Sydney siege: Hostages held in central cafe

December 14, 2014 By administrator

At least one gunman has taken several people hostage at a cafe in the centre of the Australian city of Sydney.

Pictures on Australian television have shown at least three people with their hands up against a window, and a black flag with Arabic writing.

Hundreds of armed police have sealed off the normally busy Martin Place in Sydney’s central business district.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described the incident as “deeply concerning”.

“All Australians should be reassured that our law enforcement and security agencies are well trained and equipped and are responding in a thorough and professional manner,” he said in a statement.

A National Security Committee of Cabinet had been convened for Monday morning, the PM’s office said.

New South Wales police have asked people to avoid the area and to stay away from windows.

Police have also said that they are dealing with an “incident” at the Sydney Opera House, which has been evacuated.

Local media are reporting that a suspicious package was found there on Monday, though it was unclear whether it was connected to the Martin Place incident.

Many people were arriving at work as the area was shut down

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter said that gunfire had been heard at the scene, the Lindt chocolate cafe – but this has not been confirmed.

No injuries have been reported from the incident, according to a police spokesperson.

Australia has been facing a growing terror threat in recent months, in part connected to the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq.

About 70 Australians are believed to be fighting in the Middle East while another 20 have returned home.

In September, the largest anti-terror raids in Australian history were carried out in Sydney and Brisbane after intelligence emerged that people were planning to carry out random attacks on Australian soil.

Only one person was charged with terror offences.

Anti-terror legislation was passed in October, which critics said was too severe. Mr Abbott has said the threat meant “the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift”.

The Lindt Cafe is located in a plaza in the heart of the city’s financial and shopping district that is usually packed with shoppers at this time of year.

It is home to the state premier’s office and the headquarters of two of the nation’s largest banks.

The state parliament house is also only a few streets away.

Are you in Sydney? Have you witnessed the hostage situation? You can get in touch by emailing: gagrulenet@gmail.com

Daesh (ISIS) smuggling oil via Turkey, Iraq says

December 13, 2014 By administrator

Baghdad: Iraqi finance minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that the Daesh (ISIS) is smuggling Iraqi and Syrian oil via Turkey, and called it the richest terrorist group in the world.

“Daesh controls a number of oilfields in Syria and Iraq and they smuggle this oil overland through trucks, through middlemen to Turkey or towards other countries,” Zebari told Al Jazeera news channel Friday.

After an accounting of banks under Daesh control, Zebari said that Daesh is now believed to have looted about $500 million from Mosul, Tikrit and other cities, saying it was “the richest armed group in the world”.

He said Iraq was trying to crack down on Daesh financing, including oil smuggling.

“The air campaign targets these facilities in Syria and in northern Iraq in order to deprive them of this revenue but they have enormous financial resources; they are paying recruits good salaries, better than what we can afford to pay ours,” he added.

“And this is one element of the strength of this organisation. It’s not purely an underground terrorist organisation. It has an agenda it wants to control. It wants to rule.”

He also rejected comments by US officials that the fight against the Daesh could take years.

“Contrary to what many people think, I don’t think this will be a long drawn out battle,” the minister said.

The comments came after the Iraqi army managed to liberate two key districts in the city of Samarra on Friday.

He added that coordination between Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition is the key to the success of the offensive against the radical group.

Turkish imam joins ISIL in Syria, deputy PM confirms

December 12, 2014 By administrator

ANKARA

An imam who worked at a mosque in the Çanakkale province of northwestern Turkey has joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), daily Taraf quoted Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç as saying on Dec. 12, adding that the imam has been removed from his post.

“Unfortunately it is true that an imam from Çanakkale’s Bayramiç district joined the ISIL. This person was suspended from his post on June 25,” said Arınç, while responding to questions over the budget of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet). In Turkey, all imams are appointed to mosques by the Diyanet.

“I don’t know if there are similar examples in other provinces, but it deeply hurt us that an imam could leave the country to join an army of such murderers,” the deputy prime minister also said.

More than 700 Iraqi Kurd fighters killed since ISIS offensive

December 10, 2014 By administrator

Six months into the jihadi offensive in Iraq, the autonomous Kurds said Wednesday they had lost more than 700 fighters and argued the burden of hosting a million displaced civilians was becoming unsustainable, AFP reported.

