Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for ISIS

Indian may be among Sydney hostages: minister

by

Armed police run toward a cafe in the central business district of Sydney on December 15, 2014. SAEED KHAN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

Armed police run toward a cafe in the central business district of Sydney on December 15, 2014. SAEED KHAN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

New Delhi: An Indian origin IT professional may be among the hostages held by a gunman in a cafe in Australia, according to Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu who later said the reports were unconfirmed.

“We don’t want to discuss it because there is some information that one of our IT persons is also there. So the External Affairs Ministry is keeping in touch with concerned people there– both our embassy as well as our counterpart also,” Naidu told reporters outside Parliament House.

Later, Naidu added that there were no confirmed reports and it was only preliminary information.

“There is some initial information that some people were taken hostage in Sydney by some person.

What is the purpose, what is the motive, (it is) not known and our External Affairs Ministry is keeping in touch with our embassy there in Australia.

“So far information says that people who were held hostages are safe, no harm is done to them.

All these information here and there– nothing has been confirmed about any citizens of our country is in that or not. It is a sensitive matter. I request all people to show restraint till the issue is resolved,” he said.

The Minister said whatever steps need to be taken are being taken.

Several people were taken hostage at a popular cafe in the heart of Sydney city in south-east Australia by one gunman this morning, leading to evacuation of important buildings, including the Indian consulate which is located 300-400 metres from the cafe. An Islamic flag was also reportedly seen hanging from the window of the cafe.

The Indian Consulate in Sydney was evacuated in view of the hostage situation in a cafe near its premises and all the staff members are safe, the External Affairs Ministry today said.

In Sydney, Consul General Sunjay Sudhir said that due to security concerns “we locked down our office at 12:00 PM and asked all our officers to go to places of safety”.

He said that the Central Business District (CBD) where the cafe is located is the area where many Indian establishments including the SBI, Bank of Baroda and Indian tourism office are located.

“We are in touch with the security agencies and have asked them specifically if any Indians were present inside the cafe…they have not told us about the nationality,” Sudhir said.

(PTI)

Hostages held in Sydney cafe siege

by

Five people emerge from Lindt Cafe in Australian city’s financial district amid negotiations with hostage-taker.

Sydney cafe siege

by Al Jazeera

Five people have escaped from a cafe where a man has an unknown number of hostages in the heart of Sydney’s financial and shopping district .

Two people inside the cafe were earlier seen holding up a flag with an Islamic declaration of faith that has often been used by armed groups.

The first three people ran out of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Sydney’s Central Building District six hours into Monday’s hostage crisis, and two women sprinted from a fire exit into the arms of waiting police shortly afterwards.

Both women were wearing aprons with the Lindt chocolate logo, indicating they were cafe employees.

It was not clear exactly how many people remained inside the cafe at Martin Place, a plaza that is packed with holiday shoppers this time of year.

The hostage-taker is reported to have conveyed some demands when an Australian media network interviewed some of the hostages over phone.

Some media networks have announced that they are complying with a request from New South Wales Police not to report the demands.

Andrew Scipione, New South Wales Police commissioner, said police did not know the hostage taker’s motivation.

“We have not yet confirmed it is a terrorism-related event,” he said.

“We’re dealing with a hostage situation with an armed offender.”

As the drama dragged into its 10th hour, NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said negotiators were talking with the hostage-taker.

Officials had no information to suggest anyone had been harmed, although a hospital said it was treating a man in satisfactory condition.

Pacing back and forth

Television video shot through the cafe’s windows showed several people with their arms in the air and hands pressed against the glass, and two people holding up a black flag with the Shahada, or Islamic declaration of faith, written on it.

Seven Network television news staff watched the hostage-taker and hostages for hours from a fourth floor window of their Sydney offices, opposite the cafe.

The man could be seen pacing back and forth past the cafe’s four windows. Reporter Chris Reason, a reporter for Seven Network, said the man carried what appeared to be a pump-action shotgun, was unshaven and wore a white shirt and a black cap.

