Islamic State – Page 4

Targeting ISIS, US-led strike kills 52 civilians, including 7 children

May 4, 2015 by Nasheman

Edited U.S. Air Force image of two F-15E fighters after conducting airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 23, 2014. U.S. Central Command directed the operations. (Photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/USAF via Stuart Rankin/cc/flickr)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

A U.S. military strike on Friday targeting fighters with the Islamic State has killed 52 civilians, including 7 children and 9 women, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday.

According to the human rights watchdog group, an additional 13 Syrian civilians are missing following the attack on a village in the northern province of Aleppo. The deaths mark the highest civilian loss from a single attack since the U.S.-led coalition began its war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in September 2014.

“[We] condemn in the strongest terms this massacre committed by the U.S led coalition under the pretext of targeting the IS in the village, and we call the coalition countries to refer who committed this massacre to the courts, as we renew our calls to neutralize all civilians areas from military operations by all parties,” the group said in a statement.

Coalition airstrikes have killed an estimated 118 civilians. However, Reuters notes, the U.S.-led attack has “had little impact on the hardline Islamic State group, slowing its advances but failing to weaken it in areas it controls.”

“Washington and its allies say their aim is to support what they call moderate rebels fighting against both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Isis,” Reuters continues. “But four years into Syria’s civil war, no side is close to victory. A third of the population has been made homeless and more than 220,000 people have been killed.”

New online magazine launched to “combat extremism”

March 28, 2015 by Nasheman

by 5Pillars

A new online magazine has been launched with the aim of “reclaiming the internet” from extremists, the BBC reports.

Haqiqah has been created by British Muslim scholars who say they want to do more to educate young people about the reality of extremist movements.

They say it is a direct response to the threat of radicalisation from groups such as Islamic State. ISIS supporters have widely used social media to spread their message.

More than 100 imams gathered in London for the launch of the magazine, which has been started by the website Imams Online.

As yet it is unclear if the initiative is government-funded or not.

“Someone has to reclaim that territory from ISIS, and that can only be imams: religious leaders who guide and nourish their community,” according to Qari Asim, senior editor at imamsonline.com.

“But now that we live in a digital mobile world, some young people are not coming to the mosque so we must reach out to them – and this is the Muslims’ contribution to combat radicalisation on the net,” he said.

“We’re turning the tide,” says Shaukat Warraich, the chief editor of Imamsonline.com.

“Though we still have a way to go, we know that by taking efforts to support and mobilise the huge online Muslim population, we will eventually drown out the violent voices.”

He said that the speed and volume of communications by IS has taken everyone by surprise, with more than 100,000 pieces of information, tweets and Facebook posts coming out of Syria and Iraq every day.

Warraich said that imams had to move from the real world to have a greater presence online, where young Muslims go for much of their information.

The summit was attended by imams, including Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, president of the Forum for Promoting Peace, and Hamza Yusuf, a leading US imam and co-founder of California-based Zaytuna College.

The organisers say it brought together every group within Islam, from Deobandi, Sufi, Sunni, Shia and cultural groups, and included Somalis, Arabs, Pakistanis and converts to Islam from many nations.

Yemen sinks deeper into chaos after Daesh claims mosque bombings

March 21, 2015 by Nasheman

Two mosques, both located in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, were hit with two suicide bombers each during midday prayers Friday in a string of attacks that was later claimed by Daesh. (AFP/File)

by The Daily Star

Multiple suicide bombings claimed by ISIS killed at least 142 people and wounded around 351 others Friday at Shiite mosques in Yemen’s capital in the deadliest violence to hit the fragile war-torn nation in decades.

A group claiming to be a Yemeni branch of ISIS said it carried out the bombings and warned of an “upcoming flood” of attacks against the Houthi rebels, who have taken over the capital and much of Yemen. The claim, posted online, could not immediately be independently confirmed and offered no proof of an ISIS role.

