The views in this World View article are those of the author, John Xenakis, based on Generational Dynamics analyses of historic and current events, and do not necessarily represent the views of Algora Publishing.
Islamic State militants in Mosul are deliberately targeting civilians who refuse to join them as they retreat ahead of advancing Iraqi forces involved in a large-scale government operation to retake the militant-held city, an international watchdog said on Wednesday.
Three men set up a fence and a ribbon of yellow and black crime scene tape around a site south of Iraq’s Mosul, marking a mass grave of jihadists’ victims.
U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq have provided weapons and training to hundreds of Shiite militias known for being affiliated with Iran, including some the U.S. has designated terrorists, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
The Islamic State organization published pictures of activists celebrating the recapture of Palmyra in central Syria.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter arrived in Iraq on Sunday to discuss the coming stages of the ongoing offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State jihadist group.
At least 50,000 Islamic State jihadists have been killed by the US-led coalition since it began operations in Iraq and Syria in late 2014, a senior US military official said Thursday.
Perennial Islamic State hostage/spokesman John Cantlie has once again resurfaced in an ISIS propaganda video, this time touring the destruction in the ISIS-held areas of Mosul and interviewing local men sympathetic to the terrorist group, who appear increasingly frustrated with the lack of resources and difficultly getting around the city.
Islamic State militants attacked Iraqi soldiers near a hospital in southeast Mosul on Wednesday, an army officer and the jihadist group’s new agency said, trying to repel the army’s deepest advances of the seven-week Mosul campaign.
A top Gaza jihadi has denied media reports that the leader of the Islamic State organization, Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, may have been killed in battle in the Iraqi flashpoint city of Mosul.
The Islamic State organization has continued to disseminate “business as usual” pictures from Mosul, as part of a propaganda push against an ongoing campaign by the Iraqi military and the international coalition to liberate the city.
U.S.-led coalition officials involved in the operation to eradicate the Islamic State from Mosul say they have succeeded in curbing the number of vehicle-based suicide bomb attacks on Iraqi troops on the ground by “cratering” the city’s roads and knocking down its bridges.
On Tuesday, Reuters published an interesting set of interviews with captured Islamic State militants in Kurdish custody. They talked about the appeal of the Islamic State and illuminated the difficulty of putting ISIS-dominated cities like Mosul back together again.
A fleeing seven-year-old child was among dozens of civilians allegedly executed by the Islamic State group in Mosul in recent weeks, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The month-old operation to rid the Iraqi city of Mosul of the Islamic State terrorist group continues, with Iraqi officers confirming nearly 1,000 jihadi deaths since it began. The tedious street-by-street assault has left a sea of bodies in its wake, however, and civilians demanding the government do something to clear the streets of blood.
Contents: Iraq sending Shia militias to Mosul, directly violating promise to Turkey; The chaotic operation to liberate Mosul
The Islamic State organization has increased its “business as usual” propaganda effort despite the military campaign waged against it in Iraq and Syria
The Islamic State has published a picture of a Palestinian jihadi who blew himself up among Iraqi troops near the city of Mosul.
Some women in Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-controlled Mosul have said they are “much more afraid” of the jihadist group’s all-female “morality police,” or Khansaa Brigade, than the battle-hardened male terrorists, reports NBC News.
TEL AVIV – Despite a string of defeats on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State’s propaganda organ is seeking to portray “business as usual,” disseminating gory pictures of what the terror organization called “justice” for crimes against Islam.
Representatives of a variety of United Nations (UN) agencies and non-governmental organizations have warned that the conditions in liberated areas of Mosul, Iraq, have made civilians extremely vulnerable to disease, dehydration, and famine, as the Iraqi military continues to barrel deeper into the city’s Islamic State strongholds.
The U.S.-allied Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), despite objections from Turkey, are expected to soon join the ongoing U.S.-backed offensive to retake Raqqa, considered to be the de-facto capital of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.
TEL AVIV – Female Islamic State fighters have expressed their wish to defy the organization’s leadership and carry out suicide attacks in Mosul, according to internal communication obtained by Breitbart Jerusalem.
The battle to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State is turning one month old this week, and while the Iraqi army has made significant inroads where the terrorist group previously ruled, civilians are growing concerned that their food supply is running short, while risk of disease grows as the corpses of ISIS jihadis rot in the streets.
The Islamic State (ISIS) has deployed wooden replicas of tanks, Humvees, and even jihadi fighters in a bid to deceive aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition supporting the assault on Mosul.
They were threatened, forced to spit on a crucifix or convert to Islam, but a handful of Iraqi Christians miraculously survived more than two years under Islamic State group rule.
The Associated Press on Sunday chronicled a sad homecoming for the Christians of Keramlis, a town on the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq, overrun by ISIS in August 2014.
The only shop to open so far after the army fought its way into the Intisar district of eastern Mosul is Ali Bashar’s barbershop. Inside, men were lining up to shave off the long beards they had been forced to wear under Islamic State.
The Islamic State group drone hovered in the sky over the advancing Iraqi forces before dropping a grenade, the jihadists’ latest move to weaponise small off-the-shelf aircraft.
Human rights watchdog group Amnesty International has accused fighters dressed in Iraqi Federal Police (IFP) uniforms of committing war crimes by torturing and extrajudicially executing civilians they arrested in villages south of Mosul.
MOSUL, Iraq — Elite Iraqi forces were engaged in “intense” fighting with jihadists in eastern Mosul on Saturday, an officer said, as civilians gathered on the city’s outskirts to flee.
Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists, feeling the pressure from the U.S.-backed Iraqi military and its allies on all sides of their de-facto capital of Mosul, Iraq, are perpetrating a “numbing” extent of civilian suffering, including hanging 66 corpses of alleged traitors, using radicalized children as suicide bombers, and using chemical weapons, reports the United Nations.
According to a complaint from Amnesty International (AI), Iraqi government forces have killed and tortured civilians in the area around Mosul as they closed in on the Islamic State’s stronghold.
Isis militants have executed scores more people around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul this week and are reported to be stockpiling dangerous chemicals in civilian areas, the UN human rights office said on Friday.
Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists have reportedly captured 25,000 civilians from northern Iraq to serve as future human shields in the latest desperate effort to prevent the advance of tens of thousands of U.S-backed Iraqi troops.
Iraqi security forces are preparing to advance toward Mosul airport on the city’s southern edge to increase pressure on Islamic State militants fighting troops who breached their eastern defenses, officers said on Thursday.
Islamic State militants fighting to hold on to their Mosul stronghold have displayed the crucified bodies of five people they said gave information to “the enemy”, and are back on the city streets policing the length of men’s beards, residents say.
The Islamic State has taken hundreds of hostages as it falls back into its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, bolstering its inventory of civilian human shields with 295 Iraqi Security Forces troops kidnapped last week.
Islamic State fighters have abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near Mosul and forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from the town of Hammam al Alil toward Mosul airport, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Tuesday.
Iraqi investigators were probing a mass grave on Tuesday that was discovered the previous day by Iraqi troops advancing further into Islamic State-held territory near the city of Mosul.