ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
feds cominThese ISIS nikkas going HAM against Al-Qaeda .
I wonder which side the USA will choose
EDIT: Can't embed the link for some reason
Hell up in Syria and Iraq
- Thread starter 88m3
- Start date
http://www.smh.com.au/world/islamic...dented-appearance-in-iraq-20140706-zsxqj.html
Islamic militant leader makes unprecedented appearance in Iraq
Islamic militant leader goes public
A man purported to be the reclusive leader of the militant Islamic State has made what would be his first public appearance.
Baghdad: Self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has made an unprecedented appearance in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which his forces captured last month, ordering Muslims to obey him.
It marks a significant change for the shadowy jihadist whose Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant led a lighting offensive that has overrun swathes of five provinces north and west of Baghdad.
The onslaught has alarmed world leaders, displaced hundreds of thousands and piled pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as he seeks a third term in office following April elections.
The man said to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi takes in the Mosul mosque in a video released online. Photo: AP
A 21-minute video shows a bearded man in a black robe and black turban slowly ascending the pulpit below the black flag of the Islamic State, before delivering a sermon and leading prayers at Al-Nur mosque in central Mosul.
"I am the wali [leader] who presides over you, though I am not the best of you. So if you see that I am right, assist me," said the man, purportedly Baghdadi. "If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God."
Text superimposed on the video identified the man as "Caliph Ibrahim," the name Baghdadi took when the group declared on June 29 a "caliphate," a pan-Islamic state last seen in Ottoman times in which the leader is both political and religious.
"I am the wali [leader] who presides over you", said the man, purportedly Baghdadi. Photo: AP
The video is the first ever official appearance by Baghdadi, says Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on Islamist movements, though the jihadist leader may have appeared in a 2008 video under a different name.
The Iraqi government denied that the video, which carried Friday's date, was credible.
"We have analysed the footage ... and found it is a farce," Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan told Reuters.
An undated photo of Baghdadi, released by the US State Department. Photo: AP
Mr Maan said government forces had recently wounded Baghdadi in an air strike and that he had been transferred by Islamic State militants to Syria for medical treatment. But he declined to give further details and there was no way to confirm the claim independently.
The video was shared widely on social media, and some residents of Mosul said they had witnessed a man introduced to them as Baghdadi preaching in a mosque in the centre of the city on Friday.
The three witnesses said the man had entered the mosque flanked by gunmen wearing uniforms worn by ISIL militants.
"We held our breath out of fear and surprise," said one worshipper.
Another eyewitness said: "A man from the group started to speak to us in a loud tone in eloquent Arabic saying that Ameer al-Mumineen [Prince of Believers] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is here to give Friday's speech, and he asked everybody not to use mobiles to take photos or film, for security reasons."
A third worshipper added: "The speech lasted for around 20 minutes, then the man wearing black who was introduced to us as al-Baghdadi took the lead in the Friday prayer and then, after finishing, he left with dozens of his followers in a long motorcade."
Baghdadi is believed to have been born in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971, and joined the insurgency against the US military following the 2003 invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. He spent time in a US military prison and eventually took over leadership of a group, then affiliated with al-Qaeda and known as the Islamic State of Iraq, in 2010.
At the time, the group was believed to be on the ropes but Baghdadi led it back to prominence. Last year, the organisation expanded into Syria, becoming a major player in the war to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Baghdadi subsequently cut all ties to al-Qaeda and his influence now rivals that of that group's global chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
ISIL, which changed its name to the Islamic State when it declared the caliphate, is known for its brutality and executing and crucifying opponents. Photographs also emerged on Saturday showing its militants demolishing Sunni and Shiite mosques and shrines in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province.
Iraqi security forces wilted when faced with the initial ISIL-led onslaught, and while they have since performed more capably, they have struggled to retake territory from insurgents.
An assault on Saddam's hometown of Tikrit has gone on for more than a week without retaking the city, while a suicide car bomb killed 15 people on Friday near the sensitive shrine city of Samarra.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
This whole ISIS bullshyt is because the US wants to come back.
The ISIS was a group of 200 individual terrorists a couple of years ago.
They started recieving aid from shiekh bandar al saud , and then they took off when syria blew up.
all this was designed so that the US can come back to Iraq...
which is not happening..
