^ I saw on Reddit. He, along with Umar Shishani, have been killed so many times I lost count a long time ago XD
Anyways, the Iraqi military reports 1670 air sorties in October. Not bad for a country that barely has an Air force anymore lol.
BAGHDAD / NINA / Defense Ministry announced on Monday the implementation / 1115 / sorties by the Army Aviation during the current month.
The Ministry said in a statement today that the Command of the Air Force carried out / 555 / sorties on targets elected for the period from the first of October now till the twenty-sixth of it.
It added, "The Command of the army aviation carried out / 1115 / sorties for the period from the first of the month of October till the twenty-seventh of it, through which it targeted areas where the IS gangs exist in various fields of operations./End
Not too much going on in Iraq today. More killing of ISIS and fighting in Anbar and Diyala, near Baquba, and Nineveh and Saladin, but no major operations. Coalition airstrikes have struck ISIS in Zamar and Sinjar.
I've read that ISIS is trying to move on Fallujah, but I thought they have Fallujah?
Interesting analysis article
(Reuters) - When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria's Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the "Arab Spring".
Assad, in contrast, shielded diplomatically by Russia and with military and financial support from Iran and its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah, warned that the fires of Syria’s sectarian war would burn its neighbors.
For Turkey, despite the confidence of Tayyip Erdogan, elected this summer to the presidency after 11 years as prime minister and three straight general election victories, Assad’s warning is starting to ring uncomfortably true.
Turkey’s foreign policy is in ruins. Its once shining image as a Muslim democracy and regional power in the NATO alliance and at the doors of the European Union is badly tarnished.
Amid a backlash against political Islam across the region Erdogan is still irritating his Arab neighbors by offering himself as a Sunni Islamist champion.
The world, meanwhile, is transfixed by the desperate siege of Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town just over Turkey’s border, under attack by extremist Sunni fighters of the Islamic State (IS) who are threatening to massacre its defenders.
Erdogan has enraged Turkey’s own Kurdish minority – about a fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region – by seeming to prefer that IS jihadis extend their territorial gains in Syria and Iraq rather than that Kurdish insurgents consolidate local power.
Breaking: Peshmerga units with heavy weaponry are being transported to the border near Kobane.
Aleppo Province: The fighters of Shohadaa Bader Brigade under the command of Khaled Hayyani launched some mortar shells on the regime- held neighborhood of the New Seryan leading to kill a child at least while others were wounded.
4 shells launched by the Islamic battalions landed on areas in the neighborhood of Jam’eyyat al- Zahraa.
Violent clashes are taking place between the regime forces supported by NDF against YPG, the rebel and Islamic battalions in the neighborhood of al- Ashrafeyyi coincided with shelling by the regime forces on the battalions- held areas in the neighborhood.
On October 28 2014 19:08 Awesomeguy wrote: I think America has to step in properly and teach these guys a lesson.
I think the best lesson America could teach them is dropping pallets of alcohol, bacon, and all of our 90's paper pornography. (as a substitute for bombs anyway)
Berlin - Germany's domestic Intelligence agency severely underestimated the number of radical German Muslims who are fighting for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, a Frankfurt-based newspaper reported.
The previous estimate of 450 combatants fighting for the Islamic State should be increased to 1,800, an unnamed agent of the domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAZ) newspaper in Sunday’s report. “We have to multiply the official number by four, in order to get a realistic number,” the agent said.
Nearly 40 women and a 13-year-old boy are among those who left to join the fight in Syria, German media reported.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants and other Syrian rebel groups have attacked the government-held city of Idlib, briefly seizing several official buildings.
The Nusra Front said its fighters killed dozens of government soldiers before being pushed back.
The Syrian government has maintained control of Idlib city in the country's north-west since it was briefly taken over by rebel groups in 2012.
Syria's civil war, in its fourth year, has claimed more than 200,000 lives.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!! The great sectarianist of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, apparently made a statement against those who are trying to split Iraq on a sectarian basis. This is hilarious XD
BAGHDAD / NINA / Vice President Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday that "Iraq is rich country with its men and wealth and abilities, so it is always found in confrontation of various challenges, and by the courage of its people, especially the tribes was able to overcome the difficulties.
A statement by his office said that Maliki met today with a delegation from the National Assembly of Iraq's Notables, he was quoted as saying, "Today our country is targeted clearly by terrorism, and there are those who seek to divide it on sectarian basis, but thank to God that we are able to within the national reconciliation which we launched before to defeat sectarianism.
