BAGHDAD: The man wearing an explosive vest emerged from a car and calmly marched toward the gates of the intelligence building in Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk. When he ignored their shouts to halt, guards opened fire, and he blew himself up, wounding three security personnel in the first week of Ramadan.
Days later, a three-pronged coordinated attack killed 10 Iraqi militia fighters in the northern province of Salahaddin — the deadliest and most complex operation in many months.
The assaults are the latest in a resurgence of attacks by the Daesh group in northern Iraq. The first was a brazen suicide mission not seen in months. The second was among the most complex attacks since the group’s defeat in 2017. In neighboring Syria, Daesh attacks on security forces, oil fields and civilian sites have also intensified.
The renewed mayhem is a sign that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos. The virus is compounding longtime concerns among security and UN experts that the group would stage a comeback after its “caliphate,” which once encompassed a third of Iraq and Syria, was brought down last year.
In Iraq, militants also exploit security gaps at a time of an ongoing territorial dispute and a US troop drawdown.
“It’s a real threat,” said Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. “They are mobilizing and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon.” He said Daesh was benefiting from a “gap” between Kurdish forces and federal armed forces caused by political infighting.
Intelligence reports say the number of Daesh fighters in Iraq is believed to be 2,500-3,000.
In northeast Syria, Kurdish-dominated police have become a more visible target for Daesh as they patrol the streets to implement anti-virus measures, said Mervan Qamishlo, a spokesman for US-allied Kurdish-led forces.
Daesh fighters in late March launched a campaign of attacks in government-held parts of Syria, from the central province of Homs all the way to Deir Ezzor to the east, bordering Iraq.
Some 500 fighters, including some who had escaped from prison, recently slipped from Syria into Iraq, helping fuel the surge in violence there, Iraqi intelligence officials said.
Daesh is shifting from local intimidation to more complex attacks, three Iraqi military officials and experts said. Operations previously focused on assassinations of local officials and less sophisticated attacks. Now the group is carrying out more IED attacks, shootings and ambushes of police and military. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Multiple factors help the militants. The number of Iraqi military personnel on duty has dropped 50% because of virus prevention measures, the military officials said.
Also, territorial disputes between Baghdad and authorities from the northern Kurdish autonomy zone have left parts of three provinces without law enforcement. The rugged landscape is difficult to police.
The uptick also coincides with a pullout of US-led coalition forces from bases in western Iraq, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces in line with a drawdown conceived in December.
“Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week,” said a senior intelligence official. Now, he said, security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Coalition spokesman Col. Myles B. Caggins III said Daesh attacks were increasing in reaction to operations against its hideouts in the mountains and rural areas of north-central Iraq.
Iraqi military officials believe the improved, organized nature of the attacks serves to cement the influence of new Daesh leader Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashimi Al-Quraishi, who was named after his predecessor was killed in a US raid late last year. One military official said more operations are expected during Ramadan to demonstrate the new leader’s strength.
In Syria, one of the most significant attacks occurred April 9, when Daesh fighters attacked government positions in and near the town of Sukhna. The government brought in reinforcements for a counterattack backed by Russian airstrikes.
Two days of fighting left 32 troops and 26 Daesh gunmen dead, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the country’s nine-year war.
Days later, the government said that because of the security situation in the desert several gas wells in the fields of Shaer and Hayan were damaged, leading to a 30% drop in electricity production.
Back in Iraq, the green pastures of the northern village of Kujalo conceal a hidden enemy that keeps resident Nawzad up at night. His farming community lies in a disputed territory that has witnessed a sharp increase in attacks, including a nearby ambush earlier this month that killed two peshmerga officers.
He said the militants have local collaborators. “They know everything about each farm in Kulajo and they know to whom each house belongs,” he said, asking to be identified only by his first name, fearing reprisals.
The militants also receive shelter, supplies, food and transport from local sympathizers, said Kurdish Brig. Kamal Mahmoud. His peshmerga forces are based on part of the front lines there, but can’t operate in other parts run by government troops — and there, he said, the overstretched security forces control only main roads with no presence in villages and towns.
On April 1, a federal police officer was killed, and a battalion commander and brigadier general wounded in a security operation in the Makhoul mountain range in Diyala. Two days later, an IED attack targeted a patrol of a commando regiment of the Diyala Operations Command in the outskirts of Maadan village.
Sartip, a Kujalo resident, said he fears the militants’ improved capabilities.
“IS has been carrying out attacks in Kurdish areas for a long time, but now they are more organized and have more people,” he said.