Since ISIS launched a devastating offensive from Syria on June 9, Iraq’s Kurds have been involved in battles along a frontline stretching more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).

A statement from the region’s military forces, known as the peshmerga, said 727 members of the Kurdish security forces had been killed and 3,564 wounded since June 10.

The dead and wounded included “officers, non-commissioned officers, members of the Asayish (intelligence agency), of the police and some peshmerga veterans,” it said.

The peshmerga ministry said 34 members of the Kurdish security forces are also still reported as missing.

The last overall toll released by an official Kurdish source was on Aug. 8, when the regional presidency’s chief of staff Fuad Hussein said 150 peshmerga had been killed.

Germany’s DW Reports ISIS Supply Lines Originate in NATO’s Turkey

December 4, 2014 By administrator

The German channel Deutsche Welle (DW) has published a video report of paramount importance; this is probably the first major Western media to admit that the so-called EIIL (or ISIS, or Islamic State) is fed, not by the black market oil, or the hostage-taking with ransom, but supplies and equipment to several billion dollars, transported daily by truck to Syria through the border with Turkey, a NATO member country.

The report entitled ‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey (“The supply chains of EIIL come from Turkey”) confirmed what had been reported by several political analysts in 2011, namely that Turkey, although NATO member, allows huge amounts of supplies passage of weapons and fighters across its border with Syria to the positions held by EIIL.

In a surreal scene DW reportage, we see anti-Syrian terrorists quietly cross the border and once we got to the other side, to be slaughtered by Kurdish fighters.

Residents and local merchants interviewed by DW admit that they were exercising trade with Syria was discontinued at the start of the conflict and that the goods trucks crossing the border from the “western Turkey. “The report DW does not dwell on what you mean by” Western Turkey “, but this obviously refers to Ankara, the various ports used by NATO, and of course the NATO air base Incirlik.

Although the report by DW says no one really knows who is behind all these expeditions, we are nevertheless aware that the Turkish government in Ankara denies the very existence of these convoys of trucks filmed by German reporters. What is certain is that Turkey is not only aware, but it is directly complicit, as well as NATO, which pretends to want to fight EIIL but failed so far to expose and eradicate international sponsors of EIIL, and most importantly, NATO refused to simply cut the supply lines of EIIL – which nevertheless is one of the basic principles of any military strategy.

From the beginning, behind the threat of EIIL, NATO

As explained in 2007, the US and its accomplices in the region have conspired to use al-Qaeda and other extremist armed groups to rearrange the map of North Africa and the Middle East. The famous Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his 2007 article entitled “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy Benefiting our enemies in the War on Terrorism”:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush administration has decided to review its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the government cooperated with Saudi Arabia – which is Sunni – as part of covert operations designed to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization backed by Iran. The United States has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. One effect of these activities was the development of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam, are hostile to the United States, and are close to al-Qaeda. Do you even lift

Of course, the term “extremist groups” who “espouse a militant vision of Islam” and “are close to al Qaeda” clearly refers to the Islamic state. The EIIL is the expeditionary force of NATO mercenaries, devastating proxy enemies latter from Libya in North Africa, to Lebanon and Syria, through Iraq and even borders Iran. His seemingly endless supply of money, arms and fighters can be explained by using several foreign countries and by the existence of shelters territories that NATO protects the fire of his enemies are Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq. The report of the German channel DW clearly shows how terrorists ISIS regularly escape from Syria and found refuge in Turkey.

One of the main objectives of NATO in 2012 was to use every possible pretext to extend these shelters territories or “buffer zones” inside Syria itself, making the protection by military forces NATO and from which the “rebels” could operate. If they had succeeded, DW cameraman teams would probably filmed these truck convoys, but this time through the towns of Idlib and Aleppo, and not along the border with Syria.

The plot of the US and its allies to create a sectarian mercenary force aligned with al-Qaeda was highlighted, as was the fact that the so-called “moderate rebels” that the US officially supported in Syria are nothing but sectarian extremists, the report DW filming the supply convoys from Turkey has confirmed, if doubt still existed, that the threat posed by EIIL vis-à-vis the NATO comes from NATO itself. This unveils a foreign policy so incredibly insidious that it’s hard to believe, even after the broadcast by major media as DW images showing that the supply routes of EIIL come from controlled territories by NATO.

