The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

The mysterious identity of the "King of the North" and "Small Horn" discussed here. The "Great War" of Daniel 10:1 (NIV) discussed here. The heavenly & earthly establishment of God's Kingdom discussed here at length. Answers such questions as when does Jesus' Kingdom Rule begin and end.

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Sunshine
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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#121 Post by Sunshine » Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:17 pm

ISIS Fighters Now 'At The Gates Of Baghdad': Islamic Militants Fighting 'Just One Mile From Iraqi Capital' Despite Days Western Airstrikes
  • Fierce clashes between jihadists and government forces near Iraqi capital
  • Militants understood to be attempting to enter and seize control of Baghdad
  • Reports of militants' proximity to Baghdad came from Canon Andrew White
  • He is vicar of the city's St George's Church - Iraq's only Anglican church
  • News comes despite ongoing Western airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq


By JOHN HALL FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 01:31 EST, 29 September 2014 | UPDATED: 14:46 EST, 29 September 2014

Source of Article

Fierce fighting has been reported on the outskirts of Baghdad where ISIS militants are attempting to seize control of the Iraqi capital - despite ongoing Western airstrikes against the terror group.

The fighting is taking place just one mile to the west of the city, with government forces desperately trying to hold off the militants, who allegedly killed up to 1,000 soldiers during clashes yesterday.

ISIS have held a number of towns and villages close to the Iraqi capital since earlier in the year, when government troops melted away following a lightning advance in the west of the country - enabling the terrorist group to seize further swaths of territory for their so-called caliphate.

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Under attack: An Iraqi army soldier aims his weapon during clashes with ISIS militants in Jurf al-Sakhar - 43 miles south of Baghdad - at the weekend. ISIS militants reportedly killed 1,000 such soldiers yesterday

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Defence: Fierce fighting has been reported on the outskirts of Baghdad where ISIS militants are attempting to seize control of the Iraqi capital. In this image taken at the weekend, peshmerga forces are seen holding a post in the strategic Jalawla area, considered a gateway to the city

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Peshmerga fighters hold a position at a post in the strategic Jalawla area near Baghdad during a battle with Islamic State militants at the weekend. The location is considered a gateway to the Iraqi capital

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Location: The militants are understood to have had their advance halted by airstrikes yesterday at Ameriyat Al-Falluja yesterday - a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad. But the clashes did not force the bulk of the fighters - with many of them now having made their way to the Baghdad suburbs

Reports that ISIS militants are now just one mile from Baghdad came from the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East - an organisation supporting the work of Canon Andrew White, vicar of the city's St George's Church, the only Anglican church in Iraq.

In a message posted on Facebook, the group said: 'The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen and now it almost has.

More...

  • RAF jets make three raids on jihadis... but still haven't dropped any bombs: Defence chiefs insist missions are invaluable for gathering intelligence about ISIS
  • 'We are the indispensable nation': President Obama explains U.S.-led airstrikes on ISIS as he admits intelligence community 'underestimated' terrorist group


'Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well you only need to be hear a very short while to know they can do very very little,' they added.

The claims were backed up by Canon White himself, who shared the message just hours after he had earlier suggested the group were approximately six miles from the centre of Baghdad.

In a message he also posted on Facebook, Canon White had said: 'The Islamic State are now within 10km of entering Baghdad. Over a 1000 Iraqi troops were killed by them yesterday, things are so bad. As I said all the military air strikes are doing nothing. If ever we needed your prayer it is now.'

The militants are understood to have had their advance halted by airstrikes yesterday at Ameriyat Al-Falluja yesterday - a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad.

But the clashes did not force the bulk of the fighters - with many of them now having made their way to the Baghdad suburbs for this morning's fighting.

Obama: The Only Thing ISIS Killers Understand Is Force (Related)
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The news comes as RAF jets flew armed sorties for a second day over Iraq yesterday – but despite having now sent out jets five times, they again failed to locate any suitable targets for their weapons.

Defence chiefs insisted that the flights by Tornado GR4 fighter-bombers were invaluable for gathering intelligence on the Islamist jihadists who have swept across large swathes of Iraq and Syria, carrying out massacres.

But the failure to unleash any firepower has fuelled concern that Britain is failing to pull its weight in the international coalition against Islamic State

It came as military commanders warned that Britain should brace itself to be dragged into a ground war in Iraq to crush IS, which is also known as Isis and Isil.

Former top brass also warned that the air campaign would be futile unless the UK could target the terrorists in Syria.
While the Ministry of Defence confirmed that the RAF's third mission had – like on Saturday – failed to locate any targets, US-led coalition aircraft targeted four makeshift oil refineries under IS control in Syria, as well as a command centre.

The mobile refineries generate up to £1.2million a day for the militants.

Iraqi Troops Retake 16 Villages From Militants
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On a mission: The RAF jets seek out their terror targets in Iraq - which they failed to find and bomb, again

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Strong presence: Military leaders have said about two-thirds of the estimated 31,000 Islamic State militants were in Syria. But ISIS have held a number of towns and villages close to the Iraqi capital since earlier in the year, when government troops melted away following a lightning advance in the west of the country

US And UK Planes Ahead Of Airstrikes Against ISIS

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Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama has acknowledged that US intelligence agencies underestimated the threat posed by ISIS extremists in Syria, and overestimated the capabilities of the Iraqi army.

Obama added that breaking up the terrorist cell will be a complicated battle involving both military and political action.
The president spoke about the multi-national effort against ISIS in a televised interview with 60 Minutes, which aired Sunday night.

Citing earlier comments by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, Mr Obama acknowledged that U.S. intelligence didn't take seriously enough what had been taking place in Syria.

'Well I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,' Mr Obama said.

Conversely, the United States overestimated the ability of the Iraqi army to fight the militant groups, Obama said in the interview taped on Friday, days after the president made his case at the United Nations for action.

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President Obama says the US intelligence agencies underestimated Islamic State activity in Syria and overestimated the Iraqi army's role to fight back against militants

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Speaking to CBS's 60 Minutes, he said the militants had used the chaos of the Syrian civil war, when large swathes of the country were ungoverned, to 'reconstitute themselves'

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Militants: The terrorist-group ISIS has been taking large swaths of Syria and Iraq in the recent absence of a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq

Cameron: Britain To Join Airstrikes Against ISIS In Iraq

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KEY PARTNERS IN THE COALITION AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group is growing, with dozens of countries among its ranks. The coalition is contributing a wide range of efforts, from carrying out airstrikes to providing military assistance and humanitarian aid.
Here are some of the key partners in the coalition.

UNITED STATES

The U.S., which is leading the coalition, has launched dozens of airstrikes on Islamic State targets. It also has sent military advisers, supplies and humanitarian aid to help Iraqi troops and Kurdish forces beat back the insurgents.

GULF STATES

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have participated in airstrikes in Syria. A fourth, Qatar, has played what the Pentagon called a supporting role.
The Emirates and Qatar also host air bases that are being used for the coalition's aerial campaign against the Islamic State group. U.S. Navy ships involved in the airstrikes are assigned to the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training facilities for Syrian rebels on its territory.

JORDAN

Jordan has launched airstrikes against Islamic State positions, with government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani calling the move 'necessary in light of continuous attempts to infiltrate our borders.' The kingdom didn't give any specifics about its operations, but said the airstrikes aim to insure the country's security.

EGYPT

Egypt hasn't announced any specific participation in airstrikes, but President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi told the AP that Egypt is 'completely committed to giving support,' and will do 'whatever is required' to support the coalition.

ISRAEL

Israel is offering intelligence estimates and concrete intelligence to the U.S. on the Islamic State group as part of ongoing intelligence sharing between the two countries, an Israeli defense official said. But, he added, Israel wasn't asked to contribute anything beyond that. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The prime minister's office declined to comment.