Network staff counted about 15 different faces among hostages forced up against the windows.

“The gunman seems to be sort of rotating these people through these positions on the windows with their hands and faces up against the glass,” Reason said in a report from the vantage point.

“One woman we’ve counted was there for at least two hours – an extraordinary, agonising time for her surely having to stand on her feet for that long.

“Just two hours ago when we saw that rush of escapees, we could see from up here in this vantage point the gunman got extremely agitated as he realised those five had got out. He started screaming orders at the people, the hostages who remain behind.”

St Vincent’s hospital spokesman David Faktor said a male hostage was in satisfactory condition in the hospital’s emergency department. He was the only one of the freed hostages to be taken to a hospital.

Hundreds of police flooded into the area, streets were closed and offices evacuated. The public was told to stay away from Martin Place, site of the state premier’s office, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the headquarters of two of the nation’s largest banks.

The state parliament house is a few blocks away.

“This is a very disturbing incident,” Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, said.

“It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation.”

Terror threat warning

The Australian government raised the terror warning level in September in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Counterterror law enforcement teams later conducted dozens of raids and made several arrests in Australia’s three largest cities – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

One man arrested during a series of raids in Sydney was charged with conspiring with an ISIL leader in Syria to behead a random person in downtown Sydney.

ISIL, which now holds a third of Syria and Iraq, has threatened Australia in the past.

In September, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, an ISIL spokesperson, issued an audio message urging “lone wolf” attacks abroad, specifically mentioning Australia.

Lindt Australia posted a message on its Facebook page on Monday thanking the public for its support.

“We are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all their friends and families,” the company wrote.

Pro-IS tweeter Mehdi Biswas sent to five days police custody

by

shamiwitness

Bengaluru: A local court Sunday sent pro-Islamic State (IS) terror group tweeter Mehdi Masroor Biswas to five day police custody for interrogation, a police official said.

“We had produced Mehdi before the sessions court, which remanded him to five day police custody till Dec 18 for interrogation by our investigation team on his unlawful activities,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Abhishek Goyal told IANS here.

Biswas was arrested early Saturday following a British news channel Dec 11 unmasking the city-based 24-year-old executive as a supporter of IS through social media and Twitter handle @ShamiWitness.

“Preliminary investigation reveals that Mehdi Biswas is a propagandist of IS ideology and has been instrumental in influencing minds against our friendly countries against whom the terror group is at war,” Additional Director General of Police Hemant Nimbalkar told reporters later.

Police registered a case against Biswas under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

“We are quizzing him on his virtual and actual relations with the terror group and checking his antecedents, including mobile calls, e-mails, chat sessions and postings in the social media like Facebook, blogs and Twitter,” Nimbalkar said.

A police team raided Biswas’ one-room apartment in the northern suburb early Saturday and apart from arresting him, seized two mobiles, one laptop, incriminating documents, religious literature, pictures, pen drivers and compact discs (CDs) from the premises.

“We are also probing if Biswas or the terror group has any local presence in the form of sleeper cells or networks,” Nimbalkar added.

Biswas, who hails from Gopalpur town in West Bengal’s Nadia district, is employed in the foods division of the Kolkata-based ITC Ltd in Bengaluru.

He admitted to the probe team that he had been operating the Twitter account after he got interested in the developments of the Middle Eastern region.

He has about 17,000 Twitter followers and used to aggressively tweet by collecting information on regional developments.

Bangalore Police Comissinor Mr. M.N Reddy, said on Monday that Shamiwitness could have been anyone in the world, it is only a coincidence that he happened to be in Bangalore.

When Nasheman inquired about his Twitter being reactivated, Mr. Reddy smiled and said that he does not knows who did it.

(With inputs from IANS)

Mehdi Masroor Biswas aka @shamiwitness had no direct contact with ISIS

by

shamiwitness

Bengaluru: Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who went by the nomme de guerre Shamiwitness was undoubtedly the most popular English voices of the Islamic State on Twitter, but the police interrogation since his arrest Saturday Dec 13th, has revealed that he had no direct contact with ISIS or any Jihadi groups.

