Tag Archives: ISIS

U.S. ramps up Apple fight with new filing in iPhone unlocking case

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to compel Apple Inc to comply with a judge’s order for the company to unlock the encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, portraying the tech giant’s refusal as a “marketing strategy.”

The filing escalated a showdown between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley over security and privacy that ignited earlier this week.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking the tech giant’s help to access the shooter’s phone by disabling some of its passcode protections. The company so far has pushed back, and on Thursday won three extra days to respond to the order.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The motion to compel Apple to comply did not carry specific penalties for the company, and the Justice Department declined to comment on what recourse it was willing to seek. In the order, prosecutors acknowledged that the filing “is not legally necessary.”

But the Justice Department said the motion was in response to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s public statement Wednesday, which included a refusal to “hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers.”

The clash between Apple and the Justice Department has driven straight to the heart of a long-running debate over how much law enforcement and intelligence officials should be able to monitor digital communications.

A federal court hearing in California has been scheduled for March 22 in the case, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

“Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack … Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order,” prosecutors wrote in the Friday order.

“Apple’s current refusal to comply with the court’s order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” prosecutors said.

The two sides have been on a collision course since Apple and Google began offering default end-to-end encryption on their devices in 2014, a move prompted in part by the surveillance revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

But the Justice Department struggled to find a compelling case where encryption proved to be an insurmountable hurdle for its investigators until the Dec. 2 shooting rampage by Rizwan Farook and his wife in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14. Authorities believe the couple was inspired by the Islamic State.

Some technology experts and privacy advocates backing Apple suggest Farook’s work phone likely contains little data of value. They have accused the Justice Department of choreographing the case to achieve a broader goal of gaining support for legislation or a legal precedent that would force companies to crack their encryption for investigators.

The case has quickly become a topic in the U.S. presidential race. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday called for a “boycott” against Apple until the company complied with the court order.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards, Dustin Volz and Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Andrew Hay and Bill Rigby)

U.S. strikes Islamic State in Libya, killing 40 people

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – U.S. warplanes carried out air strikes against Islamic State-linked militants in western Libya on Friday, killing as many as 40 people in an operation targeting a suspect linked to two deadly attacks last year in neighboring Tunisia.

It was the second U.S. air strike in three months against Islamic State in Libya, where the hardline Islamist militants have exploited years of chaos following Muammar Gaddafi’s 2011 overthrow to build up a presence on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Pentagon said it had targeted an Islamic State training camp and killed a Tunisian militant linked to major attacks on tourists in Tunisia.

Among those Washington said it targeted was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian blamed by his native country for attacks last year on a Tunis museum and the Sousse beach resort, which killed dozens of tourists.

“Destruction of the camp and Chouchane’s removal will eliminate an experienced facilitator and is expected to have an immediate impact on ISIL’s ability to facilitate its activities in Libya, including recruiting new ISIL members, establishing bases in Libya, and potentially planning external attacks on U.S. interests in the region,” the Pentagon said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

The mayor of the Libyan city of Sabratha, Hussein al-Thwadi, told Reuters the planes hit a building in the city’s Qasr Talil district, home to many foreigners.

He said 41 people had been killed and six wounded. The death toll could not immediately be confirmed with other officials.

The White House said it could not yet confirm the results of the air assault, but that it was committed to fighting Islamic State.

“It’s an indication that the president will not hesitate to take these kinds of forceful, decisive actions,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Other U.S. officials said they believed it is highly likely Chouchane is dead.

In Libya, photos released by the municipal authorities showed a massive crater in gray earth. Several wounded men lay bandaged in hospital.

The strikes targeted a house in a residential district west of the center, the municipal authorities said in a statement.

The house had been rented to foreigners including Tunisians suspected of belonging to Islamic State, and medium-caliber weapons including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades had been found in the rubble, the statement said.

Tunisian security sources have said they believe Tunisian Islamic State fighters have been trained in camps near Sabratha, which is close to the Tunisian border.

The air strikes came just days after a warning by President Barack Obama that Washington intended to “take actions where we’ve got a clear operation and a clear target in mind”.

“And we are working with our coalition partners to make sure that as we see opportunities to prevent ISIS from digging in, in Libya, we take them,” Obama said on Tuesday.

