Airstrikes protect dam
The U.S. launches airstrikes to protect the Haditha dam. The dam is located in Anbar province in the country’s west, where local volunteers are fighting to prevent a takeover by ISIS. Defense Secretary Hagel:
If militants seize the dam or if that dam would be destroyed, the damage that that would cause would be very significant and it would put a significant additional and big risk into the mix in Iraq.
He says the strikes don’t represent an expansion of U.S. military operations.
Mountain recaptured
Kurdish peshmerga forces recapture Mount Zartak from ISIS with assistance from U.S. airstrikes. The mountain is in a strategic location, overlooking a plain that stretches to the ISIS-held city of Mosul. The city is key to the group’s expansion of territory in the north of the country. Kurdish commander Gene Aziz Oweisi:
For the Iraqis it’s important too because it’s a step towards taking back Mosul.
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.
Captor identified
0 CommentsA French journalist held hostage in Syria by ISIS identifies the Brussels Jewish Museum suspect, Mehdi Nemmouche, as one of his captors. The journalist, Nicolas Hénin, says:
When Nemmouche wasn’t singing, he was torturing … He was a member of a small French group whose arrival terrorised the fifty Syrian prisoners being held in nearby cells. Every evening, the blows would begin to rain down in the cell where I myself had been interrogated. The torture lasted all night until the morning prayer. The prisoners’ screams were sometimes met with yelling in French.
‘Airstrikes in Syria won’t work’
Schiff, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says airstrikes in Syria won’t address the primary threat to the U.S. and could increase the risk factor:
The most significant threat we face from ISIS will be the return of foreign fighters to our shores, something an aerial campaign over Syria will do little to address. And in the absence of an immediate threat to our homeland from ISIS planners in Syria … the most profound consequence of U.S. airstrikes may be to give us greater ownership of Syria’s brutal civil war.
The U.S. leveraged potential military strikes and assistance to get Iraqis to jettison Nouri Al-Maliki and form an inclusive government, but the U.S. cannot work with the regime in Damascus:
Bashar al-Assad has gassed and dropped barrel bombs on his own people and teaming up with him would only further drive Sunnis into the arms of ISIS.
Instead the U.S. should take advantage of growing discontent among Assad’s backers – Iran and the Alawite tribe – to lessen the regime’s support.
If we discover an imminent threat to the United States emanating from Syria—and that day may come—the president would be right to attack it and he will enjoy Congress’ full support and authorization. But airstrikes now would only serve to harass, not defeat, ISIS. Let’s use the promise of American military assistance to replace, not reinforce, Assad, so that we may begin to see the outlines of an end to the Syrian civil war and with it, ISIS.
Airstrikes
Assad regime airstrikes on an ISIS-operated training camp and bakery in Raqqa kill 25 people. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says militants and civilians are among the casualties. ISIS operates a variety of assets in Raqqa – the capital of the self-styled Islamic State’s caliphate – including courts, a central bank and an administrative system.
Assembles core coalition
Obama announces the creation of a ‘core coalition’ of nations that will unite to combat ISIS. It comprises of the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Canada, Poland and Demark. He says the group:
Stands ready to confront this terrorist threat with military, intelligence, law enforcement as well as diplomatic efforts.
Welcomes coalition
0 CommentsForeign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says Barack Obama’s announcement on a ‘core coalition’ to fight ISIS is a strong response to appeals by Iraq’s government for aid:
We welcome that, and we have repeatedly called on our international partners for help and support because this threat is a very deadly threat… not only to the people of Iraq or the region, but to Europe, to America, to NATO. This is basically our fight… but we need the support — our capacity is limited, and we need the support to enhance our capacity.
Rubio: Congress doesn’t need to OK airstrikes
Sen. Rubio (R-Fla.) says Obama does not need authorization from Congress to launch airstrikes in Syria, and should act immediately against ISIS. In a letter to Obama:
Just as the U.S. has conducted operations against terrorists elsewhere, there is no legal reason preventing you from targeting ISIL in Syria
British militants ‘disillusioned’
The International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London says it has talked to British militants fighting with ISIS who are growing disillusioned with the group’s aims and its infighting with rival opposition factions. One jihadist claiming to represent 30 British fighters with a group linked to ISIS says they would be willing to undergo deradicalisation and submit to surveillance if they were assured of avoiding jail terms on their return. He tells ICSR:
We came to fight the regime and instead we are involved in gang warfare. It’s not what we came for but if we go back [to Britain] we will go to jail. Right now we are being forced to fight – what option do we have?