Biswas was detained by Bengaluru police early Saturday morning, after Britain’s Channel 4 News had aired the report regarding the country’s IT capital’s link with the Twitter account that is followed by foreign fighters.

Mehdi, an electrical engineer from Kolkata, had moved to Bengaluru in 2011. He has two sisters and his father is a retired employee of the West Bengal state Electricity Board. He had been employed with the multinational corporation as a marketing executive since 2012 at an annual salary of Rs. 5.3 lakh.

Police interrogation after Mehdi’s arrest

Mehdi got interested in the developments in middle-east countries like Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza strip, Egypt and Libya since 2003. He used to work during the day and surfed internet on a 60 GB monthly plan late into nights.

During the initial questioning, he said that he mainly concentrated on Muslims living abroad “as the Indian muslims were incapable of Jihad.” It is also learnt that more than 17,000 followers in his twitter account were English-Speakers from Europe.

Most of his tweets have been deleted and the account was shut down after the report surfaced. Even the police have not found any activity against India or anti-India tweets so far. Also there is no evidence to prove that he had planned terror attack in India. He had no previous criminal record too.

Even though Mehdi had contact with English speaking ISIS men on twitter, he did not reveal his true identity to them. Mehdi was not involved in any of the activity in propagating the ISIS agenda. He was just translating the arabic tweets into English. He collected the data and videos of ISIS from cyberspace and then posted on the internet.

Police also said that Mehdi has not travelled outside the country neither he received any funds from ISIS.

Mehdi’s interview to UK Channel 4

Channel 4’s investigators, meanwhile, discovered that Mehdi aka @ShamiWitness had used a personal email address, ElSaltador@gmail.com, to set up a personal Twitter account, @ElSaltador. Based on this lead, the channel found out that the same email address had been used to open personal LinkedIn and Google Groups accounts. The data enabled them to contact Mehdi  in Bangalore.

Reached by Channel 4, he denied that he intended to win over recruits to the Islamic State, saying his tweets only expressed his opinion. “Just because someone follows me, it doesn’t mean that I am the reason for their joining ISIS,” he said in the audio interview that was telecast along with the report.

But in the Channel 4 interview, he made clear his support for Islamic State, adding that he was prevented from joining the group by his commitments to his family.

According to Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a graduate from Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an authority on the ongoing conflict in Syria, “It would not really be accurate to characterize Shami so much an ‘IS source’ as much as a ‘disseminator’, as Peter Neumann of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization puts it…If one looks back on Shami’s Twitter feed, as more and more official IS venues of information on Twitter emerged, much of the time he was simply retweeting. Shami’s role can therefore also be described as an ‘aggregator’ of IS content, something he also did in the days before official IS (IS) provincial news feeds and the like.”

Indian government sources said the UK’s intelligence services had been contacted for any information they might have on Mehdi, but were told he was not a person of interest for any ongoing terrorism investigation.

Mehdi Masroor Biswas, alleged owner of Twitter handle @shamiwitness detained by Bengaluru police

by

shamiwitness

Bengaluru: Bengaluru police have detained the alleged handler of the pro-ISIS twitter handle @ShamiWitness on early Saturday morning.

Top police officials confirmed the detention saying “we have the man”. But they declined to confirm whether he was arrested and under which sections was a case made out against him.

Until late on Friday, the police maintained that they hadn’t made any serious headway with the investigation and the city commissioner M N Reddi had said his team was on the job.

According to sources, the police have not been able to find evidence linking the youth directly to the @shamiwitness account or any subversive activities, but have detained him based on photographs of the suspect began circulating on the web.

“We have to wait for authorities in the US where Twitter’s servers are located to provide authentic evidence if any linking the youth’s computer systems to the @shamiwitness account,” police told the media here.

