Islamic State •

Saudi Arabia Prevents US Embassy Attack

Saudi Arabia announced the arrest of 93 suspects whom had ties to the Islamic State. The country says they were planning multiple attacks on the U.S. Embassy, but also against security forces and residential compounds where foreigner citizens live.

The list of targets is similar to those hit by a series of attacks launched by al-Qaida inside Saudi Arabia from 2004 to 2007, when dozens of people lost their lives, including many foreigners. That wave of violence threatened the stability the kingdom, one of the world’s leading oil-producing nations. Saudi Arabia is the home Islam’s holiest sites, in Medina and Mecca.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said that Saudi Arabia’s security forces are very well prepared to fight against the Islamic State. The kingdom is taking part in an U.S.-led coalition which is fighting the group in Syria and Iraq.

He added there have been five Islamic State attacks across Saudi Arabia in recent months in which 15 civilians and security personnel were killed. The spokesperson explained that Saudis have ignored the Islamic State’s calls to join the fight against their government, the Shiite minority, foreigners or security forces in the kingdom.

“We do have a number of people who do respond to such calls and do try to carry out such terrorist organizations’ orders, but these people do not represent the Saudi population, do not represent the 20 million Saudis,” he said in an interview for the Associated Press, shortly before the arrests arrests were announced.

He explained that security forces’ raids dismantled a cell of 65 people whom were upheld in March and were plotting to target some residential compounds and prisons in Saudi Arabia. They also wanted to carry out attacks which would have led to sectarian strife. Only two of those arrested were Saudi citizens.

Local authorities also foiled a plot for a suicide car bomber against the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, after they received information about this terrorist attack in mid-March. Two Syrians and a Saudi citizen were detained in this case.

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia is located in a huge and and very heavily guarded complex in Riyadh, near many other embassies. The embassy building is surrounded on all sides by fortified barriers and is guarded around the clock by police, while U.S. Marines are checking visitor passes inside.

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Islamic State Is Stepping Up Offensive in Syria

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Islamic State fighters entered a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus on Wednesday. Clashes with a Palestinian group were recorded. It is the deepest invasion yet by the extremist group into the Syrian capital, according to new reports.

Jordan reacted to the news by closing its only border crossing with Syria which was functional, after heavy clashes on the Syrian side between government forces and opposition militants.

Islamic State, who controls large parts of territory in northern Syria, penetrated the Yarmouk camp from the Hajar Aswad neighborhood. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that the IS group took control of some large parts of the camp. Full control of the camp would mean a first step towards the heart Damascus, the capital of Syria.

The Observatory said heavy clashes took place in the camp between IS militants and fighters of an anti-Assad Palestinian faction named Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis.

Anwar Raja, the spokesperson for the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, added that Islamic State fighters had been based in the Hajar Aswad neighborhood for the last few months. He explained that Wednesday’s push into the camp was a joint operation of IS and a rival group, the Nusra Front, which is al-Qaida’s branch in Syria.

“The Nusra Front opened the road for them in order to infiltrate the camp and several hours ago they entered Yarmouk,” Raja said by telephone, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, has already been under siege, but by government forces, for nearly two years. U.N. aid workers have been sending aid to the camp, where thousands of desperate civilians live. The camp was a fighting scene in the past between government forces and militants who control much of the camp.

The U.N. agency that supports Palestinians (UNRWA) announced it is extremely worried about the safety of the Syrian and Palestinian civilians in Yarmouk, especially the children.

A spokesman for the rebel fighters in southern Syria, Issam al-Rayess, announced that militants were trying to gain control of the border crossing from Syrian authorities. The Nasib pass is the only working crossing between Jordan and Syria and is a very important gateway for Syria’s government and for Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese merchants and traders.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement accused Jordanian authorities for “obstructing the movement of trucks and passengers and any ensuing economic or social repercussions.”

Image Source: The Telegraph

US Evacuating Special Forces From Yemen After Deadly Attack

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The United States have decided to retreat 100 Special Forces troops from Yemen, more than 24 hours after suicide bombers killed at least 142 people in Sanaa, the capital of the country.

Hundreds of people were injured in the attacks, which targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, during Friday prayers. The coordinated attacks were claimed by Islamic State.

By doing this the Islamic State group is seeking to exploit the chaotic situation in Yemen. Suicide bombings targeted two mosques frequented by members of the Shiite Huthi militia in control of the Sanaa. More than 351 people were wounded and at least 142 died in what is considered to be the deadliest extremist attacks in Yemen’s history.

The Islamic State warned it was “the tip of the iceberg” for Yemen. On the other hand, AQAP, the country’s Al-Qaeda branch, announced in a statement that it avoided “targeting mosques and markets”.

The attack in Yemen came just a few days after another IS carnage which took place in Tunisia, at the National Bardo Musem. 21 people died, mostly foreign tourists lost their lives in that attack.

According to experts, the extremist is trying to show that it has the capacity to launch a coordinated campaign of attacks.

