by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Baghdad : An Iraqi scientist has claimed that he supervised the manufacture of lethal toxins for the Islamic State (IS) terror group for a period of 15 months, The Washington Post reported.
In 2014, the IS seized Mosul, the country’s second largest city, and made their way through every government office, rounding up workers and managers who had not yet fled the city and pressing them into service.
Suleiman al-Afari, a geologist with Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Minerals, was then offered a new job. He knew little about the subject, but he accepted the assignment nonetheless.
“Do I regret it? I don’t know if I’d use that word,” Afari, who was captured by .S and Kurdish soldiers in 2016 and is now a prisoner in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, told The Post on Monday.
“They had become the government and we now worked for them… We wanted to work so we could get paid.”
Afari, 52 and on death row, recounted his recruitment and life under the IS in a rare interview from inside the fortress-like headquarters of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Counterterrorism Department.
He is among the few known participants in the IS’ chemical weapons programme to be captured alive.
He described the terrorist group’s successful attempts to make sulphur mustard – a first-generation chemical weapon that inflicted tens of thousands of casualties during the World War I – as part of an ambitious, little-understood effort to create novel weapons and delivery systems to defend the IS’ territory.
“They didn’t force anyone,” Afari told The Washington Post, recounting his decision to take up the assignment. “I was afraid that I would lose my job. Government jobs are hard to get and it was important to hang on to it.”
Afari’s role was to organise a supply chain for mustard gas, outfitting a small cluster of labs and workshops.
Weapons created by the IS were used in scores of attacks on soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Syria, collectively inflicting hundreds of casualties.
Progress on the programme appears to have stalled in early 2016, after US and Iraqi leaders launched an aggressive campaign to destroy production facilities and kill or capture its leaders.
But according to some Iraqi officials, the IS moved equipment and chemicals from Iraq to Syria in 2016 and some of it may have been buried or hidden, The Washington Post added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : The Donald Trump-led US administration announced that it has started returning US troops home from Syria after claiming a victory in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) without revealing any detailed timetable.
“We have started returning US home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign,” said White House Spokesperson Sarah Sanders in a statement on Wednesday, claiming that America has “defeated the territorial caliphate”.
Pentagon later echoed the White House claim, saying that the US military has already begun the process of bringing the US forces back while emphasizing the continuity of the campaign, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The Coalition has liberated the IS-held territory, but the campaign against IS is not over,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a tweet.
All US State Department personnel are being evacuated from Syria within 24 hours, informed sources said.
An official also revealed that the time-frame for the troops withdrawal from the war-torn Arab country is expected to be between 60 and 100 days.
However, a senior Trump administration official, during a background briefing held on Wednesday afternoon, did not directly answer reporters’ questions on how the administration intends to withdraw the troops or whether there will a deadline for that.
Sanders’ statement came about one hour after US President Donald Trump hinted in a tweet about imminent US troop withdrawal from Syria.
“We have defeated the IS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.
Earlier on Wednesday, the US media cited anonymous officials as saying that the US is planning a “rapid” and “full” withdrawal of troops from Syria.
Currently, there are more than 2,000 US soldiers deployed in Syria.
Trump has long voiced his desire to bring the US troops back home when possible, while senior administration officials including Defence Secretary James Mattis have advocated for a longer-term military deployment in Syria to secure a victory against the IS.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s claim about victory against the IS has been questioned.
“I strongly disagree. It has morphed into other forms of extremism and the threat is very much alive,” tweeted British Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood, following Trump’s claim on the social media.
Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned “devastating consequences” for US troops quitting Syria.
“An American withdrawal at this time would be a big win for IS, Iran, Bashar al Assad of Syria, and Russia,” the lawmaker from the state of South Carolina said in a statement on Wednesday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced ex-gratia payment of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of each of 39 Indians who were killed at Mosul in Iraq, an official release said.
The mortal remains of 38 Indians, killed by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq’s Mosul in 2014, were brought to Amritsar in a special IAF aircraft on Monday.
Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh accompanied the mortal remains to Amritsar from Mosul.
Although 39 Indians were killed as the Islamic State took over Mosul, the mortal remains of only 38 of them could be brought back as identification of one body is still pending.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Kochi (Kerala) : An NIA court here on Saturday sentenced a woman from Bihar to seven years in jail in the first Islamic State (IS) case registered in Kerala.
The case is in connection with 15 persons from Kasargode district who travelled to Afghanistan to join the terror group in 2016.
Yasmin Mohammed Zahid was arrested in Delhi July 30, 2016, when she on her way to leave for Afghanistan with her child.
The case was first registered by the Kerala Police in Kasargode. It was later taken over by the National Investigation Agency.
The agency found evidence of the accused persons activities through their social media accounts.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Baghdad : The Iraqi security forces on Saturday seized two oil fields in second phase of offensive to dislodge the extremist Islamic State (IS) militants from Hawijah and surrounding areas, the Iraqi military said.
The security forces managed to free the oil fields of Allas and Ajil in the eastern part of Iraq’s northern central province of Salahudin, after two days of clashes with IS militants, a source from Salahudin Operations Command, told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
By Saturday evening, the troops recaptured all the oil wells of the two oil fields and seized the nearby Himreen mountain range in south of the IS-held city of Hawijah, which itself located some 230 km north of Baghdad, the source said.
Before the offensive, the IS militants seized roughly 100 oil wells of the 200 wells of the two oil fields, and they used to extract crude oil and refine it in primitive ways, leaving many nearby valleys filled with leaked oil, he said.
The militants set fires in some 34 oil wells, some of them were on fire for about three years since the extremist group captured the area in 2014, the source added.
In the past, Ajil oil field used to give some 35,000 barrels per day (bpd). The two oil fields, Allas and Ajil, were seized by IS militants following the June 10 blitzkrieg when the group seized large swathes of territories in predominantly Sunni provinces.
The oil fields became an important source of funding for the IS group, which extracted about 10,000 bpd and transported to others areas under its control.
The battles in the oil fields were part of an offensive began on Friday when the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the launch of the second phase of offensive to dislodge the extremist IS militants from their stronghold in the city of Hawijah and surrounding areas.
“We announce the start of the second phase of the liberation of Hawijah and all the surrounding areas to the west of Kirkuk, and as promised the sons of our country are continuing to liberate every inch of the land of Iraq and crush the gangs of terrorist Daesh group,” said Abadi in a statement.
The first phase of the operation was launched on Sept. 21 to liberate Hawijah in the western part of Iraq’s oil-rich Kirkuk province.
The operation to free Hawijah came as tensions are running high between Baghdad government and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan after the Kurdish region held a controversial referendum on independence of Kurdistan and disputed areas, including Kirkuk.
The independence referendum was opposed by many countries because it would threaten the integrity of Iraq and it could undermine fight against Islamic State militants.
In addition, neighboring countries such as Turkey, Iran and Syria see that such a step would threaten their territorial integrity, as larger populations of Kurds live in those countries.
—IANS
