ISIS executes 27 in Kirkuk
Hawija (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State militants have executed 27 civilians in their Kirkuk stronghold, the last of a series of occasional executions of Iraqis in their grip.
A local source told Alsumaria News Wednesday that the execution took place at al-Bakkara military base in Hawija, southwest Kirkuk.
The source, who said the militant group had set on a series of executions of non-compliant prisoners recently, did not explain the reason for the latest incident.
Since IS militants took over large parts of Iraq in 2014 to proclaim an Islamic “caliphate”, they executed thousands of civilians for a variety of reasons ranging from collaboration with security forces to escaping group havens and violating the group’s religious directives.
Hawija is one of the future targets of Iraqi military offensives. The government declared early July it regained control over the city of Mosul, the militants’ former capital.
Local tribal leaders and politicians from Kirkuk have mounted pressure on the Iraqi government to hasten with invading Hawija, suggesting that its people were experiencing a humanitarian crisis under the group’s rule as the group continues to massacre civilians attempting to flee the town. The government and military commanders have set Nineveh’s town of Tal Afar as the next target for operations.
3K corpses remain in Old Mosul
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Rubbles from more than eight months of battles between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in Mosul are still holding 3000 dead civilians’ bodies beneath, a relief team commander said.
Mohamed Abdul-Sattar al-Hamadani, a commander of the third division of the Iraqi Civil Defense forces, was quoted Wednesday saying that 3000 corpses remain under the rubble in the Old City district. He said 839 new bodies had been extracted from different Mosul areas in three days.
“Some corpses have been run on by tractors during removal of debris, and that is due to volunteers’ ignorance of the correct way of searching for civilians under the rubble,” Hamadani stated.
“We believe there are at least 3000 dead bodies under the rubble, especially in the western side of the Old City. Bab al-Toub and Rajm Hadid neighborhoods had been levelled, and nobody came alive from there,” he added.
The medieval Old City was the birthplace of the Islamic State. It was from its Grand Nuri Mosque that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of the group’s rule in Iraq and Syria.
The Iraqi government said early July it retook full control over Mosul from IS. The military command said more than 1000 civilians were killed in the campaign.
ISIS executes one of its politicians in Deir Ezzor
Deir Ezzor (Syria News) The self-proclaimed Islamic State has executed, yesterday, one of its elite Legislators in the city of Mayadin, east of Deir Ezzor.
Local sources told Qasioun News, today, that the Islamic State group executed its prominent Legislator Abu Bakr al-Qahtani, due to a dispute between him and one of leaders, in an attempt to turn on the radical group.
The strongholds of the Islamic State in the city of Albukamal, east of Deir Ezzor, have previously witnessed vague security operations, resulting in the killing of several members of the Islamic State group, and forced the latter to impose a security cordon on the area.
It is noteworthy that the Islamic State group lost a wide range of areas in the Syrian Badiyah and the countryside of Raqqa.
ISIS punishes 4 wimmin for using cell phone
Hawija (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State militants punished four women at their Kirkuk stronghold with biting and whipping for using cell phones without their knowledge, a local source said Wednesday.
The source told Alsumaria News that IS’s so-called “women police” raided one house in central Hawija (55 km southwest of Kirkuk) searching for “communication tools locals use to contact their relatives and check on them”.
Finding an SIM card at one part of the house, the female vigilantes arrested four women from the household, and referred them to the group’s judges who sentenced them to three lashes and the fourth, an elder, to ten “bites” in the hands and the back, according to the source.
Biting had been a common punishment for civilian women who violate IS militants’ daily life directives.
The Islamic State has executed hundreds of civilians for contacting security forces and collaborating with them at areas under its control, and has always been stringent regarding the use of communication equipment.
IS has held Kirkuk since 2014, and the town is one of the next targets for Iraqi forces which managed in July to retake the group’s former proclaimed “capital”: Mosul.
6 arrested in Iran for teaching Zumba
TEHRAN: Four boys and two girls have been arrested in Iran for teaching “Western” dance moves including Zumba, a Colombian fitness routine, a local Revolutionary Guards commander said.
“The members of a network teaching and filming Western dances have been identified and arrested,” said Hamid Damghani, commander of the Guards in the town of Sharhoud in Iran’s northeastern Semnan province, according to Jamejam Online website late on Tuesday.
“The team attracted boys and girls, taught them Western dances and published their video clips on social media apps like Telegram and Instagram,” he added. “They were arrested by the Guards’ intelligence forces while teaching and creating video clips... as they sought to change lifestyles and promote a lack of hijab,” he said. They were charged with dancing and failing to wear proper clothing.
Women in Iran are banned from dancing in front of men outside their immediate families, but in recent years Zumba and other dances have been banned even in women-only gyms, even if the rules are widely flouted.
“The promotion and teaching of dancing in the name of sport in women’s gyms is a serious issue,” Damghani said. In 2014, seven young Iranians were arrested for dancing to Pharrell Williams’s hit “Happy” in a homemade video that went viral on the Internet. They were given suspended jail and lashing sentences.