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SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 4, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 32 strikes consisting of 65 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 23 strikes consisting of 27 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, three strikes destroyed two ISIS wellheads and an ISIS pump jack.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three ISIS wellheads and a vehicle.

-- Near Palmyra, a strike destroyed an ISIS pump jack.

-- Near Raqqa, 16 strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units; destroyed 17 fighting positions, three vehicles and an ISIS excavator; and suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 38 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Qaim, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle, a heavy machine gun and an ISIS staging area.

-- Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS-held building and an ISIS staging area.

-- Near Kisik, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a weapons cache.

-- Near Mosul, four strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units; destroyed 13 fighting positions, four mortar systems, four medium machine guns, two rocket-propelled-grenade systems, two vehicle-borne bombs and a heavy machine gun; damaged six fighting positions; and suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed an ISIS staging area.

June 2 Strikes

Officials also reported that six strikes were conducted June 2 in Syria and Iraq for which details were not available in time for yesterday's report:

-- Near Abu Kamal, Syria, a strike destroyed four ISIS oil separation tanks and three oil storage tanks.

-- Near Raqqa, Syria, three strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three fighting positions.

-- Near Mosul, Iraq, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and a sniper; destroyed six medium machine guns, four heavy machine guns, a rocket-propelled-grenade system and an unmanned aerial vehicle; damaged 11 ISIS supply roads; and suppressed a medium-machine-gun team.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

More:
Strikes Continue in Effort to Defeat ISIS in Syria, Iraq - Department of Defense

The gravestone of an unidentified man found dead in a trench in Gogjali and buried by residents.

In 15 of the cases, local armed forces told a foreign journalist that the men were extrajudicially killed by government security forces who had them in custody under suspicion of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliation. In the remaining cases, reported by local and international sources, the sites of the apparent executions all in government held territory raise concerns about government responsibility for the killings. A foreign journalist also said that a government official told them that a Sunni Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi) unit, which is part of the government forces working to retake Mosul, was responsible for the extrajudicial killing of 25 men in their custody and dumping the bodies in the Tigris River.

Extrajudicial executions during an armed conflict are war crimes and if widespread or systematic, carried out as part of policy, would constitute crimes against humanity.

On May 13 and 15, 2017, two groups of aid workers and a foreign journalist said that they saw groups of corpses, 15 bodies in all, by the side of a road between the village of Athba and town of Hammam al-Alil, about 15 kilometers south of west Mosul. The area is entirely under the control of Iraqi government forces. One group said they had driven past the area a day earlier and the bodies had not been there, suggesting they were killed on May 12 or 13.

Local armed forces at the nearest checkpoint told the journalist that they saw Iraqi security forces bring the men to the area and shoot them. The journalist observed many bullet casings in the area on May 15. The journalist found an identity card on one of the bodies and confirmed with a contact within the National Security Service, a security body under the ultimate control of the prime minister, that the name was on their government database of about 90,000 people wanted for ISIS-affiliation.

Human Rights Watch obtained seven photos of the bodies at the site, which show the corpses in various lying and kneeling positions, all blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic handcuffs or fabric.

Human Rights Watch shared these photos with Stefan Schmitt of the International Forensic Program at Physicians for Human Rights, who said that there were no indications that the bodies were dragged or placed in the locations, such as drag marks or shifting of clothing. The positioning of at least two of the bodies was consistent with kneeling prior to execution and then falling forward, he said, and he concluded that it was likely the victims were executed in the place they were found.

An officer of the PMF 90th Brigade told Human Rights Watch over the phone that his forces were holding detainees in bathrooms of abandoned homes in Safina, a village 20 kilometers north of Qayyarah, along the Tigris River, and said they had business with the men they were holding. He said no visitors were allowed at the detention sites. On May 21, a foreign journalist told Human Rights Watch that a government official informed them that the 90th Brigade was holding alleged ISIS affiliates in the same village. According to the journalist, the official said the 90th Brigade had been holding detainees there for at least four months, and he personally knew of at least 25 detainees held there whom the 90th Brigade had executed and dumped into the river.

In several other cases, bound and blindfolded corpses of men whose bodies bore signs of being executed were found in government held parts in and around Mosul, aid workers and journalists told Human Rights Watch.

At the end of April 2017, an aid worker visited the morgue at Qayyarah hospital that had reopened about two months earlier. Human Rights Watch reviewed a photo the aid worker took inside the morgue of a large pile of bodies. On the top of the pile was a man who had been shot. He was lying chest down, with a blindfold and with his hands bound with plastic handcuffs. Human Rights Watch visited the hospital in mid-May and two head doctors told researchers that they had received orders from the health and defense ministers that they were not to respond to any information requests on the morgue, or allow any visitors. They did not provide a reason, but said it was a red line.

In late January, another foreign journalist showed Human Rights Watch pictures of the bodies of two bound men in a residential neighborhood of east Mosul fully under the control of Iraqi forces that he had taken two days earlier. Residents said they knew nothing about the identities of the men or circumstances of their death. Also in late January, Human Rights Watch interviewed a resident of the outskirts of Gogjali, a suburb of east Mosul, who pointed out a spot where he had found the body of a blindfolded man in the mud next to a trench. He and neighbors had buried the body. He said he knew nothing about the mans death or identity.

If Iraqi authorities want civilians who spent over two years living under ISIS to feel safe and protected, they need to ensure that anyone responsible for murdering prisoners is brought to justice, Fakih said.

