About that New Boko Haram Video: Experts Reveal Abubakar Shekau's Intentions

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">                                   <img alt="shekau_new_video1.jpg" class="alignnone wp-image-267474" height="314" src="http://cdn-01.naij.com/o/tBQ2HTgFqZkuw9rylrR9dkMS.jpg" width="400" /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Abubakar Shekau</em></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />Experts comment on the recent video released by Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau where he declares caliphate in Nigeria and express their opinion on the the terrorist’s current intentions.In the fresh Boko Haram video obtained by AFP August 24, the group <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" rel="prev" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">announced that the captured town of Gwoza was now under an Islamic caliphate</a>, which claim triggered a lot of talks about the actual meaning of the phrase.<br />On numerous occasions analysts have spolen about the similarity between the Nigerian terrorist group and Islamic State (IS) operating in Iraq, and now  they suggest that the pronouncement might be connected with Shekau’s desire to get more media attention like IS.<br />It is believed that IS might have inspired his scandalous claim made in the new video after the IS had recently attracted the international attention by seizing parts of Iraq and Syria in a brutal onslaught.<br /><br />David Cook, a religious studies professor from the United States said:<br /><em>“I think right now Shekau’s moves are coming from a desire to emulate IS”,</em> adding that the terrorist is<br /><a href="" name="more"></a>“<em>trying to get more media attention”</em> after the international focus shifted from the abduction of Chibok girls to the territorial claims of  IS.<br />An expert on the situation in northern Nigeria Shehu Sani supported his colleague’s point of view saying that Shekau’s move was dictated by the IS example. While Boko Haram had many times expressed their intention to created a strict Islamic state in the country, they did not have a direct plan of how to do it, before now:<br /><em>“What is happening in Iraq has given them direction”</em> Sani told AFP adding that previously Boko Haram thought they should <em>“overrun the whole country before they declare their (jihadist) republic”</em>, however now they <em>“they have taken a more gradualist approach”.</em><br /><br />Meanwhile the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" rel="prev" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Nigerian Defence insist the territory of the country is intact and call Shekau’s claim “empty”</a>. The declaration was also critically estimated by the group Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC). The group’s statement read that they “totally and unequivocally reject this declaration. We reaffirm our faith in the unity and indissolubility of Nigeria.”</span></div>

About that New Boko Haram Video: Experts Reveal Abubakar Shekau's Intentions

                                    Abubakar Shekau Experts comment on the recent video released by Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau w...

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South West monarchs warn over declaration of Gwoza ‘caliphate’

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I</span><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BADAN</span>—ROYAL Fathers in South West of Nigeria, yesterday warned that recent declaration of Gwoza ‘caliphate’ in the North-Eastern part of the country by the Islamic Fundamentalists,  Boko Haram, was meant to provoke the country to full scale war.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="-webkit-transition: background-color 0.2s linear, border-top-color; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color 0.2s linear, border-top-color; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://dvsl3w2q45hb8.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/boko-abducted-girls.jpg" style="-webkit-transition: background-color 0.2s linear, border-top-color; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color 0.2s linear, border-top-color; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="boko-abducted-girls" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-444111" height="187" src="http://dvsl3w2q45hb8.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/boko-abducted-girls-300x187.jpg" style="-webkit-transition: margin 0.2s linear, box-shadow; border: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; transition: margin 0.2s linear, box-shadow;" width="300" /></a></span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <br /></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Speaking through the Chairman Yoruba Obas Conflict Resolution Committee, Oba Frederick Enitiolorunda Obateru Akinruntan, who is the Olugbo of Igboland, argued that it was impossible to declare a republic within republic.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Chairman said “We are fighting guerilla war. We should not blame the FG because the president has to be very careful.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is difficult to fight because it is a guerilla war. About caliphate being declared by Boko Haram in Gwosa, it is meant to provoke the country. It is not possible to declare a republic within republic. It can never be possible.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He hinted that the age long royal battle among Yoruba monarchs including Alaafin-Ooni feud would soon be a thing of the past, saying “the committee is more determined to bring all the kings in the South West together under the same roof and amicably resolve all grey issues that could fan ember of disunity.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is not easy to repair a damaged thing. All of us in the committee are happy that the peace efforts we are making are already yielding results. We would ensure that peace reigns among Yoruba Obas.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No other Oba in Yorubaland had ever made any effort in reconciling our monarchs. We thank God because our efforts are yielding fruits. We receive calls across the country and beyond acknowledging our reconciliatory  moves.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“At the commencement of the reconciliation,  we received the blessings of Ooni of Ife, Alaafin of Oyo, Alake of Egbaland, Awujale of Ijebuland, Soun of Ogbomoso, Olubadan of Ibadanland and Owa Obokun of Ijesaland.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">At one of the meetings we organised, we knew the cause of the age long crisis between two prominent Yoruba Obas and very soon, we will bring the two of them together and resolve it amicably.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Reconciliation is a gradual process and every day, we are moving closer to the end of the age long rivalry.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Everybody is coming to the understanding and appreciation of the fact that we the traditional rulers in the South-West geo-political zone must come together and speak with one voice in order to get our share of national recognition.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We are now all aware of the marginalization of the Yoruba in the affairs of the country which the President, Goodluck Jonathan has just been addressing. It is as a result of the lack of unity among us the traditional rulers that has been responsible and we are addressing it.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div> <br /></div>

South West monarchs warn over declaration of Gwoza ‘caliphate’

I BADAN —ROYAL Fathers in South West of Nigeria, yesterday warned that recent declaration of Gwoza ‘caliphate’ in the North-Eastern part o...

