Kurdistan

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia in northern Syria that played an instrumental role in toppling the Islamic State “caliphate,” said on Thursday that it was preparing to send a delegation to the Sunni jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group currently in charge of the country.

The head of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia in the country allied with the United States, said in an interview on Wednesday that his fighters had stopped their efforts against the Islamic State in light of the ongoing assault against Kurds by a Turkish proxy force.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will begin a brief trip to the Middle East on Wednesday with stops in Jordan and Turkey.

The Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy force in the neighboring country, captured the Kurdish-held city of Manbij, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw confirmed on Tuesday, a day before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claimed to take the city of Deir ez-Zor.

The Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) notified the Islamist government of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan six months ago that it had a plan of conquest to overthrow former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Reuters reported on Monday.

The foreign minister of Iran traveled to Baghdad on Friday for a meeting to discuss, alongside his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts, how to address the surging campaign by Sunni jihadists to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

oth Kurdish forces in Syria and humanitarian organizations on the ground warned this week that militias backed by Turkey are seizing territory in northern Syria and endangering Kurdish civilians, including potentially engaging in “ethnic cleansing.”

British counter-terror officers arrested six people as part of an investigation into activity linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party.

Iraqi officials stated they are finalizing an effort to remove nearly all U.S. troops following the collapse of the Islamic State.

The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region.

The Kurdish news outlet Rudaw estimated in a report published Thursday that the southern Iraqi city of Basra lost 80 percent of its Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac Christians in the past two decades as a result of extreme persecution by jihadist groups.

Turkey carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Saturday after an attack on a Turkish military base in Iraq killed nine Turkish soldiers.

The government of Turkey announced a bombing campaign on Sunday consisting of airstrikes on 20 alleged strategic positions within the borders of Iraq, a response to a suicide attack against the Turkish General Directorate of Security in Ankara this weekend.

Authorities in Turkey are struggling to house the thousands of people left destitute after a series of massive earthquakes in the country last week, rushing to build tents and transfer earthquake victims to shelters a week later.

The government of Turkey is struggling to address the growing problem of caring for and homing babies found in the wreckage of Monday’s devastating set of earthquakes but having no apparent adult relatives, the national newspaper Hurriyet reported on Friday.

Rescuers in northwestern Syria reportedly found a newborn on Monday born under the rubble of her home after a devastating series of earthquakes left much of the west of the country and eastern Turkey entirely leveled.

Paris Police arrested a man in his 60s after at least two people were killed in a shooting at a Kurdish Cultural Centre in central Paris.

Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi visited Iran’s Kurdistan province on Thursday – the home province of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman whom Iranian “morality police” beat to death for allegedly wearing a scarf improperly – dismissing months of nationwide protests and claiming the nation’s ethnic Kurds supported the Islamic regime.

Islamic State terrorists on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a gun attack on Shiite Muslim pilgrims at a shrine in the southern city of Shiraz.

IRAQ – For President Joe Biden, a renewed Middle East crisis lurks just as the Afghan withdrawal debacle enters the rearview mirror and record-high gas prices continue to retreat.

A report by Europol examining terrorism within the EU in 2021 has found that jihadists remain the single biggest threat to the bloc, despite an increasing political focus on right-wing extremists.

U.S. military forces stationed at Al-Harir Air Base in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region “mistakenly” fired on at least 11 civilian homes and one civilian car on Monday night in the nearby town of Shaqlawa, the Kurdish news website Rudaw reported.

Christian political leaders in Syria told the Kurdish outlet Rudaw on Monday that the Christian population of that country had dropped from about ten percent of Syrians in 2011, the start of the Syrian Civil War, to three percent of the country in 2021.

Turkish military bombardments targeting sites near Yazidi refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan have displaced the camps’ inhabitants in recent weeks, the Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported on Wednesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a non-governmental organization, revealed this week that it had confirmed the deaths of nearly 500,000 people during the decade-long Syrian civil war.

Islamic State terrorists in Iraq have regrouped and are “now a force” once again threatening to gain control of significant territories in the country, a commander of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga warned on Wednesday.

Kurdish members of the Iraqi Parliament (MP) and another MP got into a physical brawl Monday night over the latter’s reported insults to the Kurdistan Regional Government and its leaders, Kurdish news outlet Rudaw reported.

Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the United States in remarks Monday to stop “siding with terrorists” for Washington’s continued support of Syrian Kurdish groups instrumental to defeating the Islamic State.

Islamic State terrorists executed a “surprise attack” on Iraqi police in Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic region in the nation’s north, late on Thursday, killing an officer and injuring at least three others according to the Kurdish outlet Rudaw.

The Islamic State terror group continues to pose a security threat in areas of northern Iraq disputed between Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdistan region, a leader of Kurdistan’s Peshmerga military said on Tuesday.

A militia loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad attacked the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Hasaka, in the northeast of the country, on Sunday, breaking a longstanding, tense lull in hostilities between the two sides.

A trial for the shooting of a two-year-old during a high-speed chase between police and suspected smugglers seeking to get to Britain.

Turkish officials and state media outlets have repeatedly accused Armenia this week of recruiting Kurdish fighters from Syria and Iraq to aid in their ongoing military engagement against Azerbaijan, a claim the president of Armenia dismissed as “nonsense” on Wednesday.

Iraq announced a travel ban on the governor of Kirkuk, Rakan al-Jabouri — appointed to restore Baghdad-led leadership and expel Kurdish leadership in the aftermath of the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum — on Tuesday amid charges of criminally misappropriating public funds.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidis remain missing in the wake of the Islamic State invasion of Iraq, which oversaw a systemic effort to eliminate the minority group through genocide and forced assimilation.

Residents of a Christian village in Northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region have been forced to abandon the settlement in recent months over Turkey’s ongoing military operations in the area, Kurdish outlets reported on Tuesday.