Tag Archives: ISIS

U.S. allies tighten grip around Islamic State stronghold in Syria

Syrian Democratic Forces manning anti-aircraft weapon

By John Davison and Ahmed Rasheed

BEIRUT/BAGHDAD – (Reuters) – U.S.-backed militia drew within firing distance of the last road into an Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria on Thursday, part of a wave of new offensives putting unprecedented pressure on the self-declared caliphate.

The effective encirclement of Manbij by a militia called the Syria Democratic Forces is part of an assault launched last week, backed by U.S. air power and American special forces, to seal off the last stretch of Syrian-Turkish frontier.

It marks the most ambitious advance by a group allied to Washington in Syria since the United States launched its military campaign against Islamic State two years ago.

Simultaneously, Russia is backing a separate advance by forces of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against Islamic State in another part of the country.

And in Iraq, at the opposite end of Islamic State territory, the Baghdad government has sent forces to try to storm the Islamic State bastion of Falluja, an hour’s drive from Baghdad.

Islamic State has also lost territory in recent weeks to Kurds in northern Iraq and anti-Assad rebels in Syria as its disparate enemies attack on a number of fronts.

But it demonstrated on Thursday it can still mount deadly attacks deep inside the territory of its foes. It claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed at least 24 people in Baghdad, and was presumed to be behind a suicide bombing that killed a Western-backed rebel leader in southern Syria.

A five-year-old multi-sided civil war in Syria and a weak government in Iraq have made it impossible to wage a single coordinated campaign against the militants. But Washington and other powers hope this year will see the tide turn against Islamic State, which has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since declaring its caliphate in 2014.

SDF SEIZES ALL ROADS INTO MANBIJ

In Syria, Washington has long lacked capable proxies on the ground, but has found its first strong allies in the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), formed last year by recruiting Arabs to join forces with a powerful Kurdish militia.

The SDF launched its new offensive last week against the city of Manbij, Islamic State’s main bastion near the Syria-Turkish border west of the Euphrates River.

The overall aim is to shut the Turkish-Syrian frontier, which has served for years as Islamic State’s only major route to the outside world for manpower and material, and more recently for followers returning to Europe to carry out attacks.

An SDF spokesman said on Thursday his group had reached the last road into Manbij from the west, having previously cut off supply routes from north, south and east.

“We have reached the road that links Manbij and Aleppo, from the west,” Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the Syria Democratic Forces-allied Manbij Military Council, told Reuters.

A monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed that the SDF had advanced to within firing distance of the western road, positioned within a kilometer of it, and were now in effective control of all routes into the city. Civilians in the city and surrounding countryside were fleeing.

Darwish would not comment on whether the SDF was planning an assault on the city itself. He told Reuters on Wednesday forces was poised to enter, but were being cautious due to the civilian presence there.

In southern Syria, where a range of anti-Assad rebel groups include Western-backed nationalists, one of the founders of a rebel alliance called the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front was killed by a suicide bomber suspected to belong to Islamic State.

Saleem Bakour, a colonel in the Syrian army who defected to the rebels, had led rebels in battle against Islamic State fighters who pushed south after being driven out of the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed government forces in March.

“The martyr was one of the toughest leaders who fought Daesh (Islamic State). We are committed to fighting them to the end,” Southern Front spokesman Issam el-Rayyes said.

BAGHDAD BOMBINGS

In Iraq, Islamic State claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed at least 24 people in Baghdad on Thursday. Such bombings have become frequent again in the capital in recent weeks, after months in which security there had improved despite Islamic State’s control of swathes of territory in the provinces.

The deteriorating security in the capital prompted Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to order an assault on Falluja, Islamic State’s closest bastion to the capital, two weeks ago. It began in earnest last week with troops sweeping into southern rural districts, and they entered the built-up areas of the city for the first time this week.

The Iraq assault on Falluja has the support of U.S. air power, but veers from Washington’s battle plan, which called for the government to focus its forces on Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto Iraqi capital further north.

Falluja, where U.S. forces fought the heaviest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq, has long been a stronghold of Sunni Muslim insurgents opposed to the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

Washington fears a sustained campaign in Falluja could bog down the army in hostile territory and delay the recapture of Mosul.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Andrew Roche)

Islamic State faces major assaults on two fronts in Iraq, Syria

Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite fighters fire artillery towards Islamic State

By Maher Nazeh and Phil Stewart

SOUTHERN OUTSKIRTS OF FALLUJA, Iraq/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State insurgents faced major assaults on two fronts in both Iraq and Syria on Wednesday in what could prove to be some of the biggest operations to roll back their caliphate since they proclaimed it in 2014.

