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U.S.-backed Syrian forces clash with Islamic State militants inside Manbij: monitor

AMMAN (Reuters) – U.S.-backed Syrian forces fought Islamic State militants on Thursday inside the city of Manbij for the first time since they laid siege to the militant stronghold near the Turkish border, a monitor said.

The British-based Observatory for Human Rights said heavy clashes were taking place in western districts of Manbij after the alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters swept into the city near the Kutab roundabout, almost 2km from the city center.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), including a Kurdish militia and Arab allies that joined it last year, launched the campaign late last month with the backing of U.S. special forces to drive Islamic State from its last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier.

If successful it could cut the militants’ main access route to the outside world, paving the way for an assault on their Syrian capital Raqqa.

Manbij is in a region some 40 km (25 miles) from the Turkish border and since the start of the offensive on May 31, the SDF has taken dozens of villages and farms around it but had held back from entering the city with many thousands of people still trapped there.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Alison Williams)

Two California men convicted of plotting to support Islamic State

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two men from Anaheim, California, were found guilty on Tuesday of conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State militants, one of them going so far as to attempt to travel to the Middle East to join the extremist group, federal prosecutors said.

A U.S. District Court jury in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, returned the guilty verdicts against Nader Elhuzayel and Muhanad Badawi, both 25, after deliberating for just over an hour, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The decision caps a two-week trial.

In addition to convictions on charges of plotting to provide material support to a terrorist organization, Elhuzayel was found guilty of actually attempting to provide such support and Badawi was found guilty of aiding and abetting those attempts.

Those counts stem from aborted arrangements the two men made for Elhuzayel to travel to Syria, where he intended to enlist as a fighter for Islamic State, prosecutors said.

Moreover, the jury convicted Elhuzayel on 26 counts of bank fraud, and Badawi on a single count of financial aid fraud in connection with their conspiracy, according to U.S. Attorney’s Office statement.

Both men were arrested on May 21, 2015, when Elhuzayel tried to board a Turkish Airlines plane at Los Angeles International Airport for a flight to Turkey, from which point he planned to make his way to the Syrian border, prosecutors said.

Elhuzayel’s one-way plane ticket, for a flight to Israel that included a layover stop in Istanbul, had been purchased by Badawi, authorities said.

Weeks before, according to prosecutors, Elhuzayel had tweeted his support for two gunmen who had attacked an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in Garland, Texas, and were shot to death by police.

According to court documents, Elhuzayel previously appeared in a video swearing allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and pledging to join the militant group as a fighter.

Prosecutors said Badawi and Elhuzayel also used social media to express their support for Islamic State. In recorded conversations they “discussed how it would be a blessing to fight for the cause of Allah, and to die in the battlefield,” according to the U.S. attorney statement.

Sentencing was set for September. Elhuzayel faces up to 30 years in prison on each bank fraud count, Badawi up to five years for financial aid fraud. Both men face up to 15 years on each charge related to material support for terrorists.

(Editing by Dan Grebler and Matthew Lewis)

Danish court finds pizzeria owner guilty of fighting for Islamic State

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A Copenhagen court found a Danish pizzeria owner guilty on Wednesday of joining Islamic State (IS) to fight in Syria, the first such case in the Nordic country.

The verdict comes amid concerns of increased radicalization among Muslims in Europe and deadly attacks claimed by Islamic State militants in Paris and Brussels.

The court found the 24-year-old defendant, who holds both Danish and Turkish passports, guilty of allowing himself to be recruited in 2013 by IS in order to commit terrorist acts in Syria.

The man, who was arrested in March 2015, had denied fighting for IS, but admitted to having worked as a baker for the group in Syria.

He is expected to be sentenced later on Wednesday.

Danish authorities have been on high alert since two people were killed in shooting attacks at a free speech event and at a synagogue in Copenhagen in February 2015.

In April Danish police arrested four other people suspected of having been recruited by IS to commit terrorist acts and two others of breaking Danish weapons law.

More than 125 people from Denmark are believed to have joined IS after going to Syria and Iraq, the intelligence service said in October, adding that at least 27 of them had died there.

(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Gareth Jones)

U.S. arrests Indiana man it says planned to join Islamic State

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An 18-year-old man who authorities said planned to fly to Morocco and travel to Islamic State-controlled territory to join the group was arrested in Indiana on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department said.

FBI agents arrested Akram Musleh, of Brownsburg, Indiana, as he was attempting to board a bus from Indianapolis to New York, from where he planned to fly to Morocco, the department said in a statement.