Daesh extremists step up as Iraq, Syria, grapple with virus
https://arab.news/2d5n6
Daesh extremists step up as Iraq, Syria, grapple with virus
- The renewed mayhem is a sign that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic
- The virus is compounding longtime concerns among security and UN experts that the group would stage a comeback after its “caliphate”
French anti-terrorism prosecutor to appeal against Lebanese militant’s release
Requests for Abdallah’s release have been rejected and annulled multiple times
PARIS: The office of France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said on Friday it would appeal against a French court’s decision to grant the release of a Lebanese militant jailed for attacks on US and Israeli diplomats in France in the early 1980s.
PNAT said Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade, would be released on Dec. 6 under the court’s decision on condition that he leave France and not return.
Abdallah was given a life sentence in 1987 for his role in the murders of US diplomat Charles Ray in Paris and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in 1982, and in the attempted murder of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984.
Representatives for the embassies of the United States and Israel, as well as the Ministry of Justice, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Requests for Abdallah’s release have been rejected and annulled multiple times, including in 2003, 2012 and 2014.
A French student who was arrested and detained in Tunisia returns to Paris
- Victor Dupont, a Ph.D. at Aix-Marseille University’s Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds, arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday
- Dupont, who researches social movements, youth unemployment and Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, was one of three French nationals arrested on Oct. 19
PARIS: A French student detained for weeks in Tunisia returned to Paris on Friday after weeks of top-level diplomatic discussions.
Victor Dupont, a 27-year-old completing a Ph.D. at Aix-Marseille University’s Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds, arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday afternoon, 27 days after he was arrested in Tunis.
“Obviously, we welcome this outcome for him and, most of all, we welcome that he is able to reunite with his loved ones here in France,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said.
He announced the release at a ministry news briefing on Friday, saying that Dupont was freed Tuesday from prison and returned on Friday back to France.
Dupont, who researches social movements, youth unemployment and Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, was one of three French nationals arrested on Oct. 19. Authorities in recent years have arrested journalists, activists and opposition figures, but Dupont’s arrest garnered international attention and condemnation because of his nationality and because he wasn’t known as a critic of the government.
A support committee set up to advocate for Dupont’s release told The Associated Press in October that Dupont and several friends were detained in front of Dupont’s home, then taken to a police station for questioning. Dupont was later taken alone into custody and taken to appear in military court in the city of Le Kef.
The arrest provoked concerns about the safety and security of foreigners in Tunisia, where rights and freedoms have gradually been curtailed under President Kais Saied.
Dupont’s supporters, both at his university and in associations representing academics who work in the Middle East and North Africa, said that his research didn’t pose any security risks and called the charges unfounded.
In a letter to Saied and Tunisia’s Ministry of Higher Educations, associations representing French, Italian and British academics who work in the region said that Tunisia’s government had approved Dupont’s research and that the allegations against him “lack both founding and credibility.”
“We therefore condemn the extraordinary use of the military court system,” they wrote on Nov. 12.
Saied has harnessed populist anger to win two terms as president of Tunisia and reversed many of the gains that were made when the country became the first to topple a longtime dictator in 2011 during the regional uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring.
Tunisia and France have maintained close political and economic ties since Tunisia became independent after 75 years of being a French protectorate. France is Tunisia’s top trade partner, home to a large Tunisian diaspora and a key interlocutor in managing migration from North Africa to Europe.
A French diplomatic official not authorized to speak publicly about the arrest told The Associated Press in late October that officials were in contact with Tunisian authorities about the case. Another diplomatic official with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday that French President Emmanuel Macron had recently spoken to Saied twice about the case and said that it was the subject of regular calls between top level diplomats.
The others arrested along with Dupont were previously released.
Israeli strikes at Damascus suburb, Syrian state news agency says
- Explosions were reported earlier on Friday in the vicinity of Damascus
- “Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” SANA said in a news flash
DUBAI: Israel carried out attacks on the Mazzeh suburb of Damascus on Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA said, a day after a wave of deadly strikes on what Israel said were militant targets in the Syrian capital.
Explosions were reported earlier on Friday in the vicinity of Damascus.
“Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” SANA said in a news flash. It gave no other details.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Commanders in Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in Syria have been known to reside in Mazzeh, according to residents who fled after recent strikes that killed some key figures in the groups.
Mazzeh’s high-rise blocks have been used by the authorities in the past to house leaders of Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Fifteen people were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes on residential buildings in Mazzeh and Qudsaya suburbs, state media reported. Israel said the attacks targeted military sites and the headquarters of Islamic Jihad.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Separately, the Israeli military said it had attacked on Thursday transit routes on the Syrian-Lebanese border that were used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah.
Syrian state media reported that an Israeli attack completely destroyed a bridge in the area of Qusayr in southwest of Syria’s Homs near the border with northern Lebanon.