In Syria, U.S.-backed militia with thousands of Arab and Kurdish fighters were reported to have captured villages near the strategically-important Turkish border after launching a major operation to cut off Islamic State’s last access route to the outside world.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider Abadi ordered his troops to slow an advance at the gates of Falluja, Islamic State’s closest redoubt to the capital Baghdad, to limit harm to civilians, two days after the army poured into rural areas on the city’s outskirts.

Both operations are unfolding with the support of a U.S.-led coalition that has been targeting the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants, who proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory in the two neighboring countries.

The Syrian operation includes American special forces operating in advisory roles on the ground. In Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition has provided air support to government forces who are also assisted by Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia.

While there is no indication that the two advances were deliberately timed to coincide, they show how a variety of enemies of Islamic State have been mobilizing in recent months in what Washington and other world powers hope will be a decisive year of battle to destroy the group’s pseudo-state.

“LAST FUNNEL”

The Syrian operation, which began on Tuesday after weeks of preparations, aims to drive Islamic State from the last stretch of the frontier with Turkey it controls.

“It’s significant in that it’s their last remaining funnel” to Europe, a U.S. military official told Reuters. Islamic State has used the border for years to receive material and recruits from the outside world, and, more recently, to send militants back to Europe to carry out attacks.

An 80-km stretch of terrain north of the town of Manbij is the only part of the Turkish frontier still accessible to the militants after advances by Kurdish fighters and President Bashar al-Assad’s government elsewhere.

A small number of U.S. special operations forces will support the push on the ground to capture the “Manbij pocket”, acting as advisers some distance back from the front lines, U.S. officials said, discussing the plans on condition of anonymity.

“They’ll be as close as they need to be for the (Syrian fighters) to complete the operation. But they will not engage in direct combat,” the first official said.

The operation will also count on air power from the U.S.-led coalition, which pounded Islamic State positions near Manbij with 18 strikes on Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that reports on the conflict there with a network of sources on the ground, said Islamic State had been pushed out of 16 villages near Manbij. U.S.-led air strikes in support of the ground operation had killed 15 civilians including three children near Manbij in the last 24 hours, the Observatory said.

The assault is being carried out by an alliance known as the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), which is composed of a powerful Kurdish militia called the YPG, and Arab combatants that have allied themselves with it.

The group, set up last year, is the main ground force to receive U.S. backing in Syria, where Washington opposes Assad’s government and has had difficulty finding capable allies on the ground in the past.

U.S. officials stressed that most of the fighting near Manbij would be carried out by Arabs, an emphasis apparently aimed at Turkey, which considers the Kurdish YPG to be foes.

“After they take Manbij, the agreement is the YPG will not be staying … So you’ll have Syrian Arabs occupying traditional Syrian Arab land,” the first U.S. official said.

However, the Observatory described much of the fighting so far as carried out by Kurds.

The operation is taking place ahead of an eventual push by the U.S.-backed Syrian forces toward Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital, which, alongside Iraq’s northern city of Mosul is one of two main objectives to bring down the caliphate.

U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized about 300 U.S. special operations forces to operate on the ground inside Syria to help coordinate with local forces. In a reminder of the risks, one U.S. service member was injured north of Raqqa over the weekend, the Pentagon said.

A five-year-long, multi-sided civil war in Syria, in which global powers back enemy sides, has made it impossible to coordinate a single campaign against Islamic State there.

The U.S.-backed advance comes some weeks after Assad government troops, with Russian and Iranian support, recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State.

FALLUJA PAUSE

In Iraq, where Abadi’s Shi’ite-led government enjoys military backing both from the United States and Washington’s regional adversary Iran, the decision to pause at the gates of Falluja postpones for now what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State.

“It would have been possible to end the battle quickly if protecting civilians wasn’t among our priorities,” Abadi told military commanders at the operations room near the front line in footage broadcast on state television. “Thank God, our units are at the outskirts of Falluja and victory is within reach.”

Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni Muslim insurgency against both the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government and U.S. troops, who fought the biggest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation there. Islamic State fighters, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, raised their flag in the city in 2014 before sweeping through Iraq’s north and west.

Abadi first announced plans to assault Falluja 10 days ago. But with 50,000 civilians still believed trapped inside the city, the United Nations has warned that militants are holding hundreds of families in the center as human shields.

After heavy resistance from Islamic State, the troops have not moved over the past 48 hours, keeping positions in Falluja’s mainly rural southern suburb of Naimiya, according to a Reuters TV crew reporting from the area.

Explosions from shelling and air strikes as well as heavy gunfire could be heard on Wednesday morning in the city that lies 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the Sunni militants after Mosul. Abadi’s initial decision to assault Falluja seems to have gone against the plans of his U.S. allies, who would prefer the government concentrate on Mosul.