Tony Cartalucci November 28, 2014 Land Destroyer Report

Chaine allemande DW : Le groupe Etat islamique est approvisionné depuis la Turquie, membre de l’OTAN

Thursday, December 4, 2014,
Stéphane © armenews.com

Isis launches attack on Kobani from inside Turkey for first time

November 29, 2014 By administrator

Assault by Islamic State militants reportedly began with suicide attack on border between Turkey and strategic Syrian town

Kobani has been under Isis assault since September, but the militants have never attacked it from Turkey before. Photograph: Jake Simkin/AP

Islamic State (Isis) has launched an attack on the Syrian border town of Kobani from Turkey for the first time, a Kurdish official and activists said.

The assault began with a suicide attack by a bomber in an armoured vehicle on the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based opposition group, said.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union party, said that Isis “used to attack the town from three sides” but “today, they are attacking from four sides”.

Turkey has previously backing the Syrian rebels fighting to topple the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has it has been reluctant to help the Kurds in Kobani for fear of stoking Kurdish ambitions for an independent state.

There was no comment from Ankara on Saturday about Isis fighters launching the assault from Turkish soil.

SOHR said heavy fighting also took place south-west of the town, where Isis brought in tanks to reinforce their fighters.

The group began its Kobani offensive in mid-September, capturing parts of the town and dozens of nearby villages. The town later became the focus of air strikes by the US-led coalition against the militants.

Kurdish fighters have slowly been advancing in Kobani since late October. Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting

SOHR said on Saturday that the latest fighting killed at least eight Kurdish fighters and 17 jihadists.

Islamic State paid up to $45 million in ransom, UN says

November 25, 2014 By administrator

UN expert monitoring sanctions against Al-Qaeda says the Islamic State militant group has received between $35 million and $45 million in ransom payments in the past year, RFE/RL reported.

On November 24, Yotsna Lalji told a meeting of the UN Security Council’s Counterterrorism Committee that an estimated $120 million in ransom was paid to terrorist groups between 2004 and 2012.

She said in recent years Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have made kidnapping “the core Al-Qaeda tactic for generating revenue.”

She highlighted an October 2012 recording from Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri inciting militants worldwide to kidnap Westerners.

ISIS has 200,000-strong force, says Kurdish leader

November 16, 2014 By administrator

Photo Reuters

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants have an army of about 200,000 fighters, over six times larger than previous CIA estimates, a senior Iraqi Kurdish leader has claimed. Report RT

“I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize young Arab men in the territory they have taken,” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told the UK Independent in an exclusive interview.

Controlling roughly one third of Iraq and Syria, Hussein says the 250,000 square kilometer territory has provided IS a 10 to 12 million-large population from which to attract potential fighters.

He said this sizeable force explains how the Islamic State had been able to wage successful campaigns on multiple fronts in Iraq and Syria.

“They are fighting in Kobani,” he said. “In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border].“

‘They will fight to the death’

Hussein believes previous US intelligence estimates, with an upward range of 31,500 militants, may have been referring strictly to a “core” force of fighters. But with a sophisticated propaganda effort, coupled with a strong military and ideological core, IS has developed into a sophisticated fighting force that has caught Western governments off guard.

“We are talking about a state that has a military and ideological basis,” said Mr Hussein, “so that means they want everyone to learn how to use a rifle, but they also want everybody to have training in their ideology, in other words brainwashing.”

In their blistering 5-month offensive, Islamic State militants have counted suicide bombings, mines, snipers and deployment of captured US armored fighting vehicles among their tactics.

That the Islamic State was able to seize and use tanks, heavy artillery and other US hardware, with such speed following the fall of Mosul on June 10, likely signifies the group has successfully identified and incorporated former Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.

The militants proved equally adept at using Russian-made equipment appropriated in Syria.

Hussein told the daily his Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are impressed by the militants level of competence, grit and discipline.

“They will fight until death, and are dangerous because they are so well-trained,” said Mr Hussein. “For instance, they have the best snipers, but to be a good sniper you need not only training on how to shoot, but discipline in staying put for up to five hours so you can hit your target.”

