New reports of the brutality of ISIS are coming from Iraq including their chopping off the hands of women who were using cell phones.
A witness reported that ISIS caught women using cell phones in the city of Mosul and proceeded to cut off their hands for it. Five men who were caught using cell phones were bound and whipped for “illegal use of the devices.”
“The ISIS militants cut three women’s hands off for unknown charges,” the man claimed. “They also whipped five people for using cell phones to contact their relatives while standing on the celebration stage in the Cultural Compound in central Mosul.”
The terrorists then told the citizens of Mosul if they were found using a cellphone, they would be given at least 30 lashes.
“In order to shut one of the doors of penetration the enemy uses to attain its goals and strike with exactness by means of its war and remote-guided aircraft, it has been decided to forbid the use of any electronic device or a system that has access to service to enable precise location of positions,” the ISIS statement declared.
The terrorist group has cut off all landlines into the city and destroyed cell phone towers to keep the town isolated from the world.
Over 100 tablets that have been dated back to Nebuchadnezzar’s era in Babylon have provided further support for the Scriptures showing the exile of the Jewish nation.
The tablets, which have just gone in display in Jerusalem, provide a look into the lives of the Jews as they lived in exile. Among day to day life items, the tablets trace a Judean family over four generations.
The tablets had been discovered in Iraq and rescued from ISIS by a UK-based Israeli collector. The artifacts are written in ancient akkadian cuneiform script.
“We started reading the tablets and within minutes we were absolutely stunned,” Babylonian expert Filip Vukosavovic told reporters. “It fills in a critical gap in understanding of what was going on in the life of Judeans in Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago.”
“On the one hand it’s boring details, but on the other you learn so much about who these exiled people were and how they lived,” he added.
The tablets will be displayed for one year at the Bible Land Museum in Jerusalem.
In the midst of the horror of ISIS in Iraq, one unidentified Iraqi man is using his wealth to try and make a difference for good.
The man is reportedly using stand-ins to purchase sex slaves from the terrorist group and then reuniting the women with their families in other parts of Iraq.
The terrorist group has been funding part of their campaign of terror through selling captured women as sex slaves or as brides in forced marriages. The women are usually killed if they refuse or try to escape.
Critics within Iraq and in activist groups around the world against ISIS have been slamming the man for giving money to the terrorist group but he told a reporter working for YouTube channel StreamDZ that all he cared about was freeing the women and returning them to their families.
One of the former slaves who has been freed told the story of a girl named Jilan who had been one of several that committed suicide after capture rather than endure the horrors subjected to them through ISIS.
“We were 21 girls in one room, two of them were very young, 10 to 12 years. One day they were given clothes that looked like dance costumes and were told to bathe and wear those clothes. Jilan killed herself in the bathroom,” the woman said. “She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was beautiful. I think she knew that she was going to be taken away to a man and that is why she killed herself.”
An activist group inside Syria has reported the terrorist group ISIS brought 13 teenage boys into the middle of a Raqqa street and slaughtered them for watching a soccer match between Iraq and Jordan.
The boys were killed because the terrorists said their watching the match “broke Islamic principles.”
“The bodies remained lying in the open and their parents were unable to withdraw them for fear of murder by terrorist organization,” the group, Syria Being Slaughtered Silently, wrote on their website.
The murders come two days after the group released a video showing them throwing two men off the top of a tower in Mosul. The video shows a terrorist saying the two men violated Islamic law.
The group which released the information about the murders had published videos showing women taken from western countries being forced into internet cafes to call their families and tell them how much they love it under ISIS’ Caliphate.
President Obama and the first lady visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii on Christmas, thanking them for their service to the nation.
The President acknowledged the birth of Christ in his message to the troops.
“So on a day when we celebrate the Prince of Peace and many of us count our blessings, one of the greatest blessings we have is the extraordinary dedication and sacrifices you all make,” Obama said according to ABC News. “We could not be more thankful. I know I speak for everyone in the entire country when I say, we salute you.”
The President spent the majority of the time talking about the end of the U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of the year.
“Next week we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan. Because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the Armed Forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country. We are safer. It’s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again. And we still have some very difficult missions around the world, including in Iraq,” Obama continued.