Britain said it had authorized the use of its airbases to launch the attack.

“I welcome this strike that has taken out a Daesh training camp being used to train terrorists to carry out attacks,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement.

Islamic State runs a self-styled caliphate across swathes of Iraq and Syria, where it has faced air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition since 2014.

Thwadi, the Sabratha mayor, said some Tunisians, a Jordanian and two women were among the dead, and several Tunisians who had recently arrived in Sabratha were among survivors. He gave no further details.

DEEPER INTO CHAOS

Since Gaddafi was overthrown five years ago by rebel forces backed by NATO air strikes, Libya has slipped deeper into chaos, with two rival governments each backed by competing factions of former rebel brigades.

A U.N.-backed government of national accord is trying to win support, but is still awaiting parliamentary approval. It is opposed by factional hardliners and has yet to establish itself in the capital Tripoli.

Islamic State has expanded, attacking oil ports and taking over Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, now the militant group’s most important stronghold outside its main redoubts in Syria and Iraq.

Calls have increased for a swift Western response to stop the group establishing itself more permanently and using Libya as a base for attacks on neighbors Tunisia and Egypt.

The leading Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, urged a better U.S. plan for North Africa.

“Ultimately, we need a comprehensive North African strategy in which we, our allies and our regional partners conduct operations to deny ISIS a sanctuary where it can continue to organize and train, establish an alternate base to Syria and Iraq, and threaten the fragile democracy of Tunisia,” he said in a statement.

Western officials and diplomats have said air strikes and special forces operations are possible as well as an Italian-led “security stabilization” plan of training and advising.

U.S. and European officials have in the past insisted Libyans must first form a united government and ask for help, but they also say they may still carry out unilateral action if needed.

The United States estimates that the number of militants directly affiliated with Islamic State or sympathetic to it now operating in Libya is in the “low thousands,” or less than 5,000, a U.S. government source said.

Last November the United States carried out an air strike on the Libyan town of Derna, close to the Egyptian border, to kill Abu Nabil, an Iraqi commander in Islamic State.

Last June, a U.S. air strike targeted veteran Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar and other jihadists meeting in eastern Libya. His fate is unclear.

The United Nations warned on Friday that efforts to confront Islamic State must be done in accordance with international law.

“The fight against Daesh in Libya should be Libyan-led. It is therefore critical that the Libyans seize the opportunity to unite under a government of national accord,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel and Mark Hosenball and Roberta Rampton in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Dominic Evans and Peter Graff; Editing by Patrick Markey, Alison Williams, Andrew Roche and Alistair Bell)

U.N. aims to air drop food to ISIS-besieged city in eastern Syria

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir al-Zor, an eastern town of 200,000 besieged by Islamic State militants, the chair of a U.N. humanitarian task force said on Thursday.

U.N. aid agencies do not have direct access to areas held by Islamic State, including Deir al-Zor, where civilians face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after U.N. aid convoys reached five areas, some besieged by government forces and others by rebels, said the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for carrying out the Deir al-Zor operation in coming days.

He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching “the poor people inside Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State. That can only be done by air drops,” said Egeland.

“It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind,” Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation, which is far more costly than land convoys.

Egeland, who is head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, later told Reuters in Oslo: “It is either airdrops or nothing. Airdrops are a desperate measure in desperate times.”

A WFP official was not available to comment on where cargo planes would depart from or what they would carry.

Deir al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Egeland chaired a three-hour meeting of the humanitarian task force on Syria, where he said that many member states pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir al-Zor.

Russia is Syria’s main ally in the five-year war, while Western and Arab states support rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million in hard-to-reach areas. In some, starvation deaths and severe malnutrition have been reported.

“We hope to be able to reach the remaining areas in the next days,” Egeland said, adding the group would meet again in a week.

Britain’s foreign minister Philip Hammond said in a statement: “Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is unacceptable. The international community and particularly Russia, which has unique influence, must put pressure on the Assad regime to lift sieges and grant full humanitarian access.”

In the past 24 hours, 114 U.N. trucks delivered life-saving food and medical supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas, enough for one month, Egeland said.

These were Madaya, Zabadani and Mouadamiya al-Sham near Damascus, which are under siege by government forces, and the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, surrounded by rebel fighters.

