Tag Archives: ISIS

Twin suicide bombing kills 70 in Baghdad’s deadliest attack this year

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State killed 70 people in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday in the deadliest attack inside the capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.

In a statement circulated online, Islamic State said it was responsible for the blasts: “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shi’ite Muslims.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition have driven Islamic State back in the western Anbar province recently and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.

But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, most recently on Thursday when two Islamic State suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Islamic State’s recent defeats: “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.

At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery, and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.

Security officials blamed Islamic State, and a news agency that supports the group said it had launched a “wide attack” in Abu Ghraib, 25 km (15 miles) from the center of Baghdad and next to the international airport.

Footage circulated online by the Amaq news agency appeared to show Islamic State fighters crouching behind dirt berms and launching the attack with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Reuters could not verify the video’s authenticity.

Security forces had mostly regained control by Sunday evening but officials said there were still clashes.

Baghdad-based security analyst Jasim al-Bahadli said the assault suggested it was premature to declare that Islamic State was losing the initiative in Iraq.

“Government forces must do a better job repelling attacks launched by Daesh. What happened today could be a setback for the security forces,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

COUNTER OFFENSIVE

Army and police sources said the militants had attacked from the nearby Islamic State-controlled areas of Garma and Falluja, driving Humvees and pickup trucks fixed with machine guns.

A curfew was imposed as a regiment of Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces was mobilized to retake the silo in Abu Ghraib and prevent the militants approaching the nearby airport, security officials said.

Iraqi army helicopters bombarded Islamic State positions in the and Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said at least 20 militants had been killed in the government’s counter offensive.

Fighters from the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, were mobilized to Abu Ghraib to reinforce regular government forces in the area, said Jawad al-Tulaibawi, a local Hashid commander.

Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also called on fighters loyal to him to be on alert to protect Baghdad. Shi’ite militias like Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ were seen as a bulwark against Islamic State’s sweeping advance in 2014 which threatened Iraq’s capital and its most sacred Shi’ite shrines.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles; Editing by Ros Russell)

Officials investigating another suspected case of ISIS using chemical weapons

Officials are investigating if the Islamic State used chemical weapons in a recent attack in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Security Council and officials from the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State are looking into Thursday’s events, the council tweeted on Friday.

According to the council, Islamic State militants used homemade rockets in an attack on the town of Sinjar, which is located about 80 miles west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Dozens of civilians and Peshmerga military forces subsequently vomited, experienced nausea or had trouble breathing and received treatment, the council tweeted. It did not say if anyone died.

Officials did not specify which chemical the Islamic State is believed to have used in the attack.

If the investigation does confirm a chemical weapon was used, the council said it would be the eighth time that the Islamic State used the substances in their attacks against Peshmerga forces.

The council tweeted last March that it believed the Islamic State used chlorine in a car bomb attack in Iraq in January 2015, saying soil and clothing samples contained evidence of its use.

The council has also tweeted it has evidence the Islamic State used mustard gas in prior attacks, saying some 35 Peshmerga forces were exposed during an August 2015 shelling near Erbil, Iraq.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also said it was concerned about chlorine gas being used in various attacks in Syrian villages in 2014.

An OPCW fact-finding mission into the attacks in Syria did not address who used the chlorine.

More than 190 countries have agreed to a 1997 United Nations treaty on chemical weapons, which prohibits their use or production and calls for nations to destroy their existing arsenals.

Four Egyptian Christians reportedly punished for mocking Islam

An Egyptian judge punished four Coptic Christian teenagers who were accused of insulting Islam by making fun of prayers in a video last year, the AFP news agency reported Thursday.

A lawyer for the teens told the news agency the quartet was mocking beheadings perpetrated by Islamic State extremists, and did not mean to insult the country’s most-worshipped religion.

However, they became the latest four people punished for blasphemy under Egyptian law.

Three of the teenagers received five-year jail sentences, according to the AFP report, while a 15-year-old was ordered to a serve an indefinite amount of time in a juvenile detention facility.

Their lawyer told AFP he is planning to appeal.

Egypt ranks 23rd on the World Watch List published by Open Doors USA, a group that monitors Christian persecution in countries around the world. The roughly 10 million Christians among Egypt’s 87.3 million residents face persecution from Islamic extremists and must cope with “relatively restrictive legislation related to religious affairs,” according to the organization.