“You do not need Falluja in order to get Mosul,” a spokesman for a U.S.-led anti-IS coalition, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, said in a phone interview 10 days ago when the government first announced its plans to recapture Falluja.

However, Falluja is Islamic State’s closest bastion to Baghdad and is believed to be the base from which militants have staged a campaign of suicide bombings in the capital, increasing pressure on Abadi to act to improve security.

FLEEING CIVILIANS SCREENED

Although most of Falluja’s population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with little food.

“The city is inaccessible for assistance and market distribution systems remain offline,” the United Nations’ World Food Programme said. “The only food available does not come from the markets, but from the stocks that some families still have in their homes.”

The military has been detaining men and boys older than 12 who leave the city, to screen them for Islamic State fighters.

“Don’t treat us like we are Daesh,” said 54-year-old Mahdi Fayyadh, among hundreds of families who escaped the city and were now taking shelter in a school.

Fayyadh, who lost a leg to diabetes while under Islamic State’s rule due to a lack of medication, said he fled the city with 11 family members after the assault began. Relatives helped him walk on crutches until they reached army lines, when the other men in the group were taken away.

“I already lost a leg,” Fayyadh said, a battered pair of crutches leaning against his shoulder. “I ask all the good people to not treat us like they (the militants) treated us.”

U.S. officials caution that territorial gains will not spell the end of Islamic State, which has established itself outside of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spreading to Libya, Afghanistan and beyond.

“It would be premature to say that the gains in Syria, even if they’re sustained, will spell defeat for ISIL, any more than the pummeling of al Qaeda in Pakistan has meant the end of that group,” said one of the U.S. officials.

(Additional reporting by John Davison in Beirut, Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. Men made persistent efforts to join Islamic State

A flag belonging to the Islamic State fighters is seen on a motorbike after forces loyal to Assad recaptured the historic city of Palmyra

By David Bailey

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Three Somali-American men from Minnesota made persistent efforts to join Islamic State militants in Syria and conspired to help the group, a prosecutor said in closing arguments on Tuesday in their federal jury trial.

Mohamed Farah, Abdirahman Daud and Guled Omar are charged with conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State and commit murder outside the United States, charges that could result in a life sentence for each if they are convicted.

They participated wholeheartedly in the conspiracy from early 2014 through April 2015, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Docherty told jurors in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

They were going to put themselves under the control of Islamic State, and they knew that they would be ordered to kill and would have to carry out those orders, Docherty said.

In all, prosecutors brought similar charges against 10 men they said were part of a group of extended family and friends who sometimes took classes on Islam together, hung out and also planned to go overseas to fight for the militants the United States has designated a terror group.

Six men pleaded guilty to providing material support to Islamic State, some testifying at trial. A seventh man is believed to be in Syria, leaving Omar, Farah and Daud to face trial.

The trial has exposed tensions in Minnesota’s Somali community, where some believe the men were entrapped.

Docherty said the defendants made “persistent efforts” to join Islamic State and the evidence supported the testimony of friends turned witnesses. Even if you discount their testimony, the tapes show their participation, he said.

“There simply is no entrapment in this case,” Docherty said, adding that the defendants were “itching” to go.

Prosecutors presented two dozen witnesses, plus audiotaped conversations to support charges the defendants planned extensively to travel to Syria and fight with Islamic State, and talked openly of killing people.

Farah and Daud did not present any witnesses during the trial. Omar took the stand, testifying that his taped conversations were boasts or taken out of context.

Defense attorneys said in opening statements that the Islamic State videos were repugnant and the defendants made inflammatory remarks, but the government lacked sufficient evidence to prove the men intended to travel to Syria and fight for Islamic State.

Farah and Daud also are charged with perjury, and Farah with making a false statement to FBI agents. Omar is also charged with attempting to use $5,000 in federal student aid to fund travel to Syria.

Iraqi forces clash with ISIS near Falluja

Shi'ite fighters forces launch a rocket towards Islamic State militants on the outskirts Falluja

By Ahmed Rasheed and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces fought Islamic State militants near Falluja on Monday and bombarded central districts at the outset of an offensive to retake the longtime jihadist stronghold on the western approaches to the capital Baghdad.

Some of the first direct clashes occurred in al-Hayakil area on Falluja’s southern outskirts, a resident said. Iraqi troops also approached the northern suburb of Garma, the top municipal official there said, to clear out militants before turning their attention toward the city center.

Air strikes and mortar salvoes overnight targeted neighborhoods inside the city proper where Islamic State is believed to maintain its headquarters, but the bombardment had eased by daybreak.

Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, speaking on state television, described the government’s advance as “careful” and reliant on engineers to dismantle roadside bombs planted by the militants.