“We still have folks in Afghanistan helping the Afghan security forces. We have people helping to deal with Ebola in Africa and obviously we have folks stationed all around the world. But the world is better, it’s safer, it’s more peaceful, it’s more prosperous and our homeland is protected because of you and the sacrifices each and every day.”
Over 2,000 U.S. troops died during the Afghan war.
Vice President Biden and his wife visited troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.
Security experts are raising the alarm over an Al-Qaeda plot to blow up at least five passenger airliners on Christmas in a 9/11 style coordinated attack.
The threat is so serious in the minds of British officials that they had considered a total ban on all carry on luggage as a way to thwart the plot.
“We’ve been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They’ve been waiting for the big one,” an airport security source told the London Express. “We have many scares but this one nearly got hand baggage pulled from all airlines. The threat is still alive and real.”
The source says the plot is aimed at European airports because U.S. security measures have increased significantly compared to their counterparts around the world.
The plot reportedly would include radicalized Britons who have returned to the country from being a part of the battles in Syria and the middle east. Some have received terrorist training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative,” terrorism expert Dr. Sally Leivesley told the Express. “They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists. These sleepers will have been from ordinary and not very religious families and not only is the threat from them here but also when they return battle hardened from Syria and Iraq.”
The Islamic caliphate of ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi now has at least 12 militarized allies including nine outside of Iraq and Syria.
NYMag.com reported that the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium identified 12 groups that have pledged to back ISIS although they acknowledged other groups could be supporting ISIS without making a formal announcement.
The report shows that ISIS is taking a large part of the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Taliban splinter group Jundallah has joined other Tehrik-i-Taliban affiliates in Pakistan in aligning with ISIS. The Taliban leaders had long been aligned with Al-Qaeda, so the breakaway parts of the organization joining ISIS are a sign that the former world terror group is losing significant power in the Islamic terrorism community.
One group has been announced inside the Gaza Strip. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which fired rockets into Israel this summer during the terrorist campaign against Israelis, has pledged their support to ISIS and changed their named to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya or The Islamic State.
Groups have also announced their allegiance in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Philippines, Lebanon, Indonesia and Jordan.
A top commander within the terrorist group ISIS has been killed during a U.S. airstrike in Mosul.
Radwan Taleb al-Hamdouni, who had overseen the terrorist organization’s operations in Mosul, died after the U.S. strike according to multiple local sources. He was inside a car and died along with his driver.
Hamdouni was given a funeral that was widely attended by members of the terrorist group according to Mosul residents.
The airstrike comes as government forces focus on recapturing the city from the terrorists. The terrorists, however, are attempting to overtake the city of Ramadi.
“Mosques are asking anyone who can carry weapons to confront the attackers,” provincial council member Hathal Fahdawi said regarding the resident’s attempts to stop the terrorist onslaught.
The terrorists are focusing on taking government buildings and police headquarters.
A new report from the United Nations says that ISIS has stored enough weapons to continue their fight for at least two more years.
The report says that the supply estimate is taking U.S. airstrikes into account.
“According to different sources, the amounts of Iraqi small arms and ammunition captured by ISIL are sufficient to allow ISIL to continuing fighting at current levels for six months to two years,” the report states. “ISIL should have few problems maintaining state-of-the-art materials seized from the Iraqi Government, as most were unused.”
The terrorists have seized Iraqi and Syrian weapon caches from cities in the Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces.
“Both ISIL and [Al Nursa Front] have seized military assets from conventional armies,” the report says. “The scale of these seizures can be grasped by noting that ISIL, in June of 2014, captured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition sufficient to arm and equip more than three Iraqi conventional army divisions.”
The report says that in addition to the weapons, ISIS makes about a million dollars a day from oil sales and over $45 million in the last year from kidnapping ransoms.
The two biggest terrorist organizations in the world are joining forces in Syria to fight U.S. backed rebels.
The Associated Press reports that leaders from ISIS and Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, agreed in northern Syria during meetings to stop fighting each other to focus on destroying rebels in Syria before teaming up to focus on the Al-Assad government.
The two terrorist groups had been fighting to determine who would be the main group attempting to overthrow the Syrian government.
The rebels, who are backed by airstrikes by U.S. aircraft on ISIS positions, are considered to be relatively weak and disorganized compared to their terrorist opposition. A combined force could be too much for the rebels to defeat.
The news of the joining of forces comes as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted the possibility of U.S. combat troops returning to Iraq.
“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee.