The Jim Bakker Show

Panic on London’s Oxford Street after reports of shooting

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – Panic erupted among Christmas shopping crowds on London’s Oxford Street on Friday evening as armed officers raced to respond to reports of shots being fired in the area but police said later they had found no evidence of gunfire or casualties.

Oxford Street, with its festive window displays and hundreds of overhead lights, was crammed with shoppers taking advantage of the Black Friday sales when the incident happened shortly after dusk.

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement they had found no evidence of gunfire, casualties or any suspects and that the incident, which lasted for just over an hour, had been stood down.

“Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers,” they said in a statement.

A Reuters witness said panicked shoppers had fled Oxford Street and Oxford Circus underground station.

The witness saw an elderly lady and a man carrying his child knocked over in the rush. “There were people running in all directions. I didn’t know which way to run,” the witness said.

Britain’s transport police said they had received a report of one woman suffering a minor injury in the panic.

The capital’s transport operator, Transport for London, said Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations, which had been briefly shut due to the incident, had later reopened.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken, William Schomberg and James Davey; Writing by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Militants kill more than 230 at mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai

By Ahmed Tolba and Patrick Markey

CAIRO (Reuters) – Militants killed more than 230 people at a mosque in North Sinai on Friday, detonating a bomb and gunning down worshippers in the deadliest such attack of Egypt’s modern history, state media and witnesses said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled a stubborn Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region, and militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El Arish, the main city in North Sinai.

Worshippers were finishing Friday prayers at the mosque when a bomb exploded, witnesses said. Around 40 gunmen set up positions outside the mosque with jeeps and opened fire from different directions as people tried to escape.

“Four groups of armed men attacked the worshippers inside the mosque after Friday noon prayers. Two groups were firing at ambulances to deter them, said Mohamed, a witness.

The public prosecutors’ office said in a statement 235 people had been killed and 109 more wounded.

Hours after the attack, Egypt’s military launched air strikes on targets in mountainous areas around Bir al-Abed, security sources and witnesses said.

“The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force,” Sisi said in a televised address.

“What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aims to destroy what is left of our region.”

Striking at a mosque would be a change in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have usually attacked troops and police and Christian churches.

SUFI MUSLIMS

Arabiya news channel and some local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry.

The jihadists have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police, branding them traitors.

The Sinai branch is one of Islamic State’s surviving branches following the collapse of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq after military defeats by U.S.-backed forces.

Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militancy, convened an emergency meeting with his defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief soon after the attack.

Security has long been one of the key sources of public support for the former general, who is expected to run for re-election early next year for another four-year term.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in a post on Twitter on Friday, called the assault a “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack”.

“The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence,” he added.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also condemned the attack and said Paris stood with its ally.

SINAI STRUGGLE

North Sinai, which stretches from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egyptian security forces because of smuggling.

Sisi has support from some Bedouin tribal leaders, who have helped the army locate weapon-smuggling routes used by jihadi groups, security officials said.

Local militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to Islamic State in 2014.

Bloodshed in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Islamic State earlier this year posted a video of the beheading of two Sufis in northern Sinai, accusing them of practicing “sorcery”.

In July this year, at least 23 soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs hit two military checkpoints in the Sinai, in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Militants have tried to expand their operations into Egypt’s heavily populated mainland, hitting Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims. In May, gunmen attacked a Coptic group travelling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29.

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Abdellah in Cairo and Yousri Mohamed in Ismalia; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Texas state trooper shot dead, suspect arrested after manhunt

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A Texas state trooper was shot and killed during a traffic stop on Thanksgiving Day, leading to a manhunt and further gunfire some 125 miles (200 km) away, where the suspect was arrested.

The fatal shooting took place on Thursday in Fairfield, about 90 miles (145 km) south of Dallas, where highway patrol trooper Damon Allen had stopped the suspect for a traffic violation and made contact with the driver, a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesman said.

When Allen returned to his patrol car, the suspect fired multiple times with a rifle, killing the trooper at the scene, Lieutenant Lonny Haschel said in a statement.

Allen, 41, was a husband and father of three who joined the department in 2002, the department said.

“Our DPS family is heartbroken tonight after one of Texas’ finest law enforcement officers was killed in the line of duty,” DPS Director Steven McCraw said in a statement.