May Allah destroy these Takfiri idiots. Ameen
The ISIS was a group of 200 individual terrorists a couple of years ago.
They started recieving aid from shiekh bandar al saud , and then they took off when syria blew up.
all this was designed so that the US can come back to Iraq...
which is not happening..
May Allah destroy these Takfiri idiots. Ameen
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Kurdish minister: 'Iraq is a failed state'
4 hours ago
Iraq's new parliament is due to reconvene on Tuesday in another attempt to agree on a unity government.
Kurdish MPs withdrew from Iraq's central government last week after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki accused the Kurds of harbouring extremists.
Speaking to the BBC, the foreign minister of Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan called on Mr Maliki to step down.
Falah Mustafa Bakir said post-Mosul Iraq needed a new government and leadership.
The northern city of Mosul was taken by Islamist militants Isis in an attack that took the Iraqi army and leadership by surprise.
Mr Bakir also said that it was time for the region of Kurdistan to separate from Iraq and be an independent state.
He was speaking to the BBC's Shaimaa Khalil in the region's capital Irbil.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28302511?ocid=socialflow_facebook
interview in link
4 hours ago
Iraq's new parliament is due to reconvene on Tuesday in another attempt to agree on a unity government.
Kurdish MPs withdrew from Iraq's central government last week after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki accused the Kurds of harbouring extremists.
Speaking to the BBC, the foreign minister of Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan called on Mr Maliki to step down.
Falah Mustafa Bakir said post-Mosul Iraq needed a new government and leadership.
The northern city of Mosul was taken by Islamist militants Isis in an attack that took the Iraqi army and leadership by surprise.
Mr Bakir also said that it was time for the region of Kurdistan to separate from Iraq and be an independent state.
He was speaking to the BBC's Shaimaa Khalil in the region's capital Irbil.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28302511?ocid=socialflow_facebook
interview in link
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Sunni Extremists in Iraq Seize 3 Towns From Kurds and Threaten Major Dam
By TIM ARANGOAUG. 3, 2014
Photo
An Iraqi Army soldier on Sunday in Diyala Province. Militant forces focused on advancing to the north during the weekend. CreditAmer Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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By TIM ARANGOAUG. 3, 2014
Photo
An Iraqi Army soldier on Sunday in Diyala Province. Militant forces focused on advancing to the north during the weekend. CreditAmer Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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TURKEY
Zumar
SYRIA
IRAN
Mosul Dam
Wana
Sinjar
Mosul
KURDISH
REGION
Tigris R.
IRAQ
Haditha
Euphrates R.
Baghdad
Falluja
ANBAR
100 MILES
“A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar,” Mr. Mladenov said.
In the face of stiff resistance from Shiite militias aligned with Iran that have stalled their march on Baghdad, the ISIS fighters who captured Mosul in June pushed north during the weekend. By Sunday afternoon, they were in control of two other towns after fierce battles with Kurdish security forces, known as the pesh merga, who have been thrust into combat to defend the border of their autonomous region in northern Iraq from encroachments by ISIS.
In a statement, ISIS boasted of conquering “more important areas which were controlled by the pesh merga and the secular militias.” With the new territory, which the group described as “the border triangle of Iraq, Syria and Turkey,” ISIS strengthened its hold on territory that traverses the frontiers of Iraq and Syria, giving it an even greater ability to move fighters and weapons between the front lines of the civil wars in both countries.
According to security officials and residents in the area, the Kurdish forces were routed from Zumar, a town on the road from the Syrian border that also sits on oil fields, and then Sinjar. Sinjar, an isolated city in northwestern Iraq, has been home to a sizable community of Yazidis, Kurdish speakers who ascribe to a religion that combines elements of Islam and ancient Persian religions and who are considered apostates by Muslim extremists.
Later on Sunday, the militants captured Wana, a strategic town near the Tigris River — putting them within striking distance of the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and an important supplier of electricity and water. The dam is on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which fell to ISIS on June 10.
Yazidi residents of Sinjar, who were reached by phone, were terrified. They told of kidnappings and executions of members of their sect. One resident, Sami Hassan, said he was at work at a hospital on Sunday when an injured ISIS fighter arrived and demanded to know the sect to which Mr. Hassan belonged.