Falluja, a longtime bastion of Sunni Muslim jihadists 50 km (30 miles) from Baghdad, was the first city to fall to Islamic State, in January 2014. Six months later, the group declared a caliphate spanning large parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Iraqi forces have surrounded Falluja since last year but focused most combat operations on IS-held territories further west and north. The authorities have pledged to retake Mosul, the north’s biggest city, this year in keeping with a U.S. plan to oust IS from their de facto capitals in Iraq and Syria.

But the Falluja operation, which is not considered a military prerequisite for advancing on Mosul, could push back that timeline. Two offensives by U.S. forces against al Qaeda insurgents in Falluja in 2004 each lasted about a month and wrecked significant portions of the city.

There are currently between 500 and 700 IS militants in Falluja, according to a recent U.S. military estimate.

Iraqi army helicopters were rocketing IS positions in nearby Garma and targeting movement in and out of the area in order to weaken resistance enough for ground troops to enter, Mayor Ahmed Mukhlif told Reuters.

The defense minister and army chief of staff visited part of that northern axis on Monday, a ministry statement said.

POPULATED CITY

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, also grappling with political and economic crises in the OPEC member state, visited a command center set up nearby to oversee operations, exchanging his suit for the black uniform of an elite commando unit.

Announcing the offensive in a late-night speech, Abadi said it would be conducted by the army, police, counter-terrorism forces, local tribal allies and a coalition of mostly Shi’ite Muslim militias.

Iraqi officials say the militias, including ones backed by Shi’ite power Iran, may be restricted to operating outside the city limits, as they largely did in the successful battle to retake the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi six months ago, to avoid aggravating sectarian tensions with Sunni residents.

State television aired footage of armored vehicles sitting among palm groves on Falluja’s outskirts, a green tracer glow emanating from shell and machine gun fire. A family stood in the daylight outside a simple one-storey home, cheering and waving a white flag as a military convoy passed by.

Iraqi and U.S. officials estimate there are as many as 100,000 civilians still in Falluja, a city on the Euphrates river whose population was three times that size before the war. A six-month siege has created acute shortages of food and medicine, pushing the city toward a humanitarian crisis.

The Baghdad government has called on civilians to flee and said it would open safe corridors to southern areas, but roadside bombs have prevented most of them from leaving.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 80 families that managed to flee in recent days via a main road or through agricultural fields were undergoing screening by the security forces.

It said in a statement that at least three people had been killed trying to escape while 10,000 families were stuck inside “in a very precarious situation”.

Residents living in central Falluja said they had moved at dawn to relative safety in outlying northern areas but Islamic State patrols have since begun limiting movement even between neighborhoods.

Militants were also using mosque loudspeakers to urge civilians to donate blood, residents said.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Blasts kill more than 120 in Syrian government held cities

People inspect the damage after explosions hit the Syrian city of Tartous, in this handout picture provided by SANA on May 23, 2016.

By John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Bomb blasts killed scores of people in the Syrian coastal cities of Jableh and Tartous on Monday, and wounded many others in the government-controlled territory that hosts Russian military bases, monitors and state media said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Mediterranean cites that have up to now escaped the worst of the conflict, saying it was targeting members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 120 people were killed. State media said 78 people died in the attacks on Assad’s coastal heartland.

Attackers set off at least five suicide bombs and two devices planted in cars, the Observatory said, the first assaults of their kind in Tartous, where government ally Russia maintains a naval facility, and Jableh in Latakia province, near a Russian-operated air base.

Fighting has increased in other parts of Syria in recent weeks as world powers struggle to revive a threadbare ceasefire and resurrect peace talks that collapsed in Geneva this year.

One of the four blasts in Jableh hit near a hospital and another at a bus station, while the Tartous explosions also targeted a bus station, the Observatory and state media reported.

Footage broadcast by the state-run Ikhbariya news channel of what it said were scenes of the blasts in Jableh showed several twisted and incinerated cars and minivans.

“ALAWITES TARGETED”

Pictures circulated by pro-Damascus social media users showed dead bodies in the back of pick-up vans and charred body parts on the ground.

The Observatory said 53 people were killed in Jableh, and gave an earlier toll of more than 48 in Tartous.

State media put the total death toll at 78.

Islamic State claimed the attacks in a statement posted online by the group’s Amaq news agency, saying its fighters had targeted “gatherings of Alawites”.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said in an interview with Ikhbariya that terrorists were resorting to bomb attacks against civilians instead of fighting on the frontlines, and vowed to keep battling them.

Damascus refers to all insurgents fighting against it in the five-year conflict as terrorists.

Bombings in the capital Damascus and western city Homs earlier this year killed scores and were claimed by Islamic State, which is fighting against government forces and their allies in some areas, and separately against its jihadist rival al Qaeda and other insurgent groups.

