Syria
Is ISIS 7x Bigger Than The West Believes?
The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken.
ISIS Video: America’s Air Dropped Weapons Now in Our Hands
At least one bundle of U.S. weapons airdropped in Syria appears to have fallen into the hands of ISIS, a dangerous misfire in the American mission to speed aid to Kurdish forces making their stand in Kobani.
Boy, 17, crucified for three days after ISIS militants accuse him of being paid to take photographs of the terror group’s HQ
Islamic State militants have publicly crucified and murdered a teenager they accused of taking photographs of the terror group’s headquarters in Syria. Sickening images purportedly taken in the central square of the extremists’ de facto capital Raqqa show the battered and bloodstained body of an unnamed 17-year-old boy strapped to a cross. A handwritten placard hangs around the teenager’s neck, accusing him of ‘apostasy’ – the abandonment of his religion – and says he had been crucified for three days after being caught receiving 500 Turkish lira for every photograph he took of an Islamic State military base.
ISIS Has Three Warplanes In Syria?
Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State in Syria are training members of the group to fly in three captured fighter jets, a group monitoring the war said on Friday, saying it was the first time the militant group had taken to the air. The group, which has seized swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, has been flying the planes over the captured al-Jarrah military airport east of Aleppo, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the report and U.
Horror of Kobani: Headless corpses left in the street and victims with their eyes ‘cut out’, the savagery of Isis laid bare
Survivors of the fighting in Kobani have spoken of the horrors they witnessed as Isis militants took control of parts of the town from Kurdish forces. Refugees in Suruc, Tukey, have told The Daily Mail how relatives and neighbours were beheaded by the militants, while another spoke of how he had seen “hundreds” of decapitated corpses in the besieged town. On Friday, the UN Syria envoy warned the hundreds still trapped in Kobani will be “massacred” by militants if the town falls, where only a small corridor remains open for people to flee.
ISIS set to capture Kobani, finish major land grab
ISIS fighters pounded the Syrian city of Kobani with tanks and heavy artillery Monday as the extremist group came closer to capturing the key city on the border with Turkey. The fall of the city would carry huge symbolic and strategic weight, giving ISIS sway over an uninterrupted swatch of land between the Turkish border and its self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria, 100 kilometers (62 miles) away. Although the fight was not over, CNN crews on Monday spotted what appeared to be the black flag of ISIS flying from a hilltop on the eastern side of the city.
America’s Allies Almost Bombed in Syrian Airstrikes
Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria. Since U.