AFP reported it’s also illegal to insult Christianity and Judaism in Egypt.

The Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians last February, according to Open Doors USA.

Trapped between Iraq frontlines, refugees illustrate their predicament

ERBIL (Reuters) – They are trapped between two worlds – one they want to leave and the other to which they are denied entry.

For three months, more than 500 men, women and children have been living in no-man’s land in northern Iraq, caught in the crossfire between Kurdish forces and Islamic State.

Their dilemma illustrates the wider predicament in which Sunni Arabs find themselves in the new order emerging from the conflict, which has displaced millions and is redrawing internal boundaries in both Iraq and Syria.

Stranded between frontlines in the Sinjar area, the group of Sunni Arabs wants to leave Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, but is being denied passage by the Kurds, who have staked out their territory in the north and fear infiltration.

In telephone interviews with Reuters, three men from the same village, including an elder, explained that if they turned back Islamic State would kill them for trying to escape.

With nowhere to go, the group has settled around 500 meters from Kurdish positions, living in tents made out of empty sacks and taking cover in makeshift trenches when Islamic State fires mortars at the peshmerga.

“The mortars are better than hunger,” said 48-year old farmer Mahmoud. “You can hide from mortars, but the hunger won’t go away.”

Cold, malnutrition and lack of medical care claimed the lives of a child and an elderly woman in the winter months, and two men were killed when they stepped on a mine, the three villagers said. Another infant died during childbirth last week, according to several members of the group.

Some are suffering from skin conditions because they are not able to wash, and the water they drink from wells in the no-man’s land is dirty, so they lay out containers to collect rain when it falls.

For the first two months food was smuggled to them from inside Islamic State territory, but the militants have now mined the route. They now depend on the goodwill of Arab tribes living on the Kurdish side of the frontline who recently bought them basic supplies the peshmerga allow through. They supplement that with edible plants that grow around them.

The peshmerga occasionally give bread from their own provisions to the displaced children when they are hungry and wander up to the berm, but say they cannot let anyone through the front line unless they receive orders from above.

Their commander, Fareeq Jamal, said it was not his decision who was excluded, but “anyone who is present in the area where terrorists are present is under suspicion”.

The Kurds have managed to keep their autonomous region relatively safe from Islamic State, but the militants have carried out several bombings in the region’s capital since 2014 and security services say they have thwarted other plots.

At a briefing in Geneva last week, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Kurdish authorities to ensure the group’s safety and access to basic humanitarian aid.

“If the Kurdish authorities have security concerns about this particular group, they should vet people on an individual basis in a safe location, in full transparency and in accordance with the law,” said Rupert Colville.

“If any wrongdoing is found to have taken place, those responsible should be charged and tried according to the law. Where it is found that an individual has not committed any crime and there are no legitimate security concerns which warrant his or her continued detention under the law, then he or she should be immediately released.”

The Kurdish region has taken in around half of the 3.3 million Iraqis who have been internally displaced over the past two years, putting huge strain on its resources. The number will only increase as Kurdish forces take on Islamic State in their remaining strongholds.

The group of villagers has been stranded since Kurdish forces routed Islamic State from the Sinjar area last November and they fled their village of Golat.

Even if they could return there, the displaced Arabs say they are too afraid of being attacked by local Yazidis who accuse them of complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against their community by Islamic State.

The Yazidi minority was hounded by Islamic State militants who consider them devil-worshippers and killed and captured thousands as they overran the Sinjar area in the summer of 2014.

“You know what Daesh did to them,” said Mahmoud. “As far as they’re concerned, any (Sunni) Arab is either Daesh or related to Daesh.”

Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the peshmerga ministry, said the entire village had sided with Islamic State, and there might be a backlash from Yazidis.

The displaced Arabs insist only one person from their village joined Islamic State and say he is now in Mosul. “If there were a Daesh (member) amongst us we would execute him ourselves,” said Mahmoud. “Each one of us would put a bullet through his head”.

(editing by Janet McBride)

Signs grow of new Western urgency to stop Islamic State in Libya

WADI BEY, Libya (Reuters) – An hour’s drive from the Libyan city of Sirte, a few dozen troops man outposts along a desert road. They are hoping the West will soon be giving them more help to fight a common enemy: Islamic State.