If true, Friday’s bombing would be the first major attack by ISIS supporters in Yemen and an ominous sign that the influence of the group that holds much of Iraq and Syria has spread to the chaotic nation. The claim was posted on the same Web bulletin board where the ISIS affiliate in Libya claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s deadly attack on a museum in Tunisia.

A significant presence of ISIS supporters would add an alarming new element to the turmoil in this fragmenting nation. Yemen is already home to the most powerful branch of the Al-Qaeda network, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP militants seized control Friday of a southern provincial capital, Al-Houta, in the most dramatic grab of territory by the group in years.

Meanwhile, the Houthi rebels’ capture of the capital and a large swath of the country – at least nine of its 21 provinces – has raised fears of a civil war tinged with sectarianism. The government of the internationally backed president, Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi, has fled to the southern port city of Aden, where it battled Thursday with supporters of the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied with the Houthis.

AQAP has been battling for months against the Houthis in various parts of the country. But the group issued an official statement denying it carried out Friday’s bombings, pointing to earlier instructions from the terror network’s leader Ayman al-Zawahri not to strike mosques or markets.

In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. had seen no indications of an operational link between ISIS and Friday’s attacks.

He said the U.S. was investigating to see whether the ISIS branch in Yemen has the command-and-control structure in place to substantiate its claim of responsibility.

Earnest said it was plausible that ISIS was falsely claiming responsibility for the incident. “It does appear that these kinds of claims are often made for a perception that it benefits their propaganda efforts,” Earnest said.

In past months, there have been several online statements by individual Yemeni militants declaring allegiance to ISIS. The ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, formally accepted their oaths and declared a “province” of ISIS in Yemen in November. Baghdadi and his deputies in Iraq have vowed to strike against the Houthis in Yemen. That has raised questions whether direct operational links have also arisen. For example, In Libya, where ISIS also declared official “provinces,” fighters and officials are known to have been sent from the group’s core to build the local branch.

Friday’s bombings left scenes of bloody devastation in the Badr and Al-Hashoush mosques, located across town from each other in Sanaa. Both mosques are controlled by the Shiite Houthis, but they are also frequented by Sunni worshippers. Footage from the Al-Hashoush mosque, showed screaming volunteers using bloodied blankets to carry away victims, with a small child among the dead lined up on the mosque floor.

Two bombers hit each mosque during midday Friday prayers, when large crowds turn out to attend weekly sermons. Nashwan al-Atab, a member of the Health Ministry’s operations committee, told AFP 142 people were killed and at least 351 wounded.

A prominent Shiite Imam, Al-Murtada al-Mansouri, and two senior Houthi leaders were among the dead, the rebel-owned Al-Masirah TV reported.

It also reported that a fifth suicide bomb attack on another mosque was foiled in the northern city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold.

In the Badr mosque, the first bomber was caught by guards searching worshippers at the gate, where he detonated his device. In the ensuing panic, a second bomber entered the mosque and blew himself up amid the crowd, according to the official news agency SABA.

“I fell on the ground and when I regained consciousness I found myself lying in a lake of blood,” one survivor, Ahmad al-Gabri, told the AP. Two worshippers next to him were killed in the explosions, then another died when one of the mosque’s large glass chandeliers fell on him, Gabri said.

Another survivor, Sadek al-Harithi, said the explosions were like “an earthquake where I felt the ground split and swallow everyone.”

In the Al-Hashoush mosque, one witness said he was thrown two meters away by one of the blasts and found the floor strewn with body parts.

“Blood was running like a river,” Mohammed al-Ansi said.

In an online statement, a group calling itself the media office of ISIS “Sanaa Province” claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the four Sanaa suicide bombers blew themselves up among crowds of Houthis.

“This operation is just a glimpse of an upcoming flood, God willing,” the group said in the statement. “We swear to avenge the blood of Muslims and the toppling of houses of God.”

“The soldiers of ISIS … will not rest until we have uprooted [the Houthis], repelled their aggression, and cut off the arm of the Iranian project in Yemen,” it said, referring to claims that Shiite powerhouse Iran is backing the rebels.