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Yazidis haunted by cries for help as militants bury victims alive

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="relatedPhoto landscape" id="articleImage" style="clear: left !important; margin: 0px 0px 10px; position: relative; width: 580px;"> <img alt="Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the Iraqi-Turkish border crossing in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province August 17, 2014. REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal" border="0" src="http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140818&t=2&i=965018306&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=LYNXMPEA7H0TD" style="display: block; width: 580px;" /><div class="rolloverCaption" id="captionContent" style="bottom: 0px; clear: both; float: left; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -10px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 590px; z-index: 2;"> <div class="rolloverBg" style="background-image: none; clear: both; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; width: 610px !important;"> <div class="captionText" style="height: 60px; padding: 10px; position: relative;"> <div style="padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the Iraqi-Turkish border crossing in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province August 17, 2014.</span></div> <div class="credit" style="margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">CREDIT: REUTERS/YOUSSEF BOUDLAL</span></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="relatedRai" id="relatedInlineVideo"> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> <div class="module" id="relatedTopics" style="float: left; margin: 0px 0px 20px; width: 140px;"> <div class="moduleHeader" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border: medium none; float: left; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <h3 style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">RELATED TOPICS</span></span></h3> </div> <div class="moduleBody" style="float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <ul style="clear: both; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <li style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: dotted; border-top-width: 1px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/news/world" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;">World »</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> <div id="thirdPartyLinkbackNews"> </div> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" id="relatedInteractive" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(Reuters) - Refugee Samo Ilyas Ali has nine children to feed but he can't focus on the future because the sounds of women and children crying out for help while being buried alive by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq often consume his mind.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tens of thousand of Yazidis fled their ancient homeland of Sinjar and other villages to escape a dramatic push by the Sunni militants who regard the ethnic minority as devil worshippers who must embrace their radical version of Islam or die.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The refugees sit idle in camps in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iraq?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Iraq</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Traumatized by Islamic State militants notorious for beheadings and mass executions, they have simply given up on Iraq and want to go as far away as possible; to countries like<span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/germany?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Germany</a></span>, worlds away from their mysterious customs.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">U.S. air strikes against Islamic State positions and vows by Kurdish commanders to recapture Yazidi villages provided no reassurances.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's easy to see why.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Ten days ago, Ali and his fellow villagers were suddenly surrounded by Islamic State militants with machine guns at night. They had long beards. Some had face masks and Arabic writing on the sides of their heads.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">NO ONE TO HELP</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Absent from the scene were Kurdish peshmerga, or "those who confront death", fighters who had held parts of the north and were seen as the only force that could stand up to Islamic State after thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled their advance, leaving them with heavy weapons including tanks</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Suddenly the men began digging ditches - soon to become mass graves.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We did not understand. Then they started to put people in those holes, those people were alive," said former grocery shop owner Ali, 46, pausing to weep.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"After a while we heard gunfire. I can't forget that scene. Women, children, crying for help. We had to run for our lives, there was nothing to be done for them."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was not possible to independently verify these accounts.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some of the Yazidis escaped with the help of Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters. But similar scenes are reported in several parts of the north.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In some of the most recent bloodshed, militants massacred at least 80 Yazidi men in Kawju village because they refused to convert to Islam, Iraqi officials said. Women and children were abducted.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Islamic State seemed most intent on killing members of Iraq's majority Shi'ite sect, which it considers to be heretical. During Islamic State's latest offensive in the north, minority Yazidis and Christians have suffered the most.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country's Kurdish minority.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein's troops tried to crush the Kurds. Some were taken away by the executed former dictator's intelligence agents.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now they feel helpless again. Fellow Kurds abandoned them. Iraq has a new prime minister who is seen as moderate and may be less inclined to engage in disputes with the Kurds over budgets and oil than his predecessor, perhaps bringing political stability that could benefit the north.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But many Yazidis have lost faith in Iraq and its leaders. They have few options. Some complained that Kurdish forces would not let them travel to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/turkey?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Turkey</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So for now, it seems all they can do is wait, and try to forget what caused them to flee their homes.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"They put women and children under the ground. They were alive. I still hear their screams. They were trying to keep their heads up to keep breathing," said car repairman Dawud Hassan, 26.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Iraq is finished for me. We had houses, shops, they all burnt our things. We have nothing. We want to cross to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/turkey?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Turkey</a></span> but the peshmerga is not letting us. We will not stay there, we want to go to Europe."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is not clear if Iraqi government forces or peshmerga will manage to claw back territory and then hold it - something that could help Yazidis believe in their country again.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Islamic State is getting more ambitious. It has already grabbed much of the north and resources such as oil fields that will help fund its self-proclaimed caliphate.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some Yazidis, like Hassan, 22, a student, shake their heads in disbelief when recalling how only foreign Kurdish fighters from Turkey or <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span> extended a lifeline in the face of Islamic State.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"They tied the hands of one woman to the back of a car and her legs to another car and they split her into two," he said beside makeshift tents as women cried.</span></div> <span id="articleText" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span id="midArticle_start"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span class="focusParagraph"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span></span><br /> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <span id="midArticle_14"></span><br /> <div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.235294); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.301961); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> "Have you seen anything like this? This is all because she is not Muslim and did not want to be converted. We barely made it."</div> </div>

Yazidis haunted by cries for help as militants bury victims alive

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the...