It marked the “beginning of the task” assigned by ministers from major and regional powers who met a week ago in Munich.

But some “vital medical items” were not delivered, he said.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that government forces had removed some medicines for emergency and trauma care from supplies bound for Mouadamiya, but had allowed a hemodialysis machine for diabetics, medicines and nutritional supplements.

(Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Dominic Evans and Katharine Houreld)

United States wants NATO to step up fight against Islamic State

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States is pressing NATO to play a bigger role against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, putting Washington at odds with Germany and France which fear the strategy would risk confrontation with the alliance’s old Cold War foe Russia.

All 28 NATO allies are already part of a 66-nation anti-Islamic State coalition, so the United States is looking to NATO as an institution to bring its equipment, training and the expertise it gained leading a coalition in Afghanistan.

“It is worth exploring how NATO, as NATO, could make an appropriate contribution, leveraging for example its unique capabilities, such as force generation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said after meeting allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week and referring to NATO’s know-how in drumming-up troops, planes and ships from allies.

Seeking to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, Washington wants a bigger European response to the chaos and failing states near Europe’s borders.

Carter’s call for NATO’s help came as defense ministers from the anti-Islamic State coalition met last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first time, albeit with NATO insignia removed from the walls.

Despite support from Britain, the U.S. push has not been received well by France and Germany.

Given Russia’s concerns over NATO expansion in eastern Europe, Paris and Berlin are worried that deeper NATO involvement in Syria could be taken by Moscow as a provocation that the alliance is seeking to extend its influence.

As the Russian-backed Syrian government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, growing hostility between Russia and Turkey only makes some members of the alliance more reluctant, diplomats say.

Notwithstanding an agreement between Russia and the United States to avoid accidental military air incidents, France and Germany worry Russia’s targeting of opposition groups other than Islamic State increases the risks.

“NATO and Russia would not be fighting a common enemy,” a NATO diplomat said.

NON-COMBAT OPTIONS

Carter has sought to distinguish between Syria’s civil war and the fight against Islamic State, saying the campaign against the militant group will go on regardless, and has pushed allies to accelerate their efforts.

In that vein, Washington tested waters by making a request for NATO to provide its surveillance AWACS aircraft to the anti-Islamic State coalition fighting militants in Syria.

Germany pushed back on the AWACS request. That has forced a compromise by which NATO will send the planes to allied countries so as to free-up allies to send more of their own equipment to fight Islamic State in Syria, diplomats said.

France also sought assurances that the AWACS request did not mean NATO as an institution was being involved more deeply in the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Still, NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove said planning for a bigger alliance role was “a natural shift … a natural evolvement of the thinking.”

“All our nations are under greater pressure, so this is just beginning. There is no detail but there are lots of opportunities that are being considered,” he said.

NATO involvement in Syria could help answer critics who say the alliance has watched passively as Russia has widened its role there. It could also address concerns expressed by southern allies, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, that NATO does not have a strategy to address risks on the Mediterranean, the entry point for huge numbers of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said NATO might not yet be ready to move ahead along the lines suggested by Washington, “but the very fact that we brought together 45 members of the anti-IS coalition, inside NATO headquarters, shows you that we want to see a stronger governance of the coalition.”

“We want to be able to measure the progress of the campaign and to review it more regularly,” Fallon told Reuters.

For the moment, discussions on various options include more NATO training of Iraqi troops and police, as well as strengthening government departments in areas taken back from Islamic State, according a U.S. defense official.

The United States has made clear it does not see a role for Western combat troops. “Territory retaken from ISIL (Islamic State) has to be occupied and governed by people who are from the area and want to live there,” Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Radioactive material stolen in Iraq raises security fears

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq is searching for “highly dangerous” radioactive material whose theft last year has raised fears among Iraqi officials that it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State.

Baghdad reported the stolen material to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in November but has not requested assistance to recover it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford <WFT.N>, an environment ministry document seen by Reuters showed and security, environmental and provincial officials confirmed.

A spokesman for Iraq’s environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns.

Weatherford said in a statement that it was not responsible or liable for the theft. “We do not own, operate or control sources or the bunker where the sources are stored,” it said.

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.

An SGS official in Iraq declined to comment and referred Reuters to its Turkish headquarters, which did not respond to phone calls and emails.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the reports but has seen no sign that Islamic State or other militant groups have acquired it.

