You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Terror Networks
The Beatings Will Continue: Iraqi and Syrian Editions
2016-12-02


15 kidz die in ISIS sniper attacks in Mosul
Evil bastards gotta be evil
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State snipers killed 15 children while they were attempting to flee towards locations taken over by Iraqi security forces in Mosul, according to a security source.

“ISIS snipers killed 15 kids belonging to Mosul refugees who were heading to security forces,” the source told Alsumaria News, but did not clarify the time frame for the alleged killings.

“ISIS gangs have used the most horrific means of killing with the migrating people of Mosul, targeting them with IEDs, sniping their children to prevent them from leaving town and using them as human shields,” the source said.

Iraqi government forces, backed by tribal militias and US-led aircrafts, have been successfully liberating several villages around Mosul as part of a wide-scale operation that launched mid October to retake the city from ISIS. The forces commanders, while claiming daily victories, admit that the existence of civilians in the city, many of whom are reportedly used as human shields, have slowed down the pace of operations.

UN adds 2 camps for refugees in Mosul

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has added two more camps for displaced families from the city of Mosul, bringing the total to six.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq said in a statement that the UNHCR inaugurated last week al-Alam camp, near the Tikrit, Salahuddin province. It said the area had admitted 180 projected to increase.

Amala camp is also expected for inauguration next week near Tal Afar, according to UNAMI.

The opening of the two new facilities comes as the rest of camps reached their maximum capacity.

The current number of refugees from Mosul stands at at least 73000, according to UN statistics. The refugees are escaping violent battles back home between Islamic State militants and Iraqi troops seeking to liberate the city from the extremist group’s hold.

The United Nations had predicted before the launch of operations that one million people would leave homes in Mosul due to fighting.

It said in a recent report that a half of children in Mosul are unable to get clean potable water as the main supply line to the city was destroyed in battles.

3 civilians die in ISIS mortar attacks

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Three civilians were killed on Thursday when a mortar missile landed on their homes in al-Bakr district in Mosul.

Shafaaq news website quoted a source as saying that three others were injured in the incident.

Iraqi forces and popular militias had liberated the district two days ago, but ISIS has been used to shell areas it lost to the forces, causing civilian deaths on some occasions.

Iraqi forces, assisted by popular militias and a US-led international coalition’s jets, continue to engage with ISIS militants in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, as part of a major campaign to force the extremist group out of Iraq.

In a related context, Abdul Wahab al-Saedi, a senior commander at the army’s anti-terrorism force, said his forces continue to clear several liberated areas from explosives planted by ISIS and comb the regions for any remaining ISIS elements.

A source told Shafaaq that the forces urged citizens through loudspeakers to remain at home.

200 families return to Namrud

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) 200 displaced families have returned to the liberated area of Namrud and nearby villages, after being liberated by the security forces and al-Hashd al-Shaabi.

Head of Namrud area, Ahmed Obeid al-Eissa, said in a press statement, “200 displaced families returned to their areas in al-Namrud vicinity, southeast of Mosul, after being fully liberated by the army’s 9th Armored Brigade and Nineveh Plain’s forces,” adding that, “These forces secured the entrances and exits of the area and removed IEDs from it.”

“The names of majority of families were checked to prevent the return of terrorist to the area,” al-Eissa added. “There is a joint cooperation between al-Hashd al-Shaabi and security forces to guarantee the return of all displaced families,” Eissa explained.

In 23 November 2016, the 37th regiment of the 9th armored brigade cleansed the area of Namrud, southeast of Mosul, from adhesive and improvised explosive devices, and dismantles nearly 240 IEDs so far.

Aleppo risks becoming graveyard

[AlArabiya] A top UN envoy on Wednesday pleaded with the Security Council to help break the siege of Aleppo, warning that residents of the Syrian city were at risk of extermination.

“For the sake of humanity we call on -- we plead -- with the parties and those with influence to do everything in their power to protect civilians and enable access to the besieged part of eastern Aleppo before it becomes one giant graveyard,” said Stephen O’Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

O’Brien, speaking to a special Security Council session by video-link from London, said that the clock was ticking on the city as the winter set in.

Residents have been reduced to scavenging for food, hospitals are not functioning after repeated military strikes and an estimated 25,000 people have fled eastern Aleppo since Saturday alone, O'Brien said.