In a further sign of the country’s chaos, AQAP took control of the southern city of Al-Houta Friday, Yemeni security officials said. Al-Qaeda militants driving pickup trucks and flying black flags swept through the city, which is the capital of Lahj province. They took over the main security barracks, the governor’s office, and the intelligence headquarters, which houses prisons with Al-Qaeda detainees, the officials said.

Most of the security forces in the city surrendered to the militants without resistance. The militants killed 21 members of the security forces who resisted at the governor’s office, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Vatican backs military force to stop ISIS ‘genocide'

March 17, 2015 by Nasheman

by John L. Allen Jr, Crux

In an unusually blunt endorsement of military action, the Vatican’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva has called for a coordinated international force to stop the “so-called Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq from further assaults on Christians and other minority groups.

“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”

Tomasi said that any anti-ISIS coalition has to include the Muslim states of the Middle East, and can’t simply be a “Western approach.” He also said it should unfold under the aegis of the United Nations.

The call for force is striking, given that the Vatican traditionally has opposed military interventions in the Middle East, including the two US-led Gulf Wars. It builds, however, on comments from Pope Francis that the use of force is “legitimate … to stop an unjust aggressor.”

Tomasi issued the call in an interview with Crux on the same day he presented a statement entitled “Supporting the Human Rights of Christians and Other Communities, particularly in the Middle East,” coauthored with the Russian Federation and Lebanon, to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The statement has drawn almost 70 nations as signatories, including the United States.

Tomasi told Crux that in the first instance, he hopes the statement will galvanize nations around the world to provide humanitarian aid to Christians and other groups suffering at the hands of ISIS, “so they can survive and stand up for their own rights.”

Beyond that, Tomasi said, the crisis requires “more coordinated protection, including the use of force to stop the hands of an aggressor.”

“It will be up the United Nations and its member states, especially the Security Council, to determine the exact form of intervention necessary,” he said, “but some responsibility [to act] is clear.”

Tomasi applauded an initiative by France to call a special meeting of the Security Council later this month to discuss the situation facing Christians in the Middle East.

Thousands of Christians are believed to have been killed in various parts of the Middle East, principally Iraq and Syria, since the eruption of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and the declaration of an ISIS-led “caliphate.” Hundreds of thousands of Christians and other minority groups have been driven into exile.

To be effective, Tomasi said, an anti-ISIS coalition must include “the countries most directly involved in the Middle East,” meaning the Islamic states of the region.

“What’s needed is a coordinated and well-thought-out coalition to do everything possible to achieve a political settlement without violence,” Tomasi said, “but if that’s not possible, then the use of force will be necessary.”Tomasi called such international military action in defense of beleaguered minorities “a doctrine that’s been developed both in the United Nations and in the social teaching of the Catholic Church.”

The March 13 joint statement on Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, Tomasi said, was a “first” in the United Nations, in that it’s the first time in the Human Rights Council that the plight of Christians has been specifically addressed.

He said the statement originated with Russia, which traditionally sees itself as a protector of Orthodox Christians in the Middle East. Lebanon was invited to participate, he said, because it’s a Middle Eastern country where Christians have long flourished alongside their Muslim neighbors.

Beyond geopolitics, Tomasi also offered some thoughts on what individual Christians around the world can do to support their fellow believers in the Middle East.

“First of all, it’s important to pray and to practice a spiritual communion with these people,” he said.

“Second, one can raise awareness of the political situation that leaves these Christians as structural victims in their own countries,” he said. Third, he said, individuals can help shape a climate of public opinion that sees “both humanitarian and effective protection of the rights of these people” as a priority.

Tomasi stressed that from the Vatican’s point of view, what’s most important is not that these victims are Christian, but that they’re human beings whose lives and dignity are in jeopardy.

“We are not fighting for Christians simply because they’re Christians,” he said. “We start from the foundation that they are human beings with equal rights.”

“Christians, Yazidis, Shi’ites, Sunis, Alawites, all are human beings whose rights deserve to be protected,” he said. “Christians are a special target at this moment, but we want to help them without excluding anyone.”