BRITAIN

Britain said that Tornado fighter bombers, supported by air-to-air refueling aircraft and signals intelligence, are operating over Iraq. Britain's media has widely reported that six warplanes are on standby in Cyprus, but defense officials have declined to offer specific numbers. Ben Goodlad from IHS Jane's has said that the Tornado jets offer the coalition enhanced capability to engage moving targets. Britain also has two weapons for long-range strikes: the Tornado's Storm Shadow cruise missile and the submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missile, he said.

FRANCE

France has carried out airstrikes in Iraq on two occasions since joining the U.S.-led coalition on Sept. 19, firing laser-guided bombs from Rafale fighter planes upon munitions and military hardware stockpiles — first near northern Mosul, then on Thursday, near Fallujah. France is conducting the operations in Iraq from a French air base in the United Arab Emirates. The base, with about 750 French service personnel and six Rafales, is 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from Mosul, meaning that the planes need refueling in flight to strike in Iraq.

AUSTRALIA

An Australian air force contingent, including eight F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters and two support aircraft, has arrived in the United Arab Emirates. About 600 troops — most of them air force personnel — are being deployed with the aircraft. The jets are expected to be used in airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq, although the Australian government has yet to commit to a combat role.

BELGIUM

Six F-16 multirole fighters and a contingent of 120 support staff, including eight pilots, to be based in Jordan. Authorized to take part in operations over Iraq for one month, subject to extension if approved by the Belgian government.

DENMARK

Denmark has pledged seven F-16 fighter jets — four operational planes and three reserve jets along with pilots and support staff for 12 months. The U.S. also has asked Danes to provide military trainers to Iraq to school Iraqi and Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State group on the ground. Denmark has already contributed a transport plane with personnel to a U.S.-led humanitarian operation in northern Iraq.

CANADA

Canada has contributed about 70 special operations soldiers to offer instruction to Kurdish forces battling Islamic State militants in northern Iraq. Early this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet will be considering a U.S. request to support airstrikes against Islamic State forces. This could include five to eight CF-18 fighter aircraft as well as tanker aircraft. Canada has already contributed two military cargo planes that carried weapons to Kurdish fighters.

GERMANY

Germany isn't participating in any airstrikes against the Islamic State group. They have sent weapons to Kurdish fighters in Irbil, and a group of Kurdish peshmerga fighters arrived in Germany to receive weapons' training here by the German army. There's also German military in Irbil to train the peshmerga fighters in Irbil.

GREECE

Greece is participating with humanitarian aid and by sending ammunition for Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group. They haven't specified any more details on quantities or type of humanitarian aid.

GEORGIA

Georgia will be providing humanitarian assistance, not military aid, according to comments made by Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Thursday to local news websites.

HUNGARY

Hungary has promised to send 15 types of ammunition totaling nearly 6 million units to Iraqi Kurds. Most of the ammunition, 4.1 million cartridges, was the M43 type for the AK-47 assault rifle.

ROMANIA

Prime Minister Victor Ponta said his country would offer 'logistic, operational and humanitarian' support to the coalition, but not troops. He provided no details of the assistance.

POLAND

Poland supports the coalition against the Islamic State, but is not actively engaged in combat.

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#122 Post by Sunshine » Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:57 am

U.N. Envoy On Kobani: Don't Let Another City Fall To ISIS
By Catherine E. Shoichet, Josh Levs and Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN
updated 10:26 PM EDT, Tue October 7, 2014

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(CNN) -- Kurdish fighters defending the key Syrian border city of Kobani are dangerously outmatched as ISIS advances, a top United Nations official said Tuesday, calling for the international community to step in.

"They have been defending themselves with great courage. But they are now very close to not being able to do so. They are fighting with normal weapons, whereas the ISIS has got tanks and mortars," Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, said in a statement. "The international community needs to defend them. The international community cannot sustain another city falling under ISIS."

Were Kobani to fall, ISIS would control a complete swath of land between its self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, and Turkey -- a stretch of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).

Outnumbered and outgunned by ISIS, local fighters trying to defend the Kurdish-dominated city have tried to flee into Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Kobani was about to fall to ISIS as protests raged in his country over how the group should be handled.

And hours after U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS struck near Kobani overnight, the city's future was far from certain.
Stopping ISIS from taking over cities, towns and other territory in Syria isn't the focus of U.S. efforts, a senior administration official and a U.S. official told CNN.

At a briefing, a State Department spokeswoman faced persistent questions over whether saving the city was a U.S. priority. The answer, CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott said, sounded like a resounding "no."

"It's obviously horrific to watch what's going on the ground, but it's important for the United States, for us to also step back and remember our strategic objective as it relates to our efforts and our engagement in Syria," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

The U.S. goal, she said, is "a deliberate, well thought-out campaign in Syria" to disrupt ISIS command and control, destroy the group's infrastructure and attack sources of fuel and financing for ISIS.

"Certainly no one wants to see Kobani fall, but our primary objective here is preventing (ISIS) from gaining a safe haven," she said.

"And we're going after those specific structures that I mentioned," Psaki added. "But we would not have taken the range of military strikes we have taken, including overnight, if we did not want to support and -- and defend the area."

Five airstrikes targeting groups of ISIS fighters struck near Kobani overnight, U.S. Central Command said. There were another four strikes elsewhere in Syria and four in Iraq.

"Finally, they are hitting the right places," one local fighter against ISIS said after the airstrikes near Kobani, which is close to the Turkish border and key to ISIS' effort to extend its terrain.

Airstrikes against the radical Islamist group in Kobani can be challenging because many targets are too close to the Turkish border or Kurdish forces to strike, a senior U.S. military official said.

Violent protests in Turkey

Destroying ISIS will require ground operations, Erdogan said, according to the semi-official Anadolu news agency.
Speaking to Syrian refugees, he said there has been "no achievement yet," despite months of efforts against ISIS.
Erdogan called for a no-fly zone, and for the arming of opposition groups in Iraq and Syria.

People upset over what they consider Turkey's failure to respond adequately to the ISIS threat launched protests in Turkey, some of which turned violent.

Three people were killed and at least 36 injured in demonstrations throughout Turkey, police said, according to Anadolu.
At least five Turkish police officers were among the injured, Anadolu said.

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There were clashes overnight in Istanbul, and a group of about 50 to 60 protesters blocked a road, CNN affiliate CNN Turk reported.

Some demonstrators set fire to a bus and garbage truck and smashed windows and cars.

One protester was killed in the middle of a demonstration after being hit in the head by a gas canister in the town of Varto, police said.

And two protesters died during demonstrations in the southeastern province of Siirt, Anadolu reported.

In Belgium, meanwhile, Kurdish protesters stormed the European Parliament building. CNN affiliate RTL Belgium said about 50 protesters stormed into the building. Police then cordoned it off.

Some European nations have joined the fight against ISIS, but the Kurdish protesters want tougher action.
Belgium participated in overnight airstrikes in Iraq, U.S. Central Command said.

Dutch join in, Canada to follow suit

Dutch forces participated for the first time in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq as well, dropping three bombs on ISIS vehicles that were shooting at Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the Dutch Defense Ministry said in a statement. The vehicles were destroyed, and ISIS fighters may have been killed, the ministry said.

Canada's Parliament approved an air combat mission against ISIS in Iraq, pledging up to six CF-18 fighter jets as part of a strike force, in addition to other aircraft for surveillance, reconnaissance and refueling.