Armed with little more than gun-mounted pick-up trucks, they are a last line of defense against the Sunni Islamist group which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq and which has now taken advantage of chaos in the north African state to seize territory there. Sirte is its stronghold.

“They’re getting stronger because no one is fighting them,” said Misrata forces commander Mahmoud Gazwan at the Wadi Bey checkpoint, a dusty outpost serving as a mobile base for his brigade of fighters.

There are signs of a growing Western urgency to stop Islamic State (ISIS), and Libyan commanders say Western weapons and air strikes will make a vital difference in the coming battle against their better-armed enemy.

But Western officials say just as important is the need for a united Libya government to request more aid and for the Libyan forces ranged against IS to bridge their own deep divisions.

Five years after Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, Libya is caught in a slow-burn civil war between two rival governments, one in Tripoli and one in the east. Each is backed by competing alliances of former rebel brigades whose loyalties are often more to tribe, region or local commander.

Forces from the port city of Misrata – one of the most powerful military factions – have been on the front line of the battle against Islamic State since it took over Sirte a year ago and drew more foreign fighters to its ranks there.

Islamic State militants are also fighting in Benghazi to the east, shelling the oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider. On Tuesday they attacked further west in Sabratha city.

U.S. special forces have been holding meetings with potential Libyan allies. U.S. and French drones and British RAF jets are flying reconnaissance missions in preparation for action to help the local forces fighting Islamic State.

An air raid by U.S. special forces on Sabratha killed more than 40 Islamic State fighters last week, but there are no international plans to send combat ground troops into Libya.

Western governments are wary of large-scale military intervention but fear inaction may allow Islamic State to take deeper root.

A U.S. government source said the Obama Administration was pursuing a two-track policy. One is to try to knit competing factions into an effective government. The other track involves air strikes.

“When you see an ISIL training camp and we see them doing push-ups and calisthenics every day, they’re not there to lose weight,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition fighting Islamic State, also known as ISIL or Daesh, told White House reporters.

“They’re there to train for something, and we’re not going to let them do that.”

CONVERGENCE OF FORCES?

U.S. and European officials say infighting between the rival administrations is blocking U.N. efforts to cajole them into a national government capable of rebuilding Libya’s army.

Tripoli is held by a faction of Islamist-leaning brigades and Misrata fighters who took over the city in 2014 and drove out rivals. Misrata now backs the U.N. deal while some of the Tripoli political leadership is against it.

Libya’s eastern government is backed by an alliance including the Libyan National Army led by former Gaddafi ally-turned rebel Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and a brigade controlling oil ports. Its ranks are split, including federalists looking for more autonomy for their eastern region.

The United Nations-backed presidential council is waiting for approval of its new government from the elected House of Representatives in the east.

Frustration is growing in Western capitals after repeated failures of the House to vote or reach a quorum to hold a ballot on the new government.

“We have always made clear the intention of providing assistance in fighting Daesh. We need to take action where we can, that requires forces on the ground that we can help and train,” said one Western diplomat.

“Patience is very short with the House of Representatives.”

Italy said on Monday it would let U.S. armed drones take off from its soil to defend U.S.-led forces against Islamic State.

French special forces and intelligence commandos are engaged in covert operations against IS in Libya in conjunction with the United States and Britain, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Wednesday. The French defense ministry declined to comment.

During the recent fighting in Sabratha, there were signs of cooperation among forces from Zintan and Sabratha brigades who back opposing sides in the wider national conflict.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, sees a convergence of forces who may agree on little but can work together against IS.

Misratan forces backed the new U.N.-supported government and could potentially work with rivals from Haftar’s Libyan National Army and the oil guards, who are both aligned with the eastern government, Toaldo said.

“We are confident here we can win,” says Mohamed al-Oreifi, one of the outpost commanders near the Sirte front line. “But we need support and new weapons.”

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and Mark Hosenball and Roberta Rampton in Washington; writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. training African police to counter new jihadist threats

THIES, Senegal (Reuters) – Ahead of a drill to teach West African police about forensics by blowing up a car filled with crash test dummies posing as suicide bombers, FBI agents met an unexpected question: why bother to investigate if the militants are already dead?

