Not far from Mosul, a large military force is finalising plans for an advance that has been more than three decades in the making. The troops are Shia militiamen who have fought against the Islamic State, but they have not been given a direct role in the coming attack to free Iraq’s second city from its clutches. Instead, while the ...

Analysis of satellite imagery taken after a deadly attack on an aid convoy in northern Syria last month shows that it was an air strike, a UN expert says. At least 18 people were killed when lorries unloading at a Syrian Arab Red Crescent warehouse in a rebel-held town outside Aleppo came under fire. The US believes Russian warplanes bombed ...

BY KALAHAN DENG In a Wednesday session on Syria at the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry deployed a curious historical reference. “Those who believe this crisis couldn’t get worse are dead wrong, as are those who believe that a military victory is possible,” Kerry intoned at the special session, after urging a cessation of hostilities. ...

BY KALAHAN DENG Syrian and Russian warplanes launched a ferocious assault against rebel-held Aleppo on Friday, burying any hopes that a U.S.-backed cease-fire could be salvaged and calling into question whether the deal would ever have worked. Waves upon waves of planes relentlessly struck neighborhoods in the rebel-held east of the city on the first day of a new offensive ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG The airstrike targeted a market. Syrian men evacuate a victim from the rubble of a building following an airstrike on the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib on September 10, 2016. People search for victims at the scene of the airstrikes. In February, a cessation of hostilities negotiated between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov fell ...

EDITED BY KALAHAN DENG Turkey has sent more tanks into northern Syria, in an operation against the Islamic State (IS) group, Turkish media reports say. The tanks crossed the border near the Turkish town of Kilis and journalists later heard firing and saw plumes of smoke rising on Syrian territory. Civilians were seen fleeing as the Turkish military advanced. The ...

WRITTEN BY KALAHAN DENG Two years ago, the so called ISIS militants in Iraq launched a vicious attack on Yazidi ethnic minority who practice faith other than the Islam. The terrorist group went wild in executing any man on their way, abducting young women, rapped them, and taken many as slaves. Their houses were looted and burned down. Older people ...

EDITED BY KALAHAN DENG Battlefield success against ISIS may produce more terrorism for the West, FBI Director James Comey warned this week. Speaking to a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University Wednesday, Comey predicted that eventually crushing ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq will likely result in dispersing terrorists elsewhere. “At some point there is going to be ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG Binary explanations of recent attacks in Nice, Munich and Normandy are wrong. It is possible to be both a terrorist and mentally unstable. As one grim atrocity follows another in unexpected locations across Europe – Nice, Munich and this week, a church in a small town in Normandy – everyone seems to have an opinion. Around ...

EDITED BY KALAHAN DENG Group’s leader, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, says move is aimed at ‘removing excuse used by international community to bombard Muslims in the Levant’. The leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the most powerful jihadi groups in Syria, has announced that the group is breaking its link with al-Qaida and changing its name, in an apparent attempt to ...