"To be absolutely clear, Canada's engagement in Iraq is not a ground combat mission. It includes a number of targeted measures, being taken with allies, to severely limit the ability of ISIL to engage in full scale military movements and to operate bases in the open," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. "We do not take this step lightly. The threat posed by ISIL is real. If left unchecked this terrorist organization will grow and grow quickly."

Near Kobani, airstrikes hit ISIS vehicles

In Syria, according to U.S. Central Command, the airstrikes against ISIS included:

  • One south of Kobani destroyed three ISIS armed vehicles and damaged another
  • One southeast of Kobani destroyed an ISIS armed vehicle carrying anti-aircraft artillery
  • Two southwest of Kobani damaged an ISIS tank
  • One south of Kobani destroyed an ISIS unit


Elsewhere in Syria, two strikes west of al-Hasakah hit multiple ISIS buildings, one near Deir Ezzor struck an ISIS staging area and IED production facility, and one southwest of Rabiyah struck a small group of ISIS fighters.

The United States, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all participated in the strikes, Central Command said.

Death toll in fight for Kobani

More than 400 people have been killed in the fight for Kobani since mid-September, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The group said it has documented the deaths of 219 ISIS jihadists, 163 members of the Kurdish militia, and 20 civilians.
A northern Iraqi hospital has received the bodies of at least 29 suspected ISIS militants, the head of the Tal Afar hospital said Tuesday. Danial Qassim said most were killed in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes overnight.

Tal Afar is about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of Mosul -- Iraq's second-largest city. Mosul has also been overtaken by ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State.

How ISIS makes its millions

Why is ISIS so successful at luring Westerners?

U.S. military airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria have cost more than $62 million so far, according to data provided by the U.S. Defense Department.

The data, apparently sent out inadvertently to the Pentagon's press contacts on Monday, listed the total number of airstrikes by U.S. Central Command in Iraq and Syria. It also detailed locations of targets and specified the costs of munitions used.


CNN's Elise Labott, Jim Sciutto, Holly Yan, Barbara Starr, Gul Tuysuz, Ingrid Formanek and Journalist Işıl Sarıyüce contributed to this report.

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#123 Post by Sunshine » Tue Oct 14, 2014 6:05 pm

ISIS Militants March On Despite Airstrikes, International Outrage
By Faith Karimi and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
updated 8:08 PM EDT, Mon October 13, 2014

Source of Article & Video

(CNN) -- Despite airstrikes and international outrage against ISIS militants, the terror group is overrunning Iraqi forces and slowly marching on toward a province on Baghdad's doorstep. And as alarming developments piled up over the weekend, Iraqi forces threatened to flee if the U.S. military does not intervene.

Here are where things stand:

On Baghdad's doorstep

ISIS fighters are making headway against poorly equipped local forces. The Islamist extremists appear set to take Kobani, a key Syrian town along the Turkish border. Next up: a province on Baghdad's doorstep.

Iraq's Anbar province pleaded for U.S. ground troops to halt the group's rapid, relentless assault.

The terror group came within 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of Baghdad's airport, according to the leader of U.S. military efforts to fight ISIS in Iraq.

The United States brought in low-flying attack helicopters to keep ISIS at bay, Gen. Martin Dempsey told ABC on Sunday.

"You're not going to wait until they're climbing over the wall," Dempsey said. "Had (ISIS forces) overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the Baghdad airport."

Anbar province at risk

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is moving -- fast.

The group, which calls itself the Islamic State, controls about 80% of the province, according to Sabah Al-Karhout, president of Anbar Provincial Council.

If the province falls, the Sunni extremists would take over an area from the perimeter of Iraq's capital to Raqqa in Syria, according to Falleh al-Issawi, the provincial council's deputy head.

Iraq's military abandoned a strategically important base in Anbar after heavy fighting with ISIS militants, provincial security force sources told CNN on Monday.

The base outside Hit was one of the Shiite-led government's few remaining military outposts in the predominantly Sunni province.

Targeting law enforcement

No one is safe from the militants. The police chief of the province was killed over the weekend when a blast targeted his convoy, authorities said.

The attack is just one of the things sending shock waves among forces fighting the militants.

Iraqi army forces and Anbar tribesmen have threatened to abandon their weapons if the U.S. military does not intervene.

The army soldiers lack training and equipment, according to local authorities. Already, some 1,800 tribesmen in the province have been killed or injured in the struggle.

Iraqi officials have been adamant that they don't want U.S. forces on the ground. President Barack Obama has not shown any intent to deploy any.

Family of ISIS captive speaks

Meanwhile, the family of an ISIS captive, British journalist John Cantlie, is begging ISIS -- also known as IS -- to re-establish direct contact.

"This is frustrating for all parties, including those who are trying to assist us. We had previously been in contact through a channel started by you, but then this stopped for reasons best known to you," Cantlie's sister, Jessica Cantlie, said in a statement.

"We strongly challenge those holding John to return to your previously opened channel, to which we continue to send messages and await your response so that in keeping with everyone's wishes, we can restart dialogue. We implore IS to reinitiate direct contact."

Offensive against ISIS in Syria

ISIS is still advancing in Syria, where it emerged during that country's civil war. Its focus is on Kobani, a Kurdish enclave a stone's throw from Turkey.

The militants are gradually taking control of a large chunk of Kobani.

Monday was one of the most violent days since ISIS launched its assault on the city, with sounds of fierce fighting, including gunfire and explosions, CNN staff on the Syria-Turkey border said.

A fighter from the Kurdish People's Protection Unit, or YPG, told CNN's Arwa Damon that the battle was focusing on the main border crossing into Turkey. If ISIS took control, he said, "it's over."

On Saturday, ISIS fighters also clashed with local troops over the official border crossing into Turkey at Mursitpinar.
If they're successful, the militants would control three official border crossings between Turkey and Syria and a stretch of the border about 60 miles (97 kilometers) long.

The U.S. military said it and its allies had attacked ISIS on Sunday and Monday, launching four airstrikes southwest of Kobani, three northeast of the city and one northwest of Raqqa.


CNN's Chandrika Narayan and Ben Wedeman contributed to this report.

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#124 Post by Sunshine » Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:38 am

ISIS Reveals Its Strategy
By Peter Bergen and Emily Schneider
updated 8:05 AM EDT, Wed October 22, 2014

Source of Article & Photo Slides

Image
An explosion rocks Kobani, Syria, during a reported car-bomb attack by ISIS militants on Monday, October 20. Civil war has destabilized Syria and created an opening for the militant group, which is also advancing in Iraq as it seeks to create an Islamic caliphate in the region.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America and professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." Emily Schneider is a research associate at New America.

(CNN) -- ISIS is looking to take over a good chunk of the Middle East -- if not the entire Muslim world. At least, that's the message the terrorist movement is sending in its English online magazine, Dabiq.

In Dabiq's first issue, which debuted in early July, the magazine declared that a "new era has arrived" for Muslims.

Photographs in the webzine of ISIS militants in American armored vehicles rolling through Iraq seemed to buttress that claim.
Graphic photos of dead soldiers from Iraqi forces litter the pages of each of the issues of Dabiq, and articles detail skirmishes across Iraq and Syria.

Each issue of the magazine -- there have been four so far, appearing at roughly monthly intervals -- starts with a foreword that contains an inspirational message for readers, before diving into longer pieces that extol the virtues of ISIS and provide updates on the group's military campaign. ISIS members fervently believe that they have established a true "caliphate" in the areas that they control, a supposed distant echo of the perfect Islamic rule of the Prophet Mohammed and his immediate successors in the seventh century.

Overall, the magazine is quite religious in tone. Excerpts from rulings by Muslim scholars are included in every issue, as are religious rationales for the actions of ISIS.