The environment ministry document, dated Nov. 30 and addressed to the ministry’s Centre for Prevention of Radiation, describes “the theft of a highly dangerous radioactive source of Ir-192 with highly radioactive activity belonging to SGS from a depot belonging to Weatherford in the Rafidhia area of Basra province”.

A senior environment ministry official based in Basra, who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak publicly, told Reuters the device contained up to 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of Ir-192 “capsules”, a radioactive isotope of iridium also used to treat cancer.

The IAEA said the material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source, 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.

How harmful exposure can be is determined by a number of factors such as the material’s strength and age, which Reuters could not immediately determine. The ministry document said the material posed a risk of bodily and environmental harm as well as a national security threat.

DIRTY BOMB FEAR

Large quantities of Ir-192 have gone missing before in the United States, Britain and other countries, stoking fears among security officials that it could be used to make a dirty bomb.

A dirty bomb combines nuclear material with conventional explosives to contaminate an area with radiation, in contrast to a nuclear weapon, which uses nuclear fission to trigger a vastly more powerful blast.

“We are afraid the radioactive element will fall into the hands of Daesh,” said a senior security official with knowledge of the theft, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“They could simply attach it to explosives to make a dirty bomb,” said the official, who works at the interior ministry and spoke on condition of anonymity as he is also not authorized to speak publicly.

There was no indication the material had come into the possession of Islamic State, which seized territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 but does not control areas near Basra.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the missing material might be suitable for use in a dirty bomb.

The security official, based in Baghdad, told Reuters there were no immediate suspects for the theft. But the official said the initial inquiry suggested the perpetrators had specific knowledge of the material and the facility. “No broken locks, no smashed doors and no evidence of forced entry,” he said.

An operations manager for Iraqi security firm Taiz, which was contracted to protect the facility, declined to comment, citing instructions from Iraqi security authorities.

A spokesman for Basra operations command, responsible for security in Basra province, said army, police and intelligence forces were working “day and night” to locate the material.

The army and police have responsibility for security in the country’s south, where Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias and criminal gangs also operate.

POLLUTION RISK

Iraqi forces are battling Islamic State in the country’s north and west, backed by a U.S.-led coalition. The Sunni Muslim militant group has been accused of using chemical weapons on more than one occasion over the past few years.

The closest area fully controlled by Islamic State is more than 300 miles north of Basra in the western province of Anbar. Islamic State controls no territory in the predominantly Shi’ite southern provinces but has claimed bomb attacks there, including one that killed 10 people in October in the district where the Weatherford facility is located.

Besides the risk of a dirty bomb, the radioactive material could cause harm simply by being left exposed in a public place for several days, said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

“If they left it in some crowded place, that would be more of the risk, if they kept it together but without shielding,” he said. “Certainly it’s not insignificant. You could cause some panic with this. They would want to get this back.”

The senior environmental official said authorities were worried that whoever stole the material would mishandle it, leading to radioactive pollution of “catastrophic proportions”.

A second senior environment ministry official, also based in Basra, said counter-radiation teams had begun inspecting oil sites, scrapyards and border crossings to locate the device after an emergency task force raised the alarm on Nov. 13.

Two Basra provincial government officials said they were directed on Nov. 25 to coordinate with local hospitals. “We instructed hospitals in Basra to be alert to any burn cases caused by radioactivity and inform security forces immediately,” said one.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Jonathan S. Landay and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Pravin Char/Mark Heinrich)

Indonesia plans tougher anti-terrorism laws after Jakarta attack

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia has drawn up plans for tougher anti-terrorism laws following last month’s militant attack on the capital, including detention without trial for up to three months compared with a week now, government sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The proposals are likely to draw fire from human rights activists, who have warned against jeopardizing hard-won freedoms over nearly two decades since the end of authoritarian president Suharto’s rule.

However, officials anticipate little opposition in parliament to the legislation, which would not be as strict as counter-terrorism laws passed in recent years by neighbors Australia and Malaysia.

President Joko Widodo’s government moved quickly to reform the country’s 2003 anti-terrorism law after Jan. 14, when four men attacked Jakarta’s business district with guns and explosives. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault, in which the militants and four others died.