“There’s a common human dignity we all share,” he said, “and it should be protected at all costs.”

Turkey says spy suspected of helping British school girls is Syrian

March 13, 2015 by Nasheman

British teenage girls Shamima Begun, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana (L-R) walk through security at Gatwick airport before they boarded a flight to Turkey on February 17, 2015, in this combination picture made from handout still images taken from CCTV and released by the Metropolitan Police on February 22, 2015.

British teenage girls Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana (L-R) walk through security at Gatwick airport before they boarded a flight to Turkey on February 17, 2015, in this combination picture made from handout still images taken from CCTV and released by the Metropolitan Police on February 22, 2015.

Ankara/Reuters: An alleged spy detained in Turkey for helping three British girls cross into Syria is a Syrian national working for a country in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Turkish foreign minister said on Friday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu announced on Thursday that a spy who had assisted the three London school girls, now believed to be on territory controlled by Islamic State, had been caught, but did not give the suspect’s nationality.

Islamic State seized swathes of land last June, cementing their rule with a militant interpretation of Islamic law, and is drawing sympathisers from many countries to support their fight. The U.S.-led coalition is using mostly air power in an attempt to push the Sunni militant group back.

“The person who helped the three British girls into Syria is a Syrian national working for another country within the coalition. The situation is so complicated,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

He did not say which country the spy was working for, although on Thursday he had said it was not the European Union or the United States. The coalition also includes countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Australia and Canada.

The three girls, two aged 15 and one 16, flew to Istanbul from London on Feb. 17 and then onwards to Syria, where more than 200,000 have been killed in a civil war. Their families have appealed to them to return.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Ece Toksabay; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Iraqi forces advance on ISIL strongholds in Tikrit

March 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Fierce battles raging as troops and allied fighters launch push to retake key city on the Tigris river.

by Al Jazeera

Iraqi government forces and their allied fighters are continuing to advance towards the centre of Tikrit as part of a major offensive to recapture the strategic city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Army and militia fighters captured part of Tikrit’s northern Qadisiya district, the provincial governor said on Wednesday, while in the south of the city, a security officer said another force made a rapid push towards the centre.

Video obtained by the AP news agency showed troops and Shia militiamen marching alongside Humvees flying Iraqi military and Shia miltia flags in the city.

ISIL fighters stormed into Tikrit last June during an offensive in which they captured large swathes of northern Iraq.

They have since used the complex of palaces built in Tikrit under Saddam Hussein, the executed former president, as their headquarters.

More than 20,000 troops and Shia militias, supported by local Sunni tribes, launched the offensive for Tikrit 10 days ago, advancing from the east and along the banks of the Tigris river.

On Tuesday they took the town of al-Alam on the northern edge of Tikrit, paving the way for an attack on the city itself.

The Tikrit Military Hospital was one of the latest key installations re-captured from ISIL fighters on Wednesday.

Government troops have also reportedly taken control of the oil fields in al-Ojail, another town near Tikrit.

Villages ‘destroyed’

Al Jazeera’s Jane Arraf, reporting from Sulaymaniyah, said on Wednesday: “The word is that while the Iraqi army is indeed in Tikrit, they have not yet managed to control the entire city.

“What they’ve done is clear the way to the city and clear surrounding areas.

“What we’re hearing is really quite a lot of concern about the damage that is being done and could be done … There are reports coming from politicians chatting to their constituencies that entire villages have essentially been destroyed along the way.”

Our correspondent said those reports could not be independently verified.

The Iraqi government is hoping that a victory in Tikrit will help persuade Sunnis in other places to rise up against ISIL as the operation proceeds further north into Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

Elsewhere in Iraq, ISIL on Wednesday launched a coordinated attack on government-held areas of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, involving seven almost simultaneous suicide car bombs, police say.

At least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded in Wednesday’s attack, according to initial reports by police and hospital sources in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province.