In the most recent issue, an ISIS writer reasoned that capturing women from the Yazidis, an Iraqi minority group, to use as sex slaves was acceptable under ISIS' version of Sharia law, since the Yazidis are polytheists, a great heresy in Islam. Showing some convoluted logic, the ISIS writer also asserted that enslaving Yazidi women is a good way to stop adultery, since a man having sex with a concubine is legal under ISIS' interpretation of Islamic law, but sexual relations outside of marriage with free women are forbidden.

The magazines are also, unsurprisingly, highly sectarian, repeatedly showing images of Shia shrines and tombs that have been blown up by ISIS, a organization made up of members of the Sunni sect. ISIS believes these sites to be idolatrous. Iraqi Army soldiers -- who are generally Shia -- are referred to as "apostates" and graphic photos of their executions by ISIS fighters are a staple of the magazine.

Other articles aim to reassure readers that ISIS, which in June renamed itself the Islamic State, is an actual state that provides social services and reconstructs critical infrastructure. The magazine asserts that administrators govern towns after the main ISIS fighting force moves on and the most recent issue of Dabiq includes photos with captions showing "services for Muslims," including street cleaning, electricity repairs, care homes for the elderly and cancer treatment centers for children.

The first issue of Dabiq even had a sort of classified ad for "all Muslim doctors, engineers, scholars, and specialists" to come and join ISIS.

The most recent installment of Dabiq asserts that two new wilayat, or provinces, had been established in the region where the Syrian-Iraqi border had once been. The magazine describes the new provinces as a successful step in "eliminating any remaining traces of the kufri, nationalistic borders." Pictures of a military parade celebrating the announcement accompany the article, along with pictures of a well-staffed checkpoint, a bustling marketplace, and ISIS police patrolling the area.

In many ways Dabiq is not a new phenomenon. Osama bin Laden's Service Office during the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets produced a similar magazine, Jihad, which was widely available around the Muslim world, was translated into many languages and was principally a fund-raising and recruiting tool designed to encourage young Muslim men to travel to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to support the Afghan jihad.

More recently, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from its headquarters in Yemen has been publishing Inspire, another well-produced online magazine. Inspire, published for the past four years, clearly served as something of a model for Dabiq. Both are well laid out and feature graphics and photos prominently.

The Dabiq feature titled "In the Words of the Enemy," where a helpful quote from an official or analyst from the West is included, is a direct copy of an Inspire feature. Dabiq's most recent issue features a portion of U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in which he discussed how much of a threat ISIS is to the United States.

But the two webzines share few similarities beyond that. Inspire was very much focused on recruiting lone-wolf jihadists and inspiring homegrown extremism in the West, but Dabiq includes only a few vague sentences about carrying out attacks in the West.

Where Inspire included instructions on bomb-making and building weapons to carry our attacks in the West, Dabiq focuses almost entirely on the actions of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and encourages followers to join the jihad there. In the third issue of Dabiq an ISIS writer asserts, "This life of jihad is not possible until you pack and move to the Khilafah," meaning to leave your home and travel to ISIS' areas of control in Iraq and Syria.

The purpose of the Dabiq webzine is quite different from Inspire: It is to encourage and perpetuate ISIS' successful insurgencies in Iraq and Syria, not to foster homegrown extremism or lone-wolf attacks in the West.

That's about the only good news that one can glean from Dabiq.


***

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#125 Post by Sunshine » Fri Oct 24, 2014 6:08 pm

Iraqi Isis Militants 'Use Chlorine Gas' Against Security Forces
By Vasudevan Sridharan
October 24, 2014 09:18 BST

Source of Article

Image
Smoke rises from the site of a car bomb attack in BaghdadThaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

Isis militants have used chlorine gas against Iraqi security forces in multiple incidents, officials in Baghdad have said.

At least 11 Iraqi security personnel have been admitted to hospital with symptoms which are consistent with chlorine gas poisoning, the use of which is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Though the specifics of the attacks remain vague, witnesses have been quoted as seeing yellow smoke filling up the sky during the attacks.

"They were panicked, we were panicked. We initially thought it might be a more serious gas, a nerve gas or an organophosphate," Kasim Hatim, director of a hospital facility located in Balad where the victims are being treated, told the Washington Post.

The incident took place in mid-September when several Iraqi police officers who were "dizzy, vomiting and struggling to breathe" were taken to the hospital, which is about 80km from Baghdad.

US officials have said they are looking into the matter.

"We continue to take all allegations of CW use - and in particular these recent allegations regarding the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon - very seriously" Alistair Baskey, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

"We are aware of the reports but cannot confirm details and are seeking additional information. The use of chlorine as a chemical weapon is an abhorrent act. These recent allegations underscore the importance of our work to eliminate chemical weapons in this volatile region."

If confirmed, this will be first time the Sunni insurgent group, which has been terrorising Iraq and Syria, have used chemical weapons in the battlefield.

The latest reports add to concerns that the Islamist organisation is intensifying its fighting against security forces to consolidate its gains.

Nonetheless, others argue that the latest attack, even if confirmed, will not signify Isis's capabilities to mount a chemical weapons attack.




**********

PENTAGON: US Probes Allegations ISIS Used Chemical Weapons
Source of Article & Video

Published October 24, 2014 FoxNews.com

The U.S. is investigating claims that Islamic State militants used chemical weapons against Iraqis last month, in what would be a serious escalation of the fighting in the region.

Iraqi officials have told media outlets that the terror group used chlorine gas bombs during clashes in September near Baghdad.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest and a spokesman with the Pentagon could not confirm the reports but said they are taking them “seriously” and investigating the claims.

"We continue to take all allegations of chemical weapons use -- and in particular these recent allegations regarding the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon -- very seriously,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steven Warren said in a statement. “The use of chlorine as a chemical weapon is an abhorrent act.”

The allegations come after chemical weapons use in Syria last year prompted a standoff between the Obama administration and the Assad government. Though President Obama had called the use of chemical weapons a “red line,” he ultimately backed down when Bashar Assad agreed to turn over his weapons stockpile. Asked Friday if the latest attack, if confirmed, would change the approach to the Islamic State fight, Earnest did not say.

“We’re going to investigate those reports,” Earnest said.

Three Iraqi officials -- a senior security official, a local official from the town of Duluiya and an official from the town of Balad – had told The Associated Press that the Islamic State group used bombs with chlorine-filled cylinders during clashes in late September in the two towns.

The militants, who control large areas of Syria and Iraq, have failed to capture Duluiya or Balad, both of which are around 50 miles north of the Iraqi capital.

In the attacks, about 40 troops and Shiite militiamen were slightly affected by the chlorine and showed symptoms consistent with chlorine poisoning, such as difficulty in breathing and coughing, the three officials said. The troops were treated in hospital and quickly recovered.

The senior security official said it was most likely that the Islamic State fighters obtained the chlorine from water purification plants in the areas they have overrun. Iraqi intelligence has indicated that the group has shells filled with chlorine that are ready to be used, the security official said.

"The IS fighters seized some quantities of chlorine after seizing control of some water purification plants or sites where chlorine was kept," said the senior official, adding that the "IS group has some experts who were able to manufacture chlorine shells."

The use of chlorine by the group in Iraq in September was first reported by the Washington Post.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said he could not confirm the Iraqi allegations but called them "extremely serious." He said chlorine can be considered a chemical weapon if it is mixed with other toxic agents.

"The use of any chemical weapon is an abhorrent act," Kerry told reporters at a State Department news conference with the South Korean foreign minister. "It's against international law. And these recent allegations underscore the importance of the work that we are currently engaged in."

He said the attacks, if true, "will not change our strategy" in Iraq.