The query from a Senegalese officer demonstrates the steep learning curve for the region’s security forces if they are to keep pace with increasingly brazen and sophisticated jihadists moving in from the north-central Sahara and possibly Libya.

Since Islamic State’s entry into Libya last year, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has responded with a series of attacks to bolster its claim of primacy in the western Sahara.

Western governments worry the Islamic State presence in Africa may lead to ties with West Africa’s Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the group last year, and could herald a drive south. Some al Qaeda-linked brigades also appear to be merging.

Reflecting the changing threat and after major attacks in the last four months in Mali and Burkina Faso in which at least 50 people, including many Westerners, were killed, this year’s annual “Flintlock” counter-terrorism exercises have included police training for the first time.

Recent West African efforts have revealed blunders, security sources say.

So many people touched an assault rifle used by militants in the Bamako attack, for example, that it was impossible to take fingerprints.

In January, an AQIM death row fugitive who fled Mauritania via Senegal was able to travel 300 miles before being stopped in Guinea, acquiring arms and accomplices on the way, thanks in part to bungled communication between Senegalese and Mauritanian officials, a Senegalese security source said.

U.S. experts say three main shortfalls need to be addressed: intelligence, cross-border cooperation and reaction times.

“In most African countries the capacity to respond to these sorts of incidents is middle-of-the-road at best,” said a senior U.S. military officer, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his remarks.

“But they are very eager to learn.”

NEW TECHNIQUES

Security experts report a growing sophistication since last year in the tactics and weaponry used by AQIM and associated groups, which they say may be born of competition with Islamic State.

An armored suicide truck, albeit a makeshift one, was used in an attack on a U.N. base in Kidal in northern Mali that killed seven peacekeepers this month.

Boko Haram suicide vests now often include hidden cell phones so they can be remotely detonated and increasingly resemble those used in the Middle East, weapons experts say.

Until last year, desert militants, aiming by moonlight, had fired rockets from far away and mostly missed their targets.

As the threat grows, there are signs the U.S. is increasing its commitments.

Already, there are up to 1,200 special operations forces on the continent, providing training, operating drones and, very rarely, intervening directly such as in the Ouagadougou siege.

Last week, the U.S. launched its second set of air strikes in Libya in three months in what risk management consultancy Signal Risk’s director Ryan Cummings called a “point of departure” from a strategy previously characterized by a limited appetite for offensive roles in Africa.

Washington is proposing $200 million in new military spending for North and West Africa. Both the United States and France, which has 3,500 troops in the region, intend to boost support to regional security body Group of Five Sahel, diplomats and officials say.

Three sources familiar with the agreement told Reuters that the United States and Senegal had agreed a new accord granting rights to establish a base here in case of an emergency.

Intelligence sharing among the different countries of West Africa will be key, security officials said.

The United States plans to set up the first of many “intelligence fusion” centers at the headquarters for a regional anti-Boko Haram task force in Chad to allow countries to share sensitive information in a secure environment.

“If we continue to invest in the development of regional platforms, it will pay huge dividends over the next year, but it cannot be done without a comprehensive approach,” said Commander for Special Operations Command Africa Brigadier General Donald Bolduc.

Overcoming suspicions between neighbors and historic rivals will be a challenge, however.

“The sharing of intelligence between neighbors is not where it should be and this is critically important,” said a Western intelligence source at Flintlock.

(Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Islamic State tightens grip on Syrian government road to Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters were reported to have tightened their grip on a Syrian government supply route to Aleppo on Tuesday as the army battled to retake the road, which is important to its campaign to retake the city.

As Damascus accepted a U.S.-Russian plan for a “cessation of hostilities” between the government and rebels due to take effect on Saturday, heavy Russian air strikes were also said to be targeting one of the last roads into opposition-held parts of Aleppo.

The plan announced by the United States and Russia on Monday is the result of intensive diplomacy to end the five-year-long war. But rebels say the exclusion of Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front will give the government a pretext to keep attacking them because its fighters are widely spread in opposition-held areas.

The Syrian government, backed by Russian air strikes since September, said it would coordinate with Russia to define which groups and areas would be included in what it called a “halt to combat operations”. Damascus also warned that continued foreign support for the rebels could wreck the agreement.