Mr. Hassan said he had escaped from a window while being shot at.
Another local, Khudhur Rasho, said he had seen two Yazidi men executed and the members of 10 families, their hands bound behind their back, being led away by militants.
A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said Sunday that ISIS posed “a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community” and that the United States would continue to seek ways to support the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish pesh merga.
The seizing of the three towns in a triangle that stretches north and west from Mosul to the borders of Syria and Turkey allowed the extremists to expand their territory, but the capture of the Mosul Dam would be a bigger prize, and could give the militants the ability to unleash a deadly flood on large populations.
On Sunday afternoon, conflicting reports emerged about who was in control of the dam, with some local news media reporting that ISIS had captured it. But Kurdish officials and an official at the Ministry of Water Resources in Baghdad denied those reports.
Keeping the dam, and other important infrastructure of the Iraqi state, out of militant hands has been a priority of the Iraqi government and the American military advisers who recently rushed back to Iraq.
Seven years ago, a report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a Pentagon watchdog, highlighted structural problems at the dam, and its warnings about safety hinted at the catastrophic possibilities should the dam fall into the hands of ISIS. The report warned that a failure at the dam could send a 65-foot wave across parts of northern Iraq. “The worst-case scenario would be a significant loss of life and property,” the report said.
Militants have also waged a fierce battle for control of Iraq’s second-largest dam, in Haditha, on the Euphrates River in Anbar Province. There, Sunni tribes, along with some Iraqi security forces, have been able to hold off the militants’ advance. But after ISIS took control of Falluja at the end of last year, militants seized the Falluja Dam, opening its gates and flooding farmlands and cutting off the water supply to southern Iraq.
The battles over the weekend deepened the humanitarian crisis in the north, with thousands of residents fleeing the fighting to the Kurdish region, and some Yazidis seeking shelter in the crevices of the barren mountains. The Kurdish regional government is struggling to deal with tens of thousands of refugees who have sought safety there from across Iraq and Syria.
The chaos that has unfolded in Iraq over the past two months has presented the Kurds with perhaps their greatest chance in generations to realize their long-held dream of independence. It has also presented them with acute challenges, which have crystallized over the past week with the upsurge in fighting and suggest that the road to statehood for the Kurds will be long and violent.
The gains over the weekend by ISIS heightened the problems faced by American officials in Washington as they weigh how to respond to the crisis in Iraq. But decisions about a possible broader American military role in Iraq have been largely put off as Iraq’s politicians struggle to form a new government after April’s national elections.
The Kurds, who have been longtime American allies, recently asked for military assistance from the United States to fight ISIS. American officials, determined to keep Iraq together as one country, are reluctant to supply weapons to the Kurds without the approval of the central government in Baghdad. That is unlikely to happen given the worries by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated leadership that the weapons would further embolden the Kurds to form a new state.
Instead, American officials are hoping to see Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who is struggling to secure a third term, replaced by someone who could persuade Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to form a national unity government. According to Iraq’s constitutional timeline, Iraq’s Shiite parties must choose a nominee for prime minister by Friday. The prime minister would then have 30 days to form a new government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/world/middleeast/iraq.html -
newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
The Kurds is like ............................................... "ain't this bout a bytch" ...
Trajan
Veteran
Hmmm. They didn't really capture a Kurdish town. I think they are Arab towns vacated by govt troops and the Kurds stepped in.
Let me know when they get to Kurdistan. Pashmergas are about that action.
Let me know when they get to Kurdistan. Pashmergas are about that action.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Iraqi Yazidis stranded on isolated mountaintop begin to die of thirst
Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar sit Tuesday at a school where they are taking shelter, in the city of Dohuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
By Loveday Morris August 5
BAGHDAD — Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.
Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.
Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.
“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”
Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
Iraqi politician Vian Dakhil makes a raw, emotional plea for the protection of the Yazidi people before Iraqi parliament. (YouTube/Al Sumaria TV)
The dramatic advance of the extremist Sunni fighters has torn the ethnic and religious fabric of the country, with Christians and Shiites also uprootedfrom cities and towns.
The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar, the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north, sent about 200,000 people fleeing, according to the United Nations. Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps.