Chlorine, an industrial chemical, was first introduced as a chemical weapon at Ypres in World War I with disastrous effects because gas masks were not widely available at the time.

In neighboring Syria, a joint U.N. fact-finding mission sent to investigate alleged chlorine attacks was ambushed and briefly detained by armed men earlier this year in rebel-held territory. The mission had said it was virtually certain chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in the country's north.

And earlier this week Kurdish officials and doctors said they believed Islamic State militants had released some kind of toxic gas in the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, where Kurdish forces have been fending off a massive monthlong offensive by the extremist group.

Assad had agreed with the United States and Russia to dispose of his chemical weapons -- an arsenal that Damascus had never previously formally acknowledged -- after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus in the summer of 2013. But because of its dual-use nature, chlorine was not listed as part of the Syrian arsenal.

Chlorine gas, when inhaled, swallowed or exposed to through skin, causes difficulty in breathing, coughing, and eye and skin irritation. It is not as toxic or effective at killing as sarin, a nerve agent, and experts say it is difficult to achieve high concentrations of chlorine by dropping it from the air.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#126 Post by Sunshine » Sun Oct 26, 2014 9:28 am

Iraqi Forces, Peshmerga Claim Gains Against ISIS; Battle For Kobani Continues
By Laura Smith-Spark and Kareem Khadder, CNN
October 25, 2014 -- Updated 1917 GMT (0317 HKT)

Source of Article & Slide Photos

Image
Smoke rises during fighting in the Syrian city of Kobani, seen from the outskirts of Suruc, Turkey, on Saturday, October 25. The United States and several Arab nations have been bombing ISIS targets in Syria to take out the militant group's ability to command, train and resupply its fighters.

Baghdad (CNN) -- Iraqi security forces have regained control of the area of Jurf al-Sakhar, a town south of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Saturday, as they battle to keep ISIS militants in check.

In a post on Facebook, al-Abadi saluted the efforts made by Iraqi forces to liberate the area and said they "have inflicted a strong blow to the terrorist organization ISIS."

Jurf al-Sakhar is on the outskirts of Hilla and is a mixed Sunni-Shiite area.

The town was also the site of intense fighting in June between Iraqi forces and ISIS over the control of a military facility, where an infantry brigade is based, Iraqi security officials said.

Farther north, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces have liberated the northern Iraqi town of Zumar, west of the Mosul Dam, and its surroundings, according to the ruling party of the Kurdish Regional Government and Iraqi state TV.

"Zumar is controlled by the Peshmerga forces. ISIS completely evacuated it," Sheikh Ahmad Mohammad, a Peshmerga commander, told Kurdish news agency Rudaw.

Specialized teams subsequently moved into the town to defuse all rigged homes and booby traps that ISIS left behind, Peshmerga operations commander in Mosul Sa'eed Mamzayn told CNN.

Peshmerga forces also regained control of 10 villages around Zumar and killed 81 ISIS fighters, Heman Hawrami, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Foreign Relations Office, said via Twitter.

Airstrikes pummel ISIS

The U.S. military said 10 coalition airstrikes had been carried out against ISIS forces Friday and Saturday west of the Mosul Dam, destroying five ISIS units, a building used by the group and several fighting positions.

Another coalition airstrike struck a large ISIS unit southeast of the Mosul Dam, according to the U.S. Central Command.
Altogether, 22 airstrikes have targeted the Sunni extremist group in Iraq since Friday.

ISIS took control of Zumar back in August when Peshmerga troops were forced to pull out after being surrounded by ISIS militants and being isolated from any support, Kurdistan Democratic Party regional official Ismat Rajab told CNN.

Kobani awaits Peshmerga reinforcements

News of the reported gains against ISIS in Iraq comes as Kurdish forces in Syria continue to battle ISIS for control of the Kurdish town of Kobani, known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab.

Clashes could be heard in the border town Saturday, but the Kurdish defenders appear to be holding their ground against ISIS as the militants seek to regain territory.

There's been heavy fighting this week around Tal Shair, a strategic hill to the west of Kobani, as well as to the south and east of the city.

Turkey has said it will allow Kurdish Peshmerga forces from Iraq to pass through its territory into Syria to join the fight for Kobani, which lies on the Syrian-Turkish border.

Saleh Muslim, chair of the PYD, a Kurdish poitical party in northern Syria, told CNN that the Peshmerga and his party finalized their pact Friday night and fighters could enter Kobani Saturday evening or Sunday.

The precise timing is unclear and dependent on part on Turkish permission, he said, adding that the armed wing of the PYD may also influence the timing in Kobani, the site of fierce fighting.

As many as 150 fighters could be allowed in, but it's not yet clear exactly how many or when the reinforcements will arrive.
One fighter in Kobani told CNN they could come as soon as Saturday night.

There was one U.S. airstrike in Syria from Friday to Saturday, against an ISIS artillery piece near Kobani, U.S. Central Command said.


CNN's Kareem Khadder reported from Baghdad and Laura Smith-Spark wrote in London. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh, Pierre Meilhan and Adam Levine also contributed to this report.

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#127 Post by Sunshine » Thu Nov 06, 2014 6:22 pm

The Merger of ISIS And Al-Qaeda Could Cripple The Civilized World
  • Take a barbaric army, add strategic jihadists—and a new evil is born.
  • Organized and disciplined, ISIS is grabbing territory to build a state.
  • On their hit list—the state of Israel.


Source of Article & Video

BY RIYADH MOHAMMED,
The Fiscal Times

October 10, 2014

As ISIS continues to advance on the Syrian town of Kobani and close in on Turkey’s border, experts in Islamic radical movements think the terror group may merge with its al-Qaeda mother organization soon. Together, the group would represent the greatest terror threat to the civilized world.

“I think Britain, Germany and France will witness significant attacks in their territories by the Islamic State. Al-Baghdadi [the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, otherwise known as ISIS] may reconcile with al-Zawhiri [the leader of the al-Qaeda central organization] to fight the crusader enemy. The attacks by the United States and her allies will unite the two groups,” said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi researcher who just finished writing a book about ISIS based on his unique access to the organization’s documents and years of research and advising Iraqi security forces.

Image

The break between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda

ISIS and al-Qaeda have a long, tangled history with one another. ISIS was the al-Qaeda official branch in Iraq until last February. However, they finally split after disagreements over operations in Syria.

The recent US intervention in the region along with the new US-led airstrike campaign against ISIS has actually forced the two groups to renew negotiations. For example, recent reports suggested that ISIS and al-Nusra Front are together planning the war against the US-led alliance. The al-Qaeda affiliated Khorasan group in Syria that was also targeted in the recent air attacks declared a few days ago in an audio message that it had joined ISIS. Add to that the Taliban in Pakistan who are hopping on board the ISIS train and you have a potential jihadi World War III.

Related: 20 Facts About Baghdadi, the Elusive ISIS Leader

Image

Other experts think that ISIS could be dissolved and swallowed by al-Qaeda, leading to the same result. “The Islamic State has killed many of al-Qaeda’s operatives in Syria and Iraq.... I think that al-Baghdadi will be killed, either by an attack by the U.S.-led alliance or by al-Qaeda.... The Islamic State doesn’t have the elements of survival like the al-Qaeda mother organization. It is most likely that it will be dissolved within al-Qaeda,” said Ibrahim al-Somaidaei, an Iraqi security analyst and former intelligence officer based in Amman, Jordan.

