The family of the leader of terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza strip were confirmed killed when an Israeli air strike destroyed the building they were living in.
However, there are conflicting reports about whether the strike also cut off the head of Hamas’ leadership in Gaza. Hamas denies that Mohammed Deif was hit while several Israeli sources say he perished in the attack.
The attack was in response to Hamas breaking the cease fire and launching a series of terrorist rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned Hamas that the IDF was prepared to “strike back hard” if the ceasefire were to be broken and the operation against Deif’s headquarters is believed to have been one of the items referenced by the Prime Minister.
Middle East analysts say that if Deif was killed in the attack it will likely cause Hamas to launch more assaults and refuse to enter back into negotiations to end the hostilities.
The Israeli Defense Forces recalled 2,000 soldiers after the breaking of the ceasefire to provide support for the IDF response.
Egypt has issued a call for both sides to return to the negotiating table in Cairo. Israel had recalled their delegation after Hamas broke the latest ceasefire.
The Islamic extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has posted a video online showing the brutal beheading of an American journalist.
James Foley, a reporter working for Agence France-Presse and Boston media company GlobalPost, was taken captive while reporting in Syria November 2012. He was passing through a zone that had been a focal point of Sunni rebel forces when four terrorists stopped his car.
The death of Foley is the first American to have been killed as a result of the Syrian conflict that began in March 2011.
A British man who had joined the terrorist group who spoke in the video using English conducted the killing. The group showed video of a second captured American journalist and said they would kill him if the U.S. continued to make airstrikes against their forces in Iraq.
Foley’s family released a statement saying they were proud of him.
“He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people,” said the statement, which was attributed to Foley’s mother, Diane Foley. She implored the militants to spare the lives of other hostages. “Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.”
The terrorist group Hamas has once again broken a ceasefire, the eleventh that the group has either rejected or violated.
Rockets from the terrorists rained down on Beersheba during the mid-afternoon local time. Explosions were also seen near Ashdod and Ashkelon within an hour after the initial attack on Beersheba.
“Today’s rocket attack on Be’er Sheva is a grave and direct violation of the ceasefire to which Hamas committed itself,” Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu, posted on Twitter. “They shoot rockets into Israel yet demand a more normal relationship? They must first commit to non-violence.”
The Israeli Defense Forces were organizing a response that was scheduled to begin toward the evening hours on Tuesday. Initial reports showed movement toward the northern part of Gaza and at vessels in the waters near northern Gaza.
The negotiating team in Cairo has been recalled to Israel because of the attack according to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office.
Israeli’s Shin Bet security service has released the details of a shocking Hamas plot that would have combined terror attacks on Israeli citizens with the overthrow of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The goal was to have a “third intifada uprising.” The plot would have opened a second front against Israel during Operation Protective Edge.
Shin Bet said that 90 Hamas operatives have been arrested in connection to the plot. Hundreds of weapons were seized along with $170,000 that was designated to fund the attack either through payments to security officials or payments to homicide bombers.
The attack within Israel was to have a centerpiece of the Temple Mount. The plan was so detailed that it had a flowchart of Hamas operatives who were in charge of the operation and those directly under them as if it was some kind of corporate organization.
The plot also focused on recruiting students, especially those who had been studying chemistry or engineering, for plotting bomb attacks on structures aimed to cause building collapse.
The mastermind of the plot is Hamas terrorist Salah al-Arouri who is in hiding in Turkey. According to the Times of Israel, authorities within the IDF have evidence that al-Arouri plotted the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers before the current Hamas-Israel conflict.
An elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces announced they had captured a Hamas operative who was planning a terrorist attack near Hebron.
The arrest led to Israeli police and the IDF carrying out a sweep in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that led to the arrest of nearly 60 people who were connected to the plot or to inciting riots.
The IDF did not release the name of the suspect or the details of the attack saying that the information was withheld for national security reasons.
The arrest is the latest in an IDF crackdown on those leading riots or attacks in Israel. The investigations into many of the arrested suspects had been placed on hold or in a lower priority because of the conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Tbe IDF said that 12 suspects were arrested late Monday and Tuesday nights in the West Bank on top of the almost 60 arrested today.
