Captures Norwegian, Chinese men
Islamic State claims it has taken Grimsgaard-Ofstad, a Norwegian, and Fan, a freelance consultant from Beijing, hostage. The Dabiq online magazine posts photos of the men wearing yellow prison outfits, but does not say where or when they were captured. The magazine lists a telegram number for:
whoever would like to pay the ransom for his release and transfer.
Norwegian Prime Minister Solberg says Grimsgaard-Ofstad was captured at the end of January.
The kidnappers have presented a series of demands and significant amounts of ransom money,. We cannot give in and won’t give in to pressure from terrorists and criminals. Norway does not pay ransom…Our goal is to get our citizen home. But let me be very clear, this is a very demanding case.
Chinese officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Murders 19 girls
ISIS murders 19 girls for refusing to act as sex slaves to ISIS soldiers. A Kurdish official from the area reports the girls were part of a group of women, taken as sex slaves, who hail from non-Sunni Muslim demographics that include Yazidis, as well as Christians. The group is reportedly being held in Mosul. UN Envoy:
The girls get peddled like barrels of petrol.
Pregnant swedish teenager held
A pregnant 15-year-old Swedish girl is being held by ISIS in Syria after running away from her foster home with her boyfriend to join al-Qaida. Swedish Foreign Ministry:
We have been informed that a Swedish minor is in Syria. We are in contact with family members,
The 15-year-old, whose name is not disclosed, disappeared from her foster home in Boras, near the south-western town of Gothenburg, on 31 May. It said she is six months pregnant. She and her 19-year-old boyfriend married in a Muslim ceremony in Stockholm earlier this year without their parents’ knowledge and reportedly travelled to Syria via Turkey, where they were recruited by an al-Qaida-linked group. The couple were captured by ISIS fighters in the northern city of Aleppo, and have been moved to an ISIS-controlled area. The boyfriend has been forced to fight for the jihadist group. The daughter had called her parents at least three times while being held by Isis after women secretly lent her a cell phone. Mother:
I spoke to her yesterday and found out she has been moved to a group of women. She is not allowed to be with her boyfriend because they aren’t considered married by [ISIS]. She was very sad and very scared. We don’t know how to get her out of the country. Now she’s in an [ISIS]-controlled area so it will be even harder.
The father says that his daughter might be moved to live with a group of women in Manbij, a town north-east of Aleppo, if ISIS militants did not recognise the marriage.
Canada takes refugees
Prime Minister Harper pledges Canada will take an additional 10,000 refugees from Iraq and Syria over the next four years if the Conservative government is re-elected in October. Canada has already settled roughly 20,000 Iraqi refugees and 2,500 Syrians. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada website shows it finalized 19,900 refugee claims from all countries in 2014. Harper:
We must stop ISIS
Kidnaps 230 civilians
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that ISIS abducted 230 civilians, including at least 60 Christians, in Al-Qaryatain hours after the group captured the town. Many of the Christians had fled from Aleppo province, in Syria’s north, to seek refuge in Al-Qaryatain. SOHR says those abducted were wanted by ISIS for ‘collaborating with the regime’ and their names were on a list used by the jihadists as they swept through the town. Families who tried to flee or hide were tracked down and taken by the jihadists. Al-Qaryatain lies at the crossroads between ISIS territory in the eastern countryside of Homs and areas further west in the Qalamun area.
Jake Bilardi dies in suicide attack
Bilardi blows himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq. Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister:
This is an absolutely horrific situation. It’s very, very important that we do everything we can to try to safeguard our young people against the lure of this shocking, alien and extreme ideology.
Peter Kassig beheaded
ISIS releases a video showing the beheading of a dozen Syrian soldiers that ends with a militant standing over a severed head he says belongs to Kassig. U.S. officials said they are working to determine the video’s authenticity. The main militant has a British accent (although the video appears to have been distorted to hide the speaker’s identity) and warns that U.S. soldiers will meet a similar fate.
