‘Itching to get back’ to Syria
Cantlie says he is eager to return to Syria despite his abduction.
I am itching to get back out there. The only thing stopping me is my cameras, as I lost them out there and need to buy some more.
Returns to Syria
Cantlie decides to return to Syria to continue reporting:
This is what I do.
After being smuggled into northern Syria by rebel activists, Cantlie captures the situation in Idlib province first hand as President Assad’s forces continued to try and crush the rebels.
Syria sarin attack report
60 Minutes reports on an August 2103 Sarin nerve gas attack in Damascus, Syria. U.S. intelligence estimates that is kills 1,429 civilians, including 426 children.
Nobody knew what was going on. People were just praying for God to have mercy on them. Sir, I’ve seen things you wouldn’t even dream about in your worst nightmares
It just took seconds before I lost my ability to breathe. I felt like my chest was set on fire. My eyes were burning like hell. I wasn’t able even to scream or to do anything. So I started to beat my chest really hard. It was so painful. It felt like somebody was tearing up my chest with a knife made of fire.
Asked to leave northern town
Six of Syria’s main rebel factions ask ISIS to withdraw from the town of Azaz, near the Turkish border, which it captured several days earlier from Free Syrian Army rebels. The statement asks “our brothers in ISIL to withdraw their troops and vehicles to their main headquarters immediately” and implement an “immediate ceasefire” in the area. Signed by the Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid and Jaysh al-Islam factions, and the smaller Suqur al-Sham, Furqan Brigades and Liwa al-Haq groups, it comes hours after the group clashes with the mainstream Northern Front Alliance and sends fighters towards a border post. ISIS and the Northern Front are asked to…
…resort immediately to the Islamic court, which will remain in session in Aleppo for 48 hours
Captures town from rival opposition
ISIS fighters seize the northern town of Azaz near the Turkish border from Free Syrian Army forces, causing confusion among the ranks of the opposition. FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad says the group took the town from Assad regime forces in self-defence and questions why ISIS are storming an area that is already ‘liberated’:
They said they came to defend the Syrian people. Now they have turned their guns away from fighting the regime to fighting the Syrian people.
Captured in Syria
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-22 17:06:492015-01-17 11:41:42Captured in SyriaUN implicates Assad in war crimes
The UN’s human rights chief says an inquiry has produced evidence that war crimes are authorised in Syria at the highest level, including by President Assad. Commissioner Pillay says her office holds a list of others implicated by the inquiry. Pillay:
[The enquiry has produced] massive evidence… [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity. The scale of viciousness of the abuses being perpetrated by elements on both sides almost defies belief. [The evidence indicates responsibility] at the highest level of government, including the head of state
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Mekdad is dismissive of Pillay’s remarks.
She has been talking nonsense for a long time and we don’t listen to her.
Bolton aid convoy
Volunteers from the Greater Manchester area join an aid convoy of 20 former NHS ambulances to a hospital in Idlib in northwestern Syria. The convoy leaves Oakley Avenue in Great Lever, Bolton, to make the 4,000-mile journey to deliver the ambulances loaded with medical equipment that includes defibrillators, stethoscopes and oxygen content. Volunteer Kasim Jameel, from Farnworth, organised the convoy along with eight other volunteers from Bolton and the UK Arab Society. The group includes taxi driver Alan Henning, from Eccles in Greater Manchester. The trip is made in memory of Abbas Khan, the UK orthopedic surgeon who was arrested by Abbas security forces and died in custody earlier in December. The group carry signs saying ‘RIP Abbas Khan’ and one saying ‘Syria is calling we will answer’.
Henning abducted
Henning is abducted 30 minutes after the aid convoy he is traveling with crosses the border from Turkey into Syria, a journey of only four miles. He had insisted on joining the convoy of former NHS ambulances delivering defibrillators, stethoscope sand oxygen to a hospital in Idlib instead of remaining at home in Eccles, Greater Manchester, with his wife and two children. Convoy organiser Kasim Jameel, a taxi driver from Bolton:
Alan is a man who is full of compassion and we are just praying to Allah that he is released safe and sound. We are liaising with the authorities and we do not want to say anything which might put him in any further jeopardy or which will inflame the situation. I could tell a lot of stories about the good that Alan has done and about how, as a non Muslim, he has helped Muslims who have suffered in the conflict. He is motivated to help others – not just by helping the convoy but by loads of other things as well. He is the nicest of nice guys who has done so much to help other people. He is just a normal bloke, an everyday taxi driver who wanted to do good. We are thinking about him all the time and praying that he will be allowed home to his family.