The Structure and the Strategy

Understanding who is responsible for big decisions within ISIS is critical to making sense of the group’s activity. According to al-Hashimi, ISIS has a written doctrine similar to a constitution. This document was authored by a man called Abdallah Abdul Samed al-Ani, who is considered the main theorist of the ISIS. The group’s decisions are divided into three categories. The first contains decisions made at the highest level by the emirate council headed by Baghdadi, the council of the resolution and decision also headed by Baghdadi, and the Shura council headed by Abu Ala al-Afri. “These decisions are very rare…like the decision of declaring the Caliphate and the decisions of rebellion on al-Zawahiri and Mulla Omar…they represent great hardship.” added al-Hashimi.

The second category specifies decisions made by the emirate council only. “These decisions are made to declare war or open new fronts or execute foreign hostages,” said al-Hashimi. The third category represents all other decisions made at the regional leadership level by the 24 governors or the numerous field commanders and religious leaders, each responsible for their jurisdiction.

Related: As Caliphate Is Declared, Iraqi Troops Battle for Tikrit

When analyzing ISIS’s main decisions since the take over of Mosul in June, it's clear that second and third category decisions are common. For example, the decision to advance to Tikrit in June was taken by the field commander of the region after the collapse of the Iraqi government forces and to control the Beiji oil refinery, the largest refinery in Iraq.

Image

Source: The Wall Street Journal

“They have declared their target: the formation of a Caliphate state and they declared Iraq and Syria as a destination for Jihadis to immigrate from all over the world…. Controlling the Beiji refinery is one of the means to enable the so-called state,” said Luay Jawad al-Khatteb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution Doha Center. The same economic drive was behind controlling the Iraqi border towns with Syria and Jordan in June and the Syrian border towns with Turkey in August. These decisions were made by the emirate council and several local governors. Economic grounds were behind last July's attacks on Syria’s largest oil field, al-Omar as well as the al-Shaer gas field in Homs Governorate, Syria and the dams in Mosul and Haditha in Iraq in August.


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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#128 Post by Sunshine » Wed Nov 12, 2014 12:17 pm

How An Arrest In Iraq Revealed Isis's $2bn Jihadist Network
Martin Chulov in Baghdad
Sunday 15 June 2014 16.06 EDT

Source of Article

Seizure of 160 computer flash sticks revealed the inside story of Isis, the band of militants that came from nowhere with nothing to having Syrian oil fields and control of Iraq's second city
Image
Members of the Kurdish armed fighting force look out over Jalula in northern Iraq, where they have been fighting Isis. Photograph: Rick Findler

Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council.

"He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.'

Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.

The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group's finances.

"We were all amazed and so were the Americans," a senior intelligence official told the Guardian. "None of us had known most of this information."

Officials, including CIA officers, were still decrypting and analysing the flash sticks when Abu Hajjar's prophecy was realised. Isis swept through much of northern and central Iraq over three stunning days, seizing control of Mosul and Tikrit and threatening Kirkuk as three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.

The capitulation of the military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in Iraq, crippled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, allowed Kurdish forces to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk and galvanised a Shia fightback along sectarian lines, posing a serious threat to the region's fragile geopolitics. On Sunday Isis published photographs that appeared to show it capturing and killing dozens of Iraqi soldiers.

"By the end of the week, we soon realised that we had to do some accounting for them," said the official flippantly. "Before Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875m [£515m]. Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks and the value of the military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5bn to that."

Image
Isis fighters, pictured on a militant website verified by AP. Photograph: AP

Laid bare were a series of staggering numbers that would be the pride of any major enterprise, let alone an organisation that was a startup three years ago.

The group's leaders had been meticulously chosen. Many of those who reported to the top tier – all battle-hardened veterans of the insurgency against US forces nearly a decade ago – did not know the names of their colleagues. The strategic acumen of Isis was impressive – so too its attention to detail. "They had itemised everything," the source said. "Down to the smallest detail."

Over the past year, foreign intelligence officials had learned that Isis secured massive cashflows from the oilfields of eastern Syria, which it had commandeered in late 2012, and some of which it had sold back to the Syrian regime. It was also known to have reaped windfalls from smuggling all manner of raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state, as well as priceless antiquities from archaeological digs.

But here before them in extraordinary detail were accounts that would have breezed past forensic accountants, giving a full reckoning of a war effort. It soon became clear that in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band of extremists to perhaps the most cash-rich and capable terror group in the world.

"They had taken $36m from al-Nabuk alone [an area in the Qalamoun mountains west of Damascus]. The antiquities there are up to 8,000 years old," the intelligence official said. "Before this, the western officials had been asking us where they had gotten some of their money from, $50,000 here, or $20,000 there. It was peanuts. Now they know and we know. They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don't need one."

The scale of Isis's resources seems to have prepared it for the improbable. But even by its ruthless standards, occupying two major cities in Iraq in three days, holding on to parts of Falluja and Ramadi, and menacing Kirkuk and Samara, was quite an accomplishment.

Social media postings throughout last week revealed the group's shock at its successes. Some posting showed extremists weeping with joy as dozens of Iraqi army humvess were driven through a sand berm on the border into Syria.

Foreign jihadists, many from Europe, were among those who stormed into Mosul and have spread through central Iraq ever since. Most of their names were already known to the intelligence agencies which had tried to track their movements after they arrived in Turkey, then disappeared, initially across the Syrian border. But noms de guerre given to the new arrivals had left their trails cold. Now officials had details of next of kin, and often phone numbers and emails.

Whether the intelligence haul can do much to reel in Isis after the fact seems a moot point, with the group having already wrought so much carnage in such a short time. "We will eventually find them," said the Iraqi official. "We knew they had infiltrated the ministries and the most frustrating thing about that flash [stick] was it only had initials. We are focusing on the initials that had the annotation 'valuable' next to them."

Other names were clearly of lesser use, he said. They were marked with "lazy", "undecided" or "needs monitoring".

More than ever before is now known about how Isis has gathered steam. The past week has also been an advanced education in its capabilities and ambitions. "Now we have to catch up with them," the official said.


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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#129 Post by Sunshine » Wed Nov 19, 2014 7:50 pm

Picture of Euphrates River In Iraq
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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#130 Post by Abaddon (Ex. 23:21) » Mon Jan 19, 2015 12:36 pm

ISIS Losing Ground In Symbolic Kobani Battle
Image
Turkish Kurds watch over the Syrian town of Kobani as they stand on top of a hill near Mursitpinar border crossing in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province. (File photo: Reuters)


Associated Press, Beirut
Thursday, 15 January 2015


Source of Article

With more than a thousand militants killed and territory slipping away, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group is losing its grip on the Syrian border town of Kobani under intense U.S.-led airstrikes and astonishingly stiff resistance by Kurdish fighters.

It is a stunning reversal for ISIS, which just months ago stood poised to conquer the entire town - and could pierce a carefully crafted image of military strength that helped attract foreign fighters and spread horror across the Middle East.

“An ISIS defeat in Kobani would quite visibly undermine the perception of unstoppable momentum and inevitable victory that ISIS managed to project, particularly after it captured Mosul,” said Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, referring to the militants’ seizure of Iraq’s second-largest city during its blitz into Iraq from Syria last summer.

It would also rob the group of a “psychological edge that both facilitated recruitment and intimidated actual and potential rivals, as well as the populations ISIS controlled,” Itani said.

In September, ISIS fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.

By October, ISIS control of Kobani was so widespread that it even made a propaganda video from the town featuring a captive British photojournalist, John Cantlie, to convey its message that ISIS fighters had pushed deep inside despite U.S.-led airstrikes.

The town, whose capture would give the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and open direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centerpiece of the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be “morally very difficult” not to help Kobani.

The U.S.-led air assault began Sept. 23, with Kobani the target of about a half-dozen airstrikes on average each day, and often more. More than 80 percent of all coalition airstrikes in Syria have been in or around the town.