“Trooper Allen’s dedication to duty, and his bravery and selfless sacrifice on this Thanksgiving Day, will never be forgotten,” McCraw said.

The suspect, identified as Dabrett Black, 32, was arrested in Waller County, about 50 miles northwest of Houston, after unspecified shots had been fired, the Waller County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.

DPS officials said they would file capital murder charges against Black, meaning prosecutors could potentially seek the death penalty in a state that has executed 518 people in the past 38 years.

In Waller County, sheriff’s deputies and a Texas DPS helicopter pursued the suspect, the sheriff’s office said.

At one point the suspect abandoned his car and deputies surrounded him near the town of Prairie View, according to a live police radio dispatch carried on broadcastify.com.

Deputies described their pursuit using night-vision goggles and lasers to pinpoint his position.

“He’s moving between the hay bails. He has good cover. He has good concealment,” one officer said.

They were uncertain whether he was still armed with a rifle and maintained a perimeter until a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team could arrive, according to the police radio.

“We got this guy. We’ve got eyeballs on him. Let’s take our time and get him on our terms, not on his terms,” another officer said.

Deputies then went to radio silence as they moved in for the arrest, a silence that was broken by, “Can we confirm one in custody?”

“One in custody,” came the reply.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney and Richard Borsuk)

Hope fades as search for Argentine submarine enters ninth day

By Walter Bianchi

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) – Hopes diminished that the 44 crew members on a Argentine submarine missing for nine days would be found alive after evidence pointed to the possibility that it had exploded and because it only had a seven-day supply of oxygen.

Crew members’ relatives who had been waiting for news at the submarine’s base in the city of Mar del Plata started going home late on Thursday, while the navy vowed to keep searching.

“At this point, the truth is I have no hope that they will come back,” Maria Villareal, mother of one crew member, told local television on Friday morning.

Some family members accused the navy of putting their loved ones at unnecessary risk by sending them out in a more than 30-year-old vessel that they suspected was not properly maintained, an accusation the navy has denied.

“They killed my brother,” a man leaving the base in a car shouted out to reporters. The older man driving the car was crying.

The submarine, called the San Juan, was launched in 1983 and underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. The armed forces have had to face dwindling resources and lack of training since the end of a military dictatorship in the early 1980s.

“They did not tell us they were dead, but that is the logical conclusion,” Itati Leguizamon, wife of one of the missing crew members, told reporters.

A sound detected underwater on the morning of Nov. 15, around the time the San Juan sent its last signal and in the same area, was “consistent with an explosion,” navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said on Thursday.

The information about the possible explosion came from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts.

(Writing and additional reporting by Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Rights groups say outside monitors needed for Rohingya return to Myanmar

By Yimou Lee

YANGON (Reuters) – Human rights groups called on Friday for international agencies to be allowed to monitor the planned repatriation of hundreds of thousands Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh to the homes they have fled from in Myanmar over the past three months.

The two governments signed a pact on Thursday settling terms for a repatriation process. They aim to start the return of Rohingya in two months in order to reduce pressure in the refugee camps that have mushroomed in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh.

But rights groups have expressed doubts about Myanmar, also known as Burma, following through on the agreement, and some have called for independent observers.

“The idea that Burma will now welcome them back to their smoldering villages with open arms is laughable,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch.

“Instead of signing on to a public relations stunt, the international community should make it clear that there can be no returns without international monitors to ensure security, an end to the idea of putting returnees in camps, the return of land and the rebuilding of destroyed homes and villages.”

More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar launched a brutal counter insurgency across northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25.

The United Nations and United States have described the military’s actions as ethnic cleansing. Rights groups have accused the security forces of atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings.

While Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said repatriation of the largely stateless Muslim minority would be based on residency and would be “safe and voluntary”, there were concerns that the country’s autonomous military could prove obstructive.

The memorandum of understanding signed by Myanmar and Bangladesh on Thursday said a joint working group would be set up within three weeks to prepare for the return of the refugees.

But it gave scant details about the criteria of return and of what role, if any, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, could play.

The agency believed conditions in northern Rakhine “are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns” of Rohingya and some refugees were still fleeing Myanmar, spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters.