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Yazidis haunted by cries for help as militants bury victims alive

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="relatedPhoto landscape" id="articleImage" style="clear: left !important; margin: 0px 0px 10px; position: relative; width: 580px;"> <img alt="Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the Iraqi-Turkish border crossing in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province August 17, 2014. REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal" border="0" src="http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140818&t=2&i=965018306&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=LYNXMPEA7H0TD" style="display: block; width: 580px;" /><div class="rolloverCaption" id="captionContent" style="bottom: 0px; clear: both; float: left; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -10px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 590px; z-index: 2;"> <div class="rolloverBg" style="background-image: none; clear: both; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; width: 610px !important;"> <div class="captionText" style="height: 60px; padding: 10px; position: relative;"> <div style="padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the Iraqi-Turkish border crossing in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province August 17, 2014.</span></div> <div class="credit" style="margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">CREDIT: REUTERS/YOUSSEF BOUDLAL</span></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="relatedRai" id="relatedInlineVideo"> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> <div class="module" id="relatedTopics" style="float: left; margin: 0px 0px 20px; width: 140px;"> <div class="moduleHeader" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border: medium none; float: left; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <h3 style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">RELATED TOPICS</span></span></h3> </div> <div class="moduleBody" style="float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <ul style="clear: both; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 140px;"> <li style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: dotted; border-top-width: 1px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/news/world" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;">World »</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> <div id="thirdPartyLinkbackNews"> </div> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" id="relatedInteractive" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 35px;"> <div class="relatedRail gridPanel grid2" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 140px;"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(Reuters) - Refugee Samo Ilyas Ali has nine children to feed but he can't focus on the future because the sounds of women and children crying out for help while being buried alive by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq often consume his mind.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tens of thousand of Yazidis fled their ancient homeland of Sinjar and other villages to escape a dramatic push by the Sunni militants who regard the ethnic minority as devil worshippers who must embrace their radical version of Islam or die.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The refugees sit idle in camps in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iraq?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Iraq</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Traumatized by Islamic State militants notorious for beheadings and mass executions, they have simply given up on Iraq and want to go as far away as possible; to countries like<span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/germany?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Germany</a></span>, worlds away from their mysterious customs.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">U.S. air strikes against Islamic State positions and vows by Kurdish commanders to recapture Yazidi villages provided no reassurances.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's easy to see why.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Ten days ago, Ali and his fellow villagers were suddenly surrounded by Islamic State militants with machine guns at night. They had long beards. Some had face masks and Arabic writing on the sides of their heads.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">NO ONE TO HELP</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Absent from the scene were Kurdish peshmerga, or "those who confront death", fighters who had held parts of the north and were seen as the only force that could stand up to Islamic State after thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled their advance, leaving them with heavy weapons including tanks</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Suddenly the men began digging ditches - soon to become mass graves.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We did not understand. Then they started to put people in those holes, those people were alive," said former grocery shop owner Ali, 46, pausing to weep.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"After a while we heard gunfire. I can't forget that scene. Women, children, crying for help. We had to run for our lives, there was nothing to be done for them."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was not possible to independently verify these accounts.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some of the Yazidis escaped with the help of Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters. But similar scenes are reported in several parts of the north.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In some of the most recent bloodshed, militants massacred at least 80 Yazidi men in Kawju village because they refused to convert to Islam, Iraqi officials said. Women and children were abducted.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Islamic State seemed most intent on killing members of Iraq's majority Shi'ite sect, which it considers to be heretical. During Islamic State's latest offensive in the north, minority Yazidis and Christians have suffered the most.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country's Kurdish minority.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein's troops tried to crush the Kurds. Some were taken away by the executed former dictator's intelligence agents.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now they feel helpless again. Fellow Kurds abandoned them. Iraq has a new prime minister who is seen as moderate and may be less inclined to engage in disputes with the Kurds over budgets and oil than his predecessor, perhaps bringing political stability that could benefit the north.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But many Yazidis have lost faith in Iraq and its leaders. They have few options. Some complained that Kurdish forces would not let them travel to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/turkey?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Turkey</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So for now, it seems all they can do is wait, and try to forget what caused them to flee their homes.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"They put women and children under the ground. They were alive. I still hear their screams. They were trying to keep their heads up to keep breathing," said car repairman Dawud Hassan, 26.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Iraq is finished for me. We had houses, shops, they all burnt our things. We have nothing. We want to cross to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/turkey?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Turkey</a></span> but the peshmerga is not letting us. We will not stay there, we want to go to Europe."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is not clear if Iraqi government forces or peshmerga will manage to claw back territory and then hold it - something that could help Yazidis believe in their country again.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Islamic State is getting more ambitious. It has already grabbed much of the north and resources such as oil fields that will help fund its self-proclaimed caliphate.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some Yazidis, like Hassan, 22, a student, shake their heads in disbelief when recalling how only foreign Kurdish fighters from Turkey or <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span> extended a lifeline in the face of Islamic State.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"They tied the hands of one woman to the back of a car and her legs to another car and they split her into two," he said beside makeshift tents as women cried.</span></div> <span id="articleText" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span id="midArticle_start"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span class="focusParagraph"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span></span><br /> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <span id="midArticle_14"></span><br /> <div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.235294); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.301961); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> "Have you seen anything like this? This is all because she is not Muslim and did not want to be converted. We barely made it."</div> </div>

Yazidis haunted by cries for help as militants bury victims alive

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, take part in a demonstration at the...

