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Terror Networks
The Beatings Will Continue: Iraqi Edition
2017-03-23


1 dead in ISIS mortar attack in central Mosul

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) One civilian was killed and three others were wounded, including a security soldier, in a mortar shelling by Islamic State militants on areas at central Mosul Wednesday with mortar missiles, according to security sources.

Shafaaq News website quoted the source saying that a girl was killed and two other civilians were injured when a mortar shell launched by militants landed on al-Farouq area, in central Mosul.

Other rockets fell on Souq al-Arbaa market and Bab al-Toub, wounding a member of the Rapid Response forces.

The Federal Police command said earlier on Wednesday that IS members have begun to shell areas recaptured by security forces in western Mosul, but said they became in control over passageways in the Old City which militants used to pass through to carry out suicide attacks on troops.

Iraqi government forces recaptured eastern Mosul in January and launched an offensive in February to recapture the western region. Iraqi troops are currently working to retake central Mosul districts from IS militants, specifically eyeing the city’s grand Nuri al-Kabir mosque in the Old City, where the group’s self-styled “Caliphate” was declared in 2014.

There have been several instances of civilians’ deaths since operations launched in October to retake Mosul, with international rights groups blaming all parties to the conflict for the deaths.
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7 die in ISIS mortar shelling in southern Mosul

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) A Police Officer informed on Wednesday, that 20 civilians were either killed or wounded in a mortar shelling launched by the Islamic State group on the liberated areas, south of Mosul.

Captain Amir Wathiq said that seven civilians were killed and 13 others were wounded in a mortar attack launched by the Islamic State on the areas of al-Jawsak and al-Dindan, south of Mosul.

Security forces rushed to the areas of incident, while ambulances transferred the wounded to a nearby hospital and the bodies to the forensic medicine department, Wathiq added.

Iraq is witnessing an extraordinary security situation, where ongoing military operations take place to drive out the Islamic State, while the US-led international coalition intensifies its air strikes on the group’s headquarters.

In wake of losses, ISIS turns to Scorched Earth

(Reuters) As Islamic State loses ground in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group which once held territory amounting to a third of those countries is turning to sabotage to ensure its enemies cannot benefit from its losses.

As the Syrian army and allied militias advanced under heavy Russian air cover on the ancient city of Palmyra three weeks ago, Islamic State leaders ordered fighters to destroy oil and gas fields.

“It is the duty of mujahideen today to expand operations targeting economic assets of the infidel regimes in order to deprive crusader and apostate governments of resources,” an article in the group’s online weekly magazine al-Nabaa said.

The strategy poses a double challenge to Baghdad and Damascus, depriving their governments of income and making it harder to provide services and gain popular support in devastated areas recaptured from the militants.

The March 2 article said operations by Islamic State in the area around Palmyra “prove the massive effect that strikes aimed at the infidels’ economy have, confusing them and drawing them … into battles they are not ready for.”

It’s not just oil wells the group has targeted. Twice in the last two years it has taken over Palmyra, about 200 km (130 miles) northeast of Damascus, and both times destroyed priceless antiquities before being driven out.

A Syrian antiquities official said earlier this month that he had seen serious damage to the Tetrapylon, a square stone platform with matching structures of four columns positioned at each corner. Only four of the 16 columns were still standing.

In their earlier occupation of the city, the militants ruined an 1,800-year-old monumental arch and the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin.

However, the article in al-Nabaa suggested Islamic State sees the destruction of tangible economic assets as a greater weapon against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is from Syria’s Alawite minority.

“In the first days of the second conquest of Palmyra, where fighters secured the city and other vast areas to the west that include the Alawite regime’s last petrol resources … the Alawite regime and its allies rushed to the depth of the desert to reclaim them,” Islamic State wrote.

“But the caliphate’s soldiers had beaten them to the punch and destroyed the wells and refineries completely so that their enemies could not gain from them and so that their economic crisis goes on for the longest time possible.”
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ISIS filling mass graves with bodies

[ARA News] The Islamic State (ISIS) radical group has executed and dumped the bodies of possibly hundreds of detainees at a site near Mosul, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday.

More and more mass graves are being discovered now that ISIS is being slowly defeated in Iraq, and pushed out of Mosul, the group’s de-facto capital in Iraq.

Multiple witnesses said that the bodies of those killed, including bodies of members of Iraqi security forces, were thrown into a naturally occurring sinkhole at a site known as Khafsa, about 8 kilometers southwest of Mosul.

Local residents said that before pulling out of the area in mid-February, ISIS laid improvised landmines at the site, which are sometimes referred to as improvised explosive devices or booby traps.

“This mass grave is a grotesque symbol of ISIS’s cruel and depraved conduct – a crime of a monumental scale,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Laying landmines in the mass grave is clearly an attempt by ISIS to maximize harm to Iraqis.”

“Iraqi authorities should make it a priority to mark and fence the site for the protection of the mass grave and those in the area, until deminers can clear the site,” the HRW said.

Residents said that water runs through the bottom of the sinkhole, which may make it difficult to exhume the human remains there. If exhumation is possible, the process should be carried out under international standards. Authorities should turn the site into a memorial and support families of victims seeking justice for the executions, according to the human rights watchdog.

The site is one of dozens of ISIS mass graves found between Iraq and Syria, but could be the largest discovered thus far, Human Rights Watch said.

While it is not possible to determine the number of people executed at the site, the estimates of residents, based on executions they witnessed and what ISIS fighters in the area had told them, reaches into the thousands.

Some of the victims may also have been detainees at Badoush Prison, 10 kilometers west of Mosul, which ISIS captured on June 10, 2014. On that day, ISIS fighters executed about 600 prisoners at a ravine in the nearby desert, nine survivors told Human Rights Watch.

On March 11, 2017, the Iraqi Security Forces announced that they had found another mass grave, about two kilometres from the Badoush Prison, that held between 500 and 600 men – though it is unclear how they determined these numbers.

On March 15, a general in the Iraqi military’s 9th Division said that under the division’s supervision, medical experts from Baghdad had exhumed about 400 bodies from the site.

“These excavations are unacceptable. They must be carried out by trained teams with sufficient experience, because they are dealing with human remains at a crime scene,” Fawaz Abdulameer of the International Committee for Missing Persons told HRW.

This is the second report of ad hoc and unprofessional exhumations taking place without authorization.

“To facilitate accountability for these crimes, Iraq should ratify the Rome Statute, giving the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity there, and should incorporate the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide into its domestic law,” HRW said.

“The strong desire to exhume the remains of loved ones from ISIS mass graves is perfectly understandable, but hastily conducted exhumations seriously harm the chances of identifying the victims and preserving evidence,” Fakih said.

“While exhuming the remains of those killed at Khafsa may be difficult, authorities should do what they can to make sure that those who lost their loved ones there have access to justice.”
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