ISIS seize nuclear, chemical materials: reports
Iraq's government warned the UN that ISIS militants have seized nuclear materials from a Mosul research facility and chemical agents from a stockpile outside Baghdad.
Iraq's government warned the UN that ISIS militants have seized nuclear materials from a Mosul research facility and chemical agents from a stockpile outside Baghdad.
As Syrians put their lives on the line to oppose a genocidal regime, Bob Dreyfuss in The Nation calls on the US to back Bashar Assad to beat back ISIS.
The US and Iran alike are sending drones to Iraq to help the government beat back ISIS, while Russia has followed Washington in sending warplanes and military advisors.
ISIS announced the establishment of a new "caliphate," with its own leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph. But even Islamist rebels in Syria are fighting back against ISIS forces.
The ISIS militants that have seized Mosul are engaged in a campaign of cultural cleansing—targeting not only the citiy's inhabitants, but its artistic and historical treasures.
Fighting erupted between ISIS and militants of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order in Kirkuk governorate, as the Sunni rebel coalition that has seized a third of Iraq starts to fray.
President Obama announced the deployment of 300 US military advisors to Iraq to help government forces beat back the ISIS militants that have seized a third of the country.
Hebron and the West Bank are heavily militarized as Israeli troops hunt for three youths whose abductions have now been claimed (somewhat dubiously) in the name of ISIS.
Ayman al-Zawahiri purged ISIS from al-Qaeda and confered the local franchise on the rival Nusra Front. But with the old Qaeda leadership moribund, ISIS now controls much of Iraq.
Iraq's contested northern city of Kirkuk was taken by Kurdish forces after being abandoned by the army—while the ISIS offensive is halted just 75 miles outside Baghdad.
An estimated half a million people have fled Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, since it was seized by ISIS forces—who have since taken Tikrit and are advancing on Baghdad.
Talk about strange bedfellows! This week witnessed the surreal spectacle of US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the most bellicose neoconservative in the Trump administration, visiting Turkey to try to forestall an Ankara attack radical-left, anarchist-leaning Kurdish fighters that the Pentagon has been backing to fight ISIS in Syria. "We don't think the Turks ought to undertake military action that's not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States," Bolton told reporters. Refering to the Kurdish YPG militia, a Turkish presidential spokesman responded: "That a terror organization cannot be allied with the US is self-evident." Bolton left Turkey without meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who then publicly dissed the National Security Adviser's stance as a "serious mistake." YPG spokesman Nuri Mahmud, in turn, shot back: "Turkey, which has been a jihadist safe-haven and passage route to Syria since the beginning of the conflict, has plans to invade the region end destroy the democracy created by blood of sons and daughters of this people." (Photo: ANF)