However, the enemies of Iraq are working to raise it among the components of the one people, and by the efforts of the tribes and the popular crowd and cooperation of the sons of our people, we will defeat these schemes and those who stand behind them.
For his part, the delegation stressed their support for the security services and armed forces to defeat terrorism, and rejection of sectarianism and maintain the unity of the national unity.
Saladin provincial governor says Iraqi forces 2 km from center of Baiji
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) On Tuesday, the governor of Salahuddin province, Ibrahim Al-Jabouri, announced that the Iraqi security forces are only 2 km away from central Biji.
Al-Jabouri stated today: “Iraqi military troops are only 2 km away from the heart of the city, and the special military troops in Salahuddin have managed to liberate areas in northern Tikrit, forcing ISIS militants to withdraw more into Tikrit city..”
Noteworthy, Salahuddin province witnesses constant clashes between Iraqi forces and the ISIS militants who have seized large expanses of territories in the province.
Mohammad Ali Baryalei reportedly killed during fighting in the Middle East
AUSTRALIA’S most senior Islamic State member Mohammad Ali Baryalei has reportedly been killed in fighting in the Middle East.
News of the death was first tweeted about 11 hours ago by a British-based researcher Shiraz Maher, from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College in London. Baryalei was the catalyst for the largest terrorism raids in Australian history that took place last month.
The 33-year-old is the most senior Australian member of the extremist group Islamic State, which has been fighting in Iraq and Syria. He has been credited with recruiting more than half of the estimated 60 Australians fighting for the terror group, also known as ISIS.
Sources say the government will have a hard time verifying Baryalei’s death; Australia doesn’t not have an embassy in Syria and relatives were often reluctant to speak or had been left in the dark.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said today that the government had not yet confirmed his death. It is believed he died four or five days ago.
A spokesman for Attorney-General George Brandis told news.com.au: “As Julie Bishop said, we are still trying to verify it.”
.....
According to Fairfax, Abdul Salaam Mahmoud, a friend who met Baryalei through the Street Dawah group in Sydney, posted this message on Facebook last night:
“I’ve just received the news that our beloved brother Mohamed Ali who was recently strongly attacked by Australian media has been martyred. He was a brother a friend and our leader in street dawah Sydney. Last time I met him he hugged me very tightly and gave me one advice he told me 'Stick to Qyam Al-Lil/night prayer” then he left to Bilad Al-Sham'. Today we shall celebrate his martyrdom with tears of joy and sorrow. Oh Allah accept him as another green bird.”
BEIRUT/AMMAN: Fighters linked to Al-Qaeda have seized territory from a moderate Syrian rebel group in a three-day campaign that has expanded their control into one of the few areas of northern Syria not held by hardline Islamists.
Syrian opposition activist and a military commander said the Nusra Front had taken several villages in Idlib province from the Syria Revolutionaries' Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a prominent figure in the moderate opposition to President Bashar Assad.
"This has happened before and we came through it. But this time the mobilisation is very large," said a military official in the Syria Revolutionaries' Front.
Twenty of the group's fighters had been killed on Monday, the official said.
Iraq National Guard movement is in full-swing. PM Abadi approves the creation of a 30,000 man guard in Anbar province. However, Sheikh Suleiman of the Dulaim tribe claims this force has nothing to do with the National Guard.
Baghdad, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has agreed to allow the creation of a 30,000-strong force of volunteers from Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), following a meeting with expatriate tribal leaders from the province in the Jordanian capital Amman on Monday.
Abadi was in Amman for an official state visit to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan, but also met with Anbar tribal leaders currently residing in the city after being displaced when ISIS entered the province in the first months of 2014, occupying parts of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Sheikh Majid Al-Ali Al-Suleiman of the Dulaim tribe told Asharq Al-Awsat via telephone from Amman that following the meeting, which he described as “very positive,” Abadi had “agreed to allow 30,000 volunteer fighters from Anbar’s tribes [to officially join the fight against ISIS], with every tribe offering a specific portion out of the total, and for the government to train and arm them.”
A number of volunteer forces, both Sunni and Shi’ite, have been formed in response to ISIS’s lightening advance across large swaths of northern and western Iraq, which saw the extremist group take control of Iraq’s second city Mosul in June after the Iraqi army suffered a series of humiliating defeats, in some cases abandoning their posts before fighting even began.