“It is important that international standards apply, and we are ready to help,” he said, adding that the UNHCR had still not seen the repatriation agreement signed by the two countries.

“It’s important that people don’t end up being sent back to confinement and ghettos.”

Human rights monitors said other important points not addressed in the statements released separately by the two governments included the protection of Rohingya against further violence, a path to resolving their legal status and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes.

Suu Kyi’s spokesman was not immediately available for comment on Friday, and had declined to comment on these concerns when contacted by Reuters late on Thursday.

Charmain Mohamed, Amnesty International’s director for refugee and migrant rights, said the United Nations and the international community “have been completely sidelined” and the talk of return was “premature” while the flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh continued.

China welcomed the agreement, saying it “feels gratified at the current positive progress that has been achieved”, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters, adding that situation in Rakhine “has obviously been alleviated”.

Humanitarian workers say, however, that hundreds of Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh daily, driven out of Myanmar predominantly by chaos, starvation and fear.

‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’

While the violence has mostly ceased, Rohingya say they have largely lost access to sources of livelihood such as their farms, fisheries and markets.

“We will go back if they don’t harass us and if we can live life like the Buddhists and other ethnic groups. Our educated children should get government jobs like the others,” said Sayer Hussein, 55, who arrived in Bangladesh two months ago.

Thousands of Rohingya, most of them old people, women and children, are stranded on beaches near the border, waiting for a boat to take them to Bangladesh.

Some independent estimates suggest there could still be a few hundred thousand Rohingya in Rakhine State.

Thirty-six groups, including the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International, called for a U.N. Human Rights Council special session on the situation in Myanmar.

Myanmar should “immediately cease all human rights violations, including crimes against humanity”, the groups said in an open letter to the U.N. council.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay, Masako Iijima, Natalie Thomas and Michael Martina; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)

Venezuela’s indigenous Warao decamp to uncertain future in Brazil

By Anthony Boadle

PACARAIMA, Brazil (Reuters) – An indigenous tribe that journeyed hundreds of kilometers to flee the economic crisis in Venezuela has been trapped in limbo near the border in Brazil, after it was moved off the streets of the Amazon city of Manaus.

Driven by hunger and illness from their traditional homeland on the Orinoco River delta in northeastern Venezuela, more than 1,200 members of the Warao tribe migrated to northern Brazil to live and beg on the streets.

Brazilian authorities, nongovernmental organizations and churches have helped provide temporary shelter on the border, but the Warao’s future remains uncertain. The tribe insists it will not return to Venezuela, where a deep recession has led to shortages of basic goods under President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.

“The children were dying in Venezuela from illness. There was no medicine, no food, no help,” said Rita Nieves, a cacique, or chief, of the matrilineal Warao.

Members of the tribe are still making the arduous journey. Nieves was wearing her best clothes to cross back into Venezuela to bury a 3-month-old Warao baby that had just died in its mother’s arms on the 1,000-km (620-mile) bus ride to Brazil.

“We are staying here because things have not changed in Venezuela,” she said, sitting in a warehouse turned into a living space for 220 Warao in the small border town of Pacaraima.

Children played among dozens of hammocks hanging from metal structures erected by U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. Outside, women cooked broth on wood fires and men sat listening to their shaman talk about the virtues of the moriche palm used to weave baskets and hammocks, as he puffed on a straw cigar.

The Warao have lived for centuries on the Orinoco delta, but some began to leave when fish supplies were depleted by the diversion of the waters to deepen shipping lanes for Venezuelan iron ore and bauxite exports.

Many went to Venezuelan cities to sell craftwork and beg on the streets. However, when the economy tipped into crisis, they began moving to Brazil last year, often just walking across the border without documents.

“They were already begging in Venezuela, but those who gave them money are themselves asking for help today,” said Sister Clara, a missionary from Brazil-based humanitarian organization Fraternidade that runs two shelters for the Warao.

“Who in today’s crisis in Venezuela is going to buy Warao arts and crafts?” she said.

SLEEPING UNDER OVERPASS

Around 500 Warao arrived on the streets of Manaus last year, where they begged from drivers and sold craftwork at traffic lights.

Many slept under a highway overpass until city authorities stopped the begging and moved them into shelters they did not like.

Some then traveled down the Amazon to Santarem and Belem, while others returned to frontier towns, from which they can go back and forth to their delta homeland when they raise enough money.