103 civilians killed by anti-IS coalition, including US aid worker: NGO

March 11, 2015 by Nasheman

Syrian rights NGO reports that Kayla Mueller is among the 103 civilians killed by the international coalition’s airstrikes

Syrian refugees are seen at an urban renewal area in the Suleymaniye neighborhood of Istanbul, Turkey on 1 March, 2015 (AA)

by Middle East Eye

A Syrian NGO on Tuesday claimed that the US-led international coalition’s airstrikes on the Islamic State and other groups in Syria has killed 103 civilians since its campaign started in September 2014.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, or SNHR, report documented the names, photos, place and time of the deaths.

The report claimed that 11 children and 11 women, including an American national – the aid worker Kayla Jean Mueller – were killed by the airstrikes.

Islamic State announced on 6 February 2015 that Mueller, an American hostage and aid worker, was killed in a Jordanian pilot’s coalition airstrike on IS in Raqqa’s eastern countryside. Mueller’s death was confirmed by US President Barack Obama four days after IS’s announcement, although the US denied their claims, blaming IS for her death.

“No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death,” Obama said in a statement on 10 February.

Mueller, 26, was captured on 4 August 2014 in the city of Aleppo, where she was en route with a Syrian friend to a bus station that would take her back across the Turkish border where she was based.

Mueller’s friend was released after a few months, but the Islamic State kept the young American aid worker prisoner. Some reports indicated that her family had received proof of life and a €5m ($6.6m) ransom demand.

Mueller’s parents received a private message from the White House, with additional information that was “authenticated” by intelligence, allowing them to confirm her killing.

Yet Carl and Marsha Mueller, speaking after the confirmation of their daughter’s death, provided no information regarding the details of her death, further fuelling speculation about the exact cause of her death.

The US has so far not admitted to killing any civilians, but has said it will probe a few specific allegations.

“Unfortunately, the coalition’s central command denies the deaths of civilians, although all the research contains testimonies, photos, videos and victims’ names,” Fadel Abdulghany, the head of SNHR said in the report.

A previous report by the network in December 2014 documented that at least 40 civilians had been killed by coalition airstrikes. Since December, at least 63 civilian deaths were documented, including three children and five women, leading to a total death toll of 103 civilians, the NGO said.

The coalition is conducting constant airstrikes on IS positions, infrastructure and projects. While coalition forces insist they are only taking aim at IS, there has been widespread concern that the strikes could be helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, the London-based NGO said.

The coalition has carried out numerous airstrikes against IS in Iraq and Syria since the militant group took over most of Mosul, in northern Iraq, in June 2014.

Boko Haram declares allegiance to Islamic State

March 9, 2015 by Nasheman

Video purportedly by leader of Nigeria group posted after female Islamists suicide bombers kill at least 50 in coordinated attacks in Maiduguri

The main gate to the Monday Market, Maiduguri, where a suicide bomb attack took place on Saturday. Photograph: Tunji Omirin/AFP/Getty Images

by Daniel Boffey, The Guardian

Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, according to a video posted online. The pledge came in an Arabic audio message with English subtitles alleged to have come from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and posted Saturday on Twitter, according to the SITE Intelligence monitoring service.

“We announce our allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims … and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease, and to endure being discriminated against, and not to dispute about rule with those in power, except in case of evident infidelity regarding that which there is a proof from Allah,” said the message.

The video script identified the caliph as Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Awad al-Qurashi, who is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State and self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world. Baghdadi has already accepted pledges of allegiance from other jihadist groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north Africa.

Boko Haram has been waging a six-year military campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

Earlier on Saturday, four bomb blasts killed at least 50 people in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in the worst attacks there since Boko Haram militants tried to seize the town in two major assaults earlier this year. Female suicide bombers believed to be acting for the group launched a series of attacks in markets, while another detonation was reported at a bus station.

In a fifth incident, a car bomb exploded at a military checkpoint 75km outside the city, wounding a soldier and two members of a civilian defence unit. The attacker in this incident had wanted to reach Maiduguri, a police officer at the scene said. In total, it is believed 58 people have been killed in the incidents and 143 wounded, but both figures were expected to rise.