But the 30,000-strong force from Anbar may well prove controversial, with many in Iraq wary of the province’s residents, whom they allege have aided the Sunni extremist group’s control in the region.
The entry of ISIS into Anbar earlier in the year coincided with mass protests in the province over the policies of former prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki, whose policies many say discriminated against Iraq’s minority Sunni population.
Speaking of reports that the Anbar volunteer force would form the nucleus of a new National Guard, Suleiman said: “This group [of volunteer soldiers] has nothing to do with the National Guard. We refer to it instead as a ‘national mobilization’ for fighting ISIS, which must be composed of fighters from the province on the condition that they be trained and armed.”
Suleiman also said that Abadi and tribal leaders had discussed “the question of the return of [Anbar] refugees to their homes and facilitating their return, securing what is needed to achieve this, and compensating them for what they have lost.”
He added: “The most important thing we asked for, though, was that promises [by the government] be kept.”
Iraqi forces are close to Baiji, where forces at the nearby refinery have held out repeated attacks since June.
BAGHDAD, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces said they advanced to within 2 km (1.2 miles) of the city of Baiji on Wednesday in a new offensive to retake the country's biggest oil refinery, besieged since June by Islamic State militants.
Backed by Shi'ite militias and army helicopters, government forces have swept through a desert area to the west of Baiji, aiming to recapture the city 200 km (130 miles) north of the capital.
They hope to cut off supply lines to militants encircling the refinery and gain control of a road leading to Mosul, the biggest city in the north, an army colonel told Reuters.
Islamic State fighters seized the city of Baiji and surrounded the sprawling refinery in June during a lightning campaign through northern Iraq. The group also controls a swathe of territory in neighbouring Syria and has proclaimed a caliphate straddling both countries.
Government forces inside the refinery complex have been surrounded by the Sunni insurgents who have failed to take it despite frequent attacks and suicide bombings.
The Iraqi government and its allies from the autonomous Kurdish region have been advancing to recapture territory in the north in recent weeks, aided by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria.
"We have made good advances. We have taken over six villages and now we are only 2 km away from the city of Baiji," said the colonel, who requested anonymity.
Islamic State has used roadside bombs and snipers to slow down the government forces' progress.
"Since yesterday morning we have defused 300 roadside bombs planted by the terrorists to delay our advance," the colonel said.
Iraqi army starts using Mi-28 "Night Hunter" helicopters.
Baghdad - The Iraqi Ministry of Defense assured the entrance of the Russian helicopter (Night Hunter) to the service to support terrorism fighting and Iraqi infantry forces.
A statement by the MoD cited “Minister of Defense Khalid al-Obaidi accompanied by several military commanders observed on Wednesday the final stage of preparing and arming the first group of the Russian modern fighting helicopters (MI-28) in a step towards sending them to specified air bases.”
“These helicopters which are known as the Night Hunter will increase the efficiency of the Iraqi Army Air Force in its war against terrorism,” the statement added.
IMPORTANT: This article is from July 18, but makes an important point about Mosul. According to the city's governor, Mosul was mostly depleted of ISIS, but Baathists and others of the Naqshbandi group have taken over the city for the most part in mid-July. I wonder of Naqshbandi is still in control of most of Mosul?
Isis fighters have partially withdrawn from Iraq's second city, Mosul, where another militant group - closely linked to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime - has taken over large areas, according to the city's governor.
In an interview with the Guardian the governor, Atheel Nujaifi, who escaped from Mosul last month, said the Islamic State's main "strike force" had withdrawn from the city to fight the Iraqi army further south in Tikrit, he said. A smaller number of local Isis supporters remained in Mosul's western part, known as the right bank, he said.
Last month Isis staged a stunning advance, seizing Mosul and Tikrit, and raising the spectre of Iraq's collapse. On Tuesday the Iraqi army was forced to retreat from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace, 100 miles north of Baghdad, after its latest attempt to retake the city met heavy Isis resistance.
But according to Nujaifi, most of the eastern half of Mosul is now dominated by the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by high-ranking Saddam-era Ba'athists including Izzat al-Douri, the king of clubs in the US deck of "wanted Iraqi" playing cards. Naqshbandi militants had taken down Isis flags from "a lot of buildings" and replaced them with their own, he said. Other sources inside Mosul confirmed that Isis fighters began to withdraw from the city about a week ago.