“They started staying here, sleeping in the streets, and caused a humanitarian emergency,” said Pacaraima social services secretary Isabel Davila.

The town provided an abandoned warehouse with toilets, showers and a kitchen, built with funding from the Mormon church.

Like a similar shelter in the nearby city of Boa Vista that houses 500 Warao, these are temporary landing places, where the Warao can live while they get documents to legalize their status so they can find work, Davila said.

But Chief Rita has no plans to move. Pacaraima’s mayor promised land to grow crops and materials to make Warao craft work, she said, and she wants the Warao children to learn Portuguese.

Half of the land in Roraima state is reserved for indigenous peoples, but an attempt to ask local communities to cede territory to the Warao met with a firm rebuttal.

“We think they might be here for a decade,” said Danusa Sabala, a spokeswoman for Brazil’s Indian affairs office FUNAI, which sees no short-term solution for the Warao.

Ramon Gomez, a Warao chief in the Boa Vista shelter, said their ancestral homeland in the delta was “finished” and the situation in Venezuela was deteriorating rapidly.

“When … this President Maduro took over, everything ended, food, medicine,” Gómez said. “We will be here until Venezuela changes. It will get worse before it gets better.”

(Additional reporting by Sebastian Rocandio and Nacho Doce; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Jonathan Oatis)

Militants kill 184 in attack on mosque in Egypt’s north Sinai: state media

By Ahmed Tolba and Patrick Markey

CAIRO (Reuters) – Militants killed 184 people at a mosque in Egypt’s north Sinai region on Friday, detonating a bomb and shooting at fleeing worshippers and ambulances, state media and witnesses said.

It was one of the deadliest attacks in the region’s Islamist insurgency. No group claimed immediate responsibility, but since 2014 Egyptian security forces have battled a stubborn Islamic State affiliate in the north of the mainly desert Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of the city of El Arish.

State television and the official news agency MENA reported that 184 people had been killed. Another 125 were wounded, according to state media.

“They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” a local resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters. “They were shooting at the ambulances too.”

Arabiya news channel and some local sources said some of the worshippers were sufis who hardliners such as Islamic State regard as apostates because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants, convened an emergency meeting with his defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief soon after the attack, the presidency’s Facebook page and state television said.

The government also declared three days of mourning.

Militants have mostly targeted security forces in their attacks since bloodshed in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi, then an armed forces commander, led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But jihadists have also targeted local Sinai tribes that are working with the armed forces, branding them traitors for cooperating with the army and police.

In July this year, at least 23 soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs hit two military checkpoints in the Sinai, an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Militants have tried to expand beyond the largely barren, Sinai Peninsula into Egypt’s heavily populated mainland, hitting Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims.

In May, gunmen attacked a Coptic group travelling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29.

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Abdellah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Houston-area woman charged with mailing explosives to Obama, Texas governor

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – A Houston-area woman has been charged with mailing booby-trapped packages designed to explode to former U.S. President Barack Obama, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and a federal office in Maryland.

Julia Poff, 46, was ordered held in jail last week ahead of trial after she was indicted on charges of mailing packages last year that were designed to kill, transporting explosives and other criminal counts, court documents showed.

“Poff presents a real safety risk to witnesses and others in the community,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy wrote in a five-page order outlining the case.

Poff, who was charged earlier this month and pleaded not guilty last week, reached out to the Houston Chronicle to defend herself, the newspaper reported on its website on Thursday.

Poff told the Chronicle that investigators had taken trash from her home. The trash was “used in some serious crimes that we did not commit and know nothing about,” she was quoted as saying.

It was not clear whom Poff was referring to as “we.”

An explosive-laden package mailed to Obama in October 2016, while he was still in office, contained hair that an FBI crime lab matched to one of Poff’s cats, the judge wrote in the detention order.

Poff is said to have expressed dislike for Obama, who is a Democrat, according to the order. Packages sent to Obama and the U.S. Social Security Administration in Maryland were both stopped in screening, according to Houston TV station KPRC.

In October 2016, Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, opened a third package that also was rigged to explode, but it failed to detonate.

The judge’s detention order said Poff was upset with Abbott because she believed that in his previous role as state attorney general, he played a part in her inability to receive support from her ex-husband.