That the war-torn and impoverished region leaves few opportunities for young men, the group’s $400-a-month salary also provides a strong incentive for locals to take up arms.

‘Pulling Iraq back from the precipice’

Washington’s recognition of the threat IS poses can be explained by a series of recent moves pointing to broader US engagement in the region.

During a surprise visit to Baghdad on Saturday, General Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Iraqi officials and American troops to assess the situation on the ground.

Dempsey sounded a note of optimism, saying the US military had helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces “pull Iraq back from the precipice,” Reuters, whose journalists accompanied the general on the trip, said.

“And now, I think it’s starting to turn. So well done,” Dempsey told a group of Marines at the US embassy in Baghdad.

Earlier in the week, Dempsy told congress that an 80,000-strong ground force would be needed to defeat IS. Despite retaking the town of Baiji, which houses the country’s largest refinery, Iraqis have little faith their army is capable of triumphing over IS.

Last week, US President Barack Obama authorized more than doubling the number of American ground forces in Iraq. Around 1,400 US troops are currently in Iraq, with Obama’s signing off up to 3,100 troops.

On Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told Congress that American troops might have to assume a new role to expedite the anti-extremist campaign.

Hagel insisted, however, that Americans “will not be engaged in a ground combat mission.”

US security guarantees have given Kurdish fighters much needed breathing space, after the Islamic State routed Peshmerga forces in Iraq and nearly captured the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Irbil.

The siege of the Syrian city of Kobani, which has become the epicenter of both Kurdish resistance and Washington’s campaign to “degrade and destroy” IS, similarly saw the Kurds on the brink of being crushed before US-led airstrikes turned the tide.

Despite the relative gains, the Kurdistan Regional Government is tasked with defending a 650-mile long front line, which extends across Northern Iraq between Iran and Syria.

While Hussein expressed appreciation for US air support that had allowed the Kurds to hold out, he told the Independent they would need Apache helicopters and heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery to combat the jihadists effectively.

Ramping up CIA involvement, opposition forces

Meanwhile, reports have indicated the US is planning to ramp up support for the moderate Syrian opposition in a bid to both stem the IS tide and bolster less radical forces seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad.

On Friday, the Washington Post, citing senior US officials, reported the Obama administration is weighing plans to ramp up the CIA’s involvement in arming and training fighters in Syria.

Currently, the CIA is on track to train 5,000 fighters a year, a figure that echoes previous Pentagon aims.

The following day, reports surfaced in the Turkish Daily Hurriyet that the US and Turkey had agreed on plans to train 2,000 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Turkish territory.

The two sides, however, failed to agree on the question of training members of Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has called a terrorist organization.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “the PYD is equal with the PKK for us.”

Photo surfaces of Baghdadi’s ‘slain’ ISIS aide

November 10, 2014 By administrator

Sources told Al Arabiya News Channel Saturday that Baghdadi (R) was ‘critically wounded’ and his close aide, Abu Suja (L), was killed. (Photo courtesy: The Telegraph/Reuters)

An image of the close aide of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, believed to have been killed in a U.S.-led air strike on a convoy of militants in Iraq, was revealed on Sunday.

The aide Auf Abdulrahman Elefery, who went by the code name Abu Suja, was reportedly killed after the strike, which targeted the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim, tribal sources told Al Arabiya News Channel on Saturday.

The fate of Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militant group, remains unclear following reports stating he had been critically injured in the strike.

“He [Abu Suja] and Baghdadi were rarely separate. It’s for this reason that it could be possible that Baghdadi was with him [at the time of the attack],” Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi security strategist, told The Telegraph, which posted the image of Abu Suja.

Iraqi officials said Sunday Baghdadi was wounded in an air strike over the weekend, the Associated Press reported.

Pentagon officials, however, said they had no immediate information on such a strike or Baghdadi being wounded, the agency said.

Both Iraq’s Defense and Interior Ministries issued statements saying Baghdadi had been wounded, without elaborating, the AP reported.

On Saturday, tribal sources told Al Arabiya News Channel that Baghdadi was “critically wounded” when an air strike targeted the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They said other senior ISIS members were killed in the air strike that targeted a gathering of ISIS leaders.

