July 24th, 20170BEIRUT – Hezbollah said on Monday its battle with Nusra Front jihadists at the Syria-Lebanon border was almost over and urged remaining insurgents in the area to give up, pressing its campaign to take their last foothold at the frontier.
With the Nusra Front almost beaten in the mountainous area on the outskirts of the Lebanese town...
July 21st, 20170SOUTHFIELD — The liberation of Mosul from ISIS was a formidable victory for Iraq. But for Iraqi Americans, it was an exhilarating and unifying experience during a time of great scrutiny.
The extremist group had left a trail of devastation wherever they set camp and strained relations between Western and Arab World...
July 19th, 20170WASHINGTON ― The number of terrorist attacks worldwide and deaths from such attacks dropped in 2016 for the second straight year, driven by decreases in Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen, the State Department said on Wednesday.
The total number of terrorist attacks in 2016 dropped 9 percent compared to 2015, while...
July 11th, 20170BEIRUT ― The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters on Tuesday that it had "confirmed information" that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed.
The report came just days after the Iraqi army recaptured the last sectors of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which Baghdadi's forces overran almost exactly three years...
July 10th, 20170MOSUL/ERBIL, IRAQ - Iraq's prime minister declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, three years after the militants seized the city and made it the stronghold of a "caliphate" they said would take over the world.
"I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and...
July 3rd, 20170MOSUL — After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops captured the ruined mosque at the heart of ISIS' de facto capital in Mosul, on Thursday and the prime minister declared the group's self styled caliphate at an end.
Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining ISIS...
June 12th, 20170RAQQA —At Raqqa's eastern edge, a handful of Syrian fighters cross a river by foot and car, all the while relaying their coordinates to the U.S.-led coalition so they don't fall victim to friendly fire.
This is their only way into al-Mishlab, the first district the Kurdish and Arab militias have swept into, in what the coalition...
June 12th, 20170ANKARA — Iran said on Thursday that gunmen and bombers who attacked Tehran were Iranian members of ISIS who had fought in the militants' strongholds in Syria and Iraq - deepening the regional ramifications of the assaults.
The five attackers raided Iran's parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum on Wednesday morning, in a rare...
June 10th, 20170Local and national articles are alarming readers with tales of an insidious "Dearborn cleric" who is apparently "popular" and "inspirational" to ISIS members.
The headlines, however, have it all wrong.
He is neither a cleric nor has he ever really been visible in Dearborn. Furthermore, his obscurity can hardly award him with any...
June 7th, 20170TEHRAN- Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault which Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.
ISIS claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the...
May 25th, 20170JAKARTA ― Two suspected suicide bombers killed three Indonesian police officers and injured 10 people on Wednesday night in twin blasts near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, police said.
The blasts went off five minutes apart at Jakarta's Kampung Melayu terminal, police said.
National Police spokesman Setyo...
May 24th, 20170SYRIA- A car bomb exploded in Homs on Tuesday morning, Syrian state television said, two days after the city went back under full government control for the first time since 2011.
Authorities destroyed another vehicle rigged with explosives near a Shi'ite Muslim shrine south of Damascus, the broadcaster and other state media...
May 23rd, 20170MANCHESTER- British police on Tuesday identified the suicide bomber who killed 22 people, including children, in an attack on a crowded concert hall in Manchester, and said they were trying to establish whether he had acted alone or with help from others.
The man suspected of carrying out Britain's deadliest bombing in nearly 12 years...
May 19th, 20170WASHINGTON — The United States is close to completing a series of arms deals for Saudi Arabia totaling more than $100 billion, a senior White House official said on Friday, a week ahead of President Trump's planned visit to Riyadh.
The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the arms package could end up...
May 19th, 20170JERUSALEM — Just four months after taking office, Donald Trump will make the earliest foray into Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking by any U.S. president next week. But with mounting obstacles at home and abroad, he faces long odds of succeeding where more experienced predecessors have failed.
Even as last-minute changes are being made...
May 15th, 20170WASHINGTON ― President Trump disclosed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister about a planned ISIS operation during their meeting last week, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation said on Monday.
The intelligence, both officials said, was supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the militant...
May 10th, 20170VILNIUS ― Despite fierce opposition from NATO ally Turkey, President Trump has approved supplying arms to Kurdish YPG fighters to support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
Ankara views the Kurdish YPG militia, fighting within a larger U.S.-backed coalition, as the Syrian...
May 5th, 20170LONDON — ISIS militants are developing their own social media platform to avoid security crackdowns on their communications and propaganda, the head of the European Union's police agency said on Wednesday.
Europol Director Rob Wainwright said the new online platform had been uncovered during a 48-hour operation against Internet...
April 18th, 20170A Georgian man has been reported imposing what he calls "the civil part of the sharia law" in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside by dictating to others how they should dress, what or what not to eat or drink, not to use drugs, or even interact with the opposite sex.
The man, who has been attempting to recruit others...
April 16th, 20170
DAMASCUS, Syria - The death toll from a bomb attack on a crowded bus convoy outside Aleppo has reached at least 126 in the deadliest such incident in Syria in almost a year, human rights groups reported on Sunday.
Human rights groups and United Nations agencies cited reports that more than 60 children were among the...
April 16th, 20171BAGHDAD, Iraq -Â ISIS used chemical weapons against Iraqi forces taking part in the operation to recapture Mosul, injuring some security personnel, the Iraqi military said on Sunday.
ISIS has periodically carried out attacks using chemical weapons, but both the toll and the impact on military operations has been minimal and the...
April 13th, 20171The United States dropped a massive GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat, in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday against a series of caves used by ISIS militants, the military said.
It was the first time the United States has used this size of bomb in a conflict. It was dropped from a MC-130 aircraft in the...
April 9th, 20170CAIRO, Egypt - ISIS has claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks on Coptic Christian churches in Egypt which have killed at least 36 people.
“A group that belongs to Islamic State carried out the two attacks on the churches in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria,” the group’s news agency Amaq said.
In the first, a bomb exploded...
April 8th, 20170The deadliest chemical attack in Syria in years killed dozens of people in the rebel-held northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more. The alleged "chemical airstrikes" are said to have taken place in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 50km south of the city of Idlib.
Predictably, the...
April 4th, 20170BEIRUT, Lebanon - The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack...
April 3rd, 20170WASHINGTON, DC - President Donald Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the White House.
Trump said the Egyptian President had done a "fantastic job" and declared his support for Egypt and the Egyptian people.
He also said he was “very much behind” Sisi and been very close to him since the first time they...
April 2nd, 20170DEARBORN HEIGHTS — On Monday, Khalil Abu Rayyan, a 22-year-old accused of supporting ISIS, told U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh that he embarrassed Islam during a hearing that ended with a postponed sentencing.
"I never intended to hurt anyone," the Dearborn Heights man said. "My behavior caused embarrassment to myself, my...
March 24th, 20170MOSUL — About 400,000 Iraqi civilians are trapped in the ISIS-held Old City of western Mosul, short of food and basic needs, as the battle between the militants and government forces rages around them, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday.
Many fear fleeing because of ISIS snipers and landmines.
But 157,000 have...