Analysts, as well as Syrian and Kurdish activists, credit the air campaign and the arrival of heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq, who neutralized ISIS’ artillery advantage, for bringing key areas of Kobani under Kurdish control. These include a cultural center on a strategic hill overlooking several neighborhoods east and southeast of the town, which was captured in December, as well as a neighborhood that houses government buildings and a police station.

“The U.S.-led coalition airstrikes turned the balance. ... Without airstrikes, most likely the city would have been much more difficult to defend,” said Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an expert on Kurdish politics who writes for The Jamestown Foundation, a U.S.-based research center. “The peshmerga did play a role, but it was mostly the airstrikes.”

In the past month, the Kurdish fighters have made more advances, leading to a remarkable battlefield shift.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, estimates the Kurds now control roughly 80 percent of Kobani. Kurdish forces offer similar estimates. Four months after barreling into the town, the extremists barely hold Kobani’s southern and eastern edges, activists and residents say, despite weekly reinforcements to protect what it clearly views as a major strategic prize.

Since mid-September, the battle has killed some 1,600 people, including 1,075 ISIS group members, 459 Kurdish fighters and 32 civilians, according to the Observatory.

“Kobani is on the verge of being free of ISIS,” Abdurrahman said. The militant group’s “death toll is very high and they are not able to advance.”

That doesn’t mean ISIS is leaving without a fight.

The extremists have carried out more than 35 suicide attacks in Kobani in recent weeks, Abdurrahman and other activists said.

An ISIS video released last week via social media, apparently to boost morale, showed jihadist fighting street battles as coalition warplanes flew overhead. It showed a truck loaded with explosives being detonated by a suicide bomber inside the town. The footage could not be independently authenticated, but it corresponded with Associated Press reporting on the situation in Kobani.

In the video, a Tunisian fighter among the large contingent of foreign jihadis fighting in Kobani, was shown wearing sunglasses and carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He made a pledge to ISIS group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that militants in Kobani were willing to fight to “the last drop of blood.”

“We are not scared by their warplanes,” the fighter said.

An ISIS member based in central Syria, speaking to the AP via Skype, also insisted militants in Kobani faced no setbacks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the Kobani campaign.

It is not clear how long the battle for Kobani might last. ISIS brought in some 400 fighters, including many well-trained foreign recruits, during the first week of January, a Kobani-based Kurdish activist, Mustafa Bali, said.

Van Wilgenburg, the analyst, said losing Kobani would be a symbolic as well as strategic defeat for ISIS. But he cautioned: “This doesn’t mean it is the beginning of their defeat in Syria.”

Shorsh Hassan, a spokesman for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG - the Syrian Kurds fighting alongside the Iraqi peshmerga in Kobani - praised the will of his fighters to battle the far better-armed ISIS militants while losing “dozens of martyrs and wounded fighters.”

“This is a price that we are happy to pay to liberate Kobani,” he said.


Last Update: Thursday, 15 January 2015 KSA 07:07 - GMT 04:07
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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#131 Post by Abaddon (Ex. 23:21) » Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:20 pm

ISIS Loses Battle For Kobani
Date & Time: January 26th, 2015 02:03 pm

Source of Article & Video

(CNN) Kurdish fighters have taken the Syrian city of Kobani from ISIS' grip after 112 days of fighting with the Sunni extremist group, multiple sources said Monday.

The announcement comes a day after an Iraqi official declared that Iraq's Diyala Province had been "liberated" from ISIS.

Idriss Nassan, Kobani's deputy foreign minister, told CNN he expects an official announcement Tuesday "if things continue this way."

"YPG is in control," Nassan said, using the acronym for the People's Protection Units. "They are making sure to clear the streets and the places from ISIS to declare it a free city."

YPG spokesman Polat Can confirmed the news in a tweet: "Congratulations for liberation of Kobani to all of humanity, Kurdistan and people of Kobani."

Nassan called for the quick implementation of a "humanitarian corridor" to help the myriad refugees in the city, whom, he said, "need everything."

A Kobani official, who did not want to be named because it would interfere with Tuesday's official announcement, said the Kurds were going house to house in the newly liberated area to check for booby traps. Once the traps are removed or defused, the fighters will invite residents to return to their homes, the official said.

According to London-based opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights -- which also confirmed Kobani was liberated -- since October 6, when ISIS first raised its banner on the city's outskirts, the fighting among ISIS, YPG and the rebel battalions backing YPG has killed 979 ISIS combatants, 324 YPG fighters and 12 rebels.

Thirty-eight more ISIS militants died in attacks using booby-trapped vehicles or explosive belts, and the ISIS shelling of Kobani killed 12 civilians, SOHR said.

"On the other hand, hundreds of (ISIS) militants died during U.S. and Arab allies' airstrikes on the city and its countryside. Meanwhile, large parts of the city have become uninhabitable due to U.S. and Arab allies air raids, detonation of booby-trapped vehicles and mutual shelling," the group said.

Kobani apparently declared itself autonomous exactly one year before Monday's victory, SOHR said.

Iraqi victory claimed over ISIS in Diyala
A large-scale military operation to reclaim Iraq's Diyala Province from ISIS was successful, Iraqi transportation minister Hadi al-Amiri said Sunday.

The operation started last week, and at least 58 people -- including two journalists -- were killed. Nearly 300 others were wounded.

In a televised news conference Sunday, al-Ameri, who is also the head of the a powerful Shiite militia, said the province was "liberated" from ISIS.

Al-Amiri said that Iraqi security forces are searching for ISIS militants who fled into orchards and farms in remote areas.

Diyala Police commander Brig. Gen. Jamil Kamel al-Shamari also announced that Diyala is now under full control of Iraqi security forces.

ISIS has been fighting for Kobani for months, hoping to add it to the territory it already controls in Syria and Iraq as part of what it calls its independent Islamic nation.

Syria has been embroiled in a more than three-year civil war, with government troops battling ISIS and other rebels elsewhere, leaving Kobani's ethnic Kurds to defend the city.

Kobani, aka Ayn al-Arab, is strategically important because of its location on the border with Turkey.

Airstrikes by the United States and its allies, part of a larger U.S.-led coalition effort against ISIS in the region, intermittently take out ISIS targets in the area. The coalition started operations in September.


CNN's Ralph Ellis, Dana Ford, Gul Tuysuz, Raja Razek and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#132 Post by Sunshine » Thu Apr 09, 2015 6:49 pm

Syria Says Military Operation Needed To Expel IS From Yarmuk
Source of Article

Damascus (AFP) - Syria said Wednesday a military operation was needed to expel jihadists who have overrun large parts of a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, trapping thousands of civilians inside.

The Islamic State group's advances in the Yarmuk camp have sparked international concern for the civilians, who have already endured repeated bombardment and an army siege of more than 18 months.

The European Union has announced additional aid for residents of the camp, saying their suffering was reaching "intolerable levels" and the UN Security Council has urged a humanitarian corridor into the district.

Syria's Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar on Wednesday said the crisis required a military operation.

"The priority now is to expel and defeat militants and terrorists in the camp," he said, after meeting Palestine Liberation Organisation official Ahmed Majdalani, who arrived Tuesday from Ramallah.

"Under the present circumstances, a military solution is necessary," Haidar said.

He did not spell out when a military operation might begin or how it would be waged, but suggested that Syrian troops could be involved.

"The Syrian state will decide whether the battle requires it," he said.

- Concern for residents -

Amnesty International, however, said Wednesday that thousands of lives are already being put at risk by intensified regime shelling and aerial bombardment since the IS advance.

"Civilians have also come under sniper fire and been caught up in clashes between armed groups," it said. "For civilians still trapped in Yarmuk life is an agonising struggle for survival."