We say to you, Obama: … You claim to have withdrawn from Iraq four years ago. Here you are: You have not withdrawn. Rather, you hid some of your forces behind your proxies.
The militant claims Kassig was killed because he “fought against the Muslims in Iraq, while serving as a soldier”. Kassig’s family says it is awaiting the outcome of the investigation.
The family respectfully asks that the news media avoid playing into the hostage takers’ hands and refrain from publishing or broadcasting photographs or video distributed by the hostage takers. We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family, not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause.
Killed in Syria
Hassan is the fourth person from Portsmouth killed while fighting for ISIS. Chairman of the Portsmouth Jami Mosque, Abdul Jalil:
It has been confirmed with the family that he has died. Right now they are very upset. I am saddened and again shocked for the community about this news.
It is thought he died in Kobane.
Beheaded man with Down Syndrome
Kurdish rights activist Bazran Halil and his wife, Raushan, say the group beheaded a man with Down Syndrome in Kobani and impose horrific punishments for violating what they say is Islamic law. Bazran in an interview in Turkey:
There was a man with Down Syndrome. He couldn’t understand the situation, to flee, or to run away from the frontline. When ISIS arrived they beheaded him and took photos, shared them on social media and said ‘we killed an atheist, a Kaffir’.
Raushan:
For smoking, they chop your fingers off. Drinking is punished by jail. And if a woman is seen in the company of a man who is not her relative, she is stoned to death.
They say ISIS also abducted a group of high-schoolers in Aleppo for exams and made the boys study Shariah law in a mosque, shocking them with electric cables if they did not learn quickly enough.
Founder announces 2M donation
Turkish born C
EO Hamdi Ulukaya pledges $2 million to aid refugees in Kobani, a town bordering Syria and Turkey that is under siege from ISIS.
Either we will be watching the massacre there and will live on with a guilty conscience or we will save people.
May have been killed Sept. 20
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-03 19:27:322015-01-16 13:10:38May have been killed Sept. 20Killed at 7:50 a.m.
A Twitter user who has offered previously credible accounts of ISIS activities says a captive dressed in an orange jumpsuit was driven to a hill near Raqqa where Foley was beheaded. Roads are sealed, and a man with a knife is present. @Raqqa_SI:
We believe it’s the same person who executed the reporters before.
The killing takes place at 7:50 a.m. local time (00:50 Eastern time):
Isis beheaded this captive at 7:50 am and many cars went with them, one of cars were carrying a big TV camera in it
The Twitter user says two more cameras captured the killing, and another prisoner is readied to appear in a video:
We notice a Nissan red station and a black 4×4, in this black car there was another captive who was protected with many Isis troop
Manning: Focus on containment
Manning writes a commentary in The Guardian stating that military strikes play to ISIS’s strengths, and recommending four areas that a containment strategy could focus on. She suggests countering ISIS’s online presence to curb recruitment. The coalition should then set clear, temporary borders in the region to discourage ISIS taking territory where humanitarian issues could result. It should place a moratorium on ransom payments for hostages and cut off other sources of ISIS funding such as oil trade and artefact theft. Finally, it should allow ISIS to succeed in setting up a failed ‘state’ – in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern.
Eventually, if they are properly contained, I believe that Isis will not be able to sustain itself on rapid growth alone, and will begin to fracture internally. The organization will begin to disintegrate into several smaller, uncoordinated entities – ultimately failing in their objective of creating a strong state.
Austrian girl may be dead
Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Alexander Marakovits says authorities have received intelligence that one of the two Austrian teen girls believed to have joined ISIS may have been killed:
We also have this information and have checked it, but cannot say with absolute certainty that it is true. But the parents have been informed their daughter could be dead.
It is not specified whether the girl believed to have died is 16-year-old Samra Kesinovic or 15-year-old Sabina Selimovic, both of whom are believed to have run way from their homes in Vienna in April to join ISIS.