Most of those stranded on Mount Sinjar had run out of battery life on their cellphones by Tuesday, but the few that still could communicate gave grim updates.
On Tuesday, 10 children and one elderly woman died, while on Monday, seven children had perished, said 23-year-old Shihab Balki, who was trapped with his mother, sister and four brothers. “I saw their bodies with my own eyes.”
He later texted the news of another casualty: a young man who had died of thirst, leaving his wife and five children behind. UNICEF said that 40 children had died after being displaced from their homes in the area in the 48 hours ending Monday night, including an unknown number on the mountain. The agency did not have figures for Tuesday.
In Baghdad, parliamentarians complained bitterly about the plight of the displaced, their discussions temporarily overshadowing wrangling over thenomination of a prime minister.
“Children have died because of dehydration and lack of food,” Vian Dakheel, a Yazidi parliamentarian from Sinjar, said through tears. “My people are being slaughtered,” she continued, referring to reports of mass killings of those who had stayed behind.
Tens of thousands of people from the Yazidi community fled their homes in northern Iraq on Sunday, after Islamic militants attacked the towns of Sinjar and Zunmar. (AP)
The ancient and secretive Yazidi sect, whose members number no more than 600,000 across Iraq, has suffered persecution for centuries.
Islamic State posted the first pictures of its capture of Sinjar on social networking sites on Tuesday. One showed six men lying face-down in a field, a pistol pointed at the backs of their heads. “Kill them wherever you find them,” read the caption.
Salem al-Sinjari, a 45-year-old teacher, said he’d seen around 25 bodies piled in the streets as he fled Sunday, leaving early enough to catch a ride to the Kurdish region. His mother, five brothers and two sisters wound up besieged on the mountain. He said he last spoke to them Monday before their last cellphone battery died.
Iraqi Kurdish security forces known as pesh merga are attempting to secure a road from the mountain to the nearby city of Rabia, but the process involves clearing villages where locals are sympathetic to the militants, said Majid Shingali, another local parliamentarian, who left Sinjar on Saturday.
Kurdish factions in neighboring Syria say they are entering Iraq to assist this country’s Kurds as they face Islamic State along a 650-mile front.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by the United States for its armed struggle against the Turkish state, also called for all Kurdish factions to unite against the Sunni extremists.
Babille, UNICEF’s Iraq representative, said that U.N. agencies have offered the Iraqi government technical assistance with airdrops but have yet to be asked for help. At least 15 to 20 flights would be needed just to provide those stranded with enough water and supplies to survive for a week, he said.
“We need to get them out,” he said. “If we don’t, it would be catastrophic.”
Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...6-41bd-8163-7a52e5e72064_story.html?tid=sm_fb
Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar sit Tuesday at a school where they are taking shelter, in the city of Dohuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
By Loveday Morris August 5
BAGHDAD — Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.
Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.
Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.
“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”
Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
Iraqi politician Vian Dakhil makes a raw, emotional plea for the protection of the Yazidi people before Iraqi parliament. (YouTube/Al Sumaria TV)
The dramatic advance of the extremist Sunni fighters has torn the ethnic and religious fabric of the country, with Christians and Shiites also uprootedfrom cities and towns.
The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar, the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north, sent about 200,000 people fleeing, according to the United Nations. Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps.
Most of those stranded on Mount Sinjar had run out of battery life on their cellphones by Tuesday, but the few that still could communicate gave grim updates.
On Tuesday, 10 children and one elderly woman died, while on Monday, seven children had perished, said 23-year-old Shihab Balki, who was trapped with his mother, sister and four brothers. “I saw their bodies with my own eyes.”
He later texted the news of another casualty: a young man who had died of thirst, leaving his wife and five children behind. UNICEF said that 40 children had died after being displaced from their homes in the area in the 48 hours ending Monday night, including an unknown number on the mountain. The agency did not have figures for Tuesday.
In Baghdad, parliamentarians complained bitterly about the plight of the displaced, their discussions temporarily overshadowing wrangling over thenomination of a prime minister.
“Children have died because of dehydration and lack of food,” Vian Dakheel, a Yazidi parliamentarian from Sinjar, said through tears. “My people are being slaughtered,” she continued, referring to reports of mass killings of those who had stayed behind.
