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ISIS Tag

The Islamic State (ISIS) has held Raqqa, Syria, for four years and made it the the group's de facto capital. That appears to have ended as US-backed Syrian forces have declared they retook the city from the terrorists. From CNN:
"Major military operations in Raqqa are finished but they are now clearing the city of sleeper cells -- if they exist -- and mines," Talal Salo, spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, told CNN. The SDF is a coalition of Arab and Kurdish fighters.

This is how the terrorists win, and civilization dies. From Australia, Bondi synagogue ban over terrorism risk leaves Jewish community shocked and furious:
A LOCAL council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi because it could be a terrorist target, in a shock move that religious leaders say has caved in to Islamic extremism and created a dangerous precedent.

The NY Times, The Washington Post and other major news media have been in a stiff competition to leak sensitive intelligence operational information in order to harm Donald Trump and his administration. Among other things, there have been repeated supposed intelligence community leaks disclosing the ability of U.S. intelligence to monitor conversations of the Russian ambassador with his superiors back in Russia. This is a pattern.

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump's CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president's actions in Syria. WaPo's David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: "I'm going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump." He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that "the most daring and decisive" attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn't been for President Trump's decision to delegate authority to commanders in the field.

Egypt has launched an air assault on terror training camps in Libya, following the deadly bus attack that claimed the lives of over two dozen Coptic Christian men, women and children.
On Friday, Egyptian fighter jets struck eastern Libya just hours after a shooting that killed 29 and wounded 24 in the southern Egyptian province of Minya when masked militants boarded vehicles en route to a monastery and opened fire at close range. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest directed at Egypt's increasingly embattled Christian minority following two church bombings last month that killed more than 45, also claimed by the group.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, UK, on Monday night. The attack killed 22 people and left 59 injured. British authorities refuse to name the attacker, but CBS News reported he was 23-year-old Salman Abedi. Yes, the authorities knew about him before the attack.

In Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip as president, President Trump delivered a speech on Islamic extremism and the need for the world to unite against and eradicate it.  Trump urged the Muslim-majority countries to "take the lead in combating radicalization" and to expel Islamist extremists from their places of worship, communities, holy lands, and the planet. Some highlights from the full text of President Trump's speech.
"I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to deliver a message of friendship and hope. That is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith." "Our vision is one of peace, security, and prosperity—in this region, and in the world. Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God."

The Arab world's most-watched TV network, MBC 1, will air a prime-time TV drama depicting life under ISIS. The 30-part series will debut during Ramadan. “Black Crows", "paints a picture of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as a brutal criminal organization run by corrupt and hypocritical leaders. But recruits are depicted as victims, and women who challenge the militants’ control are heroes," reports the New York Times.

With the recent flaring of violence in India’s Muslim majority region of Kashmir, leaders of the Muslim world and the Western mainstream media have rushed to defend the violent Islamist mobs running amok in the Himalayan province. Earlier this week, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan called for "multilateral dialogue" with his direct involvement to settle the question of Islamist separatism in Kashmir. After last year's power grab in Ankara, Erdogan speaks in his newly acquired capacity as the ruler of Turkey, who wants to take his country back to the days of Ottoman Caliphate, when Turkey claimed to speak for the entire Islamdom. Erdogan promotes a ‘Kashmir group’ within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to air Islamic grievances. OIC is a forum for Islamic countries -- an exclusive club of military despots and Islamic theocrats -- to bash India. India with all its flaws is at least a democracy.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for two attacks on two Coptic churches in Egypt.  The attacks took place this morning and left 37 people dead and over a hundred wounded. Fox News reports:
The ISIS terror group has claimed responsibility for two separate Palm Sunday bombing attacks at Coptic Christian churches in Egypt that have killed 37 people and injured more than 100.

As the Islamic state (ISIS) retreats from Mosul, Iraq, more locals have spoken out about life under the terrorist group. ISIS captured Iraq's second largest city in the summer of 2014. OB-GYN Dr. Fatima Khaleel spoke with The Sunday Times about the females she treated in Mosul, noting most of them desperately wanted to get pregnant by ISIS fighters to breed caliphate cubs.

Wednesday, Swiss Police raided a mosque and several houses in search of terrorists belonging to Islamic State. Around one hundred law enforcement officers were involved in the counter-terrorism operation carried out in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino. Police arrested two Islamists of Turkish origin, including a recruiter for Islamic State. So far, Switzerland has been spared terrorist attacks such as those carried out in France, Belgium and Germany, but the country has long been in the crosshairs of Jihadists. ISIS had previously released propaganda clips calling Switzerland part of the "coalition of devil" and threatening to carry out terrorist attacks inside the country.

Right after the Paris attacks of November 2015 that killed 128 people, President Obama scoffed at Republicans for being "scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America." But just because those "clinging to their guns and religion"  -- to use another of Obama's expression-- might be skeptical of mass-migration from Muslim dominated countries, doesn't mean Islamic terrorism isn't out to get them. According to a recent report published by a UK-based counter-extremism think tank, Islamist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are using child recruits to infiltrate the refugee wave currently overwhelming Europe. ISIS was paying smugglers to bring child recruits across to Europe and offering up to $2,000 for each child recruited inside the refugees camps in Lebanon and Jordan, says the report issued by Quilliam International.