Ousted from Aleppo, Idlib
Rival opposition factions strike back at ISIS after its moves to seize territory they have claimed from regime forces in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Raqqa-based Sham News Network media activist Abu Bakr:
The rebels have achieved tremendous progress against ISIS in all the points of conflict, liberating more than 80% of the Idlib countryside and 65% of Aleppo and its countryside
Mohammad Hassano, an activist in the town of Azaz:
People just couldn’t take it anymore, after all the kidnapping and arrests and attacks against the [Free Syrian Army]. People were very angry at them, but there was hesitation in fighting them because of the priority of fighting the regime.
‘Crush other rebels’
ISIS calls on its fighters to destroy rival opposition groups in an audio message from spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani:
Crush them totally and kill the conspiracy at birth
A warning to the rebels:
None of you will remain, and we will make of you an example to all those who think of following the same path
Withdraws from Aleppo
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that ISIS’s headquarters in Aleppo have been overtaken by rival opposition:
Fighters from several Islamist rebel brigades took control of the children’s hospital in the Qadi Askar district, which is the headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the city.
The extremist group has effectively abandoned the area:
ISIL withdrew from the Inzarat area after clashes with fighters from rebel… brigades, and the post office building was taken over by Islamist rebel fighters … There are hardly any ISIL members left in the city of Aleppo.
Senior militant killed
A senior Iraqi intelligence official says senior ISIS leader Haji Bakr has been assassinated in a killing related to the dispute between ISIS and other opposition groups. Haji Bakr’s real name was Sameer Abid Mohammed Al-Halefawi, and he is reported to have served as an air-defense officer in Saddam Hussein’s army before joining Al Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Claims Lebanon suicide bombing
Syrian Al Qaeda offshoot the Al-Nusra Front claims a suicide bombing in Lebanon. The car bomb targeting an army post in Hezbollah-controlled area kills two Lebanese soldiers and a civilian and leaves 17 wounded. Prime Minister Tammam Salam, the government’s highest-ranking Sunni official says the attack constitutes an act of terrorism:
The attack on the military establishment exceeds a normal crime. We urge everybody to unite
Expelled from Deir Ezzor
Rival opposition groups including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front expel ISIS from the province of Deir Ezzor. The oil-producing province is also a key conduit for weapons across the Iraqi border. The Al-Nusra Front, which has largely stayed out of conflicts with ISIS, joined about 10 other militant groups to expel the extremist faction.
Flees to Syria
Media report that Sharrouf was able to flee to Syria via Malaysia in January by skirting a travel ban placed on him. He boarded a flight at Sydney airport using his brother’s passport in place of his own, which was confiscated by authorities. New South Wales premier Barry O’Farrell:
I have to say I think that immigration and the federal police and customs have been doing a magnificent job. But I look to see what caused what appears to have been a fairly major breakdown.
Assad cousin killed
A cousin of Assad is killed fighting militants along the Turkish border. Hilal al-Assad founded the National Defence Army of pro-government civilians fighting alongside the Syrian army, and is the head of the group. Rebel faction Jaish al-Islam issues a statement claiming responsibility for the killing:
The first rocket was fired around 7:15pm, followed by another five minutes later. The rockets targeted a house where Hilal was holding a meeting with other members of the National Defence Army.
Interpol searches for Austrian girls
Interpol is searching for two teenage girls from Austria who are believed to have run away from their homes in Vienna to join ISIS. Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, have been missing since April 10. Photos on their Facebook pages apparently show them brandishing Kalashnikov rifles – in some cases surrounded by armed men. Some of the pictures have been circulating online for years, and their families believe that those pictures, and social media posts apparently by the girls, are fake. However, Austrian officials believe that the girls are located in a training camp, are already married, and are living in the homes of their new husbands. Facebook postings apparently from the two girls say that they planned to marry so that they could become ‘holy warriors’ and indicate that they are seeking martyrdom:
Death is our goal.
American carries out suicide bombing
An American detonates a suicide bomb in Syria on behalf of al-Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of Al Qaeda, driving a truck laden with 16 tons of explosives into a restaurant patronized by government troops in the northwestern city of Idlib. The group tweets a statement confirming the bombing, referring to him by his nom de guerre, ‘the American father of the kitten’:
Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki performed a martrydom operation in Idlib, Jabal Al-Arba’een. May Allah accept him.
The U.S. government identifies him as Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, of Florida.
Trained in Syria
Paris public prosecutor François Molins says the man arrested as the Brussels Jewish Museum shooting suspect, French national Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, trained in Syria:
During his last stay in jail he was noticed for extremist [Islamist] proselytism. On December 31, 2012, three weeks after he was freed, he travelled to Syria. He spent over a year in Syria, where he seems to have joined the ranks of combatant groups, jihadist terrorist groups.
Nemmouche is being questioned by the DGSI, which can hold him for up to 96 hours or 144 hours if investigators feel he poses an imminent terrorist threat.