Executes eight Sunnis
ISIS executes eight people in a Sunni village over the course of two days. An eyewitness says that on Friday night a pair of masked ISIS gunmen openly murdered a police officer in al-Jumasah village, 75 miles north of Tikrit, after accusing him of spying for the Kurdish and Iraqi military forces. They gather residents in the village square to watch the execution:
Islamic State members said that this is the fate of anyone who opposes them. They presented as evidence CDs and copies of the man’s correspondences with the security forces.
A small group of villagers opens fire on the house of an ISIS officer after the policeman’s killing. On Saturday morning, 10 Islamic State cars drive around al-Jumasah with two masked informants who help identify 10 people suspected of attacking the ISIS member’s house. On Saturday evening, three are released and seven others – all but one relatives of the slain policeman – are executed.
Haines executed, Henning threatened
ISIS releases a video showing the execution of British aid worker David Cawthorne Haines. In the video, titled ‘A Message To The Allies of America’, Haines is shown kneeling on a bare hillside under the open sky in a landscape that appears identical to those where journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley were executed. He reads from a script:
I would like to declare that I hold you, David Cameron, entirely responsible for my execution. You entered voluntarily into a coalition with the United States against the Islamic State. Unfortunately, it is we the British public that in the end will pay the price for our Parliament’s selfish decisions.
A black-clad executioner then issues a threat against another British hostage, a man identified as Alan Henning. The man’s voice and his distinctive London accent are similar to those of the same person who appeared in the videotaped executions of Sotloff and Foley. He threatens Prime Minister David Cameron:
If you, Cameron, persist in fighting the Islamic State, then you, like your master Obama, will have the blood of your people on your hands.
He says that the Western allies have no chance of winning:
Your evil alliance with America which continues to strike the Muslims of Iraq and most recently bombed the Haditha Dam will only accelerate your destruction and playing the role of the obedient lapdog Cameron, will only drag you and your people into another bloody and unwinnable war.
Kills 17 Sunnis
ISIS kills at least 17 Sunni tribesmen in an apparent revenge attack. The group deploys an explosives-laden Humvee – apparently captured from the Iraqi military – at an entrance to the town of Dhuluiya, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. Some of the district’s most prominent Sunni tribes, including the Al-Jabour, have been openly fighting the Sunni extremists of ISIS for the last two months.
Suicide bombs kill nine Sunnis
Two suicide bombings kill at least nine people and leave 70 wounded in the northern Iraqi Sunni town of Dhuluiya, which has been under siege by ISIS for more than two months. A suicide bomber in a seized military Humvee strikes a dirt berm built to reinforce the southern part of the town around 9 a.m. local time (0200 EDT), clearing the way for a second suicide bomber in another Humvee to drive into the center of the town and strike the market area. Dhuluiya journalist Shaalan al-Jibouri:
In the name of humanity we call on President Obama, who says they are the protectors of humanity — where are your planes, your missiles? Why this terrorism, why are our children being killed, our homes destroyed? We call on the American people to pressure their government to help us.
Lebanese soldier ‘beheaded’
The family of Lebanese soldier Abbas Medlej, a Shiite from the eastern city of Baalbak, say that photos posted online by ISIS apparently showing his beheading are real. The group says he was killed attempting to escape. If confirmed, he would be the second Lebanese soldier to be killed by the group. His mother, Zeinab Noun:
My son was sacrificed.
She says the family will seek retribution against Sunnis:
We have to take our revenge from those apostates.
Kidnaps 50 men
ISIS militants kidnap 50 men from a district on the edge of the Sunni town of Hawija in the northern region of Kirkuk, a day after the fighters left the district in anticipation of an attack by the Iraqi military. Militants load the men onto vehicles and drive off. Town residents say they are unsure why the abductions have occurred as the town has not actively resisted ISIS.