“The criminal complaint alleges that he planned to provide personnel (himself) to ISIL,” the statement added, referring to the militant Islamist group.

If convicted, Musleh faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a lifetime of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, the statement said.

(Reprting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Dan Grebler and Peter Cooney)

Libyan forces take losses in battle for Sirte against Islamic State

By Aidan Lewis

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan forces fighting Islamic State in its stronghold of Sirte said on Wednesday that 36 of their men had been killed and nearly 150 wounded in the previous day’s clashes, one of the heaviest tolls in their month-long campaign.

Islamic State militants had been fighting hard to defend the shrinking territory they still control in the residential center of Sirte, said Abdalla Binrasali, a spokesman at the forces’ media center in Misrata.

“The resistance was fierce and they were firing with everything they’ve got, mortars, rockets and rifles,” he said. “They fear that if they lose more ground they will be defeated.”

Brigades largely composed of fighters from Misrata launched a campaign to retake Sirte from Islamic State last month. They rapidly recaptured ground west of Sirte at the end of May, but their advance slowed as they closed in on the center of the coastal city.

On Tuesday fighting escalated and the brigades said they had taken control of parts of the “700” neighborhood, the broadcasting and electricity company headquarters and a mosque.

The “700” neighborhood is strategically important because Islamic State snipers have been positioning themselves on the district’s taller buildings.

The brigades based in Misrata are aligned with a U.N.-backed unity government that arrived in Tripoli in March. It is seeking to replace two other rival governments that were set up in Tripoli and the east in 2014, and to unite Libya’s many political and armed factions.

Islamic State took advantage of Libya’s political turmoil to establish a presence in several of the country’s towns and cities from 2014.

It took full control of Sirte, the hometown of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, last year, creating its most significant base outside Syria and Iraq. However, the jihadist group has struggled to retain territory elsewhere in Libya.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Russia calls for swift resumption of Syria peace talks

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia called on Tuesday for a swift resumption of stalled Syrian peace talks, saying it was the only way to halt “massive violations” of human rights perpetrated in the five-year-old conflict.

Russia, a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air strikes in September to support the Syrian army and its militia allies battling rebels and Islamic State fighters, and is backing an offensive on rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo.

It supports proposals for a political settlement under which some Syrian opposition figures would be brought into a Syrian unity government – steps which rebels and their foreign backers say do not go far enough.

“The only way to find a solution to the Syria crisis and stop the massive violations is to promptly convene talks with a broad spectrum of Syrian opposition which includes Syria Kurds,” Aleksei Goltiaev, senior counselor at Russia’s mission to UN in Geneva, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Only Syrians, without diktat, have the right to decide (their future),” Goltiaev said.

The main Syrian Kurdish political group, the PYD, was left out of Geneva peace talks which ground to a halt in late April without results.

Goltiaev’s comments followed an appeal by United Nations war crimes investigators for world powers to pressure the warring sides to return to the negotiating table.

Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the U.N. independent commission of inquiry on Syria, said that the Syrian government was conducting daily air strikes, while militant groups including Islamic State and the Nusra Front also carried out indiscriminate attacks.

“We need all states to insist time and time again that influential states and the (U.N.) Security Council unconditionally support the political process,” Pinheiro said.

U.S. ambassador Keith Harper did not refer to resumption of talks, but called for Damascus to release some of the “tens of thousands” of imprisoned Syrians. Many are subjected to “torture, sexual violence and denial of fair trials”, he said.

Pinheiro said schools, hospitals, mosques and water stations “are all being turned into rubble” and tens of thousands of people were trapped between frontlines and international borders.

Syria’s ambassador Hussam Aala accused regional powers of “supporting terrorism” and “causing the failure of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva”.

He said schools and hospitals in Aleppo were being destroyed and civilians killed by missiles provided by Turkey and Qatar to the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

In a report last week, the U.N. investigators said that Islamic State is committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the religious community of 400,000 people through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

“As we speak, Yazidi women and girls are still sexually enslaved in Syria, subjected to brutal rapes and beatings,” Pinheiro said on Tuesday.

Vian Dakhil, the only female Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, told a news briefing in Geneva: “We need the Security Council to bring this report to the Criminal Court.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Full Orlando 911 transcript released; gunman pledged allegiance to Islamic State

Makeshift memorial for victims of Pulse shooting

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Monday released what they said was the complete transcript of the phone conversation between the Orlando, Florida, shooter and 911 police operators as he threatened to strap explosives to his hostages.