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PM Warns Of Terror State On Europe's Doorstep

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <section class="story__media" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="module module--primary" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 25px; width: 660px;"> <div class="module video" data-format-high="http://video.news.sky.com/video/h264/vod/700/2014/08/170814POLCameronMcCaffrey1408254762318700.mp4" data-format-low="http://video.news.sky.com/video/h264/vod/374/2014/08/170814POLCameronMcCaffrey1408254762318374.mp4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 25px; overflow: hidden; width: 660px;"> <div class="video__placeholder-wrapper js-video" style="box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; height: 0px; padding-bottom: 371px; position: relative; width: 660px;"> <div class="image" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <div class="image__wrapper image__wrapper--16x9" style="box-sizing: border-box; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 371px; position: relative;"> <img alt="" class="image__item video__teaser-image js-responsive" data-breakpoint="" data-sizes="144x81 362x204 762x428 942x530" data-sizes-wide="" data-template="http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2014/8/17/329933/default/v2/pershmerga-forces-crawford-1-{width}x{height}.jpg" src="http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2014/8/17/329933/default/v2/pershmerga-forces-crawford-1-942x530.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(220, 220, 220); box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 371px; max-width: 100%; page-break-inside: avoid; position: absolute; vertical-align: middle; width: 660px;" /></div> </div> <button aria-labelledby="video__caption-1320030" class="video__play--icon" style="background-image: url(http://news.sky.com/images/ffa94923.play-icon.png); background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: contain; border: none; bottom: 8px; cursor: pointer; height: 46px; left: 7px; margin: 0px; position: absolute; width: 46px;"><span class="video__play-a11y" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); display: inline-block; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute !important; text-align: left; width: 1px;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Play video</span></span></span></button></div> <span class="video__caption" id="video__caption-1320030" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; min-height: 40px; padding: 10px 8px; width: 660px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="video__type" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Video:</span> <span class="video__teaser" style="box-sizing: border-box;">PM's Warning On Islamic State</span></span></span><span class="video__caption" id="video__caption-1320030" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; min-height: 40px; padding: 10px 8px; width: 660px;"><div class="story__standfirst" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; margin-bottom: 40px; max-width: 64%;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">David Cameron says a "firm security response" is needed against the Islamic State or it will bring terror to Britain's streets.</span></div> <div class="last-updated" style="bottom: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 40px; max-width: 40%; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: right;"> <div class="last-updated__text" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"> </div> </div> </span></div> </div> </section><div class="story__content-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <div class="share" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">David Cameron has warned that if the Islamic State's onslaught continues Europe will be facing a "poisonous" terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Prime Minister said urgent action needs to be taken to <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1320004/us-launches-airstrikes-to-help-retake-iraq-dam" style="background-position: 0px 0px; border-bottom-color: rgb(203, 203, 203); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">defeat the extremist group</span></a>, which has created an expanding caliphate in the heart of Iraq and parts of Syria.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a letter in the Sunday Telegraph, he said a "firm security response" is needed and Islamic State (IS) fighters would not be removed by airstrikes alone.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He wrote: "Because if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We already know that it has the murderous intent.</span></div> <div class="image image--inline" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; margin: 0px auto 1em; max-width: 540px;"> <div class="image__wrapper image__wrapper--4x3" style="box-sizing: border-box; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 405px; position: relative;"> <img alt="" class="image__item js-responsive" data-breakpoint="" data-sizes="91x68 300x225 480x360" data-sizes-wide="" data-template="http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2014/8/16/329917/default/v1/kurds-1-{width}x{height}.jpg" src="http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2014/8/16/329917/default/v1/kurds-1-480x360.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(220, 220, 220); box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 405px; max-width: 100%; page-break-inside: avoid; position: absolute; vertical-align: middle; width: 540px;" /></div> <div class="image__caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; min-height: 40px; padding: 10px 8px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are battling against Islamist militants</span></div> </div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mr Cameron said the West's first priority was to deal with the "acute humanitarian crisis" caused by people fleeing forces from IS, also known as Islamic State In Iraq and Syria (ISIS).</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He praised Britons for risking their lives to deliver 80 tons of supplies to the Yazidis trapped in the blistering heat on Mount Sinjar.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"But a humanitarian response alone is not enough. We also need a broader political, diplomatic and security response," he wrote.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a poisonous and extremist ideology, which I believe we will be fighting for the rest of my political lifetime.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We face in ISIS a new threat that is single-minded, determined and unflinching in pursuit of its objectives."</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He said IS has made ground in Syria and has the ancient city of Aleppo firmly within its sights.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It also wants to seize territory in Jordan and Lebanon, right up to the Turkish border.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"If it succeeds, we would be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a Nato member," he said.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"This is a clear danger to Europe and to our security."</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">His comments come after the Church of England attacked the Prime Minister's handling of the crisis.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Bishop of Leeds said "many" senior clergy were seriously concerned that the Government appears to have no "coherent or comprehensive approach" to tackling the rise of Islamic extremism.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a letter to Mr Cameron backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Rev Nicholas Baines said he recognised "the complexity and interconnectedness of the challenges" but criticised an apparent failure to respond effectively to the advance of IS fighters.</span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 540px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He also expressed concerns over a "growing silence" over the fate of the plight of persecuted Christians in Iraq and the failure to respond to calls to set out what arrangements would be made to offer asylum in the UK.</span></div> </section><section class="story__other" data-append="story__other" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: SkyTextRegular, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana; font-size: 16px;"></section></div> </div>

PM Warns Of Terror State On Europe's Doorstep

Play video Video:   PM's Warning On Islamic State David Cameron says a "firm security response" is needed against th...

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Iraq crisis: UK PM warns of possible IS attack

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Islamic State militants could grow strong enough to target people on the streets of Britain unless action is taken, David Cameron has warned.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The PM, writing in the Sunday telegraph, said a “humanitarian response” to IS was not enough and a “firm security response” was needed.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It comes as Church leaders expressed concern that the UK had no “coherent” approach to tackling Islamic extremism.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">IS has seized large parts of northern Iraq and Syria over the summer.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Kurdish forces, supported by US air strikes, are currently battling to retake Mosul dam from IS fighters in northern Iraq.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There are also continuing reports of massacres of non-Muslims by the extreme Sunni group, which is seeking to build a new Islamic state spanning Iraq and Syria.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Cameron said: “True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.”</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He warned that if IS was able to “carve out its so-called caliphate”, the UK would be “facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member”.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The UK has made aid drops to people stranded in northern Iraq but the prime minister warned a “broader political, diplomatic and security response” was needed, in addition to humanitarian action.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We need a firm security response, whether that is military action to go after the terrorists, international co-operation on intelligence and counter-terrorism or uncompromising action against terrorists at home,” he wrote.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The prime minister suggested that anyone walking around in the UK with an Islamic state flag should be arrested.</span></div> <div style="padding: 0px 0px 5px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cameron also made clear that he did not see this as a “war on terror” but as “a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other”.</span></div> </div>

Iraq crisis: UK PM warns of possible IS attack

Islamic State militants could grow strong enough to target people on the streets of Britain unless action is taken, David Cameron has warn...