Officials say that rioting has increased in the Jerusalem area as Arab groups took advantage of decreased IDF presence.
The Islamic extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has committed a horrific war atrocity that was caught on video: the cutting in half of a 5-year-old Christian boy.
The boy, named Andrew, was the child of a founding member of St. George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad. He was slaughtered in an attack on the Christian town of Qaraqosh.
“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” Anglican Canon Andrew White of St. George’s Church told the Anglican Communion News Service Friday. “I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me — he was called Andrew.”
The family had fled to Qaraqosh, which had been under the protection of Kurdish fighters. However, the Islamic State overran the Kurdish fighters and slaughtered as many Christians as they could capture as the believers fled the city.
The dead boy’s parents and brother were able to make it to the city of Arbil, which President Obama said would be under the protection of the U.S. military because of the U.S. consulate being located in the town.
The Christian Post reports that Iraqi church leaders have asked for the world to pray for them and to send money so they can purchase supplies, food and clothing for the tens of thousands of Christians fleeing the terrorists.
In the latest round of violence against Christians in Nigeria, the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has killed at least 100 people in a predominantly Christian town.
The terrorists struck in Gwoza around 4 a.m. local time, invading homes and slashing anyone they found with machetes and knives. The terrorists also targeted the homes of Christians with firebombs.
Witnesses say the government’s forces fled quickly when the terrorist attack began and left the town in the control of the extremists.
“I thank God for sparing my life, but three of my neighbors and members of our church were killed during the attack,” Christian resident of the city Pirda Tada told reporters. “These Christians in our village had their throats slit with knives while their hands were tied behind their backs. Some houses were bombed as the Boko Haram gunmen were chanting, ‘God is great!’ in Arabic.”
The estimated number of Christians who have been forced to flee northern Nigeria because of the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has passed 300,000.
The terrorists have also sent letters to various Christian majority communities threatening to attack and kill all Christians.
“You have been fleeing your homes, but we are still pursuing you, because the soldiers with you people cannot protect you,” the letter reads. “Your lives, farmlands and other property are also not safeguarded. Allah willing, we shall not fail to attack your communities and the listed churches in this letter.”
The terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are reportedly holding hundreds of women captive inside school buildings in various cities under their control.
A spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry says that the women are all below the age of 35 and are mostly in the city of Mosul. The kidnapping and captivity of the women is being reported to the Ministry through relatives who have escaped the terrorist group.
“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Kamil Amin told The Associated Press. “We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.”
A U.S. official who spoke under condition of anonymity said that U.S. intelligence has confirmed the captivity of the women and that they are being placed into forced marriages with terrorist fighters.
One Iraqi lawmaker who escaped the region said that some of the women have been sold in the public square “in a slavery market.”
The Islamic terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has released a statement that they are planning to take over the United States.
“I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” Abu Mosa, a spokesman for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), said in a video. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”
A group called VICE Media, who embedded a reporter with the terrorist group for three weeks, released the video.
The terrorist group also said in their announcement that the city of Raqqa is now the capital of their newly declared Islamic nation.
The video release came the same day that President Obama authorized air attacks by U.S. forces on the terrorist group.
“To stop the advance on Erbil, I’ve directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city,” Obama elaborated, using the acronym for another name the terror group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad.”
A Christian leader in Iraq says the disappearance of all Christians from Iraq is “very near.”
Canon Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican church left in Iraq, says that as Islamic terrorists continue their campaign against those of other faiths, the Christian population is fleeing for other nations.
“Are we seeing the end of Christianity? We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near,” White told the Christian Post. “The Christians are in grave danger. There are literally Christians living in the desert and on the street. They have nowhere to go.”
The terrorists attempting to overthrow the Iraqi government killed 31 people in a homicide bomb attack last week. They’ve driven all but a few hundred Christians out of the city of Mosul, where the remainder has been forced to pay high taxes. However, worship in the city has ended.
“We have at least 25 churches in [Mosul],” Syriac Patriarch Ignace Joseph Ill Younan said. “All are abandoned. No more prayers, no services, no more Masses on Sundays in Mosul because no clergy, no people there that are Christian.”