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Iraq: Dozens Found Handcuffed, Executed in, around Mosul ... - Human Rights Watch

Common Dreams

In Iraq and Syria, US-Led Coalition Killing Increasing Number of Civilians Common Dreams With its latest official declaration estimating the number of innocent people killed by airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. military has admitted killing 484 civilians since beginning a bombing campaign and ground operations to unseat the Islamic ... After tour of Iraq, R.I.'s Sen. Reed warns of post-ISIS dangersThe Providence Journal Strikes Continue Against ISIS Targets in Syria, IraqDepartment of Defense Coalition praises Shia paramilitary forces for their fight against ISIS in IraqARA News U.S. News & World Report -Blasting News -Department of Defense -Operation Inherent Resolve all 193 news articles »

Read more:
In Iraq and Syria, US-Led Coalition Killing Increasing Number of Civilians - Common Dreams

BAGHDAD: The Islamic State has surrendered the key town of Baaj in north-west Iraq, which was a known hideout of the terrorist group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Baaj had been under Islamist militants' control throughout the 14 years of war and insurgency.

After the surrender, the remaining ISIS fighters fled the town on Saturday night, allowing Shia militia forces to enter unopposed.

"The Iraqi flag has been hoisted above its buildings," a statement from the Popular Mobilisation Front, which is an umbrella organisation for pro-government paramilitaries that is dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, announced the "total liberation" of the Baaj district.

The withdrawal leaves just a pocket of Mosul and the border town of Bukamal as the only urban centres in Iraq with a significant ISIS presence.

Bukamal is expected to be a new focus of both Iranian and U.S. efforts.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed Kurdish troops are now within sight of Raqqa on three sides of the city and the battle to retake the city is likely to start sometime this month.

See original here:
ISIS surrenders leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's hideout in Iraq - Economic Times

The indiscriminate slaughter of ordinary members of the public on London Bridge and in Borough Market on Saturday night is fully in keeping with the operational methods of Isis. They have yet to claim responsibility, but it is extremely likely that they were ultimately behind an attack that bears so many Isis hallmarks.

The killings were probably triggered by a pre-arranged instruction to a cell or individual in Britain, the order coming from within the Isis apparatus, and not in response to a more generalised call to its sympathisers to make attacks in Europe and elsewhere. Isis is more professionally organised than is generally supposed, going by its track record over the last five years; its military and terrorist tactics traditionally involve those in charge deciding overall objectives and timings, but leaving local operatives to determine everything else.

Mass murder by Isis of defenceless civilians is frequently carried out in well-known or iconic places to ensure maximum publicity and to spread as much fear as possible. The perpetrators, for the most part, die along with their victims or soon afterwards, making a deliberate public demonstration of their religious commitment. The latest killings in London have all these characteristics, and are very similar in this respect to previous atrocities on Westminster Bridge carried out by Khalid Masood, and in the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi.

The timing of these three acts of terrorism is most likely connected to Isis setbacks and retreats on the battlefield in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Its fighters have lost most of Mosul the centre of the self-declared Caliphate since Isis captured the city in 2014 which Iraqi security forces have been assaulting for seven months. The US-backed Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies have said in the last few days that they are about to storm Raqqa, the isolated Isis de facto Syrian capital on the Euphrates River.

Isis uses terrorism in a deliberately sadistic and attention-grabbing way to counter-balance any perception that it is weakening or is fought out. In return for minimum expenditure of men and resources on its part, it can demonstrate to the world that it is still in business despite its loss of territory. It welcomes denunciations because its savagery is geared to topping the news agenda. For this purpose, Isis films its own massacres, ritually decapitates journalists, burns captives alive or drowns them in cages. Last week, a bomb exploded outside an ice cream shop thronged with children in Baghdad killing at least 15, with some reports saying 30 people were killed and dozens more injured.

It has been suggested that the Western mass media plays into the hands of Isis or al-Qaeda by the wall-to-wall coverage of their crimes. But self-censorship is unrealistic since there is overwhelming and understandable public demand for information about terrorists and terrorism which needs to be satisfied. Where authoritarian governments censor or play down Isis and al-Qaeda acts and capabilities, as they do in much of the Middle East, the result is simply to create a vacuum of news and to discredit any media outlet that is silent.

The terrorist tactics used by the three men shot dead in Borough Market in the midst of their killing spree, have been developed by Salafi-jihadi movements over the last 20 years. The most notorious example of a suicidal terrorist attack of this nature was 9/11, when the World Trade Centre was destroyed, but they were used on a mass scale from beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, though they were not pervasive in Afghanistan until later.

The effectiveness of this sort of terrorism is that the entire population is the target and cannot all be defended. Fanaticism but no great amount of military expertise is necessary, so Isis is not depleting its limited number of experienced fighters. Many of the untrained Isis supporters who arrived in Syria and Iraq in recent years, who did not speak Arabic and had no other useful skills, were deployed as suicide bombers, with more than 600 being dispatched, often in vehicles packed with explosives, in the first weeks of the Iraqi security forces advance into Mosul last year.

A further aim of the suicide bombings in Iraq and Syria is to spread out the security forces and to discredit the government in the eyes of its own people, on the grounds that it cannot defend them. In these countries, the ability of bombers to pass through numerous checkpoints without being stopped is often blamed on corruption, but, even when they are stopped, they can cause heavy casualties by blowing themselves up at a crowded security post.

The emphasis in Britain on seeking to stop Isis attacks by monitoring and neutralising some 23,000 Salafi-jihadi suspects can never be more than partially successful. Only five people are known to have been directly involved in the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge killings, and these may have been selected, or self-selected, because they were not on a list of prime suspects. But the real key to preventing terrorist attacks lies not in Britain at all, but in eliminating Isis sanctuaries in Iraq and Syria which remain the inspiration and guiding hand for Isis worldwide.

More:
After major losses in Iraq and Syria, London terror attack is an attempt by Isis to prove it's still a major force - The Independent