Mehdi, who spoke to The Indian Express on Friday night had expressed fears of being arrested. He claimed that he had given some information about his online activities to Channel 4 only to throw them off his back. He reportedly told the newspaper that he is not the owner of the account.

Iraq says woman detained in Lebanon is not Baghdadi's wife

by

A man purported to be the reclusive leader of the militant Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has made what would be his first public appearance at a mosque in the centre of Iraq's second city, Mosul, according to a video recording posted on the Internet on July 5, 2014, in this still image taken from video.

A man purported to be the reclusive leader of the militant Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has made what would be his first public appearance at a mosque in the centre of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, according to a video recording posted on the Internet on July 5, 2014, in this still image taken from video.

Baghdad/Reuters: Iraq’s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a woman detained by Lebanese authorities was not the wife of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the sister of a man convicted of bombings in southern Iraq.

“The one detained by Lebanese authorities was Saja Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, sister of Omar Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi who is detained by authorities and sentenced to death for his participation in … explosions,” ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters.

“The wives of the terrorist al-Baghdadi are Asmaa Fawzi Mohammed al-Dulaimi and Esraa Rajab Mahel al-Qaisi, and there is no wife in the name of Saja al-Dulaimi,” he said.

Maan said Saja Dulaimi had fled to Syria where she was detainees by authorities. She was part of a group of female detainees freed in exchange for the release of a group of nuns captured by Islamist rebels in Syria, he said.

Security officials in Lebanon said on Tuesday the Lebanese army had detained a wife and daughter of Baghdadi’s as they crossed from Syria late last month.

They were detained in northern Lebanon after the woman was found with a fake passport, officials said. Investigators were questioning her at the Lebanese Defence Ministry.

(Reporting by Raheem Salman; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alison Williams)

ISIS our biggest challenge: Rajnath Singh

by

Rajnath Singh

by Manoj Anand, Asian Age

Union home minister Rajnath Singh said here on Saturday that the growing threat of Islamic State (ISIS) in the Indian subcontinent was the biggest challenge, especially in the wake of some youth being lured by them.

Referring to the attack in Arnia sector, Mr Singh said that Pakistan claims “non-state” actors are behind such incidents, which is not true.

“I want to ask Pakistan if its intelligence agency the Inter-Services Intelligence, is also a ‘non-state actor’,” Mr Singh said, reiterating that Pakistan was engaged in destabilising India.

The Union home minister also pointed out, “Though ISIS was born in Syria and Iraq, it is a fact that the Indian subcontinent is not outside its radar, especially as some Indian youth are also getting attracted to it.”

He said, “Moreover, the Al Qaeda had recently announced the formation of a new outfit, Qaeda-ul-Jihadi, with the intention of specifically targeting Gujarat, Assam, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir and Bangladesh.”

He said, “India cannot remain unaffected by international terrorism, (and the) activities of the Islamic State. We can’t take Al Qaeda’s threat of turning India into an Islamic country lightly, we should consider it a challenge.”

Asserting that India was capable of handling these threats, Mr Singh, in his inaugural address at the 49th police conference, however, asserted, “There might be many terrorist organisations in the world, but we will not allow them to get a foothold in our country.”

Mr Singh also expressed confidence that these Islamic terror groups will never be able to succeed in India and said that the majority of Indian Muslims will not side with them. “I am sure these terror groups will never succeed in India. They may try to convert India into an Islamic country on the assumption that a large number of Muslims will support them. But the fact remains that Indian Muslims had fought and sacrificed equally with others for India’s independence,” Mr Singh said.

The home minister, at the meeting attended by police chiefs from across the country as well as senior officials from intelligence agencies, also urged states to fill up vacancies in police forces and assured them of all possible help.

Speaking about modernising police forces, Mr Singh stressed the need to make the police people-friendly.

“Our coastal security network is inadequate and it should be strengthened,” he said while expressing his concern on the growing use of cyberspace by anti-national and anti-social forces. He asked the police chiefs to deliberate on strategies and steps to monitor cyberspace. He admitted that the biggest stumbling block in this direction was that the majority of servers are outside India. “We should work out a strategy on how to handle it,” he said.

