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It's the first time an official has estimated the total number of Yazidis found in grave sites littered around Sinjar since Iraqi forces pushed the terror group out more than two years ago.

Thirty-five mass graves along with 100 individual graves have been unearthed, according to Hussein Hassoun, the spokesman of the Higher Committee to Introduce Yazidi Kurds.

"The mass graves are about 5 to 10 kilometers apart," Hassoun told CNN. Between 300 and 500 bodies were found in the past few months.

A new mass grave was recently found in the Hardan area of Sinjar, the town's mayor told Rudaw news agency.

Most of the bodies have been left in their graves, so officials can only give an estimate of the total number of dead discovered thus far. Due to limited resources, only 65 bodies have been exhumed, Fouad Othman, the spokesman of the Martyrs Ministry in Kurdistan, told CNN.

ISIS was driven out of Sinjar in 2015, and Kurdish officials believe more mass graves will be found as more territory is seized from the terror group.

A US-led coalition has mounted an aggressive campaign to recapture ISIS-held territory in recent months. ISIS currently controls less than 7% of Iraqi territory, Iraq's military says -- down from nearly 40% of the country in 2014.

Hassoun said intelligence reports indicate that there could be up to 12 mass graves in the village of Kocho, which remains under ISIS control.

The village is among two identified by the UN report as sites of large mass killings, which the report defines as more than 20 men and boys killed at the same time.

Hassoun told CNN that his committee lacked the funds to conduct DNA tests needed to match the dead with family members looking for their loved ones' remains.

He said more international support would be needed to determine the true scale of ISIS' atrocities against Yazidis.

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Official: 1,500 Yazidi bodies found since 2015 - CNN.com - CNN

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A Fox Business host had to correct Donald Trump when he mistakenly said the United States fired at missiles Iraq last Thursday night, not Syria.

The president was explaining to Maria Bartiromo how he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he carried out a targeted missile strikes on a Syrian airfield over dessert at Mar-a-Lago.

I was sitting at the table, Trump said. We had finished dinner. We are now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that youve ever seen, and President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded What do you do? and we made a determination to do it, so the missiles were on the way. I said, Mr. President, let me explain something to you. This was during dessert. We have just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit by the way. Unbelievable from hundreds of miles away. What we have in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing. We are going to start getting it because the militarys been cut back and depleted so badly by the past administration, and by the war in Iraq, which was a disaster

So what happens is I say we have just launched 59 missiles headed to Iraq

Headed to Syria, Bartiromo cut in.

Yes, heading towards Syria, and I want you to know that. Because I didnt want him to go home. He paused for ten seconds, and then he asked the interpreter to please say it again. He said to me, Anybody that uses gases to do that to young children and babies, its OK.' (RELATED: Trump Comments On U.S. Airstrikes In Syria)

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Fox Business Host Corrects Trump When He Says He Fired Missiles At Iraq - Daily Caller

by WorldTribune Staff, April 7, 2017

Iraqs Kurds, who have long been one of the most effective fighting forces against Islamic State (ISIS), are re-energized in their bid for independence, a senior Kurdish official said.

The Kurds, who already run their own autonomous region in northern Iraq, expect to hold a referendum on independence some time after ISIS is ousted from Mosul, said Hoshiyar Zebari, a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) agreed at a meeting on April 2 that a referendum should be held this year, Zebari told Reuters.

The idea of a referendum has been re-energized, Zebari, a former Iraqi foreign and finance minister, said in an interview in Erbil on April 5.

Iraqi Kurdish independence has been historically opposed by Iraq as well as Iran, Turkey and Syria, as they fear the move would embolden their own Kurdish populations to seek autonomy.

Iraqs Kurds are the community to have advanced the most toward independence. Iraq has been led by the Shiites since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, following a U.S.-led invasion.

They run their own affairs in the north, through a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), led by KDP leader Massoud Barzani.

The Kurds have played a major role in the U.S.-backed campaign to defeat ISIS. They have their own armed force, the Peshmerga, which prevented in 2014 Islamic State from capturing the oil region of Kirkuk, after the Iraqi army fled the battlefield.

The Kurds have historical claims over Kirkuk, which is also inhabited by Turkmen and Arabs. Hardline Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias have threatened to drive the Kurds by force from the region and other disputed areas.

Kirkuks Kurdish-led provincial council rejected a resolution by the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad this week to lower Kurdish flags raised since last month next to Iraqi flags over public buildings of the region.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan also warned the Kurds that failure to lower the Kurdish flags would damage their relations with Turkey.

We dont agree with the claim Kirkuk is for the Kurds at all. Kirkuk is for the Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds, if they are there. Do not enter into a claim that its yours or the price will be heavy. You will harm dialogue with Turkey, he said at a rally in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak.

The KRG government rejected the Iraqi and Turkish demands, arguing that the Kurds role in defending Kirkuk against ISIS justified the hoisting of their flag.

If it wasnt for the Peshmerga, there would be neither Iraqs flag in the city nor Kurdistans, KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told reporters in Erbil on April 5.

Hoshiyar Zebari, Kirkuk, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Kurds eye independence in post-ISIS Iraq, Massoud Barzani, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, WorldTribune.com

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Kurds eye independence in post-ISIS Iraq - World Tribune

The president of the Iraqi Artists Society is on a mission to return a painting by Faeq Hassanwho he calls Iraqs Picassoto the Iraqi state. The 1968 painting, a dramatic depiction of Saladins famous 12th century conquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, was due to be auctioned at Christies Dubai last month, but was withdrawn after he sent a letter to the auction house. I am like Sherlock Holmes, says Qasim al-Sabti, the Artists Society president.

