Tagged: Raqqa

Islamic State returning to insurgent roots as caliphate disappears

(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR) — After being nearly defeated on the battlefields of its would-be caliphate, the Islamic State group has reverted to what it was before its spectacular conquests in 2014, analysts say – a shadowy insurgent network that targets civilian populations with guerrilla-style attacks and exploits state weaknesses to incite sectarian strife.

In Iraq and Syria, hardly a week goes by without the group staging an attack on a town or village, keeping its opponents on edge even as it fights US-backed forces advancing on the last remaining slice of territory under its control near the countries’ shared border.

Hisham al-Hashimi, an IS expert who advises the Iraqi government, said the group now operates like it did in 2010, before its rise in Iraq, which culminated four years later with the militants seizing one of Iraq’s biggest cities, Mosul, and also claiming the city of Raqqa in Syria and declaring an Islamic caliphate across large areas of both countries.

Mr. Al-Hashimi said the world’s most dangerous insurgent group is trying to prove that despite losing its territorial hold, “it still has long arms to strike.”

While it fends off attacks on its remaining pockets in Syria, a recent surge in false claims of responsibility for attacks also signals that the group is struggling to stay relevant after losing its proto-state and its dominance on the international news agenda. The main figures behind the group’s once sleek propaganda machine have mostly been killed. Raqqa fell a year ago this month, and the group has lost all but 2 percent of the territory it held in Iraq and Syria.

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Trump: ‘End of the ISIS caliphate is in sight’

(CNN) — By Miranda Green, CNN

President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would soon transition into a “new phase” of involvement in Syria after US-backed forces drove ISIS members from Raqqa, the city they deemed their capital.

“The defeat of ISIS in Raqqah represents a critical breakthrough in our worldwide campaign to defeat ISIS and its wicked ideology,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House. “With the liberation of ISIS’s capital and the vast majority of its territory, the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight.

“We will soon transition into a new phase in which we will support local security forces, de-escalate violence across Syria, and advance the conditions for lasting peace, so that the terrorists cannot return to threaten our collective security again,” Trump said.

The US and its allies would support diplomatic negotiations to end the violence, to allow Syrian refugees to return to their homes, and to make way for “a political transition that honors the will of the Syrian people,” the President added.

US-backed forces fighting ISIS in Raqqa announced this week that “major military operations” in the city have ended and that the terrorist group has lost control of its self-declared capital.

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Raqqa: Isis completely driven out of Syria ‘capital’ by US-backed forces

(UK INDEPENDENT) — By John Davidson

US-backed militias have completely taken Isis’ de facto capital, Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Tuesday, in a major symbolic blow to the jihadist group.

The fall of Raqqa, where Isis staged euphoric parades after its string of lightning victories in 2014, is a potent symbol of the movement’s collapsing fortunes. The city was used as a base for the group to plan attacks abroad.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by a US-led international alliance, has been fighting Isis inside Raqqa since June.

SOHR said 3,250 people were killed in the five-month battle, including 1,130 civilians.

A witness said fighting appeared to be almost at an end with only sporadic bursts of gunfire.

Militia fighters celebrated in the streets, chanted slogans from their vehicles and raised a flag inside Raqqa stadium.

An SDF spokesman said the alliance would capture the last Isis areas in the city within hours.

Save The Children has warned that the humanitarian crisis in northeast Syria is “rapidly escalating”, with 270,000 people who have fled the fighting in “critical need” of aid and camps “bursting at the seams”.

On Saturday a deal was brokered for the last remaining local fighters in Raqqa to leave the city.

SDF spokesman Talal Silo said then that any fighters who were not signed up to the deal would be left behind “to surrender or die”.

The jihadists’ last bases in the city, a stadium and a hospital, were captured earlier on Tuesday, the SDF said.

A local field commander said no Isis fighters remained at the two central points where militants had been best entrenched and where the SDF said fighting on Monday night and early Tuesday was focused.

“We do still know there are still IEDs and booby traps in and amongst the areas that ISIS once held, so the SDF will continue to clear deliberately through areas,” said Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the coalition.

In a sign that the four-month battle for Raqqa was in its last stages, Col. Dillon said there had been no coalition air strikes there on Monday.

It is now hemmed in to a tiny bomb-cratered patch of the city around the stadium that was being pounded from the air by a US-led coalition and encircled by SDF fighters.

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Islamic State ‘caliphate cubs’ video shows children executing prisoners

BREITBART) — On December 29, the Islamic State released another “Cubs of the Caliphate” training video in which child soldiers are shown murdering helpless prisoners.

As in the previous “Cubs” video, preteen children are shown moving through a training course like a military squad, using their handguns to murder bound captives they discover along the way. Last year’s video had the trainees sweeping through an outdoor area, evidently somewhere in Syria; this time they are going through a ruined building somewhere in or near the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa. Another similarity to the earlier video is that the executions are made to resemble a first-person video game.

Unlike the previous child-executioner video release, this time the prisoners are allowed to move around with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, turning the exercise into a murderous cat-and-mouse chase. Some prisoners are shown weeping and pleading when cornered by the gun-wielding children. The bloody aftermath of their executions is shown in detail.

One prisoner is shot in the leg or groin and tries to crawl to safety before his child murderer shoots him in the leg again to stop him, prompting a howl of pain and fear. The little boy then stands over his victim and finishes the job with a string of point-blank shots.

Another hysterically weeping victim is brought to his knees with a bullet to the leg and then shot in the top of the head. The ISIS cameramen linger on him as he takes his last ragged breaths.

Several armed children corner the last victim on a rooftop, who appears to leap to his death to escape them. The children go downstairs and pump several bullets into his head.

One of the victims is notably identified as a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, the Kurdish separatist group in Turkey. The Turkish government frequently claims the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, which is allied with the United States and has been fighting the Islamic State since its inception, is a branch of the PKK.

Some of the children shown in the video appear to be wounded. One of them has a cast on his arm.

The 34-minute video, titled “My Father Told Me,” also shows children aged 9 to 13 training with firearms, rocket launchers, and hand-to-hand combat. They also read the Koran, undergo jihadi indoctrination, and pledge to fight for the Islamic State.

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Another made kid of Allah: ISIS child executes alleged Israeli spy

» Another made kid of Allah: ISIS child executes alleged Israeli spy