The Associated Press on Sunday quoted an Iraqi Interior Ministry intelligence official as saying the strike happened early Saturday in the town which is located in Iraq’s Anbar province.

The official, citing informants within the militant group, said the strikes wounded Baghdadi, AP reported.

A senior Iraqi military official also said he learned in operational meetings that Baghdadi had been wounded, the agency also said.

Neither knew the extent of Baghdadi’s apparent injuries.

Both officials said the operation was carried out by Iraqi security forces. Neither knew the extent of Baghdadi’s apparent injuries

‘ISIS Sees Turkey as Its Ally’: Former Islamic State Member Reveals Turkish Army Cooperation

November 8, 2014 By administrator

By Barney Guiton

A former member of ISIS has revealed the extent to which the cooperation of the Turkish military and border forces allows the terrorist group, who now control large parts of Iraq and Syria, to travel through Turkish territory to reinforce fighters battling Kurdish forces. Report Newsweek Magazine

A reluctant former communications technician working for Islamic State, going by the pseudonym ‘Sherko Omer’, who managed to escape the group, told Newsweek that he travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February, in order to bypass their defences.

“ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” said Omer of crossing the border into Turkey, “and they reassured us that nothing will happen, especially when that is how they regularly travel from Raqqa and Aleppo to the Kurdish areas further northeast of Syria because it was impossible to travel through Syria as YPG controlled most parts of the Kurdish region.”

Until last month, NATO member Turkey had blocked Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to aid their Syrian counterparts in defending the border town of Kobane. Speaking to Newsweek, Kurds in Kobane said that people attempting to carry supplies across the border were often shot at.

National Army of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG) spokesman Polat Can went even further, saying that Turkish forces were actively aiding ISIS. “There is more than enough evidence with us now proving that the Turkish army gives ISIS terrorists weapons, ammunitions and allows them to cross the Turkish official border crossings in order for ISIS terrorists to initiate inhumane attacks against the Kurdish people in Rojava [north-eastern Syria].”

Omer explained that during his time with ISIS, Turkey had been seen as an ally against the Kurds. “ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria. The Kurds were the common enemy for both ISIS and Turkey. Also, ISIS had to be a Turkish ally because only through Turkey they were able to deploy ISIS fighters to northern parts of the Kurdish cities and towns in Syria.”

“ISIS and Turkey cooperate together on the ground on the basis that they have a common enemy to destroy, the Kurds,” he added.

While Newsweek was not able to independently verify Omer’s testimony, anecdotal evidence of Turkish forces turning a blind eye to ISIS activity has been mounting over the past month.

Omer, the son of a successful businessman in Iraqi Kurdistan, initially went to Syria to join the Free Syrian Army’s fight against Bashar al-Assad, but found himself sucked in to ISIS, unable to leave. He was given a job a communication technician, and worked at the ISIS communications bureau in Raqqa.

“I have connected ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” said Omer.

“I rarely heard them speak in Arabic, and that was only when they talked to their own recruiters, otherwise, they mostly spoke in Turkish because the people they talked to were Turkish officials of some sorts because ISIS guys used to be very serious when they talked to them.”

Omer was then transferred to a battalion travelling to fight Kurdish forces in Serekaniya, north-eastern Syria, and describes travelling through Turkey in a convoy of trucks, staying at safehouses along the way, before crossing back into Syria at the Ceylanpinar border crossing.

Before crossing the border back into Syria, he says: “My ISIS commander reassured us once again that it was all going to be all right because cooperation had been made with the Turks. He frequently talked on the radio in Turkish.”

“While we tried to cross the Ceylanpinar border post, the Turkish soldiers’ watchtower light spotted us. The commander quickly told us to stay calm, stay in position and not to look at the light. He talked on the radio in Turkish again and we stayed in our positions. Watchtower light then moved about 10 minutes later and the commander ordered us to move because the watchtower light moving away from us was the signal that we could safely cross the border into Serekaniye.”

Once in Serekaniye, Omer says he surrendered to Kurdish forces when they attacked his camp. He was held for several months before his captors were convinced that he had not been a fighter in ISIS and had not taken part in violence.

Read Omer’s full story: ‘It Was Never My Intention to Join ISIS’