It was unclear what type of support Poff might have sought. The state attorney general’s office has a division that handles requests for child support after a divorce or separation.

The packages sent to Obama, the Social Security Administration and Abbott contained pyrotechnic powder, and investigators found a large amount of fireworks at Poff’s home in Brookshire, west of Houston, the court order said.

Poff is represented by a public defender, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

She is scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on Jan. 2.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and Peter Cooney)

Islamic State beheads 15 of its own fighters: Afghan official

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Islamic State beheaded 15 of its own fighters due to infighting in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said, while a separate suicide attack on Thursday tore into a crowd in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, killing at least eight.

The two incidents underline the insecurity and lawlessness across Afghanistan, where thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded this year amid unrelenting violence involving militant groups including Islamic State and the Taliban.

In a bloody day for the province, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing at least eight people at a meeting of supporters of a police commander who was sacked for illegal land grabbing.

There was no claim of responsibility and no immediate indication of who was behind the attack on the crowd in Jalalabad, which had gathered to demand the reinstatement of the commander, who survived the attack.

A spokesman for the Jalalabad hospital confirmed eight people had been killed and 15 wounded.

Nangarhar, on the porous border with Pakistan, has become a stronghold for Islamic State, generally known as Daesh in Afghanistan, which has grown to become one of the country’s most dangerous militant groups since it appeared around the start of 2015.

Attaullah Khogyani, the provincial governor’s spokesman, said the 15 Islamic State fighters were executed after a bout of infighting in the group, which has become notorious for its brutality. The killings occurred in the Surkh Ab bazaar of Achin district.

Further details were not available and there was no confirmation from Islamic State, whose local branch is known as Islamic State in Khorasan, an old name for the area that includes modern Afghanistan.

The Taliban and Islamic State have frequently fought each other in Nangarhar and both have been targeted by sustained U.S. air strikes.

But the exact nature of the relationship between the two groups is little understood. There have been isolated incidents in Afghanistan in which the fighters of both appear to have cooperated.

Afghan intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters this year showed security officials believe Islamic State is present in nine provinces, from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west.

(Reporting by Ahmad Sultan; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by James Mackenzie and Clarence Fernandez)

Iraq launches operation to clear desert near Syria of Islamic State

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces launched an operation on Thursday to clear the desert bordering Syria of Islamic State in a final push to rid Iraq of the militant group, the military said.

Troops from the Iraqi army and mainly Shi’ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were taking part in the campaign against militants hiding in a large strip of border land, Iraqi military officials said.

“The objective behind the operation is to prevent remaining Daesh groups from melting into the desert region and using it as a base for future attacks,” said army colonel Salah Kareem, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.

Islamic State fighters who ruled over millions of people in both Iraq and Syria since proclaiming their “caliphate” in 2014, have been largely defeated in both countries this year, pushed out of all population centers to empty desert near the border.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective, but he would declare final victory only after the militants were routed in the desert. [nL8N1NR57C]

In the latest operation, Iraqi forces had “purified” 77 villages and exerted control over a bridge and an airport, operations commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement. Over 5,800 squared kilometers had been “purified,” he added.

On Friday Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control. Iraqi army commanders say the military campaign will continue until all the frontier with Syria is secured to prevent Islamic State from launching cross border attacks.

“We will completely secure the desert from all terrorist groups of Daesh and declare Iraq clean of those germs,” said army Brigadier General Shakir Kadhim.

LANDMINES, BOMBS

Army officials said troops advancing through sprawling desert towards the Syria border are facing landmines and roadside bombs placed by retreating militants.

“We need to clean scattered villages from terrorists to make sure they no longer operate in the desert area with Syria,” said army Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Fairs.

Iraqi military helicopters provided cover for the advancing troops and destroyed at least three vehicles used by militants as they were trying to flee a village in the western desert, said the army officer.

Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate has swiftly collapsed since July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling battle that had lasted nine months.

Driven also from its other main bastion in Syria’s Raqqa, Islamic State has since been gradually squeezed into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert straddling the Syria-Iraq frontier, pursued by a range of enemies that include most regional states and global powers.

The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert which runs along the border of both countries.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Nick Macfie, William Maclean and Peter Graff)

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