IS forces attacked Yarmuk on April 1 and have seized control of large parts of the camp, executing Palestinian fighters.

The Syrian government and residents of the capital have been rattled by the presence of IS militants just a few kilometres (miles) from the heart of Damascus.

Once a thriving district that was home to some 160,000 Syrian and Palestinian residents, Yarmuk has been devastated by violence since late 2012.

The Syrian army imposed a tight siege on the camp that reportedly led to deaths because of shortages of food and medicines.

An agreement between rebels and the government, backed by Palestinian factions in the camp, was reached last year and led to an easing of the siege, although humanitarian access remained limited.

Majdalani, speaking after meeting Haidar, said the Palestinian leadership would back whatever measures the Syrian government decided on.

"It is more and more difficult to talk about a political solution in the camp," he said.

But it remains unclear whether an operation will be accepted by all Palestinian factions, including the Hamas-linked Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis, which has led the fight against IS in Yarmuk.

A range of Palestinian factions, including Hamas representatives, were to meet in Damascus on Wednesday evening to discuss the situation.

Inside the camp, concern has grown for the fate of thousands of residents, with the EU saying it would provide 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million) in emergency funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

"The suffering of civilians in Yarmuk camp is reaching intolerable levels," EU aid commissioner Christos Stylianides said Tuesday.

- IS bomb kills rebels -

Elsewhere in Syria, the toll in two car bombings late Tuesday in northern Aleppo province rose to 32, a monitor said, accusing IS of being behind the attacks.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group, said the attacks appeared to be a bid by IS jihadists to expand their reach in Aleppo.

One bomb hit a base in the village of Hawar Kilis, near the Turkish border, killing at least 23 rebels, while the second targeted a joint rebel office in the town of Marea and killed nine.

The Observatory said three commanders, including one from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, were killed in the Marea blast.

Al-Nusra confirmed the death of its local commander in the town and accused IS of the bombing.

Despite sharing a similar ideology, Al-Nusra and IS are at odds in fronts across most of Syria.

More than 215,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, which spiralled into war after a regime crackdown.

***

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#133 Post by Abaddon (Ex. 23:21) » Tue Oct 13, 2015 1:19 pm

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in convoy hit by airstrike, Iraq says
By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Hamdi Alkhshali, CNN
Updated 10:49 PM ET, Mon October 12, 2015 | Video Source: CNN

Source of Article

Image

The ISIS terror threat
56 photos: The ISIS terror threat

(CNN) Iraq's military claims its air force struck a convoy in western Anbar province that included ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The fate of Baghdadi is unknown, as he was "carried away in a vehicle," the military statement said.

But nine ISIS officials were killed in the airstrike, along with a "large number" of Baghdadi's bodyguards, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.

The slain officials included several military leaders and an adviser to Baghdadi, the ministry said.

"The Iraqi air force carried out a heroic operation by striking al-Baghdadi's convoy while he was on his way to attend a meeting with senior ISIS leaders in Karabelah," the statement said.

The site of the meeting was also struck, and several ISIS leaders were killed and wounded, the statement said.

The Pentagon said it can't confirm the report.

Who might lead ISIS if Baghdadi dies?

Claims that Baghdadi has been hit in airstrikes have been made twice over the past year. In November, Iraqi officials said he had been wounded in an airstrike. In March, Iraq's Interior Ministry said the Iraqi air force wounded Baghdadi in an airstrike on the Iraqi town of Al-Qaem.

Each time, audio recordings of Baghdadi showed up on social media within days after the airstrikes.

He is enemy No. 1 in the fight against ISIS, and this summer, U.S. intelligence officials said they believed Baghdadi was in the area of Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the self-declared Islamic State. He was also still in charge of ISIS' operations, they said.

CNN's Susanna Capelouto, Holly Yan and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
"He that is from God listens to the sayings of God..." -- John 8:47

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#134 Post by Abaddon (Ex. 23:21) » Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:08 pm

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly poisoned



Source of Article and Video -- Fox News

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is at death’s door after being poisoned by a mystery assassin in Iraq, it has been reported.

Three other senior jihadis were also afflicted by the toxin in Al-Ba’aj, southwest of Mosul – Islamic State’s biggest city in Iraq. The four have reportedly been rushed for treatment at a secret location.

FARS, an Iranian news agency, say that ISIS is now arresting several suspects to find out who has struck a blow at the terror group’s self-proclaimed ‘Caliph’.

The evil Iraqi cleric is known to have been personally responsible for the rape and torture of US aid worker Kayla Mueller.

He forced the 26-year-old to marry him, before repeatedly raping her.

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Mueller was killed during a Jordanian airstrike on ISIS in February last year.

Baghdadi was previously held by US forces in the city of Fallujah in 2004 during their invasion of the country.

Baghdadi was released within six months and would go on to be declared the leader of ISIS – then known as al-Qaeda in Iraq – in 2010.

If the reports are true, it would not the first time al-Baghdadi has been injured. In 2015 he was severely hurt in a US airstrike in Syria.

In June of this year, rumours surfaced that he was killed by a US airstrike in ISIS 'capital' Raqqa, but they were later found to be false.
"He that is from God listens to the sayings of God..." -- John 8:47

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Re: The "Small Horn" Of Bible Prophecy Emerges!!!

#135 Post by Abaddon (Ex. 23:21) » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:50 pm

ISIS leader al-Baghdadi may have been poisoned

Source of Article

Story By Jamie Schram New York Post
October 3rd, 2016

The Pentagon is investigating whether ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was poisoned during a lunchtime feast — causing him to fall seriously ill.

The ISIS leader and three commanders were eating in the small town of Be’aj, Iraq, when all four suffered “severe poisoning” and had to be “transferred to an unknown location under strict measures,” the Iraqi news agency WAA said.

The barbaric terror group, also known as ISIL and Daesh, has launched a full-scale investigation to find the culprits, according to WAA.

Pentagon spokesman and Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told The Post that he is “aware of the reports, but we have no information to corroborate [them].”

“Suffice it to say we always have great interest in the whereabouts and condition of the leader of ISIL,” Davis added when asked if the US military was looking into the matter.

Over recent years, Baghdadi has risen to the top of the extremist world, becoming the most feared jihadi leader since Osama bin Laden.

The US government has put a $7 million bounty on his head.

Since 2013, his network of savage killers has taken over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, ruling small towns and large cities with an iron-fist under ­Sharia law.

Baghdadi also has sent his military-trained soldiers to Western nations to carry out numerous deadly attacks, while encouraging lone wolves through social media to commit similar acts of bloodshed.

Scores of innocent people have been slaughtered in the attacks across Europe and America.

The radical cleric also allegedly participated in the rape and torture of Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old Arizona resident, who was kidnapped in Syria while working as a humanitarian aid. She was killed last February in a Jordanian airstrike on ISIS.

In 2004, Baghdadi was captured in the city of Fallujah by American soldiers during the US invasion of Iraq.

After spending several years as a US prisoner at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, Baghdadi was released and subsequently took the reins as leader of ISIS in 2010.

There have previously been unverified reports that Baghdadi was either wounded or killed by US-coalition airstrikes.

Meanwhile, Iraqi jets leveled a radio station used by the ISIS.

Broadcasting abruptly stopped on Sunday at the Al-Bayan radio station, NBC News reported.

The station was “one of the strongest” propaganda tools used by the terror group, a spokesman at Iraq’s Joint Operation Command told NBC.

“They used to broadcast Islamic anthems that encouraged people to join them,” the spokesman said.

The station encouraged listeners “to stand against the government and encouraged people to be terrorists under the name of jihad,” he added.
"He that is from God listens to the sayings of God..." -- John 8:47

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