Maiduguri was once the base of the Islamist group, which has been conducting a campaign of violence pushing for Islamic rule in Nigeria. At least 13,000 people have so far been killed in the campaign. After being pushed from the city last year, the militants retreated to the nearby Sambisa forest, from where they launched attacks on villages and towns in the region, taking over swaths of territory.

Last month experts warned Boko Haram was likely to increase its attacks on civilian targets in response to the successful campaign by government forces to retake several of the group’s former strongholds.

The first attack on Saturday occurred at the city’s Baga fish market at around 11.20am, according to Abubakar Gamandi, head of the fisherman’s union in Borno state. “A female suicide bomber exploded as soon as she stepped out of a motorised rickshaw,” said Gamandi, who was at the scene. “Eighteen people were killed.” A market trader, Idi Idrisa, said: “I saw many bodies and several badly injured”.

About an hour later a second explosion rocked the Post Office shopping area near the market, leaving many casualties. A further series of bombs then rocked what is known locally as the Monday market, the biggest in Maiduguri, killing at least 15.

A trader there told the BBC that two other female bombers seemed to have targeted the market. One had a bomb strapped to her body that detonated as she was being scanned at the entrance gate, he said. Another woman was said to have exploded a bomb she was carrying in a bag a few feet away.

A fourth bombing came shortly after 1pm at the nearby busy Borno Express bus terminal, where witnesses said about 12 people were left either dead or injured. A survivor of the first blast said it occurred when a boy aged about 16 moved into a crowd by the gates holding what looked like a remote control. Security officials were about to stop the teenager when there was a blast. The witness said he was blown over by the impact and when he came to he saw at least six bodies.

A vigilante leader in Borno, Danlami Ajaokuta, whose civilian fighters have been working with the military in the region to fight Boko Haram, said security forces had ordered the closure of all businesses in the city given the apparently coordinated nature of the bombings and the fear there could be more. The state’s justice commissioner, Kaka Shehu, confirmed the attacks but declined to discuss casualties.

Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan said the tide has “definitely turned” against militant Islamists as Nigerian troops and their regional allies recapture territory.

Boko Haram has recently launched attacks on villages in Cameroon and Niger, as Nigeria’s neighbours are forming a multinational force to confront the spreading Islamist uprising.

Chad’s President Idris Déby last week said his forces knew the whereabouts of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and warned him to surrender or face death. Shekau’s fighters are massing at a headquarters in the northeastern town of Gwoza, in apparent preparation for a showdown with multinational forces, according to witnesses who escaped the town. An intelligence officer told Associated Press that they were aware of the movement, but that the military is acting with care as many civilians are still trapped in the town and Boko Haram is laying land mines around it.

Nigeria’s presidential and parliamentary elections have now been postponed by six week to 28 March to give troops time to push back the militants. Shekau has vowed to disrupt the vote and widespread unrest, especially near polling stations, could prove disastrous. Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the conflict are living in Maiduguri, swelling the city’s population to well over two million.

ISIL fighters bulldoze ancient Assyrian palace in Iraq

March 6, 2015 by Nasheman

Reported demolition at Nimrud comes less than a week after video was released showing destruction at Mosul museum.

Winged-bull statues were placed at the gates of Assyrian palaces as protective spirits [Getty Images]

by Jane Arraf, Al Jazeera

Baghdad: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters have used a bulldozer to start destroying a 3,000-year-old Assyrian city near Mosul in Iraq, archaeologists and other sources have told Al Jazeera.

The demolition at Nimrud on Thursday comes less than a week after video was released showing ISIL fighters destroying ancient artefacts in a Mosul museum.

“They came at midday with a bulldozer and started destroying the palace,” said an Iraqi official in touch with antiquities staff in Mosul.

She said the winged-bull statues known as lamassu at the gates of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II had been smashed. It was not clear what else had been destroyed on the site, about 20km southeast of Mosul.