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Islamic State carves jihadist hub in heart of Middle East

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="relatedPhoto landscape" id="articleImage" style="clear: left !important; margin: 0px 0px 10px; position: relative; width: 580px;"> <img alt="A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer" border="0" src="http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140812&t=2&i=963531392&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=LYNXMPEA7B0NY" style="display: block; width: 580px;" /><div class="rolloverCaption" id="captionContent" style="bottom: 0px; clear: both; float: left; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -10px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 590px; z-index: 2;"> <div class="rolloverBg" style="background-image: none; clear: both; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; width: 610px !important;"> <div class="captionText" style="height: 60px; padding: 10px; position: relative;"> <div style="padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014.</span></div> <div class="credit" style="margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">CREDIT: REUTERS/STRINGER</span></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="relatedRai" id="relatedInlineVideo"> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; 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margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 300px;"> <div class="assetBuddy" name="breaking news - Iraq"> <span modulename="E0812141148_475056" name="trackingEnabledModule" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><div class="module" style="float: left; margin: 0px 0px 20px; width: 300px;"> <div class="moduleHeader" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border: medium none; float: left; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <h3 style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">IRAQ</a></h3> </div> <div class="moduleBody" style="float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <div class="gallery feature" style="float: left; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <div class="photo" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 4px 0px; position: relative;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks to the media on the situation in Iraq on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington August 9, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas" border="0" src="http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/media/global/assets/images/20140811/20140811_5891177620140811105808.jpg" style="border: none; outline: none;" title="President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks to the media on the situation in Iraq on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington August 9, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas" /></a></div> <h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 20px;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">The Iraq Crisis: As it happens</a></h2> </div> </div> </div> </span></div> </div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(Reuters) - Ridiculed at first, the new power which has seized a third of Iraq and triggered the first American air strikes since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 – has carved itself a powerful and possibly lasting presence in the Middle East.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The bombing of fighters of the Sunni Islamic State is unlikely to turn around Iraq and its fragmented condition has given the self-proclaimed caliphate the opportunity to establish a hub of jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    To confront the Islamic State storming through the villages of eastern <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span> and western Iraq, an international coalition sanctioned by the <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/united-nations?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">United Nations</a></span> would need to be set up, analysts in and outside the Gulf region said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The jihadist army, whose ambition for a cross-border caliphate between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers was not initially taken seriously by their opponents, is now brimming with confidence, emboldened by blood and treasure.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The warriors of the new caliphate are exploiting sectarian and tribal faultlines in Arab society, petrifying communities into submission and exploiting the reluctance of Washington and the West to intervene more robustly in the civil war in <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Unlike Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, which set its sights on destroying the West, the Islamic State has territorial goals, aims to set up social structures and rages against the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/france?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">France</a></span> that split the Ottoman empire and carved borders across the Arab lands.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">President <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/people/barack-obama?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Barack Obama's</a></span> decision to step back into the Iraq quagmire nearly three years after withdrawing U.S. troops, with limited air strikes in the past few days against the Islamic State, arises in part because of inertia over Syria.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    A failure to arm the mainstream, mostly Sunni, rebellion against Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule opened space for the Islamic State, which has now surged back into a broken Iraq, raising its black flag in town after town, the analysts said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Almost a year ago, in a last-minute change of mind, Obama decided against bombing Assad amid accusations of nerve gas attacks on rebel enclaves. That decision, many believe, has proved costly both in Syria and in neighboring Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    It reinvigorated Assad, helped in the quashing of Syria’s moderate rebels and empowered the militant Islamists who became a recruiting magnet for disenchanted Sunnis in Syria and Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">GROWING CALIPHATE</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Well financed and armed, IS insurgents have captured large swathes of territory in a summer offensive, as the Iraqi army – and now Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the self-governing north - have crumbled in the face of its onslaught, massacring Shi'ites and minority Christians and Yazidis as they advance.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The military campaign has been accompanied by a social media blitz showing crucifixions, beheadings and other atrocities. To many, the business of the Islamic State is killing infidels, and it is better at it that any of its forerunners including al Qaeda, which has renounced its offshoot as too brutal.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Interspersed with footage of executions, and the marking out of local minorities for extermination, the message is that the Islamic State does not just preach; it acts mercilessly against its catalog of enemies.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   Using captured territory in north and eastern Syria, nearly 35 percent of the country, as its rear base, the IS is now attacking northeastward into Iraqi Kurdistan and even west across the border of Lebanon.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Its rapid advances are made possible by the disintegration of Syria and Iraq, alienation of Sunni communities willing to ally even with IS to resist governments they see as under the thumb of Shi’ite Muslims and their sponsor in <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iran?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Iran</a></span>, and Sunni rage at U.S. and Western policy in the Middle East.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “If you have tens of thousands of people who are willing to fight under its banner, that by itself tells you that the state system itself is really almost in tatters," says Fawaz Gerges, head of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Obama justified his air strikes as humanitarian, to protect tens of thousands of refugees from the Yazidi community threatened with genocide, and defensive - to thwart any IS advance on Arbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government where U.S. diplomats and special forces might be at risk.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    But as Washington starts provisioning poorly armed Peshmerga forces policing a 1,000-km (600-mile) border against the new caliphate, the strategic stakes are becoming clearer. The United States hopes to revitalize the Peshmerga, whose name means those who confront death but who were driven back by the IS onslaught.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The United States has also lined up behind Haidar al-Abadi, a new Iraqi premier to replace its former ally Nuri al-Maliki – spurned by his Iranian backers and most of his own party as a liability whose sectarian policies helped drive Iraq’s Sunni minority into the jihadist camp. The political struggle exposed the treacherous political quicksand Obama now faces.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Dr Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based researcher into Iraq’s and the region's armed groups, said the Islamic State has found ways to compensate for its initial lack of manpower, estimated by most analysts at between 10,000 and 15,000 fighters before its rapid advance from Syria into Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    It may be overstretched by its sudden conquest of vast territory but has learned to use fear as a strategic weapon. “The more it terrorizes the people of those areas, the longer it can stay” in control, Hashimi said. “The caliphate exists and is growing now, in an environment where (Sunni opinion) rejects the central government, be that in Iraq or in Syria”.