O’Brien said that aid convoys were ready to roll in from Turkey and western Aleppo but that they needed an end to the siege and protection for civilians.

“These are neither new nor complicated demands -- those common threads of humanity that we all have a responsibility to rally around,” he said.

“Those parties that can’t or won’t live up to their basic obligations should know that they will one day be held accountable for their actions,” he said.

The eastern part of Aleppo has been a key rebel stronghold since 2012, with government forces determined to wrest control.

More than 250,000 people had been living in the eastern neighborhoods when the government laid siege four months ago.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has enjoyed diplomatic support from Russia, which has also intervened militarily to boost the campaign for Aleppo.

O’Brien said he faced the persistent question as he traveled -- “Why on Earth can the Security Council not come together to unite to put a stop to this suffering?”

“The people of Syria have suffered far too much for far too long,” he said.

He urged the Security Council not to lose sight of another 700,000 people besieged in other areas, notably around Damascus.

Civilians flooding out of Aleppo

[AAWSAT] “There are still corpses in the streets, there are wounded people everywhere and hunger is killing those civilians that remain. I do not know if the term “humanitarian disaster” is sufficient to describe the situation of the city, but the reality is worse than can be described in words.”

The above is a description of the situation in the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo that is situated in northern Syria. The description was made by a prominent Syrian opposition activist named Hadi Al-Abdullah and he gave this account five days after the Syrian regime and its allies launched a major offensive on the city through which they were able to make advances into the areas that have been controlled by the Syrian opposition since 2012.

Al-Abdullah said that opposition factions remain devoted to fighting but said that “all options remain open” with regards to the possibility that they might accept to withdraw at a later time or continue with the fighting. He added that “there are a number of reasons for the opposition’s withdrawal in the city; the most prominent of these is the unprecedented bombing in the south, the fact that hospitals have been bombed and taken out of service as a result and wounded people are unable to leave for treatment. This has led to the collapse of both citizens and fighters’ morale, and has naturally led to withdrawal from some neighbourhoods. He continued by saying “As for talk of the military fall of the city, this is incorrect considering that the regime does not control more than 18% of Aleppo”.

The director of the Free Aleppo Health Directorate Abdelbasset Ibrahim said in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that “the situation in the city is going from bad to worse” and pointed out that “the wounded are dying in the streets because we are unable to save them”. He continued by saying “More than 50 women and children were killed in one place.”

Another mass grave uncovered in Mosul
Via NY Times
Hamam al-Alil, Iraq- The battle was over in Hamam al-Alil, Iraq, an old spa resort town that the country’s security forces had wrested from ISIS a few days ago, but one Iraqi soldier was still on a very personal mission.

The soldier, Zaman Mijwal, was looking for his older brother, Munther, a former policeman he described as “a quiet man, a poor man,” who lived in a nearby village but hadn’t been heard from in weeks.

Mr. Mijwal’s circuit had taken him to a stretch of road flanked by two dirt fields. He pointed to one side, where decaying, headless corpses were lying in heaps of trash on a barren plot of land that had once been a shooting range for the Iraqi Army.

“He may be there,” he said.

He pointed to the other side of the road, just an expanse of earth that looked freshly moved.

“Or he may be there.”

With every mile of territory the Iraqi security forces retake from ISIS, it seems another mass grave is uncovered. It has become nearly ritual, and despairingly regular.

The legacy of the mass grave in Iraq is long, stretching back further than ISIS to the times of Saddam Hussein’s industrial-scale killings. It is the horrible symbol of what has been for decades a gut-wrenching constant of Iraqi life: the disappearance of loved ones into the machinery of despotism.

For Iraqis, ISIS, for which the mass grave is as much a part of the group’s infrastructure as makeshift prisons and slaveholding houses, is just a new form of tyranny with direct links to Mr. Hussein’s regime. Many former Baathist officers from Mr. Hussein’s security forces populate the top ranks of ISIS, mimicking the former dictator’s tactics.

Lately, with ISIS under pressure from Iraqi security forces, the group’s cruelty has gone into overdrive: Many of the mass graves recently uncovered, the biggest of which was in Hamam al-Alil, contain the bodies of local men. Most of the buried were former members of the security forces who were executed only in recent weeks, after the campaign for Mosul began.
More at the link
Posted by:badanov

00:00