A lion cub evacuated from Lebanon to a South African sanctuary escapes airstrikes and abuse
- After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-half-month-old lion cub arrived Friday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa
- Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by local rescue group Animals Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire
BEIRUT: When Sara first arrived at her rescuers’ home, she was sick, tired, and was covered in ringworms and signs of abuse all over her little furry body.
After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-half-month-old lion cub arrived Friday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa after a long journey on a yacht and planes, escaping both Israeli airstrikes and abusive owners.
Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by local rescue group Animals Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire a day after the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas that ignited the war in Gaza last year.
Animals Lebanon first discovered Sara on social media channels in July. Her owner, a Lebanese man in the ancient city of Baalbek, posted bombastic videos of himself parading with the little lion cub on TikTok and Instagram.
Under Lebanese law, it is prohibited to own wild and exotic animals.
The lion cub was “really just being used as showing off,” said Jason Mier, executive director of Animals Lebanon.
In mid-September, the group finally retrieved her after filing a case with the police and judiciary, who interrogated her owner and forced him to give up the feline.
Soon after that, Israel launched an offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — after nearly a year of low-level conflict — and Baalbek came under heavy bombardment.
Mier and his team were able to extract Sara from Baalbek weeks before Israel launched its aerial bombardment campaign on the ancient city, and move her to an apartment in Beirut’s busy commercial Hamra district.
She was supposed to fly to South Africa in October, but international airlines stopped flights to Lebanon as Israeli jets and drones hit sites close to the country’s only airport.
Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border into Israel in support of its ally, Hamas, on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Palestinian militants staged the deadly surprise incursion into southern Israel. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes. Beginning in mid-September, Israel launched an intense aerial bombardment of much of Lebanon, followed by a ground invasion.
Before the conflict, Animals Lebanon was active in halting animal trafficking and the exotic pet trade, saving over two dozen big cats from imprisonment in lavish homes and sending them to wildlife sanctuaries.
Since the war started, Animals Lebanon has also been rescuing pets that have been trapped in damaged apartments as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fled bombardment — almost 1,000 over the past month alone.
“Lots are still in our care because the owners of these animals are still displaced,” Mier said. “So, we can’t expect the person to take this animal back when he might be living on the street or in a school.”
Before the conflict escalated, the rights group was able to move around the country more freely as the fighting largely remained in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. But things became more difficult as airstrikes became more frequent and spread over wider swathes of the country.
Unaware of the war around her, Sara thrived. She was fed a platter of raw meat daily and grew to 40 kilograms (88 pounds). She cuddled every morning with Mier’s wife Maggie, also an animal rights activist.
But the activists faced a major obstacle: How would they get her out of Lebanon?
Animals Lebanon collected donations from supporters and rights groups around the world to put Sara on a small yacht to take her to Cyprus. From there, she flew to the United Arab Emirates before her long journey ended in Cape Town.
Days before her evacuation Sara played in one of the bedrooms at Mier’s apartment, with cushions and chew toys scattered.
Thursday at dawn, she arrived to the port of Dbayeh, just north of Beirut. Mier and his team were relieved, but also struggling to hold back their tears at her departure.
Mier anticipates Sara will be held for monitoring and disease-control, but soon will be part of a community of other lions.
“Then she’ll be integrated with two recent lions that we’ve sent from Lebanon, so she’ll make a nice group of three hopefully,” he said. “That’s where she will live out the rest of her life. That is the best option for her.”
Palestinian militants release new clip of Israeli hostage Trupanov in Gaza
- Trupanov appealed to Aryeh Deri, a member of Israel’s governing coalition, to help free him and the other hostages held in Gaza
- In September, Deri described the act of bringing back the hostages as a “sacred duty“
JERUSALEM: A Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas released a new clip Friday of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, held in Gaza since the October 2023 attack, after publishing a first video earlier this week.
Trupanov, identified by his relatives in the previous video released on Wednesday, appealed to Aryeh Deri — leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, a member of Israel’s governing coalition — to help free him and the other hostages held in Gaza.
The Shas party supports a deal for their release under the Jewish religious obligation to do everything possible to free captives.
In September, Deri described the act of bringing back the hostages as a “sacred duty.”
Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
His mother and grandmother were also abducted and released along with Cohen during a week-long truce and hostage-prisoner exchange in November 2023.
His father, Vitaly, was killed in the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.
This is now the fourth video of Trupanov released by Islamic Jihad.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called for the release of Trupanov and another hostage, Maxim Herkin, in comments made before the release of the latest clip.
“We reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians held by Palestinian groups, with priority given to our compatriots,” she said.
Herkin, a 35-year-old Russian-Israeli citizen, was abducted at the Nova music festival.
Militants seized 251 hostages during the attack, some of them already dead.
Ninety-seven are still being held hostage, while 34 are confirmed dead but their bodies remain in Gaza.
The attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,764 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