Tens of thousands of people from the Yazidi community fled their homes in northern Iraq on Sunday, after Islamic militants attacked the towns of Sinjar and Zunmar. (AP)
The ancient and secretive Yazidi sect, whose members number no more than 600,000 across Iraq, has suffered persecution for centuries.
Islamic State posted the first pictures of its capture of Sinjar on social networking sites on Tuesday. One showed six men lying face-down in a field, a pistol pointed at the backs of their heads. “Kill them wherever you find them,” read the caption.
Salem al-Sinjari, a 45-year-old teacher, said he’d seen around 25 bodies piled in the streets as he fled Sunday, leaving early enough to catch a ride to the Kurdish region. His mother, five brothers and two sisters wound up besieged on the mountain. He said he last spoke to them Monday before their last cellphone battery died.
Iraqi Kurdish security forces known as pesh merga are attempting to secure a road from the mountain to the nearby city of Rabia, but the process involves clearing villages where locals are sympathetic to the militants, said Majid Shingali, another local parliamentarian, who left Sinjar on Saturday.
Kurdish factions in neighboring Syria say they are entering Iraq to assist this country’s Kurds as they face Islamic State along a 650-mile front.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by the United States for its armed struggle against the Turkish state, also called for all Kurdish factions to unite against the Sunni extremists.
Babille, UNICEF’s Iraq representative, said that U.N. agencies have offered the Iraqi government technical assistance with airdrops but have yet to be asked for help. At least 15 to 20 flights would be needed just to provide those stranded with enough water and supplies to survive for a week, he said.
“We need to get them out,” he said. “If we don’t, it would be catastrophic.”
Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...6-41bd-8163-7a52e5e72064_story.html?tid=sm_fb
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Militant Slaughter Sparks Mass Exodus in Northern Iraq Mountains
By Glen Carey and Ladane Nasseri Aug 7, 2014 5:01 AM ET
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Photographer: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Iraqi Yazidis flee from Sinjar. The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the... Read More
Related
Thousands of people from Iraq’s Yezidi religious group are stranded in northern mountains, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, as they sought to escape execution and rape by Islamist militants.
About 140,000 people fled from regions in the north this week, including the town of Sinjar, where most of the population is Yezidi, according to UNICEF. While most escaped to Kurdish-controlled areas, about 50,000 people, half of them children, are stuck in the mountains, UNICEF spokeswoman Juliette Touma said by phone from Iraq.
“Their situation is the direst because we cannot provide assistance or provide essential supplies like water,” she said.
The attacks on the minority Yezidi group are the latest evidence of the trauma that has gripped Iraq as militants calling themselves the Islamic State rampage through the country. The jihadist group’s army is also targeting dams whose destruction could flood areas near Baghdad and Mosul.
“I received a text message from one of my relatives there before his phone’s battery died, saying there is a mass grave for the children,” Housam Salim, the head of the Solidarity and Brotherhood Yezidi Organization, said in a phone interview today from an area of Mosul controlled by Kurdish forces.
Women ‘Sold’
The group, which has used beheadings to intimidate people in its advance across Iraq and Syria, consider Yezidis, a community whose faith includes features of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, as apostates under its fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
“As we speak, there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis,” Vian Dakheel, a Yezidi member of Iraq’s parliament, said in an impassioned speech on Aug. 5. “Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets.”
The militant policy of “‘either convert or be killed’ is a very powerful message,” Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said in a phone interview. “This group is going to be creating more refugee flows as it moves in different directions within the multi-ethnic structure of Iraq.”
Iraq’s population is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse in the Middle-East. As well as the majority Arabs and Kurds, minority ethnic groups include Assyrians, Armenians and Turkmens. Religiously, a majority are Shiite Muslims and about a third Sunnis, while Christians make up about 4 percent of Iraqis, and Yezidis are among the remaining 2 percent, according to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
‘Get Them Out’
UNICEF’s Touma says the group estimates that at least 40 children died during the flight from Sinjar. She said she spoke to a man among those stranded who said he was only 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the area controlled by the Islamists.
“It’s not just reaching them with supplies, it’s also how do we get them out of that area into safety,” Touma said.
