3 Kids die in bombing attack in Fallujah
Fallujah (IraqiNews.com) Five children were killed and wounded when a leftover landmine exploded east of Fallujah, a paramilitary commander said on Friday.
Gomaa al-Jumaili, a senior commander at the Popular Mobilization Forces in al-Karma region told Baghdad Today that an explosive device from Islamic State remnant landmines exploded, killing three children and wounding two others.
Iraqi government forces had recaptured Karma from IS militants in May 2016
Several incidents of remnant explosives killing civilians at areas retaken from IS have been reported over the past months. Millions of landmines from Iraq’s past wars, including the three-year-war against the Islamic State militants, still await removal.
Islamic State militants are still holding areas in western Anbar near the borders with Syria, and Iraqi government and paramilitary forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition warplanes, have regularly bombarded or cleared surrounding areas, leaving hundreds of militants dead. Anbar is one of the next targets marked by Iraqi government forces which are currently battling IS out of Tal Afar, Islamic State’s last haven in Nineveh province.
Iraqi warplanes reportedly dropped thousands of messages on IS havens west of Anbar in July telling citizens that military invasions of those areas were imminent, and advising them to stay away from militants’ gatherings.
ISIS Press Gangs busy in Anbar
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State carried out random arrests in western Anbar seeking compulsory recruitment, a security source from the province said.
“IS launched campaigns of random arrests in Qaim at checkpoints or even against whoever doesn’t hold an ID card,” the source told Alghad Press on Saturday.
“These campaigns seek compulsory recruitment ordered by the militant group on people at the western regions,” the source added.
Earlier this month, three brothers under the age of 15 years old were reportedly killed by the group in Qaim over refusing to join the group as well as the compulsory recruitment.
Anbar’s western towns of Anah, Qaim and Rawa are still held by the extremist group since 2014, when it occupied one third of Iraq to proclaim a self-styled Islamic Caliphate. Iraqi troops were able to return life back to normal in the biggest cities of Anbar including Fallujah, Ramadi and others after recapturing them.
In late July, a military source was quoted saying that Lt.Gen Abdul-Amir Yarallah, commander of the Nineveh Operations, ordered to besiege IS havens in western Anbar preparing to invade them.
Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition regularly pound IS locations in the province.
ISIS classifies female sex slaves
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Subjecting women from the Iraqi Yazidi minority to sexual slavery, Islamic State militants would separate attractive women from less attractive ones, a survivor has said in an interview.
Dubai-based Al Arabiya network interviewed Bivrin (an approximate spelling of the name mentioned in the Arabic report) whose family was taken by IS militants to Mosul from their home village of Kojo. She gave just another firsthand account of forced marriages and sexual slavery the religious minority had endured since the emergence of the extremist group in 2014.
When she and her elder fell into IS captivity, Bivrin was sent to a house in Mosul used as a females’ detention facility for being “not beautiful” as she heard her captors saying, while her more attractive sister was sent to Raqqa, the group’s base in Syria.
At one day, a fellow hostage was beaten, humiliated by the militants to force her to take a bath and put on skimpy clothes, which she resisted and committed suicide by cutting her own veins.
“We never saw her body, the militants had tane her away and never knew where she ended up to,” Bivrin said in the video of the interview.
“I once saw a (IS) member take four sisters (to be his pleasure subjects),” Bivrin told the interviewer.
The United Nations has recently urged Iraq to ensure protection for victims of Islamic State sexual slavery.
“Women and girls under the control of ISIL, in particular women from the Yezidi and other minority communities, have been especially vulnerable to abuses of human rights and violation of international humanitarian law,” the report by the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) and the UN Human Rights Office said last week. It said victims had been subjected to rape and sexual assault, forced displacement, abduction, deprivation of liberty, slavery, forced religious conversion, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
A statistic released by the Kurdistan Region Government’s Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry said Islamic State’s massacres of Yazidis forced nearly 360.000 of the religious minority to flee their areas, with 90.000 of those heading abroad.
IS kidnapped 6417 Yazidis since 2014, the report added. Those include 1102 women and 1655 children, the statistics showed.
The calamity rendered 2645 kids parentless, including 220 whose parents are still under IS captivity, the ministry revealed.
Authorities ran into 43 mass graves of Yazidi victims slaughtered by IS, according to the statistic.
ISIS enforces use of its own scrip in Anbar
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State militants issued directives on Friday in Anbar to punish whoever uses a currency other than the ones issued by the group.
During Friday sermons, Islamic State preachers at the group’s havens on Annah, Rawa and Qaim, west of Anbar, obliged civilians to use coins issued by the group’s “finance bureau”, threatening public whipping for violators.
Past reports had told of the group imposing the currency at other havens in Syria and also in Mosul, its former capital which Iraqi forces recaptured in July.
Islamic State militants have held the three towns since 2014, when they occupied a third of Iraq to proclaim their self-styled “caliphate”. So far, there has not been a wide-scale campaign to retake those regions, but occasional offensives by government forces and allied Popular Mobilization Forces have managed to take over several surrounding villages.
The Iraqi government declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul, the group’s former capital in Iraq, in July, and said it was going to proceed towards other group holdouts, including Anbar. Government troops are currently battling Is out of Tal Afar, west of Nineveh.
Late July, Iraqi army warplanes reportedly dropped millions of messages on western Anbar telling locals that liberation offensives for the province were nearing, and advising them to stay away from militants’ deployments.