Latakia city, which is north of Jableh and capital of the province, has been targeted on a number of occasions by bombings and insurgent rocket attacks, including late last year.

Government forces and their allies have recently stepped up bombardment of areas in Aleppo province in the north, which has become a focal point for the escalating violence. Insurgents have also launched heavy attacks in that area.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Anger, fear sweep Turkish border town under attack from Islamic State

Children play inside a devastated house struck by rocket fire from Syria in Turkey's southeastern border town of Kilis

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish shopkeeper Mehmet Baykal knew he had less than 10 seconds to dive under his desk when he heard another rocket being fired from Islamic State-held territory across the border in Syria.

Once a safe haven for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, this tiny Turkish border town has now become a frontline in its war. So frequent is the rocket fire across what is in effect also NATO’s front line that residents know instinctively how long they have to take cover.

“It feels like a powerful earthquake. The ground shakes with pressure and then it is dust everywhere,” Baykal, 45, who has lived all his life in Kilis, said as he stood on its main shopping street, several of its stores shuttered.

“Kilis never knew what terror was. We opened our homes to those who fled war. But now the war is at our doorstep.”

The town has been hit by rockets from a patch of Syria controlled by Islamic State more than 70 times since January, killing 21 people including children, in what security officials say has gone from accidental spillover to deliberate targeting.

Some houses have been reduced to rubble. Others, their rooms exposed to the open air where walls have collapsed, are still inhabited. Streets are largely deserted and schools are on an informal break as families refuse to send their children.

“I say goodbye to my wife every night before I go to bed, in case I don’t make it to the morning,” said Resul Sezer, whose five-year old granddaughter was killed two weeks ago when a rocket struck the house she was standing outside.

“The talk in the tea house every day is where the rocket might fall today,” he said. “We want the state to do something.”

Turkey, a NATO member, EU aspirant and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, has stepped up retaliatory fire into northern Syria in recent weeks. But security sources say it is difficult to hit the militants, sometimes firing from the back of vehicles, with the heavy artillery stationed on the border.

Coalition air strikes have increasingly targeted militant positions close to the Turkish border and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last month that U.S. mobile rocket launchers would soon arrive. But so far there has been no concrete sign of the assistance arriving.

In Kilis, frustration with President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party is starting to boil over. Police used tear gas to disperse dozens of residents protesting last month after a rocket attack killed one person and wounded 26.

“Where is the state?” said Omer Ciloglu, an AKP supporter and party member, standing in what was left of his third-floor apartment after the building was hit by a rocket.

“Nobody from the state called me. Nobody told me ‘do not leave your hometown, we are with you’. Instead they say do not gather, do not protest,” he said.

EVEN PRISONERS WANT OUT

Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu say Turkey is taking every necessary measure to secure its border, a promise echoed by Kilis mayor Hasan Kara.

“This is hardly Turkey’s problem alone,” Kara told Reuters in his office in Kilis. “Unless this bog of terrorism is dried up…this problem will continue to hit Kilis but it will also strike other capitals in Europe too,” he said.

Turkey has long pushed for creation of a safe zone in northern Syria but the idea has found little support from Western allies. The United States and Turkey have for months been discussing a military plan to drive Islamic State from the border but there has been little concrete sign of progress.

Earlier in Syria’s war, Turkey, eager to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, faced criticism from Western allies for failing to prevent foreign fighters crossing its border and joining what would become Islamic State. But, as well as the threat to its border, Turkey has been hit by a spate of suicide bombings blamed on the militant group this year.

Erdogan said last week Turkey was making necessary preparations to clear the area across the border from Kilis and that it would not refrain from taking steps on its own if it was unable to get the support it wants from allies.

Lawmakers from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have warned of ‘serious security lapses and breaches of the border’ in Kilis and the surrounding area, calling for the town to be declared part of a ‘terror zone’.

“For the first time, the war is spilling over to Turkey with Kilis coming under attack,” said CHP MP Ozturk Yilmaz, who was abducted by Islamic State with other officials when he was Turkey’s Consul General in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.

“If this continues, we could see Gaziantep, Urfa or other cities going through this with Turkey’s national security seriously at stake.”

Hundreds of Syrians are thought to be among the tens of thousands of people who have fled Kilis over the past few months.

“We already lived through this once and now it’s happening again,” said Mohammed, a 23-year old refugee from Aleppo who is planning to leave to join relatives in the central Turkish city of Konya, far from the border.

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria

File photo of Russian President Putin, Defence Minister Shoigu and FSB Director Bortnikov watching events to mark Victory Day in Sevastopol

By Maria Tsvetkova

NOVOSASITLI, Russia (Reuters) – Four years ago, Saadu Sharapudinov was a wanted man in Russia. A member of an outlawed Islamist group, he was hiding in the forests of the North Caucasus, dodging patrols by paramilitary police and plotting a holy war against Moscow.