Strengthened with weapons seized from the Iraqi army, the Islamic State, which was previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has seized oil fields in Iraq and is threatening the two key dams at Mosul and Haditha. Kurdish forces are battling to retake Sinjar from the militants.
The Iraqi government has deployed its air force to support Kurdish forces in the Mosul and Sinjar areas, General Hamed al-Maliki, an air force commander, told Al-Sumaria TV yesterday.
Iraqi financial markets declined amid the latest clashes. The ISX General Index of shares dropped 1.5 percent yesterday to the lowest level since 2010. The benchmark government bond due January 2028 fell to the lowest since March, with the yield rising 9 basis points to 7.41 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06/yezidis-flee-execution-in-iraq-after-militant-gains.html
By Glen Carey and Ladane Nasseri Aug 7, 2014 5:01 AM ET
124 Comments Email Print
Save
Photographer: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Iraqi Yazidis flee from Sinjar. The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the... Read More
Related
Thousands of people from Iraq’s Yezidi religious group are stranded in northern mountains, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, as they sought to escape execution and rape by Islamist militants.
About 140,000 people fled from regions in the north this week, including the town of Sinjar, where most of the population is Yezidi, according to UNICEF. While most escaped to Kurdish-controlled areas, about 50,000 people, half of them children, are stuck in the mountains, UNICEF spokeswoman Juliette Touma said by phone from Iraq.
“Their situation is the direst because we cannot provide assistance or provide essential supplies like water,” she said.
The attacks on the minority Yezidi group are the latest evidence of the trauma that has gripped Iraq as militants calling themselves the Islamic State rampage through the country. The jihadist group’s army is also targeting dams whose destruction could flood areas near Baghdad and Mosul.
“I received a text message from one of my relatives there before his phone’s battery died, saying there is a mass grave for the children,” Housam Salim, the head of the Solidarity and Brotherhood Yezidi Organization, said in a phone interview today from an area of Mosul controlled by Kurdish forces.
Women ‘Sold’
The group, which has used beheadings to intimidate people in its advance across Iraq and Syria, consider Yezidis, a community whose faith includes features of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, as apostates under its fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
“As we speak, there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis,” Vian Dakheel, a Yezidi member of Iraq’s parliament, said in an impassioned speech on Aug. 5. “Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets.”
The militant policy of “‘either convert or be killed’ is a very powerful message,” Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said in a phone interview. “This group is going to be creating more refugee flows as it moves in different directions within the multi-ethnic structure of Iraq.”
Iraq’s population is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse in the Middle-East. As well as the majority Arabs and Kurds, minority ethnic groups include Assyrians, Armenians and Turkmens. Religiously, a majority are Shiite Muslims and about a third Sunnis, while Christians make up about 4 percent of Iraqis, and Yezidis are among the remaining 2 percent, according to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
‘Get Them Out’
UNICEF’s Touma says the group estimates that at least 40 children died during the flight from Sinjar. She said she spoke to a man among those stranded who said he was only 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the area controlled by the Islamists.
“It’s not just reaching them with supplies, it’s also how do we get them out of that area into safety,” Touma said.
Strengthened with weapons seized from the Iraqi army, the Islamic State, which was previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has seized oil fields in Iraq and is threatening the two key dams at Mosul and Haditha. Kurdish forces are battling to retake Sinjar from the militants.
The Iraqi government has deployed its air force to support Kurdish forces in the Mosul and Sinjar areas, General Hamed al-Maliki, an air force commander, told Al-Sumaria TV yesterday.
Iraqi financial markets declined amid the latest clashes. The ISX General Index of shares dropped 1.5 percent yesterday to the lowest level since 2010. The benchmark government bond due January 2028 fell to the lowest since March, with the yield rising 9 basis points to 7.41 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06/yezidis-flee-execution-in-iraq-after-militant-gains.html
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
I thought Peshmarga was about that life?
Nikkas didn't want no issues with Caliphate Back :phew:
I would to see Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon become a super state.
I wonder if Jordan's military is about that life?
Apparently Jordan has the best trained troops in the Arab world
Shows you how weak simp Arab armies are. Still Jordan would get the work, IS fighters love death on the battlefield more than anything. On top of that they got Chechen commanders and officers from Sadam's army.