In last week’s ISIL video , fighters were shown using power drills and sledgehammers to try to destroy similar statues at the ancient site of Nineveh, within Mosul.

The mutli-tonne figures were placed at the palaces’ gates as protective spirits.

One source told Al Jazeera the fighters warned Mosul residents last week that they would move on to Nimrud next. Hatra, a World Heritage Site, is also believed to be in danger.

Since 2002, the World Monuments Fund has listed Nimrud as one of the world’s most endangered sites. The intricate stone reliefs, exposed to the elements, have been decaying. Without security around the site, it has been exposed to looters.

The palace belonged to King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled a powerful empire that included Iraq, the Levant, lower Egypt and parts of Turkey and the Levant. The palace was built with precious wood, marble and other materials brought from the furthest reaches of his kingdom.

Nimrud, known as biblical Calah, is believed to have first been settled 7,000 years ago. At its height, up to 60,000 people lived in the walled city, which contained lush gardens and sprawling parks.

Mostly excavated by the British, with the finds taken to the British Museum, the most spectacular discovery was an Iraqi one.

In the late 1980s Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmood discovered a royal tomb containing one of the biggest finds of the last century – hundreds of pieces of golden jewelry and other objects belonging to an Assyrian queen.

Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Thursday condemned the destruction at Nimrud, stating that ISIL “continues to defy the will of world”.

Don't refer to IS as 'Islamic,' urges Russian Council of Muftis

March 5, 2015 by Nasheman

Russian Grand Mufti Ravil Gainutdin in Moscow in December 2014

by Joanna Paraszczuk, RFERL

The international community should not use the word “Islamic” when referring to the militant group Islamic State, according to the first deputy chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Rushan Abbyasov.

Abbyasov said that leaders of the Council of Muftis of Russia had joined representatives of several Arab countries in calling for the use of the word “Islamic” to be dropped when referring to IS in the media and elsewhere in public discourse.

Abbyasov made his comments in a live interview with Russia’s Vesti FM radio station ahead of a meeting in Moscow with diplomatic representatives of Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Kuwait, Algeria, Jordan, and Sudan, pro-Moscow Russian news site RIA Novosti reported on March 3.

“We have arrived at this idea, that today we can try to neutralize these groups ideologically. At the minimum, we should remove the prefix ‘Islamic’ [from Islamic State],” Abbyasov was quoted as saying.

The Russian Council of Muftis deputy chairman said that the media and others should refer to thIS “just as [the militants] are positioning themselves — as terrorists, bandits, and radicals, but we should try to remove the prefix [of “Islamic”] that they have given themselves and which they are trying to play with,” Abbyasov told Vesti FM.

Abbyasov said he believed that dropping the term “Islamic” from the name of the militant group would have a significant impact.

“If the international community would not call them ‘Islamic’ then believe me, they can be destroyed ideologically,” he said.

Abbyasov recalled that a group of over 120 Muslim scholars had released an open letter to IS militants and followers recently.

The letter declared that the militant group’s ideology was “completely contrary to the essence of Islam,” Abbyasov said.

The letter, released in September 2014, used Koranic sources to refute the militants’ ideology.

Abbyasov said that the militants had taken elements of the Koran out of context.

“You can pull out any [Koran] quote out of context. To deal with the Koran, you don’t only need knowledge of Arabic, but of the many sciences that make it possible to reveal the full meaning of the verses and all the meanings that are inherent in the Holy Koran,” he concluded.

Abbyasov’s comments come amid increasing concerns in Russia about the threat posed by IS to the country’s security. Russia is not only concerned that Russian nationals who fight in Syria could return and commit terrorist acts on Russian soil, but also that the group’s ideology could prove a pervasive source of radicalization for Russian Muslims or Muslim foreign laborers from Central Asian countries.

Recent attempts to combat the threats Russia believes are posed by IS include a December 2014 ruling by the Supreme Court that deemed IS a terrorist group. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) included the IS group on a “unified list” of 22 terrorist groups published on its website last week.