The lightning Isis offensive, which swept Iraqi government forces from swaths of the country's north, is thought to have been partially enabled by an alliance with the Naqshbandi group - known in full as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order which emerged around 2007. The group is believed to be under the control of Douri, the most senior of Saddam's commanders to evade capture after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. His whereabouts is unknown, though many think he is in Syria.
IMPORTANT: ISIS executes 220 tribesmen of the Albu Nimr tribe in Anbar. + Show Spoiler +
BAGHDAD - Islamic State militants executed at least 220 Iraqis in retaliation against a tribe’s opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad, security sources and witnesses said. Two mass graves were discovered on Thursday containing some of the 300 members of the Sunni Muslim Albu Nimr tribe that Islamic State had seized this week. The captives, men aged between 18 and 55, had been shot at close range, witnesses said.
The bodies of more than 70 Albu Nimr men were dumped near the town of Hit in the Sunni heartland Anbar province, according to witnesses who said most of the victims were members of the police or an anti-Islamic State militia called Sahwa (Awakening).
“Early this morning we found those corpses and we were told by some Islamic State militants that ‘those people are from Sahwa, who fought your brothers the Islamic State, and this is the punishment of anybody fighting Islamic State’,” a witness said.
The insurgents had ordered men from the tribe to leave their villages and go to Hit, 130 km (80 miles) west of Baghdad, promising them “safe passage”, tribal leaders said. They were then seized and shot.
A mass grave near the city of Ramadi, also in Anbar province, contained 150 members of the same tribe, security officials said.
======================================================================================== IMPORTANT: ISIS executes 600 prison inmates in Mosul + Show Spoiler +
BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants from the Islamic State carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi prison inmates when they seized the country's second-largest city of Mosul in June, an international rights group said on Thursday.
Some 600 male Shiite inmates from Badoosh prison outside Mosul were forced to kneel along the edge of a nearby ravine and shot with automatic weapons, Human Rights Watch said in a statement based on interviews with 15 Shiite prisoners who survived the massacre.
The New York-based watchdog added that the Shiite prisoners were separated from several hundred Sunnis and a small number of Christians who were later set free. A number of Kurdish and Yazidi inmates were also killed, they said.
The prisoners had been serving sentences for a range of crimes, from murder and assault to nonviolent offenses.
IMPORTANT: Iraqi forces capture the city of Baiji, north of Tikrit. + Show Spoiler +
The Iraqi army backed by tribesmen overnight on Thursday (October 30th) recaptured the industrial city in Baiji district, Salaheddine province, from the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), the Defence Ministry said Friday.
"The Iraqi army's 1st and 6th Divisions, supported by a tribal force, managed to recapture the industrial city in Baiji district, one of the largest industrial cities in Iraq," ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari told Al-Shorfa.
ISIL had turned the city into a centre for making improvised explosive devices, bombs, guided weapons and car bombs, al-Askari said.
During the operation, the army killed many ISIL elements and seized various weapons and equipment, he added.
He said retaking the city would pave the way for an offensive on Baiji to reach its main centre.
IMPORTANT: Not sure if this is true, but Iraqi Defense Minister Obeidi aims to cancel all Iranian military presence in the country. + Show Spoiler +
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) On Wednesday, Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi declared his plans to cancel all military cooperation with Iran that was agreed upon at the time of former Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Siyasah.
The Kuwaiti Newspaper Al-Siyasah reported that the current Iraqi Defense Minister, Khaled al-Obeidi plans to form strict orders to cut all types of relations and cancel military cooperation between Iraq’s army and Iran’s government, including all deals and sales that were agreed upon at the time of former Iraqi PM Al-Maliki. al-Obeidi’s intentions will be also to return all Iranian troops to Iran.
The report said that, “Obeidi thinks that any types of military cooperation between his government and Iran will not serve the interest of Iraq since Iran hasn’t solved her problems with the world.”
“Iraqi MoD Obeidi has a solid strategy to strengthen the Iraqi Army in order to face the terrorism and defeat the extremists groups within two years.”
Obeidi is to resign from his position if he finds intended obstacles that aim at blocking his orders for building and developing the Iraqi Army in a way that meets with the challenges of the current conflict.
========================================================================================= Abadi aims to get more support the support of the Anbar tribes. This article doesn't take into account that Abadi approved a 30,000-man force of the tribesmen to be trained and supported by the government. + Show Spoiler +
BAGHDAD, Oct 29 (Reuters) - When Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi took office, he was regarded as a moderate Shi'ite leader who could win over powerful Sunni tribal chiefs to the fight against Islamic State.