In the letter, sent on 4 March, Al-Sabti alleged that the painting had been stolen from the Iraqi Military Club in Baghdad (run by the Ministry of Defence) in the early 1990s and then illegally smuggled and sold outside Iraq. He asked the auction house to help us return it to its rightful owners in Iraq. Two weeks later, Christies withdrew the painting from its 18 March sale. According to Alexandra Kindermann, a senior communications director at Christies, Since then the matter has been investigated by the Dubai authorities, who have been in contact with the consignor of the work and will be ruling over this case.

Al-Sabti is working closely with Maysoon al-Damluji, an Iraqi parliament member and head of the commission for culture and information, who is championing the cause and has enlisted the help of Iraqs foreign minister.

To facilitate the paintings return, proof is required that it was in fact the property of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. This is no mean feat: most of the Ministrys records were burned and looted in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

For al-Sabti, the paintings return is not only a matter of rightful ownership, but also one of Iraqi patrimony. Faeq was a pioneer of Iraqi art, and was also one of my professors at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts, he relates, His work needs to be in an Iraqi museum so the next generation of artists can see it.

But Al-Sabtis artistic sleuthing may be more Don Quixote than Sherlock Holmes.

For the past month, al-Sabti has been conducting interviews, gathering documents from the Ministry of Defence and hunting down historical records to piece together the paintings history. A former military officer told him that the painting had been stolen by a police chief from Saddam Husseins regime, and then sold by his son to an Iraqi gallerist in Jordan. Meanwhile, al-Sabti has been searching for a 1973 issue of al-Rawaq, a periodical formerly published by the Ministry of Culture that featured the painting on its cover.

The paintings origins may be traced back to Iraqs former president. According to Haydar Salem, a former curator at Baghdads Saddam Centre for the Arts (now the National Museum of Modern Art), it is one of three historical scenes by three Iraqi artists that the president Hassan al-Bakr, Saddams predecessor, commissioned in the late 1960s. Salem says that the Military Club gave the two other painting to the arts centre in the late 80s, while the one by Faeq Hassan remained at the Military Club until it disappeared in the early 90s.

Al-Sabti, who has run the Hewar Gallery in Baghdad for decades and has weathered invasions, occupations and terror attacks, notes sanguinely that over 5,000 works of art have been stolen from Iraq, mostly since 2003.

But for al-Sabti and many other Iraqis, the Faeq Hassan work has particular significance. That painting is a famous one in Iraq and its part of our national heritage, says al-Sabti. It needs to be returned to us.

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One man's epic quest to recover a stolen painting by 'Iraq's Picasso' - Art Newspaper

The group's Egyptian affiliate which claimed Sunday's attacks in the Nile Delta cities of Tanta and Alexandria has been centred in the Sinai Peninsula, where it has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

But IS has been unable to seize population centres there, unlike its early gains in Iraq and Syria, and it has also lost top militants to Egyptian military strikes in recent months.

The jihadists have attacked Egyptian Coptic Christians before, but their campaign against the minority picked up in December with a Cairo church bombing that killed 29 people.

In Sinai, IS militants killed seven Copts in January and February, forcing dozens of Christian families to flee the peninsula that borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

"IS and its supporters online have been methodically introducing more radical sectarian concepts to Egyptian jihadists since the December bombing," said Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism.

The December bombing in a church adjacent to the Coptic papal seat marked a shift in IS tactics.

"It was not until December 2016 when the Islamic State began a systematic campaign to target Coptic Christians in Egypt," said Jantzen Garnett, an expert on the jihadists with the Navanti Group analytics company.

"As the Islamic State is squeezed in Iraq and Syria it often conducts spectacular attacks elsewhere in an attempt to regain the narrative, boost morale and win recruits," he said.

In Iraq and Syria, where the group proclaimed its "caliphate" in 2014 as it swept across northern Iraq, IS has faced consecutive defeats over the past year and is on the verge of losing control of Iraq's second city Mosul.

In a video released in February, IS attacked Christians as "polytheists" and promised there would be further attacks.

After Sunday's bombings in Tanta and Alexandria, the group said it had deployed two Egyptian suicide bombers against the "crusaders".

A defiant President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reacted by declaring a three-month state of emergency.

The Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90 million people, have been attacked by Islamists for years, more so after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The Coptic Church was accused by the Islamists of supporting Morsi's overthrow which led to a bloody crackdown on Islamists, although Muslim clerics and politicians also backed his ouster.

Even before Morsi was toppled, jihadists had targeted the Christians, most notably in a 2011 New Year bombing of a church in Alexandria which police blamed on a group linked to Al-Qaeda.

The Islamic State group's "sectarian attacks fuel those ideologically inclined to support the group, while showing it's still 'expanding' despite battlefield setbacks," said Zack Gold, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Center's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

The three church attacks in December and now April also suggest an expanded presence of jihadist cells west of the Suez Canal separating the Sinai proper from the rest of Egypt.

Following the December bombing, Sisi said members of the jihadist cell who carried it out had been caught, but others remained on the run.

"The Islamic State has struggled, with constant setbacks, to establish a sizable presence on the Egyptian mainland over the preceding years. These church bombings indicate they have a growing presence on the mainland," said Garnett.

The IS affiliate's predecessor in Egypt, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, had carried out several attacks targeting the police on the mainland before pledging allegiance to IS in November 2014.

And several IS bombings and shootings took place in Cairo, also targeting policemen, before the December church bombing.

Police arrested several cells and in November 2015 announced they had killed a top IS jihadist, Ashraf al-Gharably, in a Cairo shootout.

-AFP

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Pressed in Iraq and Syria, IS lashes out in Egypt - Times LIVE