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300 Syrian "Cubs of the Caliphate" said killed fighting for IS in Mosul
 [IsraelTimes] In battle to recapture Iraqi city, children are majority of 500 jihadi fatalities, observer group saysMore than 300 child fighters are among the almost 500 jihadists who have been killed in battles by US-backed forces to wrest the Iraqi city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... , a Syrian watchdog group said. According to a report Sunday by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the majority of those killed in battles with Iraqi, Kurdish and Shiite troops converging on the city were Syrian minors drafted to fight for Islamic State’s "Cubs of the Caliphate" youth force. The Cubs of the Caliphate receive intense military and religious training throughout IS’s areas of control in Syria, according to reports from the war-torn country. The child soldiers are deployed to man checkpoints or gather intelligence from areas outside IS control, but IS has also used them to execute prisoners or conduct suicide kabooms. The Observatory put the total number of Islamic State fighters killed since the offensive began two weeks ago at 480, well below the 800-900 fatalities figure offered by the Pentagon last week. While their forces suffered heavy losses, IS preachers continued to announce victory in Mosul. "Allah has replaced the loss in Aleppo’s Dabiq with a victory in Mosul," they told worshipers. Though only a small town of marginal strategic importance in northern Syria, Dabiq has figured centrally in IS propaganda. Citing Islamic lore, the turban group claims it will be the stage for an apocalyptic battle between Crusaders and an army of the Moslem caliphate that will herald doomsday. The group’s English-language propaganda magazine is named after the town. Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces captured the symbolically significant town from IS on October 16, the day before the offensive to retake Mosul was launched. Mosul is the last bastion of IS in Iraq, linked by road to territory it holds in Syria. Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been advancing on Mosul from the north, east and south after the launch of a vast offensive to retake IS’s last stronghold in the country. After standing largely on the sidelines in the first days of the assault, forces from the Popular Mobilization Units (Hashed al-Shaabi) -- a paramilitary umbrella organization dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias -- began a push on Saturday toward the west of Mosul. Spokesmen for Iraq’s state-sanctioned Shiite militias say that some 5,000 fighters have joined their push to encircle the country’s second largest city and cut off Islamic State fighters there. Karim al-Nuri of the Popular Mobilization Units and Jaafar al-Husseini, a front man for unit member the Hezbollah Brigades, said Sunday that a total of some 15,000 Shiite fighters were participating in the battle. The Iraqi military confirmed the figures, which, including army units, militarized police, special forces and Kurdish fighters mean the total number of anti-IS forces in the offensive now stands at over 40,000. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-11-01 |
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