Three months later, Sunnis who once helped U.S. Marines kick the Islamic State's predecessor al Qaeda out of Iraq view Abadi with deep scepticism because he has yet to deliver on promises to support their neglected Sunni heartland Anbar province.
Abadi, for his part, seems mistrustful of tribal leaders, who are plagued by divisions and accused of misuse of government funds and military support in the past.
A 62-year-old British-educated Shi'ite Muslim engineer, Abadi is a much more conciliatory figure than his predecessor Nuri al-Maliki, whose policies were seen by most Sunnis as discriminatory, leading to an uprising in Sunni areas that was exploited by Islamic State fighters this year.
Washington, now providing air support for Iraqi forces, hopes that the new prime minister's outreach can rebuild the shaky alliance with Sunni tribal figures, particularly in Anbar, which helped the U.S. Marines defeat al Qaeda during the "surge" offensive of 2006-2007.
But on the evidence of a televised meeting Abadi called this week with tribal leaders, he still faces a tough task. The prime minister spoke with little evident charisma, and many of the sheikhs listened to his appeal in stony silence. When they left, they said the government still hadn't understood their grievances or given them firm enough promises of support.
"We're bewildered by Abadi's policy towards Anbar. We want to live in peace and bring back displaced families and stop the bloodshed," said senior tribal Sheikh Lawrence al-Hardan from Garma town in Anbar.
...
Many of the Sunni tribal leaders say they can never trust the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad until it does more to rein in Shi'ite militia, which Sunnis accuse of kidnapping, torturing and killing with impunity.
So far there is no sign of the government dismantling the Shi'ite militia, which mobilised to defend Baghdad when the Iraqi army melted away in the face of an Islamic State onslaught in the north in June.
"If Abadi wants us to help him fight Islamic State then he should start battling the militias," Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleiman, one of the leaders of the Sunni revolt against Maliki.
========================================================================================= UN estimates that there are 15,000 foreign fighters with ISIS + Show Spoiler +
The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale” and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism.
A report by the UN security council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida”.
The UN said it was uncertain whether al-Qaida would benefit from the surge. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida who booted Isis out of his organisation, “appears to be maneuvering for relevance”, the report says.
The UN’s numbers bolster recent estimates from US intelligence about the scope of the foreign fighter problem, which the UN report finds to have spread despite the Obama administration’s aggressive counter-terrorism strikes and global surveillance dragnets.
“Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing,” says the report, produced by a security council committee that monitors al-Qaida.
DWEIR SHEIKH SAAD, Syria (AP) — The posters of slain Syrian soldiers, put up by families to commemorate their sons killed in the fight against rebels, are plastered on walls throughout the coastal province of Tartous. The impromptu murals of death illustrate the price supporters of President Bashar Assad are paying to defend his rule.
The khaki-clad men often pose with guns, with Assad's image often imposed above the slain soldier.
For government supporters, Assad is synonymous with Syria itself, particularly in Tartous, a scenic Mediterranean port that is majority Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that is the faith of Assad's family. For Syria's Alawite minority, there is no other way out but to back the president, despite rumblings of dissent. Rebels often indiscriminately target Alawites because they are seen as the firmest pillar of Assad's rule — and because extremists among the rebels consider them heretics.
More soldiers have been killed from Tartous than any other region in Syria in the fighting to quell the armed rebellion seeking to topple Assad, now in its fourth year.
"This is the price we must pay for the country," said Ramadan Haidar, whose 23-year-old son Mahmoud was killed fighting in northern Syria. "Because if the country doesn't regain its sovereignty, then I have lost my son and my home."
It's unlikely that need for the sons of Tartous will ease, with the government seemingly desperate for soldiers as the conflict grinds on.
Some 4,000 soldiers from Tartous have been killed in the war, according to a Syrian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to media.
Report: SAA has retaken the Sha'er Gas Fields. But an Iranian unit did most of the fighting.
Heavy Syrian Army bombardment of Rebel Forces on the edge of Jobar and Zamalka, Damascus.
The Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, has seized a town and several villages in Syria's Idlib province, dealing another blow to Western-backed rebel fighters in the northwestern region.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said that al-Nusra fighters had captured the town of Khan al-Subul overnight after the withdrawal of the Hazm movement, a moderate opposition group.
The group also seized another five villages in the province held by other rebels, the Observatory said.