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SOCIAL EPIDEMIC?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In Syria, more than three years of thwarted rebellion against Assad, built around the ruling family’s minority Alawite sect, a heterodox offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, has given the militants a base in the east and north and a following among the brutalized Sunni majority.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    In Iraq, the increasingly sectarian rule of Maliki caused anger in the Sunni minority, which held power until the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 deposed Saddam Hussein.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The IS is well-resourced, with young volunteers, cash to buy weapons and pay wages, plus an arsenal of U.S.-supplied heavy weapons it captured from the Iraqi army in June, when it overran the mainly Sunni cities of Mosul and Tikrit.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Aside from funding from sympathizers in the Gulf and tens of millions raised from theft, extortion and kidnapping, the Islamic State has oil. “In eastern Syria IS controls 50 of the 52 oil wells, while in the north and northwest of Iraq there are now 20 oil wells under the control of IS,” Hashimi said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Many experts cautioned against comparing IS with its predecessor, the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq run by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, which was at the heart of the anti-American insurgency and the Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian blood-letting of 2005-08. Sunni tribes finally rebelled against it.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “These are not just barbarians who came here to steal what they could and then leave,” Hashimi says. “They are now fighting to establish a state, while Zarqawi fought to topple the central government – there is a big difference.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The new caliphate declared by its Iraqi leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is filling the vacuum of imploding states and, unlike al Qaeda, are establishing a real social base, says Gerges.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “The al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden was a borderless, transnational movement which has never been able to find a social base. The reason to take the IS ... seriously is because they are like a social epidemic, feeding on sectarian tensions and the social and ideological faultlines in Arab societies," Gerges said, adding that Syria's Nusra Front other militant Islamists were following a similar pattern.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The phenomenon of the Islamic State is a manifestation of the weakening and dismantling of the Arab state as we know it.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">RECRUITING MAGNET</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gerges also called the militants' spectacular brutality – the crucifixions, stoning of women and now, according to Iraqi ministers, the burying alive of women and children from the Yazidi minority – all publicized over the Internet, as “a strategic choice”.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    IS has an extraordinary ability to multiply its numbers by recruiting and indoctrinating volunteers, feeding them their radical brand of Islam and training them militarily.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who is now a U.S.-based dissident, said the emergence of the Islamic State was a reaction by Sunni factions to Maliki and his anti-Sunni policies, which were defended by the Guards.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   Maliki, Sazegara said, squandered the inheritance of the Sahwa, the U.S.-funded militia drawn from among the country's Sunni Muslim tribes who were a driving force in fighting al Qaeda predecessors to IS in Iraq after 2006.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The U.S. decision to hand over responsibility for the Sahwa to the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government in 2009 was a mistake, which alienated them and drove many to join IS ranks.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   "U.S. General (David) Petraeus used the tribes in Iraq to fight the al Qaeda predecessors to IS. But Maliki upset the tribes. The hardline pro-Shi’ite policy of <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iran?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Iran</a></span> and Maliki and those around him led to this Sunni extremism. Islamic State is one manifestation of that,” Sazegara said. </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">  The success of the Islamic State has created a dilemma for all the Muslim neighbors and beyond from <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/saudi-arabia?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Saudi Arabia</a></span> to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/libya?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Libya</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Riyadh, which until now has seen non-Arab, Shi’ite Iran as ultimately posing the greater threat, is worried that the Islamic State's territorial gains will radicalize Saudis who may eventually target their own government.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The conservative Sunni kingdom was so concerned by the Islamic State's advance in June and July that it moved tens of thousands of troops to the border with Iraq. Yet, Saudi officials say they do not believe the Islamic State is capable of posing any military threat to the mighty Saudi armed forces.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    By contrast, they regard Iran and its Shi'ite allies across the region as posing a far more sustained and dangerous threat to the kingdom's position in the Arab and Islamic world.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SAUDI CONCERNS</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam’s Sunni-dominated rule, <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/saudi-arabia?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Saudi Arabia</a></span> and its Gulf allies have not accepted the rise to power of the Shi’ite majority in Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Saudi Arabia has a strategic rivalry with Iran over the control of the Gulf but its Wahhabi version of Sunni Orthodoxy has always depicted Shi'ites as heretics and this has a huge resonance inside the kingdom and across the Gulf.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Beyond any strategic rivalry the royal family is careful about contradicting the Wahhabi clerical establishment that underpins the monarchy.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The Islamic State's victories against an Iraqi army run by a Shi'ite government, and against ethnic Kurdish forces seen as having encroached on Arab territory, have engendered a degree of sympathy and admiration among some Saudis, the analysts said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    "The Islamic State's propaganda is that they are fighting the Shi'ites. This is the reason why sometimes some people have sympathy with them. But this sympathy is not substantial. It is only among those who are very extremist," said Mohsen al-Awaji, a reformist Saudi Islamist scholar. "We are very much afraid for our young people, who may believe in this propaganda."   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">However, most analysts agree that token U.S. air strikes are unlikely to turn the tide. It will be very hard for Washington to succeed unless the new Iraqi government radically addresses Sunni grievances by granting them a real share in power and persuading Sunni tribes to set up a new Sahwa to fight the IS.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Otherwise, the Islamic State will further expand and grow in numbers as it seizes more territory. For the moment, it is the militants who are pulling in the recruits. Video footage of long lines of young men waiting outside IS recruiting offices in Syrian and Iraqi towns shows their popularity.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A Syrian living in an area of Islamic State control near Raqqa, the movement's power base in Syria, said the group has carried out beheadings, levied the "jizya" tax on non-Muslims and settled foreign fighters in homes confiscated from minorities, former government officers and other people.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But despite that, it has still won a degree of respect among locals by, for example, curbing crime using its own version of law of and order. For youths without work, salaries offered by the Islamic State are one of the few sources of income.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The movement seems keen to sow its ideals among the young; one video distributed by the Islamic State features a preacher called Abdallah al-Belgiki - "The Belgian" - who says he traveled from Belgium to the caliphate with his young son.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Against a background of black jihadist flags, he asks the child, aged about 8, whether he would like to go home: "No," he replies. "I want to stay in the Islamic State ... I want to be a jihadi to fight the infidels and the infidels of Europe."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   At an IS training camp for boys, one fighter tells the camera: "This generation of children is the generation of the caliphate, this is the generation that will fight the Americans and their allies, the apostates and the infidels."</span></div> <span id="articleText" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span id="midArticle_start"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span class="focusParagraph"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span></span><br /> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <span id="midArticle_14"></span><br /> <div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.235294); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.301961); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> "The true ideology has been planted in these children."</div> </div>