U.S.-led strikes have killed 910 people in Syria: monitor

by

Thick black smoke rises over an eastern Kobani neighborhood following an air strike on November 8, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/YANNIS BEHRAKIS

Thick black smoke rises over an eastern Kobani neighborhood following an air strike on November 8, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/YANNIS BEHRAKIS

by Reuters

Beirut: Air strikes by U.S.-led forces in Syria have killed 910 people, including 52 civilians, since the start of the campaign against Islamic State and other fighters two months ago, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.

The majority of the deaths, 785, were Islamic State fighters according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Islamic State, a hard-line offshoot of al Qaeda, has seized land in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where it has also been targeted by U.S.-led strikes since July.

Eight of the civilians killed were children and five were women, the Observatory said. The United States has said it takes reports of civilian casualties seriously and says it has a process to investigate any reports of such deaths.

The Observatory, which gathers its information from a network of contacts on the ground, said 72 members of al Qaeda’s Syria wing Nusra Front were also killed in the air strikes, which started on Sept. 23.

The United States has said it has targeted the “Khorasan Group” in Syria, which it describes as a grouping of al Qaeda veterans under the protection of Nusra Front. Most analysts and activists do not differentiate between the groups in this way.

According to the United Nations, around 200,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which is in its fourth year.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; editing by Susan Thomas)

U.S troops will deploy to Iraq without congressional approval: Pentagon

by

This Department of Defense photo shows US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as he addresses questions from US military members during a town hall meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, November 15, 2014. AFP/DOD/ D. Myles Cullen

This Department of Defense photo shows US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as he addresses questions from US military members during a town hall meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, November 15, 2014. AFP/DOD/ D. Myles Cullen

by Al-Akhbar

Some of the 1,500 new US troops authorized to “advise and train” Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants will be deployed in Iraq within the next few weeks without waiting for Congress to fund the mission, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said leading elements of the US force would begin moving to Iraq in the coming weeks, even if Congress has not yet acted on a $5.6 billion supplemental request to fund the expanded fight against the militants who overran northwestern Iraq earlier this year.

Large swathes of land in Iraq have become ISIS strongholds as the extremist group, which declared a “caliphate” in the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria, drove Iraq’s army – the recipient of $25 billion in US training and funding since the 2003 invasion – to collapse.

Late October, the Pentagon revised its estimate of the cost of the US air war in Iraq and Syria, saying the price tag for the campaign against ISIS comes to about $8.3 million a day.

Since US airstrikes began on August 8, the campaign – which has involved about 6,600 sorties by US and allied aircraft – has cost the US $580 million, said Pentagon spokesman Commander Bill Urban.

In addition, the campaign, which has so far failed to stop ISIS from advancing, has also cost the Iraqi government $260 million.

Officials initially indicated they needed to get lawmakers to approve the funding for the troops deployment before the Pentagon could start the mission, but General Lloyd Austin, the head of US troops in the Middle East, recommended starting the effort using resources already available to him.

“The commander … can reallocate resources inside his theater as he deems fit. So he is going to .. try to get a jump start on this program,” Kirby told reporters, adding that congressional approval of the $5.6 billion was still needed to carry out the “more robust program.”

The Pentagon’s announcement came just days after US officials said some 50 troops had been sent to Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province in Iraq to establish an operation to “advise and train” Iraqi troops.

Kirby said Austin thought that starting the expanded mission sent a message both to Iraqis and other coalition partners.

“It sends an important signal … about how seriously we’re taking this,” Kirby said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner Iraqi units will improve … and the sooner we’ll get coalition contributions to that particular mission.”

US President Barack Obama, who was elected in 2008 largely due to his promises to exit Middle Eastern military entanglements – especially in Iraq – and avoiding new ones, announced plans last week to double the number of American troops in Iraq, approving an additional 1,500 forces to establish sites to “train” nine Iraqi military brigades and three Kurdish peshmerga brigades.