The situation in Yemen is chaotic since 2012, when the longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted. Huthi militiamen entered the capital unopposed last year.

The Huthis surrounded the presidential palace in Sanaa and forced President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to leave the capital. The militia has met a tough resistance from AQAP and Sunni fighters, after it tried a push into central Yemen.

AQAP, a group considered by the United States to be the one of the most dangerous jihadist organisations, was formed in 2009. It is responsible for a high number of bloody attacks on Yemeni security forces in recent years.

AQAP claimed responsibility for the heinous January 7 attack in Paris on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, after the French journalists published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

IS is challenging AQAP in Yemen. The Islamic State seized patrs of Syria and Iraq last year and is now expanding into other Muslim countries, like Egypt and Libya. and also Nigeria, Yemen and Tunisia.

“Since the Huthi militiamen took control of the capital and a good part of the country, Al-Qaeda lost credibility, having been unable to defend even Sunni provinces,” said for the Daily Mail Mathieu Guidere, an expert in Islam at the University of Toulouse.

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ISIS bulldoze ancient city of Nimrud

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The Islamic State group has destroyed some parts of the ancient city of Nimrud, in Iraq, in the latest attack against cultural history in the region.

According to the tourism and antiquities ministry of Iraq, the historic city of Nimrud, built by the Assyrian civilization more than three thousand years ago, was bulldozed with heavy vehicles.

The destruction began on Thursday, but the extent of the damage is not yet known. Nimrud is one of the most important archaeological sites in the region. It was founded in the 13th century BC and it’s located near Mosul, by the Tigris River.

IS fighters consider the heritage of Iraq as idolatrous. The attack against Nimrud follows the release of a video which showed Islamic State men destroying ancient statues with hammers in Mosul.

Nimrud was the capital of the neo-Assyrian capital, the most powerful force on the Planet at the time, which covered territories in modern-day Iran, Turkey and Egypt, as well as Iraq.

The most famous monuments of the site were removed from the site some years ago, the famous Winged Bull statues are in London, while gold artifacts and precious stones were moved to the Museum in Baghdad.

According to Reuters, Islamic State members looted Nimrud before leveling it to the ground. Many statues as well as a castle were destroyed completely.

Experts say that the ancient site of Hatra will be next in the IS path of destruction. The city is an Unesco world heritage site and is more than 2,000 years old.

Unesco demanded an emergency meeting of the Security Council, after the destruction of the Mosul Museum, comparing the event to the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas in 2001 by the Taliban.

Many religious minorities lived peacefully in the Mosul region for centuries, including Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves to be the indigenous people of the area.

Islamic State rules some regions in Iraq and Syria that hold some of the most important sites of the ancient world. The organization is a self-declared caliphate that seeks its inspiration from the early Islamic history.

IS militants have destroyed Sunni Muslim shrines, which they consider being heretical. The jihadists are involved in a heavy battle with allied fighters and Iraqi forces near the city of Tikrit, which controlled by ISIS and lies just 100 kilometers away from Baghdad.

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Trial against Erol Incedel has “Unusual Features”

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According to prosecutor Richard Whittam, Erol Incedal, age 26, plotted an attack against a significant individual or killings that would resemble the attacks in Mumbai in 2008, leaving 174 people dead. Incedal, who is from London, is now standing trial in a court of law to determine his true intentions, as well as fate.

Whittam added that while count one does not suggest Incedal settled on one particular target or a specific methodology to carry out the threats, looking at the context of the case in whole along with the evidence gathered, the fact that he knew where Blair and his family live is significant.

Later in the proceedings, the court was made aware of several emails going between Incedel and an unknown individual, which contained unique coded messages. In one, there was a coded word “k 11 22 aaa shhh” that according to prosecutors could have been a reference to Kalashnikov rifles. In another message, “mo88m 55bayy style” was written, which he believes has something to do with the Mumbai-style attack.

As the jury sat and listened, they learned that Incedel had initially been stopped by law enforcement officials in September of last year. Because of growing suspicions and increased evidence, investigators used the opportunity to place a bugging device in his Mercedes. Weeks later in October, Incedel along with Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar were arrested when stopped in East London.

The prosecutor told the jury that both men were carrying an iPhone inside a protective case and that between the device and the case was a memory card containing a bomb-making document. Just last week, Rarmoul-Bouhadjar pled guilty to being in possession of material beneficial to terrorism.

The jury was also told about an iPhone recovered during the investigation on which there was the material in support of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, as well as photographs of various synagogues.

Although jurors were provided with extensive details, they were advised yesterday that some parts of the trial would never be made public. In today’s proceedings, jurors remained behind closed doors and are forbidden from talking about the things they hear and learn.

To observe the ongoing courtroom proceedings, 10 journalists will be locked in the room but banned from revealing anything said. Noted by Justice Nicol, this particular trial has unusual features. He added that the usual method of justice being administered is in the public but that this trial would be conducted differently. In fact, evidence heard in a third part of the trial will exclude all journalists.

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