Then his fortunes took a dramatic turn. Sharapudinov, 38, told Reuters that in December 2012 Russian intelligence officers presented him with an unexpected offer. If he agreed to leave Russia, the authorities would not arrest him. In fact, they would facilitate his departure.

“I was in hiding, I was part of an illegal armed group, I was armed,” said Sharapudinov during an interview in a country outside Russia. Yet he says the authorities cut him a deal. “They said: ‘We want you to leave.'”

Sharapudinov agreed to go. A few months later, he was given a new passport in a new name, and a one-way plane ticket to Istanbul. Shortly after arriving in Turkey, he crossed into Syria and joined an Islamist group that would later pledge allegiance to radical Sunni group Islamic State.

Reuters has identified five other Russian radicals who, relatives and local officials say, also left Russia with direct or indirect help from the authorities and ended up in Syria. The departures followed a pattern, said Sharapudinov, relatives of the Islamists and former and acting officials: Moscow wanted to eradicate the risk of domestic terror attacks, so intelligence and police officials turned a blind eye to Islamic militants leaving the country. Some sources say officials even encouraged militants to leave.

The scheme continued until at least 2014, according to acting and former officials as well as relatives of those who left. The cases indicate the scheme ramped up ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics because the Russian authorities feared home-grown militants would try to attack the event.

The six Russian militants and radicals identified by Reuters all ended up in Syria, most of them fighting with jihadist groups that Russia now says are its mortal enemies. They were just a fraction of the radicals who left Russia during that period. By December 2015, some 2,900 Russians had left to fight in the Middle East, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, the Russian security service, said at a sitting of the National Anti-terrorist Committee late last year. According to official data, more than 90 percent of them left Russia after mid-2013.

“Russian is the third language in the Islamic State after Arabic and English. Russia is one of its important suppliers of foreign fighters,” said Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, an independent body aimed at resolving conflicts.

“Before the Olympics, Russian authorities didn’t prevent departures and a big number of fighters left Russia. There was a very specific short-term task to ensure security of the Olympics … They turned a blind eye on the flow of radical youth” to the Middle East.

Moscow is now fighting Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria that the Kremlin says pose a threat to the security of Russia and the world. The Kremlin has justified its campaign of air strikes in Syria by saying its main objective was to crush Islamic State.

Russian authorities deny they ever ran a program to help militants leave the country. They say militants left of their own volition and without state help. Officials, including FSB director Bortnikov and authorities in the North Caucasus, have blamed the departures on Islamic State recruiters and foreign countries who give radicals safe passage to Syria and elsewhere.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Reuters: “Russian authorities have never cooperated or interacted with terrorists. No interaction with terrorists was possible. Terrorists get annihilated in Russia. It has always been like that, it is like that and it will be in the future.”

The Foreign Ministry said claims that Russian law enforcement agencies had helped militants were “without grounds.” It said the agencies take various measures to prevent militants from leaving and to bring to account those who come back. It added that Russia has opened hundreds of criminal cases relating to Russian citizens fighting in Syria, and that therefore it was “absurd” to believe officials had facilitated the departure of militants from Russia.

The Interior Ministry declined to comment, saying the FSB was in charge of the issue. The FSB in Dagestan declined immediate comment.

MUTUAL BENEFIT

Allowing militants to leave Russia was convenient for both radicals and the authorities. In the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, the two sides had fought themselves to a stalemate.

The Islamist groups, fighting to establish a Muslim state in the region, were exhausted after years on the run and had failed to score any significant victories against security forces. The authorities were frustrated because the militants – holed up in remote mountain hideouts or protected by sympathizers – still eluded arrest.

Then from 2013 Islamists began threatening to attack the Sochi Olympics, posting videos of their threats online. An attack would embarrass Putin at an event meant to showcase Russia; Moscow ordered a crackdown.

A retired Russian special forces officer with years of battlefield experience in the North Caucasus told Reuters that the federal authorities put pressure on local officials to curb insurgency ahead of the Sochi games. “They told them before the Olympics that no failures would be forgiven and those who failed would be fired. They tightened the screws on them,” he said.

The initial approach to Sharapudinov came from a political official in the militant’s home village of Novosasitli in Dagestan, a region in the North Caucasus. The official, who has since retired, became the liaison between Sharapudinov and Russian security services. He confirmed Sharapudinov’s account to Reuters.

It took Sharapudinov several months to decide whether to take up the offer of a deal. He eventually chose to trust the local official, whom he had known since childhood.

According to Sharapudinov, the intermediary took him to the town of Khasavyurt, where a high-ranking local FSB official was waiting. Though Sharapudinov had been given guarantees about his safety, he remained suspicious, he said. So he took along a pistol and a grenade in his pocket, despite a condition that he should come unarmed.

