BBC News Elderly Yazidis released by IS militants in Iraq
The Islamic State (IS) militant group has freed at least 200 members of the Yazidi religious community in northern Iraq. The group of mainly elderly Yazidis crossed out of IS-controlled territory...
By: George Parr
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BBC News Elderly Yazidis released by IS militants in Iraq - Video
Isis releases hundreds of Yazidi prisoners in Iraq
CNN #39;s Ivan Watson reports that Isis has released over 200 elderly and infant Yazidi prisoners taken over six months ago.
By: CNN
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Isis releases hundreds of Yazidi prisoners in Iraq - Video
Gen. Jack Keane: U.S. Should Change Strategy In Syria, Iraq To Take Out ISIS
Fox News military analyst Gen. Jack Keane weighs in. Fox News: America #39;s News HQ http://www.foxnews.com/americasnewshq/index.html Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/ Fox News Insider: The ...
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Gen. Jack Keane: U.S. Should Change Strategy In Syria, Iraq To Take Out ISIS - Video
Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Soleimani seriously injured in Iraq by ISIS suicide squad
Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards elite Al Qods Brigades, and senior officer of Iranian forces in Iraq, was seriously injured in a targeted attack by an ISIS suicide squad, debkafile reports from military and intelligence sources in the Gulf.
The attack took place near Samarra in central Iraq, after agents of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant managed to infiltrate his command staff and get close enough to their target before blowing themselves up. The date of the assassination attempt has not been revealed. Soleimani, 58, who is a member of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis closest circle and a pivotal figure in Iranian military and intelligence, was rushed to hospital in Tehran.
In an exclusive report Tuesday, Jan. 13, debkafile first revealed that ISIS had adopted a new tactic of systematically targeting top officers fighting them in Iraq, especially the Iranians, in order to sow confusion and panic among the men under their command.
Soleimani won the epithet in the West as Irans Shadow Commander for pulling the strings of his countrys clandestine espionage and terrorist operations outside its borders. For nine years, he has masterminded Irans military and political involvement in three conflicts, starting with the Hizballah-Israel war of 2006, the nearly four years of Syrias bloody conflict and the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Gen. Soleimani it was who laid down the strategy Iran adopted in all these military interventions. His latest project was a major effort to weld all of Iraqs Shiite militias into a single popular army, after coming to the conclusion that the national Iraqi army was past rebuilding as a regular military fit for combat operations after its elite division fell apart in its first confrontation with ISIS. The US had invested $25 billion in rebuilding the Iraqi army. Tuesday, debkafile reported that ISIS had managed to wipe out the forward command group of an Al Qods Brigades commando force early Monday, Jan. 12, killing its commander, Gen. Mehdi Norouzi. His chief is now in bad shape after a jihadist attack using the same modus operandi.
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Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Soleimani seriously injured in ...
Smoke rises from the Syrian city of Kobani, following an air strike against Isis by the US-led coalition. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP
From the air, things appear to be going well for the US-led coalition that has dropped more than 1,700 bombs on Islamic State (Isis) targets in Iraq and Syria, scattering the terror group in some areas and slowing its momentum in others.
But the view on the ground tells a different story, officials and tribal leaders in Iraq say. The absence of a political process to accompany the air strikes is instead driving Sunni communities to consider allying with Isis, they claim, especially in sensitive areas around Baghdad.
Iraqs vice-president for reconciliation, Iyad Allawi, said a lack of a political process between the Shias who dominate the countrys power base, and disenfranchised Sunnis was a grave mistake that could mean the air attacks end up achieving little.
The whole strategy needs to be revisited and readdressed and the international allies should be part of this, Allawi told the Guardian. People are asking me what will come after Isis. What would be the destiny of [local] people? Are they going to be accused of supporting or defeating Isis? Would they be accused of being Baathists? It is going to be really difficult for them to engage without reconciliation.
Allawi said the areas surrounding Baghdad where Isis had made inroads even before the group overran Iraqs second city, Mosul, last June are now increasingly unstable and vulnerable.
The Baghdad belt demonstrates the lack of strategy and reconciliation. There is widespread ethnic cleansing there, militias are roaming the areas. Scores and scores of people ... have been expelled from their areas and they cant go back because of the dominance of the militias.
A senior Iraqi official, Dr Hisham al-Hashimi, who advises the government on Isis, agreed. The areas around Baghdad are suffering from a lot of sectarian violence and the tribes there have started to reflect on the idea of joining Isis. The tribes believe that there are moves to deport them from their lands.
Samarra to the north of the Iraqi capital and Sunni areas just to the south remain tense and dangerous, despite more than seven months of air strikes that have supported the embattled Iraqi military and the large number of Shia militias that fight alongside it.
Controlling both areas is considered vital to establishing control of Iraq. Two other senior Iraqi officials contacted by the Guardian during the week claim the security forces relative control now would fast melt away if tribes threw their weight behind the insurgency.
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Lack of political process in Iraq risks further gains for Isis