The Russian intervention has turned the momentum President Bashar al-Assad’s way in a conflict that has splintered Syria and mostly reduced his control to the big cities of the west and the coast.

Damascus, backed by ground forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is making significant advances, including near the city of Aleppo which is split between rebel- and government-control.

The Islamic State assault has targeted a desert road which the government has been forced to use to reach Aleppo because insurgents still control the main highway further west.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports the war using a network of sources on the ground, said the road remained cut for a second day. A Syrian military source told Reuters army operations were continuing to repel the attack.

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters: “The clashes are ongoing, the regime recovered four of seven (lost positions). It is still cut.” It later reported IS had seized control of the village of Khanaser on the road.

Islamic State, which controls swathes of eastern and central Syria, differs from rebels fighting Assad in western Syria because its priority is expanding its own “caliphate” rather than reforming Syria through Assad’s removal from power.

The group has escalated attacks on government targets in recent days. On Sunday, it staged some of the deadliest suicide bomb attacks of the war, killing around 150 people in government-controlled Damascus and Homs.

A U.S.-Russian statement said the two countries and others would work together to delineate the territory held by IS, Nusra Front, and other militant groups excluded from the truce.

In Geneva, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said: “This is a cessation of hostilities that we hope will take force very quickly and hope provide breathing space for intra-Syrian talks to resume.”

RIGHT TO RESPOND

Damascus stressed the importance of sealing the borders and halting foreign support for armed groups and “preventing these organizations from strengthening their capabilities or changing their positions, in order to avoid what may lead to wrecking this agreement”.

The Syrian military reserved the right to “respond to any breach by these groups against Syrian citizens or against its armed forces”, a government statement added.

The main, Saudi-backed Syrian opposition body said late on Monday it “consented to” the international efforts, but said acceptance of a truce was conditional on an end to blockades of rebel-held areas, free access for humanitarian aid, a release of detainees, and a halt to air strikes against civilians.

The opposition High Negotiations Committee also said it did not expect Assad, Russia, or Iran to cease hostilities.

The powerful Kurdish YPG militia, which is currently fighting both Islamic State and rebels near Aleppo, is “seriously examining” the U.S.-Russian plan to decide whether to take part, a YPG official told Reuters. “There is so far no decision,” said the official, declining to be identified because he is not an official YPG spokesman.

The YPG, an ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, has recently received Russian air support during an offensive against rebels near Aleppo.

Britain said on Tuesday it had seen disturbing evidence that Syrian Kurdish forces were coordinating with the Syrian government and the Russian air force.

Turkey, a major sponsor of the insurgency against Assad, said it welcomed plans for the halt to fighting but was not optimistic about a positive outcome to talks on a political transition.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Ankara had reservations about actions that Russian forces could take against Syria’s moderate opposition and civilians. Turkey is worried about the expansion of YPG influence in Syria, fearing it could fuel separatism among its own Kurdish population.

A rebel fighter in the Aleppo area said he did not expect the ceasefire plan to work.

“The Russian jets will not stop bombing on the pretext of Nusra and the Islamic State organization, and will keep bombing civilians and the rest of the factions with this pretext,” said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter with the Ajnad al-Sham group.

“Everything that is happening is pressure to extend the life of the regime,” he told Reuters from the Aleppo area.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Libya official warns of more Islamic State attacks on oil facilities

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s oil facilities are likely to suffer further attacks unless a United Nations-backed unity government is approved, the head of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Mustafa Sanalla also said suspected Islamic State militants had staged their latest attack against Libya’s oil infrastructure last Thursday or Friday, setting fire to one production tank and damaging another at the Fida oil field.

Fida lies south-west of the oil terminals of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, where militants launched repeated assaults and inflicted major damage last month.

“If there is no new government I think the situation will get worse. I believe there will be more attacks on the oil facilities,” Sanalla said.

Libya has been mired in conflict following an uprising that toppled veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. Two rival governments, backed by loose alliances of armed groups, are now vying for power and a share of the OPEC member’s oil wealth.

Islamic State militants have taken advantage of the security vacuum to establish a foothold in Libya, seizing Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte and launching attacks in several other cities.