Details of the overhaul have been kept confidential, but two government sources with direct knowledge of the draft law said it would broaden the definition of terrorism and make it easier to both arrest and detain suspects.

The sources declined to be named because the legislation, which could be passed within the next few months, is still under consideration by parliament, where Widodo enjoys strong cross-party support.

“The new definition of terrorism includes the possession, distribution and trade of any weapons … or potential material that can be used as weapons for terrorism acts,” said one.

EVIDENCE IN COURT

The maximum period allowed for detention without trial will be lifted to 90 days and for preventive detention to 120 days, both from a current limit of one week.

The law will also allow authorities to target anyone who recruits members for, or cooperates with a militant group, and to use electronic communications, intelligence reports and financial transactions as evidence in court against suspects.

Indonesians who have joined militant training or participated in terrorist acts in a foreign country will be stripped of their citizenship.

Security officials say about 500 Indonesians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the radical group Islamic State and they estimate that about one in five of these has returned, although most did not see frontline combat.

Over the past two months, Indonesian counter-terrorism forces have arrested dozens of men suspected of plotting attacks on government targets and major landmarks, and last week seven men were jailed for being sympathizers of Islamic State.

But police have long complained that even when they are aware of radical activities, they are unable to detain known militants unless they threaten or actually carry out an attack.

The new law will allow the arrest of people merely “if they assemble to discuss terrorist and radical acts”.

The International Commission of Jurists last month urged the government not to undermine the process of justice by making it easier for authorities to arrest people irrespective of whether there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity.

OTHERS ARE MORE STRICT

Elsewhere in the region, counter-terrorism measures have been more far-reaching.

Malaysia last April reintroduced a law under which individuals can be detained without trial for up to two years with two-year extensions thereafter.

Australia has in recent years passed measures banning its citizens from returning from conflict zones in Syria and the Middle East, while making it easier to monitor domestic communications.

Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims and the vast majority of its 250 million people practise a moderate form of Islam.

However, the Southeast Asian country saw a spate of attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have grown increasingly concerned about a resurgence inspired by Islamic State and officials say homegrown radicals are regrouping.

Security experts say one problem is that high-security prisons have become breeding grounds for militants, with radical clerics being able to preach and communicate with followers from behind bars.

The government sources said one of the legislative changes proposed involves segregating prisoners convicted of terrorism from other inmates to minimize radicalization in prisons.

Terrorism convicts will also be separated into three categories: masterminds or those involved in planning attacks, those involved in executing plans, and followers.

(Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by John Chalmers and Mike Collett-White)

Germany shuts down Islamic center in Bremen, raids apartments

BREMEN, Germany (Reuters) – The northern German city-state of Bremen shut down an Islamic cultural center on Tuesday after police raided it and the apartments of 12 of its members on suspicion of associations with Islamist militants.

Bremen Interior Minister Ulrich Maeurer said The Islamic Association Bremen was closely linked to a similar cultural organization that was banned after some of its members joined the Islamic State (IS) insurgent group in Syria.

More than 220 officers participated in the raids, confiscating mobile phones, computers, hard drives and other memory cards, Maeurer told a news conference.

No arrests were made. Police also searched a car repair shop in Delmenhorst, just outside Bremen.

“This organization has promoted the radicalization of people, and support and following for IS. It really does mean that people who live in our immediate neighborhood are willing to become terrorists overnight,” Maeurer said.

“So I must sound cynical when I ask: What security do we have when they only plan attacks in Syria? We must assume that this could also happen in Germany.”

Bremen authorities banned the Culture and Family Society in the city in December 2014, saying that it had promoted jihad (holy war) and martyrdom among members, six of whom died while fighting with IS in Syria.

The German federal police chief said last month that the number of Islamist militants returning to Germany from Syria and Iraq was on the rise and more than 400 people were under surveillance.

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Nearly 5,700 buildings in Iraq’s Ramadi need repair, U.N. says

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Around 5,700 structures in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi and its outskirts have incurred some level of damage since mid-2014, and almost 2,000 buildings have been destroyed, the United Nations said on Monday, citing satellite images.

Iraq declared victory over Islamic State in December after seizing the main government building in the city, the provincial capital of Anbar. But more than six months of fighting shattered most infrastructure and leveled many homes in the city, where around half a million people once lived.