Sharapudinov had never previously tried to leave Russia, even clandestinely, because he thought he might be caught or shot. And leaving Russia openly would have been impossible because he was on a wanted list on suspicion of being involved in a bombing. If caught and convicted, he faced eight years to life in prison.

But now, according to Sharapudinov, the FSB officer said he was free to leave Russia and that the state would help him go.

“They said: ‘Go wherever you want, you can even go fight in Syria,'” Sharapudinov told Reuters in December. He recalled that the Olympics came up in the negotiations. “They said something like, ‘to let the Olympics pass without incidents.’ They didn’t conceal they were sending out others as well,” he said.

NEW NAME

Sharapudinov had his own reasons for leaving Russia. There were tensions between him and the local emir, who was also the commander of the militant group to which he belonged. When Sharapudinov told his mother of the FSB’s offer, she tearfully asked him to take it, he said, because she did not want him to be a fugitive any longer.

The plan required the involvement of more state machinery: Sharapudinov needed a new passport to leave Russia, according to the former local official who acted as a go-between.

“Since he was on the wanted list, they couldn’t send him out otherwise,” the former official told Reuters.

Sharapudinov said he was handed a new passport when he arrived at the Mineralnye Vody airport in southern Russia in September 2013, where he was escorted by an FSB employee in a silver Lada car with darkened windows. Along with the passport he got a one-way ticket to Turkey.

Sharapudinov showed Reuters the passport that he said had been supplied by the Russian state. It had a slightly different name and date of birth to those recorded for Sharapudinov on an official list of wanted militants. The photograph showed Sharapudinov, who had a beard when he was interviewed for this article, as shaved. He said he had got rid of his beard for the new passport.

While Reuters was unable to confirm the provenance of the passport, neighbors of Sharapudinov and the former official who acted as a go-between confirmed his identity and his story of how he got the document. Sharapudinov asked that the name in the passport, which he uses as his new identity, not be published.

North Caucasus security officials deny that Islamist radicals were intentionally helped out of the country, but agree their absence helped to solve security problems in the region. “Of course, the departure of Dagestani radicals in large numbers made the situation in the republic healthier,” said Magomed Abdurashidov from the Anti-terrorist Commission of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

A security services officer who took part in negotiations with militants from Novosasitli confirmed that a few fighters “laid down arms and came out” from hiding before later traveling to Syria. “Since they disarmed we stopped prosecuting them,” he said.

He said there were cases over a few years but that it had nothing to do with the Sochi Games. He said the security services did not help anyone leave. “If no measures are being taken against them, according to law, they have same rights as every Russian citizen,” he said. “They could get an international passport and leave.”

The security services officer said he did not know Sharapudinov’s case.

SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED

When Sharapudinov got to Syria, he said, Islamic State was on the rise but did not control much territory. He joined a rebel group called Sabri Jamaat with other fighters from Russia and post-Soviet states. They were based in Al Dana near Aleppo, and Islamic State controlled neighboring territory.

According to Sharapudinov, the two groups were friendly toward each other. Later, Sabri Jamaat pledged allegiance to Islamic State, though Sharapudinov said that by that time he had quit fighting and left Syria. He declined to say whether he had seen other Dagestani radicals in Syria.

Reuters independently found details of five other militants who left Russia in similar circumstances to Sharapudinov. The five are either dead, in jail or still in Syria and unreachable.

Relatives, neighbors and local officials gave accounts of what happened to the men. The five shared some common threads: They were all from Dagestan, and Russian authorities had reason to deny them travel documents and prevent them from leaving the country. But according to relatives and local officials, in each case the authorities made their passage possible.

One of the five other militants who left Russia was Magomed Rabadanov from the village of Berikey. A local police officer in the village said that in 2014 his orders were to keep a close eye on Rabadanov and other suspected radicals as part of a new security policy established before the Sochi Olympics.

He said he was told to put potential radicals on a watch list and to telephone them once a month. “If they didn’t pick up, we had to find them,” the officer said in his office, showing a Reuters reporter Rabadanov’s profile on his computer monitor. The police officer said that during preparations for the Olympics, Rabadanov was listed as a person “with non-traditional Islamic beliefs, Wahhabism” –  the school of Sunni Islam known for its strict interpretation of the faith.

At one point, Rabadanov had been detained for keeping explosives at his home, according to his father, Suleiban Rabadanov, but had been released shortly afterwards and placed under house arrest instead.

Despite being under such restriction, Rabadanov was able to leave Russia: He passed through passport control at a Moscow international airport along with his wife and his son in May 2014, his father and the local police officer said. He later turned up in Syria, his father said. Government officials had no comment on Rabadanov.