A unity government is trying to win approval from Libya’s internationally recognized parliament in eastern Libya, known as the House of Representatives (HOR). But the government remains plagued by divisions and has faced opposition from hardliners on both sides of Libya’s political divide.

“We are urging the HOR to approve this government to put an end to these troubles we have regarding security in the oil industry,” Sanalla said.

UNIFIED SECURITY FORCE

Total current production generally stands at 360,000-370,000 barrels per day, Sanalla said, though sometimes production drops to around 300,000 bpd because of technical problems.

That is less than a quarter of the 1.6 million bpd that Libya was producing before the 2011 uprising. About 100,000 barrels per day are refined locally for domestic consumption, with the rest exported.

Sanalla said the NOC in Tripoli faced a “daily battle” to prevent authorities in eastern Libya from selling oil through parallel structures.

But Sanalla said he was “optimistic” that Libya’s total production could recover quickly under a unity government, with an additional 400,000 bpd or more coming on stream from fields at El Sharara and El Feel in south-western Libya.

Sanalla said a unity government should set up a unified security force to protect facilities. This could incorporate the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a largely independent brigade that controls the area around Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, he added.

The PFG fought militants at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf last month, but Sanalla said their defenses were weak and that 20 of the 32 oil storage tanks at the terminals had been destroyed or badly damaged. Repairing those installations will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

(Writing by Aidan Lewis, editing by Gareth Jones)

Study finds Islamic State using more child soldiers, 89 die in 13 months

At least 89 children have died in the past 13 months while acting on behalf of the Islamic State, according to a new study suggesting the group has more child soldiers than previously thought.

The study, published Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, says that the Islamic State “is mobilizing children and youth at an increasing and unprecedented rate.”

It focuses on the 89 children and teenagers who the Islamic State has publicly eulogized as martyrs since January 1, 2015, shining a light on how the group uses children in its operations.

The study found children are largely being given the same roles as their adult counterparts and “are fighting alongside, rather than in lieu of” men. The findings suggest the Islamic State’s “systematic use of children is more widespread than previously imagined,” the report states.

The Islamic State does not publicize the ages of the deceased children, so the researchers had to rely on photographs to determine their approximate ages. They found 60 percent of the child soldiers were believed to be adolescents (ages 12 to 16), 6 percent appeared to be pre-adolescent (ages 8 to 12) and the remaining 34 percent seemed to be older adolescents (ages 16 to 21).

Many of the children died setting off vehicle bombs (39 percent) or as soldiers on the battlefield (33 percent). Another 18 percent died in “inghimasi” attacks, where a mix of adult and child soldiers shoot their way into enemy territory before blowing themselves up. The others were killed while working as propagandists among Islamic State units or in attacks against civilians.

The study found that 87 percent of the children were purportedly killed in Iraq or Syria, where the group controls large portions of land, while the others died in Libya, Nigeria and Yemen.

Researchers acknowledge the data isn’t all-encompassing — they noted the Islamic State did not publicly release photographic propaganda about every one of its suicide attacks last month, for example — but they maintain the report is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date.

They also warned that the Islamic State utilization of child soldiers appears to be on the rise, saying 11 were killed in suicide missions last month compared to just six during January 2015.

A spokesman for the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State has said Iraqi forces have regained significant amounts of territory the insurgency once held in Iraq and Syria, and airstrikes recently destroyed “significant amounts” of cash the group used to fund its operations.

The report suggests a potential link between recent military pressure and the uptick in deaths.

“It seems plausible that, as military pressure against the Islamic State has increased in recent months, such operations — especially those of the inghimasi variety — are becoming more tactically attractive,” it states. “They represent an effective form of psychological warfare. … We can expect that as their implementation increases, so too will the reported rate of child and youth deaths.”

Missing radioactive material found dumped in south Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.

The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.

Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.

It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 9 miles southwest of Basra.

“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device,” the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.

“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 percent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”

A security official close to the investigation said it had been established soon after the material was stolen that it was being kept in Zubair and controls had been tightened to prevent it being taken out of the town.

“After failing to take it out of the town, the perpetrators decided to dump it,” the security official said. “I assure you it is only a matter of time before we arrest those who stole the radioactive device.”

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the IAEA, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

SGS and Weatherford have both denied responsibility for the disappearance of the material last year.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Susan Thomas and Digby Lidstone)