The impact of Islamic State bomb attacks and U.S.-led coalition air strikes has been documented by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, which compared satellite imagery collected last month with images from July 2014.

More than 3,200 structures in the city center have been affected, with 1,165 destroyed, the analysis showed. Those figures nearly double when outlying areas are included.

It is not clear what percentage of Ramadi has been affected, but the imagery shows none of the central districts has been spared and almost every block has incurred at least some damage.

A U.N. statement called the analysis preliminary and said it had not been validated in the field. Baghdad has not yet declared the city safe for return; Iraqi special forces clashed with militants in some districts as recently as last week.

The cash-strapped government in Baghdad is appealing to international donors to help rebuilding Ramadi, the largest city retaken from Islamic State. But it must first clear explosives planted by the militants in streets and buildings – an effort which also requires funding Iraq doesn’t have.

The United Nations is working with local authorities on plans to rebuild health, water and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, displaced residents are waiting in camps or rented accommodations in other parts of the country.

It is expected to take months to secure the city before reconstruction can begin.

(Reporting By Stephen Kalin, editing by Larry King)

Samples confirm Islamic State used mustard gas in Iraq, diplomat says

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, based on tests by the global chemical weapons watchdog.

A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.

The OPCW will not identify who used the chemical agent. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings have not yet been released, said the result confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by Islamic State fighters.

The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

The OPCW already concluded in October that mustard gas was used last year in neighboring Syria. Islamic State has declared a “caliphate” in territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria and does not recognize the frontier.

Experts believe that the sulfur mustard either originated from an undeclared Syrian chemical stockpile, or that militants have gained the basic know how to develop and conduct a crude chemical attack with rockets or mortars.

Iraq’s chemical arsenal was mainly destroyed in the Saddam era, although U.S. troops encountered some old Saddam-era chemical munitions during the 2003-2011 U.S. occupation.

Syria gave up its own chemical weapons, including stockpiles of sulfur mustard, under international supervision after hundreds of civilians were killed with sarin nerve gas in a Damascus suburb in 2013, an attack Western countries blame on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which denies it.

Sulfur mustard is a Class 1 chemical agent, which means it has very few uses outside chemical warfare. Used with lethal effectiveness in World War One, it causes severe delayed burns to the eyes, skin and respiratory tract.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Peter Graff)

Iraq moving troops, preparing offensive to retake Mosul

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s military said on Friday it was mobilizing troops to prepare for an offensive the government has pledged to launch this year to retake the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State.

Hundreds of forces from the army’s 15th division reached Makhmour base, 45 miles south of Mosul, and more forces, including Sunni Muslim tribal fighters, were expected to arrive in coming days, said Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the joint operations command.

Defense Minister Khaled al-Obaidi told Reuters last month that Iraq would launch the Mosul operation in the first half of the year and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said 2016 would see the “final victory” against the militants.

Some U.S. officials have endorsed that assessment, but a top U.S. intelligence officer told Congress this week any operation to retake Mosul would be long and complex and unlikely to finish this year.

With more than a million people still living there, Mosul is the largest city controlled by Islamic State, which declared a ‘caliphate’ in swathes of territory it seized in Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014.

Retaking it would be a huge boost for Iraqi forces who, backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, reclaimed the western city of Ramadi from Islamic State in late December.

Mosul, however, is a far larger city with a populace made up of many sects. And even in Ramadi, Iraqi forces are still working to secure that city and its environs.

Iraq’s Rasool told Reuters on Friday that troop movements south of Mosul were being coordinated with the peshmerga, the armed forces of the autonomous Kurdish region north and east of Nineveh which are expected to join the campaign.

“Once we complete all the preparations, we will officially announce the date for the start of Mosul operations,” he added.

The United States, which is leading an international campaign in both Iraq and Syria to defeat the jihadist group, has said its strategy is to regain territory at the heart of Islamic State’s cross-border state, take Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, and destroy the confidence of its fighters that it can expand as a magnet for jihadis.

Iraq’s army, weakened by years of corruption and mismanagement following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, is trying to rebuild itself after collapsing 18 months ago in the face of Islamic State’s lightning advance.

(Reporting By Stephen Kalin and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Andrew Heavens)