ICSR director Peter Neumann believes up to a fifth of British jihadists could be looking for a way to disengage from the fighting in Syria:
The people we have been talking to… want to quit but feel trapped because all the government is talking about is locking them up for 30 years.
Three Tikrit execution sites found
Human Rights Watch says it has located three fresh ISIS mass execution sites, bringing the number of victims confirmed in executions by the group at former U.S. air base Camp Speicher outside Tikrit city to 770. HRW emergencies director Peter Bouckaert:
Another piece of this gruesome puzzle has come into place, with many more executions now confirmed. The barbarity of the Islamic State violates the law and grossly offends the conscience.
Canada to send advisors to Iraq
A report says Canada is planning to send dozens of military personnel to Iraq, with the Canadian Forces soldiers expected to perform advisory roles from Baghdad without being involved in fighting in the field. The move is expected to be a Canadian initiative, not part of a wider NATO mission.
Witness: Haines kidnapped by ‘professionals’
A Syrian translator for the charity that David Haines was working with says he was taken in March 2013 by ‘professional gunmen’ who targeted the vehicle in the hopes of gaining Western victims. Haines was in the final hours of a three-day tour to assess locations for new refugee camps in the north of Syria for the Paris-based Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) when he was abducted with the organisation’s Italian coordinator, Federico Motka. Details of the abduction have previously been kept secret until ISIS threatened Haines this week in a video containing the execution by beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff.
Bombs kill 20
Two bombings in Baghdad kill at least 20 people and leave dozens injured. A carbomb in the Shia-majority area of Kdhamiya kills at least 11, while a suicide bomber drives a vehicle packed with explosives into a police checkpoint in central Baghdad, killing nine. Responsibility for the bombings remains unknown.
‘Send Syrian refugees home’
Lebanese Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi proposes dividing refugees from the Syrian conflict by political alliance and deporting them:
What is at stake now is the proposal that refugees who trust the regime return to the areas under regime control, and those who have faith in Nusra Front and ISIS go to the regions under their control.
Azzi says the option of setting up camps for the refugees similar to the ones existing in Jordan and Turkey is no longer relevant. The remarks come after protests by the families of security personnel kidnapped by ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of Al Qaeda.
‘A dozen American fighters’
A Pentagon spokesman says that around 100 American fighters are ‘operating inside Syria,’ and the U.S. government believes that several of them have joined ISIS. Col. Steven Warren:
We believe there are maybe a dozen that are with ISIL
Australia joins coalition
0 CommentsForeign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop confirms that Australia will be a part of the coalition and contribute to the fight against ISIS:
We are keen to play our part in ensuring that this heightened terrorist risk to Australia can be tackled head-on…The bigger risk could well be doing nothing and enabling ISIL to spread its poison and ideology way beyond Syria, Iraq, Lebanon. That’s the concern that Australia faces and we take it very seriously.
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.
Kerry: Fight may take years
Kerry says that the U.S. needs to combat ISIS without putting boots on the ground:
We need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, to bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own.
It may take years to defeat the group:
We’re convinced in the days ahead we have the ability to destroy Isis. It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we are determined.
‘We will secure international coalition’
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes says the U.S. is sure of securing international support in the fight against ISIS from European nations concerned that radicalized jihadis who have traveled to the Middle East could return home and create a domestic terror threat. In an interview with CNN:
I absolutely do believe that there will be a coalition of countries from the international community, from here in NATO, also from the region where many of the neighbors have stepped up and said they want to be a part of that type of effort
While the U.S. has yet to commit to airstrikes in Syria there are many other ways partners could contribute:
Intelligence. Law enforcement. Lots of ways for nations to step up to the plate and be a part of this coalition