Suleiban Rabadanov said he received a message on Jan. 2, 2015, from someone who said his son had been killed fighting with Islamic State militants against Kurdish forces near the Syrian town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey.

The father of another militant also said his son was allowed to leave Russia as part of a deal with the authorities. The former official who acted as the go-between in Sharapudinov’s case said two other militants were helped to get passports.

Residents and officials in Dagestan said that once Russian militants arrived in Syria they encouraged others from their home communities to join them. From the village of Berikey, which has a population of 3,000, some 28 people left for areas of the Middle East controlled by Islamic State, according to the local police officer. He said 19 of the 28 were listed in Russia as radicals.

In a police station near Berikey, a Reuters reporter saw a computer file on dozens of suspected militants. The file was entitled “Wahs,” an abbreviation the police use for “Wahhabis.”

Some pictures showed groups of bearded young men from Berikey and nearby villages, posing with guns. The officer said the photographs, found or received online, showed the men in Syria and Iraq.

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(Web version) How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria – http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/russia-militants/

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(Edited by Richard Woods, Simon Robinson and Christian Lowe)

Iraq says Islamic State control shrinks to 14 percent of its territory

Iraqi security forces stand with an Islamic State flag which they pulled down in the town of Hit in Anbar

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Wednesday its U.S.-backed military campaign against Islamic State had retaken around two-thirds of the territory seized by the militants in their lightning sweep across the country’s north and west in 2014.

“Daesh’s presence in Iraqi cities and provinces has declined. After occupying 40 percent of Iraqi territory, now only 14 percent remains,” government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said in a televised statement, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

That calculation appeared rosier than recent estimates from Washington. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Alhurra TV late last month that Islamic State had lost 44 percent of the territory it had held in Iraq.

Iraq’s military, along with Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shi’ite Muslim militias and Sunni tribal fighters, have recaptured several cities in the past year, including Ramadi, Tikrit and Baiji.

Yet Islamic State still manages to launch deadly attacks in areas under the government’s nominal control. On Wednesday, a suicide car bomb in Baghdad’s Sadr City district killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78.

Iraqi officials say they will retake the northern city of Mosul this year, but in private many question whether that is possible.

Iraq’s military opened a new front in March against the militants in the Makhmour area, which it called the first phase of a wider campaign to recapture Mosul, around 60 km (40 miles) further north. Progress has been slow, and to date Iraqi forces have taken just five villages.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Germany to increase military for cybersecurity and fight against Islamic State

German Bundeswehr army demonstrate their skills at Kaserne Hochstaufen in Bad Reichenhall

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany plans to add 7,000 military jobs and 4,400 civilians to its armed forces over the next seven years to help tackle demands such as cybersecurity and the fight against Islamic State, its defense minister said on Tuesday.

Ursula von der Leyen said the move marked the first increase in the size of the German military since the end of the Cold War and was part of a broader campaign that has revamped the way the military buys equipment and prepares its budgets.

“A quarter century of a shrinking military is over. It is time for the German armed forces to grow,” she told reporters.

Germany’s armed forces totaled 800,000 military and civilian personnel at the time of German unification in 1990, but since have shrunk to a target of 185,000 troops and 56,000 civilians, according to German government officials.

They said the goal now was to get away from the strict ceilings used in the past and move toward a more dynamic annual review of personnel needs.

Officials said a recent comprehensive review had shown that the German military needed 14,300 additional troops to cope with new missions. These include the at-sea rescue of refugees, operations in support of a U.S.-led air strike campaign against Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria, and backing operations against other Islamist militants in Mali.

Of those, 5,000 would be filled through changes in existing personnel, with 7,000 to be added in new posts and the extension of existing contracts.

Current plans would leave about 2,300 of the required military positions vacant, although that estimate could be adjusted next year, officials said.

(Reporting by Berlin Newsroom; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. leads 25 strikes against Islamic State

A plume of smoke rises above a building during an air strike in Tikrit March 27, 2015. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – The United States and its allies conducted 25 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Sunday, according to the coalition leading the daily operations against the militant group.

In a statement released on Monday, the Combined Joint Task Force said 16 strikes near nine Iraqi cities were concentrated near Falluja and Mosul, where they hit six units of Islamic State fighters as well as two dozen rockets and a dozen rocket rails, among other weapons.

The strikes also hit a bunker, weapons caches and four tactical units near other cities, including Al Baghdadi, Albu Hayat, Bayji, Habbaniyah, Hit, Kisik and Sultan Abdallah, the task force said.

In Syria, nine strikes near Al Shadaddi, Manbij, Mar’a and Palmyra hit six units of militant fighters as well as six Islamic State fighting positions, four vehicles, an improvised explosive device, and other targets, according to the statement.

(Reporting by Washington newsroom)