

“I want everyone to know that we the Somali-American community stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow Americans in condemning the sickening violence that took place in our city earlier today,” Abdi Dini, a member of the Somali community, said at a news conference in Ohio.

A car which police say was used by an attacker to plow into a group of students is seen outside Watts Hall on Ohio State University's campus in Columbus

A car which police say was used by an attacker to plow into a group of students is seen outside Watts Hall on Ohio State University’s campus in Columbus. Courtesy of Mason Swires/thelantern.com

SUSPECT SAID DIDN’T “EVEN KNOW WHERE TO PRAY”

The campus newspaper, The Lantern, on Monday posted on its website an interview with Artan that it had published only in print in August as part of its Humans of Ohio State feature.

In the interview, Artan, a third-year logistics management student, said he had recently transferred to Ohio State from Columbus State University. Artan talked about being a Muslim and said that Columbus State had offered more accommodations for prayer.

“We had prayer rooms, like actual rooms where we could go pray because we Muslims have to pray five times a day,” he was quoted as saying.

Artan said he was scared to pray openly on campus as a Muslim, saying that he feared that media portrayals of Muslims would give people the wrong idea about him.

“This place is huge, and I don’t even know where to pray,” he told the newspaper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. … But I just did it. … I went over to the corner and just prayed.”

Of the people injured in the attack on Monday, one was critically injured, Columbus fire officials said. Eleven people were treated at area hospitals, including 10 taken by ambulance.

“It frankly took a piece out of everybody here at our beautiful Ohio State University that this could have happened here,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said at a news conference.

With nearly 60,000 students, the Columbus campus is the state’s flagship public university.

Fire officials said the critically injured victim was taken to the university hospital. A spokeswoman said that by Monday evening, none of the patients there suffered from life-threatening conditions.

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center treated six victims, including two with stab wounds and three who were hit by the vehicle, said Dr. Andrew Thomas, the chief medical officer.

Two other hospitals received five patients, who suffered from lacerations and injuries caused by the vehicle, Thomas said.

The university initially reported the attack on Twitter, saying it involved an “active shooter.”

Moll said that while in the vehicle, the suspect jumped the curb and used the vehicle to strike pedestrians in front of Watts Hall.

He then left the vehicle and stabbed several other people, Stone, the Ohio State police chief, said.

Less than 2 minutes elapsed between the first call for help at 9:52 a.m. and the shots fired by campus police officer Alan Horujko, 28, Moll said.

Monday’s incident follows a stabbing attack in September at the Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where a man whose family came to the United States from Somalia wounded 10 people with a knife before he was shot to death by an off-duty police officer.

Authorities last month indicated the Minnesota attacker showed signs of radicalization, and a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent said his actions appeared to be “consistent with the philosophies of violent radical Islamic groups.”

CNN aired an image from a room at Ohio State where students had barricaded a door with stacked chairs.

Columbus and university police continued their investigation with assistance from the FBI.

A university warning on Twitter telling students to shelter in place was lifted shortly before noon (1700 GMT).

The university campus remained open, although classes were canceled for the day.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland, Laila Kearney and Franklin Paul in New York, Mark Hosenball and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington and Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Leslie Adler)

Civilians flee as Shi’ite groups close in on flashpoint town west of Mosul

Displace Iraqi family

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

ERBIL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have fled Tal Afar as Shi’ite paramilitary groups close in the Islamic State-held town on the road between Mosul and Raqqa, the main cities of the militant group’s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The exodus from Tal Afar, 60 km (40 miles) west of Mosul, is causing concern among humanitarian organizations as some of the fleeing civilians are heading deeper into insurgents’ territory, where aid cannot be sent to them, provincial officials said.

Popular Mobilisation units, a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained and backed militias, are trying to encircle Tal Afar, a mostly ethnic Turkmen town, as part of the offensive to capture Mosul, the last major city stronghold of Islamic State in Iraq.

About 3,000 families have left the town, with about half heading southwest, toward Syria, and half northward, into Kurdish-held territory, said Nuraldin Qablan, a Tal Afar representative in the Nineveh provincial council, now based in the Kurdish capital Erbil.