Islamic State carves jihadist hub in heart of Middle East

A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria'...

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Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: Iraq descends into apocalypse

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: Iraq descends into apocalypse as Islamic State fanatics seize towns and tell terrified Yazidi 'Become Muslims by noon today... or we kill all of you'</span></span></h3> <div class="post-header" style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"> <div class="post-header-line-1"> </div> </div> <div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-596317204934983247" itemprop="description articleBody" style="position: relative; width: 670px;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4W8eOxkNOO4yIgUTwbdiGvIBF254azW_KQjxZ8pQ-IlB7ZYTMQz5Un-Z2nda8KDOCULG7ZDLlYkIh_ua51B0cDiTR6M_Ump4F2VjIaI8h1kP-Avnxzi9CtUsuWSYJ-8IZbPIN-rBDHRa/s1600/1407624648631_Image_galleryImage_Twitter_picture_posted_6t.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4W8eOxkNOO4yIgUTwbdiGvIBF254azW_KQjxZ8pQ-IlB7ZYTMQz5Un-Z2nda8KDOCULG7ZDLlYkIh_ua51B0cDiTR6M_Ump4F2VjIaI8h1kP-Avnxzi9CtUsuWSYJ-8IZbPIN-rBDHRa/s1600/1407624648631_Image_galleryImage_Twitter_picture_posted_6t.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">                            <i>Savagery: A man is crucified in northern Syria by Islamic State militants</i><br /><br />They arrived bristling with heavy weapons and waving black flags from about a dozen Humvees, seized from the Iraqi army and supplied originally by the United States.<br /><br />When the terrified residents looked out of their windows, they saw that Kosho, their traditional walled village in the mountains of northern Iraq, had been surrounded by jihadists. More than 200 bearded militants had besieged the village.<br /><br />Then their leader – a local man from Mosul rather than the foreigners who make up more than a third of the ranks of the group now known as Islamic State – offered them a chance to save their lives.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89mK6DLm68Ww9VboNPX0w0ojMd5ZffAKqISIn2pFCn6Mi2ZfjfX_K13OdIQ8zqeTQnDOxj0o5AyQRmjWmiQ30UUhAnyTkk_Y9NSoZR0syiZxjVRvHlYET9b1q64b4Drh_HStAVHBzFXon/s1600/1407624982032_wps_9_isis_execution_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89mK6DLm68Ww9VboNPX0w0ojMd5ZffAKqISIn2pFCn6Mi2ZfjfX_K13OdIQ8zqeTQnDOxj0o5AyQRmjWmiQ30UUhAnyTkk_Y9NSoZR0syiZxjVRvHlYET9b1q64b4Drh_HStAVHBzFXon/s1600/1407624982032_wps_9_isis_execution_jpg.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">                            <i>  Horror: A black flag is held aloft as Islamic State jihadists execute a prisoner</i><br /><br />‘He told us that either we become Muslims or they would kill us all,’ said Falah, mayor of the village made up mainly of members of the ancient Yazidi sect. ‘We offered money but they would not accept it.’<br /><br />The deadline the people of Kosho have to meet is midday today. Since the residents refuse to betray their faith, it is feared an entire village of about 2,500 innocent people might be slaughtered in cold blood.<br /><br />‘If we did not have families, we would try to escape,’ the stoical Falah told me yesterday. ‘But we have lots of women here and many children, along with all the old men and women of the village. How could we leave them?’<br /><br />This is thought to be the first time these blood-drenched fanatics – who delight in boasting of their barbarism and posting sickening murder videos on social media – have threatened to wipe out an entire village.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjgZK9duELTOckBsLHo5_hu10srAx8VdpRNxrfa5QVqwYaUbJE5LhMgmJ4plmGPwayv3C_1w6r7U5TVsI7S_3Yzg458wRgwFS4TToZT-6lURNdAMtmYT42MnF3Dh29xDB2RzBcbU-P5-4A/s1600/1407625102065_Image_galleryImage_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjgZK9duELTOckBsLHo5_hu10srAx8VdpRNxrfa5QVqwYaUbJE5LhMgmJ4plmGPwayv3C_1w6r7U5TVsI7S_3Yzg458wRgwFS4TToZT-6lURNdAMtmYT42MnF3Dh29xDB2RzBcbU-P5-4A/s1600/1407625102065_Image_galleryImage_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Seeking salvation: Thousands of people stranded for weeks on the mountain range near Sinjar flee towards Syria through a secure corridor opened by Kurdish troops</i><br /><br />Even by their own chilling standards, re-drawing the Middle East map with a rampage of rape, beheadings and revolting crucifixions, this marks a new low.