The release of the full transcript came a few hours after the FBI had issued an edited transcript of the calls.

In the full transcript, the gunman, Omar Mateen, is quoted pledging allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mateen, 29, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida on June 12, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. He threatened to detonate a car rigged with bombs and to strap hostages into explosive vests, according to transcripts of the 911 calls he made while police tried to rescue people trapped in the club.

The FBI and Justice Department said they had released a redacted transcript of the conversations because of sensitivity to the interests of survivors and victims’ families, and the integrity of the investigation.

But the first transcript led U.S. House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan and other politicians to call for the release of a full transcript after a political battle over gun violence brewed in the U.S. Congress.

Mateen’s conversations with a dispatcher and crisis negotiators were made public as police sought to fend off criticism that they may have acted too slowly to end a three-hour standoff at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“You people are gonna get it and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid,” Mateen said during one of the calls, according to the FBI transcript.

(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Frank McGurty in New York, and Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Fiona Ortiz and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Bill Trott)

Islamic State launches counterattacks on U.S.-backed forces and Syrian army

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – The Islamic State group launched a counter attack against fighters trying to capture the Syrian city of Manbij on Monday, inflicting heavy casualties on the U.S.-backed forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the militants said.

The monitor said the ultra-hard line militants won back three villages south of the besieged city in a surprise assault against fighters from the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces, in which at least 28 SDF fighters were killed.

Two years after IS proclaimed its caliphate to rule over all Muslims from swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, its many foes are advancing on a number of fronts in both countries, with the aim of closing in on its two capitals, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

The SDF were poised to enter Manbij nearly three weeks after the launch of a major assault to regain the city backed by U.S. air power and American special forces, to seal off the last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier

The alliance, formed last year by recruiting Arabs to join forces with a powerful Kurdish militia, fought their way to nearly 2 km from the city center from the western side on Saturday before retreating. [L8N19A08E]

U.S-led coalition jets hit militants taking cover near the large wheat silo complex on the southern edge of the city that has been encircled by SDF forces.

An SDF spokesman said they succeeded in repulsing the militant attack and remained positioned on the outskirts of the city, most of whose residents remain trapped inside and where the militants have planted mines and dug in to defend it.

“The situation is under control. They have many bodies on the ground,” Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the Syria Democratic Forces-allied Manbij Military Council, told Reuters.

“We are at the four gates to the city. The whole city is booby-trapped. After 20 days of the campaign, we have yet to storm the city,” he added, adding that some 2,000 people had succeeded in fleeing the city.

Separately further south, Islamic State militants were also able to roll back the Syrian army which had got as close as 10 km south of the strategic town of Tabqa, an Islamic State-held city on the Euphrates River, in Raqqa province.

The town, some 50 km (30 miles) west of Raqqa city, the militant’s defacto capital, appears to be the first target of a major Syrian army assault in Raqqa province backed by Russian air power that began earlier this month. [L8N18W058].

Tabqa dam and a major air base have been in militant hands since 2014.

Amaq news agency, which is affiliated to the militants, said suicide bombers had attacked Thawra oil field, south of Tabqa, which the Syrian army had captured earlier this week and regained it.

Eyad al Hosain, a Syrian journalist embedded with Syrian troops, confirmed to Reuters the militants had succeeded in gaining back areas they lost near the oil field. He did not give figures on army casualties.

“A very intense attack has targeted army and allied positions in Thwara field that led to the withdrawal of troops from areas they liberated… and their retreat,” al Hosain said.

Amaq also said militants seized a Syrian army checkpoint near a strategic junction which leads to Raqqa city that the Syrian government forces and their allies had taken control in the early phase of its Raqqa campaign. [L8N1923VR]

The monitor, which tracks violence across the country, said the militants had sent reinforcements and cited at least three hundred fighters heading to Tabqa from Raqqa.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Tom Perry in Beirut and Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Separate bomb attacks kill at least 22 in Afghanistan

Officials cleaning the site of the bombing June 20 2016

By Mirwais Harooni

KABUL (Reuters) – More than 20 people were killed in separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Monday, including at least 14 when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying Nepali security contractors in the capital Kabul, officials said.

A Reuters witness saw several apparently dead victims and at least two wounded being carried out of the remains of a yellow bus after the suicide bomber struck the vehicle in the capital.

Hours later, a bomb planted in a motorbike killed at least eight civilians and wounded another 18 in a crowded market in the northern province of Badakhshan, said provincial government spokesman Naveed Frotan. The casualty count could rise, he said.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government in Kabul and its Western backers as Washington considers whether to delay plans to cut the number of its troops in Afghanistan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said on Twitter that 14 people had been killed and eight wounded in the attack in Kabul. Police were working to identify the victims, he said.

The casualties appeared to include Afghan civilians and Nepali security contractors, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said, after police and emergency vehicles surrounded the scene in the Banae district in the east of the city.

He said the suicide bomber had waited near a compound housing the security contractors and struck as the vehicle moved through early morning traffic. Besides the bus passengers, several people in an adjacent market were also wounded in the attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack in a statement from the Islamist group’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Twitter. However it denied responsibility for the attack in Badakhshan.

Islamic State, which is bitterly opposed by the Taliban, said it carried out the Kabul attack but Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed the claim as “rubbish”.

“By organizing this attack, we wanted to show Americans and NATO military officials that we can conduct attacks wherever, and whenever, we want,” the Taliban spokesman said.

The Nepal government was still working through its embassy in Pakistan, which also oversees Afghanistan, to verify reports that its citizens were involved in the attack, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bharat Paudel said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his condolences to his two South Asian neighbors after the attack.

“We strongly condemn the horrible tragedy in Kabul. Our deep condolences to people and governments of Afghanistan and Nepal on loss of innocent lives,” Modi said on Twitter.

Another explosion in Kabul later on Monday morning wounded a provincial council member and at least three of his bodyguards, Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said. It was thought a bomb had been attached to the lawmaker’s car, he said.

The attacks underlined how serious the security threat facing Afghanistan remains since former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month and was replaced by Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The blasts follow a deadly suicide attack on a bus carrying justice ministry staff near Kabul last month and a separate attack on a court in the central city of Ghazni on June 1.

The Taliban claimed both those attacks in revenge for the execution of six Taliban prisoners.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi; Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)

Iraqi camps overwhelmed as residents flee Falluja fighting

By Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi government-run camps struggled on Sunday to shelter people fleeing Falluja, as the military battled Islamic State militants in the city’s northern districts.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the jihadists on Friday after troops reached the city center, following a four-week U.S.-backed assault.

But shooting, suicide bombs and mortar attacks continue.

More than 82,000 civilians have evacuated Falluja, an hour’s drive west of Baghdad, since the campaign began and up to 25,000 more are likely on the move, the United Nations said.

Yet camps are already overflowing with escapees who trekked several kilometers (miles) past Islamic State snipers and minefields in sweltering heat to find there was not even shade.

“People have run and walked for days. They left Falluja with nothing,” said Lise Grande, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. “They have nothing and they need everything.”

The exodus, which is likely to be many times larger if an assault on the northern Islamic State stronghold of Mosul goes ahead as planned later this year, has taken the government and humanitarian groups off guard.

With attention focused for months on Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in May that the army would prioritize Falluja, the first Iraqi city seized by the militants in early 2014.

He ordered measures on Saturday to help escapees and 10 new camps will soon go up, but the government does not even have a handle on the number of displaced people, many of whom are stranded out in the open or packed several families to a tent.

One site hosting around 1,800 people has only one latrine, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch,” the aid group’s country director Nasr Muflahi said.

“WE JUST WANT OUR MEN”

Iraq’s cash-strapped government has struggled to meet basic needs for more than 3.4 million people across Iraq displaced by conflict, appealing for international funding and relying on local religious networks for support.

Yet unlike other battles, where many civilians sought refuge in nearby cities or the capital, people fleeing Falluja have been barred from entering Baghdad, just 60 km (40 miles) away, and aid officials note a lack of community mobilization.

Many Iraqis consider Falluja an irredeemable bulwark of Sunni Muslim militancy and regard anyone still there when the assault began as an Islamic State supporter. A bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion, it was seen as a launchpad for bombings in Baghdad.

The participation of Shi’ite militias in the battle alongside the army raised fears of sectarian killings, and the authorities have made arrests related to allegations that militiamen executed dozens of fleeing Sunni men.

Formal government forces are screening men to prevent Islamic State militants from disguising themselves as civilians to slip out of Falluja. Thousands have been freed and scores referred to the courts, but many others remain unaccounted for, security sources told Reuters.

At a camp in Amiriyat Falluja on Thursday, Fatima Khalifa said she had not heard from her husband and their 19-year-old son since they were taken from a nearby town two weeks earlier.

“We don’t know where they are or where they were taken,” she said. “We don’t want rice or cooking oil, we just want our men.”

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed in Amiriyat Falluja; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Alexander Smith)

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