“We ask Kurdish authorities to open a safe passage for them,” he told Reuters.

He said Islamic State started on Sunday night to allow people to leave after it fired mortars at Popular Mobilisation positions at the airport, south of the city, and Popular Mobilisation forces responded.

The offensive started on Oct. 17 with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition. It is turning into the most complex campaign in Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and empowered the nation’s Shi’ite majority.

The people fleeing Tal Afar are from the Sunni community, which makes up a majority in the Nineveh province in and around Mosul. The town also had a Shi’ite community, which fled in 2014 when the hardline Sunni group swept through the region.

Turkey is alarmed that regional rival Iran could extend its power through proxy groups to an area close to the Turkish and Syrian borders, where Ankara is backing rebels opposed to the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Citing its close ties to Tal Afar’s Turkmen’s population, Turkey has threatened to intervene to prevent revenge killings should Popular Mobilisation forces, known in Arabic as Hashid Shaabi, storm the town.

“People are fleeing due to the Hashid’s advance, there are great fears among the civilians,” said Qablan, who is also the deputy head of Nineveh’s provincial council.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tried to allay fears of ethnic and sectarian killings in Tal Afar, saying any force sent to recapture it would reflect the city’s diversity.

Cutting the road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded to the north, south and east by Iraqi government and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Iraq’s U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached Islamic State’s defenses in east Mosul at the end of October and is fighting to expand a foothold it gained there.

AIR STRIKES ON MOSUL

Iraqi military estimates put the number of insurgents in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000, facing a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government units, peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias.

Mosul’s capture is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate, and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, believed to have withdrawn to a remote area near the Syrian border, has told his fighters there can be no retreat.

A Mosul resident said air strikes have intensified on the western part of the city, which is divided by the Tigris river running through its center.

The strikes targeted an industrial area where Islamic State is thought to be making booby traps and transforming vehicles into car bombs, he said.

The militants are dug in among more than a million civilians as a defense tactic to hamper the strikes. They are moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire.

The Iraqi authorities did not release an overall estimate of the casualties, but the United Nations warned on Saturday that growing numbers of wounded civilians and military are overwhelming the capacity of the government and international aid groups.

More than 68,000 people are registered as displaced because of the fighting, moving from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to U.N. estimates.

The figure does not include the thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany Islamic State fighters to cover their retreat towards the city as human shields. It also does not included the 3,000 families which have fled Tal Afar.

In some cases, men of fighting age were separated from those groups and summarily killed, according to residents and rights groups.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Exclusive: Watchdog condemns Syrian government, Islamic State use of banned chemical weapons

car parts to make car bombs

By Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The executive body of the global chemical weapons watchdog voted on Friday to condemn the use of banned toxic agents by the Syrian government and by militant group Islamic State, a source who took part in the closed session said.

Roughly two-thirds of the 41 members on the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), endorsed a U.S.-tabled text, the source told Reuters.

The OPCW’s Executive Council, which meets behind closed doors, seldom votes on such matters, generally operating through consensus. But this text was supported by 28 members, including Germany, France, the United States and Britain.

It was opposed by Russia, China, Sudan and Iran. There were nine abstentions. Russia and Iran are Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main allies against rebels seeking to overthrow him. Western and Gulf Arab states back the rebels.

The U.S.-Russian split over Syria was striking as it was those two countries that in 2013 took the lead in getting the Damascus government to join the OPCW and avert threatened U.S.-led military intervention in Syria’s civil war.

A 13-month international inquiry by the OPCW and United Nations concluded in a series of reports that Syrian government forces, including helicopter squadrons, were responsible for the use of chlorine barrel bombs against civilians.

The OPCW-U.N. mission found that the Syrian government carried out three toxic attacks in March and April of last year, while Islamic State militants had used sulfur mustard gas.

The findings set the stage for a U.N. Security Council showdown between the five veto-wielding powers, likely pitting Russia and China against the United States, Britain and France over how those responsible for the attacks should be held accountable.

Syrian authorities deny having used chemical weapons in the conflict. Islamic State has not commented.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark Heinrich)