<br />It comes at the end of a week during which the fanatics of Islamic State –formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – shocked the world again by advancing further into Iraq, prompting the US to renew military operations there for the first time since 2011.<br />In other developments yesterday:</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33wI3C_zC7Yr73N2tU9RaOTZW_o0DO_rUIeHmofeep0etKsxrJEDcdHXT2-oxd0coWsIWYg3pdof4neuhDzMdTIwXjid_pNy4Go6zUgyiKDJShe420626km6LXkf8oBaeYuKew8A8vIlf/s1600/1407625987485_wps_24_Paul_Hennessy00006_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33wI3C_zC7Yr73N2tU9RaOTZW_o0DO_rUIeHmofeep0etKsxrJEDcdHXT2-oxd0coWsIWYg3pdof4neuhDzMdTIwXjid_pNy4Go6zUgyiKDJShe420626km6LXkf8oBaeYuKew8A8vIlf/s1600/1407625987485_wps_24_Paul_Hennessy00006_jpg.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Desperate masses: Yazidi people stranded in the Sinjar mountains rush towards a helicopter laden with supplies</i><br /><br />As U.S. air strikes continued, President Obama warned he will not allow jihadists to carve out a ‘caliphate’ straddling Syria and Iraq;</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfqENAfF1okTZIKX86QTdiLTV_ImSvFwhI3S-Cy-oo3otXG5po4xwOL_hPszW1cRRftgy5NDC4NGM7LdllqTtwcj2WztRm1BFIAKgB_0Pf-tgxslBNyp5X8D_Dim4F14LxkOEMH6rONgYJ/s1600/1407625922717_wps_17_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfqENAfF1okTZIKX86QTdiLTV_ImSvFwhI3S-Cy-oo3otXG5po4xwOL_hPszW1cRRftgy5NDC4NGM7LdllqTtwcj2WztRm1BFIAKgB_0Pf-tgxslBNyp5X8D_Dim4F14LxkOEMH6rONgYJ/s1600/1407625922717_wps_17_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Lifted: This child, too weary to make the journey off of the barren mountainside, must be carried</i><br /><br />Islamic State fanatics kidnapped hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35;<br /><br />Hundreds of desperate refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar scrambled to board a single helicopter laden with food and water – while 5,000 escaped down a new ‘safe’ route;</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XlJCqIu1ahHj57O3vsQUqD-kavlrlZ-M7NP9I0NFY1ly2cUiGttUakjN6eKmw6D1okFJpCCD7Y-_CWCn0PBUXRZ4_FP2280-HhUzcs1uTPFoaKKq3Oh8sMIAn-nyuMB0QfWRGW-OdV2c/s1600/1407625875532_wps_16_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XlJCqIu1ahHj57O3vsQUqD-kavlrlZ-M7NP9I0NFY1ly2cUiGttUakjN6eKmw6D1okFJpCCD7Y-_CWCn0PBUXRZ4_FP2280-HhUzcs1uTPFoaKKq3Oh8sMIAn-nyuMB0QfWRGW-OdV2c/s1600/1407625875532_wps_16_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Wide-eyed: A Yazidi child, who has just been fed by a Peshmerga rescuer, stares into a camera lens</i><br /><br />The UK sent two aircraft to help with the relief operation and promised further air-drops;<br /><br />IS seized control of the vital Mosul Dam which supplies water and power to millions of Iraqis. There were fears its destruction would unleash a 65ft wave that would overwhelm Mosul and even cause flooding in Baghdad.<br /><br />The Islamic State militants have already imposed a medieval-style Islamic caliphate on a slice of Iraq and Syria the size of Britain after seizing Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, in June.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWkcyW7zz0c7zkAvGkxRruuYNPImrq4M9-rGAl8UK6T7vPHPFt18uwJDoEqUwFyYrnzV82jtAo-JYzOEUlbOj7UUbljrQAYZAurm6MuVryCUsL_evwbChyphenhyphenSGhOkJL8jXNRoJR7cR7SsL0/s1600/1407625930185_wps_18_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWkcyW7zz0c7zkAvGkxRruuYNPImrq4M9-rGAl8UK6T7vPHPFt18uwJDoEqUwFyYrnzV82jtAo-JYzOEUlbOj7UUbljrQAYZAurm6MuVryCUsL_evwbChyphenhyphenSGhOkJL8jXNRoJR7cR7SsL0/s1600/1407625930185_wps_18_MOSUL_IRAQ_AUGUST_9_Thous.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div> </div> </div>

Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: Iraq descends into apocalypse

Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: Iraq descends into apocalypse as Islamic State fanatics seize towns and tell terrified Yazidi 'Be...

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