The move came almost three years after US troops completed their withdrawal from Iraq after a nine year occupation that left the country in turmoil.

Iraq ranked first out of 162 countries on the Global Terrorism Index, the Australia and US-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said in a report published Tuesday, giving the country a score of 10 out of 10.

According to the report, 80 percent of the lives lost to terrorist attacks in 2013 occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The influx in terrorist attacks raises questions about the effectiveness of the US “War on Terror” launched by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks, which included the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The campaign failed to eliminate or even reduce terrorism, as the report showed a steady increase in the death toll over the last 14 years, from 3,361 in 2000 to 11,133 in 2012 and 17,958 in 2013.

On the contrary, the campaign in general and the US invasion of Iraq in particular served as a recruitment tool for terrorist groups, such as ISIS, as figures show that terrorism rose precipitously in Iraq since 2003.

Kirby indicated additional US troops would begin deploying to Iraq before the end of the year.

“You’re going to start to see initial elements of the 1,500 or so additional start to flow in the next few weeks,” he said. “I think certainly by the end of the calendar year you’re going to see a much more robust presence, not just by the United States doing this but by coalition partners as well.”

Some 3,500 US troops are believed to be on Iraqi land.

ISIS claims Erbil suicide bombing

The US-led anti-ISIS campaign has so far failed to stop ISIS from gaining ground, thus drawing criticism from many sides, including the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous region, Massoud Barzani.

On Wednesday, following a suicide bombing that hit the usually secure capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Barzani accused Western countries of not providing enough heavy weapons to help peshmerga forces deliver a “decisive blow” against ISIS militants.

Later on Thursday, ISIS claimed responsibility of the suicide attack in an online statement.

“We breached all the security checkpoints of the agent Kurdistan government and reached the heart of the city of Erbil,” the statement said.

It identified the bomber as Abdul-Rahman al-Kurdi, indicating that he was an ethnic Kurd.

The bomber struck the main checkpoint on the way to the provincial government headquarters in the northern city just before noon on Wednesday, killing four people and wounding more than two dozen.

The bombing was the worst attack to hit Erbil since September 29, 2013, when militants struck the headquarters of the Asayesh security forces in the city, killing seven people and wounding more than 60.

In that attack, the Asayesh said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the entrance to their headquarters, after which they killed four more would-be bombers before a fifth blew up an ambulance rigged with explosives.

Kurdish peshmerga forces joined the battle against ISIS in August after the extremist group targeted ethnic and religious minorities, took control of the country’s largest dam and moved within striking distance of Erbil, where many Western expatriates, including oil industry and aid workers are based.

(Al-Akhbar, Reuters, AFP)

Video of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly injured in Mosul aired by Egypt's Balad TV

by

Screenshot of footage aired by Balad TV supposedly showing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi injured after his convoy was attacked by coalition air strikes.

Screenshot of footage aired by Balad TV supposedly showing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi injured after his convoy was attacked by coalition air strikes.

by Abdelhak Mamoun, Iraqi News

The video below, broadcast on Balad TV, claims to show ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his convoy being attacked in an airstrike that led to his injury or death.

The video claims to show al-Baghdadi next to a black SUV car, suffering injuries due to the airstrike.

In the beginning, Baghdadi appears to be lying on the ground, groaning in pain while one of his aides is lying dead beside him. Baghdadi moves slightly before ISIS elements hurry to rescue him.

The injured, who Balad TV claims is al-Baghdadi, is dressed in a military uniform and is said to be wearing a watch on his right hand which appears similar to the one he wore during his sermon at Mosul. IraqiNews.com has not independently verified these claims.

A spokesman for the Central Command of the US Army, Col. Patrick Raider, said two days ago that warplanes of the international coalition targeted ISIS leaders who were meeting near Mosul and that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may have been among those who were targeted.

According to officials from the United States, US air raids managed to destroy a convoy of 10 cars belonging to the organization of the Islamic State; they were traveling in a convoy near the city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives