Nigerian Soldiers Free 71 Women From Boko Haram

A major action by the Nigerian military against the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram as resulted in the freedom of 71 girls and women who had been held captive by the terror group.

Some of the women had been in the control of the terrorists for a year.

Close to 30 people were saved in a raid on Tuesday, with the remainder freed during an assault on two jihadist camps in Borno on Wednesday.  The camps were about 22 miles southeast of the Borno state capital of Maiduguri.

Army spokesman Tukur Gusau said a number of terrorists were killed during the military raid.

The army has been focusing on raids that will free hostages in light of many of the hostages being forced into suicide terror attacks.  Suicide bomber attacks spurred by Boko Haram have killed 47 people in the last week.

The group has also increased their campaigns of terror, killing 830 in just two months.

However, Nigeria’s military spokesman said a new multi-national group fighting the terrorists is about to go into service.

“Any moment from now, the operations or the Task Force will be manifest. In other words, we may not tell you (when it will commence), you will just see it,” Nigeria’s military spokesman Major General Chris Olukolade told AFP, who declined to give further details for strategic reasons.

ISIS Releases Video of Children Calling For Jihad

The media wing of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS has released a video showing young boys being indoctrinated into the group’s extremist theology, training to fight and championing the group’s cause.

The video, “The Cubs of Dilja”, shows children as young as three reciting verses of the Quran directly into the camera for the first time.

A boy asks the camera “where are the martyrs?  Where are the suicide attackers?” and then says “give me my weapon.”  The video later shows the child firing the gun.

The video release Wednesday follows reports the group has been training children to behead people using dolls for practice.

The Associated Press spoke with Yazidi children who escaped the training camps who said the terrorists are brainwashing children into converting to Islam and becoming fighters.

“Then they taught me how to hold the sword, and they told me how to hit. They told me it was the head of the infidels,” the boy, renamed Yahya by his ISIS captors said to the AP.

He told the AP that he was at the camp five months where he studied the Koran and was trained in fighting 8 to 10 hours a day.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 8 children have been used by the terrorists in suicide bomb attacks.

ISIS Claims Kidnapping of Christians in Libya

Three African Christians have been kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.

The group released photographs of the men bound and blindfolded along with pictures of their passports on various social media sites sympathetic to the terrorists.

The International Business Times says the three men were all migrants from other nations:  Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana.  A source told Reuters they were kidnapped in Noufiyah, an ISIS dominated town which was later confirmed by a government source.

ISIS has been attempting to strengthen their hold in parts of Libya, using the vacuum created by the governmental strife to swoop into areas not strongly controlled by the military.  The terrorists have also attacked multiple foreign missions in Tripoli.

The capital city of Tripoli has been controlled by the rebel faction Libya Dawn since last year forcing the government to operate in exile.

Meanwhile, another kidnapping of Christians is believed to have taken place in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that Friar Antoine Boutros, pastor of the Shahba parish, was kidnapped on July 12th along with his driver.  The two men haven’t been seen or heard from since that date.

The Friar had just finished celebrating mass when he disappeared.

Masons Rebuild Timbuktu’s Tombs After Destruction by Terrorists

When radical Islamic terrorists attempted to take over Mali in 2012, one of their initial steps was to destroy anything in the region that did not line up with their radical form of Islam.  One of those locations was a United Nations world heritage site containing a series of Muslim tombs.

“We’re going to destroy everything before we apply Shariah in this city,” a terrorist spokesman said at the time.

Now, three years after the terrorists were driven out of the country by a combined African military force and French military action, there is a sign of restoration as masons have banded together to rebuild the tombs the terrorists destroyed.

The tombs were little more than piles of mud and rock when the terrorists completed their destructive actions.  Now, a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country reported that 8 of 14 tombs have been finished and that the work on the remaining 6 are near completion.

“We have kept our promise. This is why we are here to say ‘no’ to extremism, and ‘yes’ to peace, development, and, at the same time, pay homage to the Timbuktu community,” said UNESCO’s director-general Irina Bokova told reporters.

The mason used traditional building techniques including local stone and banco, a mixture of clay and straw.

The city’s library, which contained ancient manuscripts and other artifacts, is also back in operation thanks to hundreds of residents who smuggled out the valued items from the library and hid them in homes and other locations to keep them from the terrorists.

ISIS Claims Rocket Attack That Struck Egyptian Military Ship

Islamic terrorist group ISIS says their affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula fired a guided rocket at an Egyptian Navy vessel near Rafah that burst into flame.

The military confirmed a frigate had been pursuing ISIS terrorists near Rafah and had “engaged in gunfire” with the extremists and the ship experienced a fire but said no one had been killed.

The terrorists, however, released a series of photos that appear to show a rocket flying toward an Egyptian frigate, causing a massive explosion and fire.  The terrorists claim everyone on board was killed.

The SITE Intelligence Group told the BBC the missile appeared to be an anti-tank missile.  Witnesses say that other Egyptian military craft rushed to the side of the stricken vessel.

The attack is believed to be the first time the terrorist group has launched a missile attack on a ship.  It raises concerns that they would attempt to disrupt shipping traffic through the Suez Canal.

ISIS has been particularly active in Egypt over the last four weeks.  The group claimed the assassination of the country’s top prosecutor, killing 21 soldiers in the town of Sheikh Zuwaid and Saturday’s bombing of the Italian Consulate in Cairo.

ISIS Using Encryption To Avoid FBI

FBI Director James Comey admitted to lawmakers that ISIS and other terrorist groups are using encryption methods as a way to avoid federal investigators.

“This is not your grandfather’s al Qaeda,” he told a Senate panel.

Comey said that ISIS has been effective in using social media outlets like Twitter where they have over 22,000 English-language followers.

“[It’s like a] devil in their pocket all day long that says ‘Kill, kill, kill,” Comey said.  “There is simply no doubt that bad people can communicate with impunity in a world of universal strong encryption.”

“We cannot break strong encryption,” Comey told lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I think people watch TV and think the bureau can do lots of things. We cannot break strong encryption.”

Comey cited as an example the case of Usaamah Rahim, the Boston man killed when he attacked FBI and Boston Police as they tried to question him.  The agents tracking him couldn’t see his exact plans because they went into an encrypted site.

The FBI calls that “going dark.”

“ISIL does something al-Qaida would never imagine: they test people by tasking them,” Comey told the senators. “Kill somebody and we’ll see if you are really a believer. And these people react in a way that is very difficult to predict. What you saw in Boston is what the experts say is flash-to-bang being very close. You had a guy who was in touch in an encrypted way with these ISIL recruiters and we believe was bent on doing something on July 4th. He woke up one morning, June 2nd, and decided he was going to go kill somebody.”

Day of Violence in Nigeria Leaves 60 Dead

Islamic terrorists launched a day of violence in Nigeria against both Christians and Muslims on Sunday leaving more than 60 dead.

Boko Haram bombed a crowded mosque and Muslim restaurant in the city of Jos.  Muslim community lawyer Ahmed Garba told Fox News that 51 people died in the twin attacks and were buried on Monday.  An additional 67 were wounded and remain hospitalized.

A witness said that the bomber at the mosque appeared to be targeting cleric Sani Yahaya.

“He is a great Islamic scholar who has spoken out against Boko Haram, and that is why we believe he was the target,” Danladi Sani told The Associated Press.

The terrorists also attacked an evangelical Christian church in Potiskum along with a campaign of arson against villages that burned over 300 homes.

Boko Haram has ramped up violence in response to a call by ISIS terrorists for increased activity during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attacks and said that he will protect the rights of Nigerians to freely worship.

In the last week the terrorist group has killed over 300 people.

Boko Haram Storms Village; 150 Dead

Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram launched a surprise attack Wednesday night on villages in the north-eastern part of Borno state that has left at least 150 people dead.

The deadliest attack was on the village of Kakawa where the Islamists killed 97 people including women and children.

“The terrorists first descended on Muslim worshippers in various mosques who were observing the Maghrib prayer shortly after breaking their fast,” eyewitness Babami Alhaji Kolo said to AFP news agency.  “They… opened fire on the worshippers who were mostly men and young children.  They spared nobody. In fact, while some of the terrorists waited and set most of the corpses on fire, others proceeded to houses and shot indiscriminately at women who were preparing food.”

The attacks on Wednesday followed Tuesday assaults on two towns where 48 men were shot after finishing prayers.

The two villages attacked are on the outskirts of the town of Monguno which the military recently recaptured from the terrorists.

“They were praying in the mosque when Boko Haram attackers descended on the village. They waited till they finished the prayers. They gathered them in one place, separated men from women and opened fire on them,” a Monguno resident told the BBC. “Many died, some escaped. They then set the village on fire. I saw five victims with bullet wounds who managed to escape. They were brought to [Monguno] on wheelbarrows, before they were transferred to vehicles that took them to hospitals.”

ISIS Destroys Syrian Artifacts

ISIS terrorists smashed cultural artifacts from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra according to a statement from the terrorists and from Syrian state media outlets.

Terrorists caught a man smuggling six ancient statues through Aleppo province and then destroyed the statues after he was taken to an “Islamic court” in Manbij.

“An IS checkpoint in Wilyat arrested a person transporting several statues from Palmyra,” the group said in an online statement. “The guilty party was taken to an Islamic court in the town of Minbej, where it was decided that the trafficker would be punished and the statues destroyed.”

The statues “appear to be eight statues stolen from the tombs in Palmyra. The destruction is worse than the theft because they cannot be recovered,” Maamoun Abdelkarim, Syria’s Antiquities Director, told the London Guardian.

Also reported destroyed was a 2,000 year old statue of a lion that was outside the museum in Palmyra discovered during a 1977 archaeological mission.

“IS members on Saturday destroyed the Lion of al-Lat, which is a unique piece that is three metres [10ft] tall and weighs 15 tonnes,” Abdelkarim told AFP. “It’s the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra’s heritage.”

Abdelkarim said the items destroyed by the terrorists were “priceless.”

Mother Who Lost Son to Terrorist Propaganda Fighting Back

A woman whose son died while fighting alongside Islamic terrorists has come out swinging against radicalization of westerners with a new organization called Mothers For Life.

Christianne Boudreau lost her 22-year-old son when Damien became radicalized by Islamist propaganda and then died while fighting with al-Nusrah, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.  Now she is working to help other parents spot the signs of radicalization in their children.

“If I knew back then what I know now, I may have seen it before my son left,” Boudreau told Fox News. “There are things that only a mother will notice. Maybe your child will disconnect and separate from their social group, or start saving money, whereas they never did before. It is only getting harder, as ISIS is encouraging recruits to hide their religion, so it is really important to pick up on other changes.”

Boudreau said her son was raised Christian but converted to Islam a few years before joining the terrorists.  She said he claimed he had been “wasting his life and had no direction” before the Islamists came along and provided him with a “purpose.”

She says the group is needed because of the stigma that can be placed on families if their children leave for the terrorist groups.

“How can families reach out for help if they are afraid people will come after them?” Boudreau said. “That’s why something like Mothers for Life was needed. To show that parents aren’t always to blame, but that we need to do whatever we can to stop this. We need the politicians to start to listen. We need them to help with outreach and with prevention.”

Boudreau hopes that by going public with other mothers who have lost their sons they can stop another mother from suffering in the way they’ve done in losing their child.