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A senior Islamic State (ISIS) leader who recruited funds and fighters and procured weapons for the jihadists has been killed in a coalition airstrike in Syria, the Pentagon said Thursday, according to the AFP news agency. The leader was identified as Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi. He was killed in the northern city of Shaddadi on June 16, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement. His brother Ali, an ISIS recruiter and person of interest in the 2012 Benghazi attack, was killed by an airstrike in Iraq a day earlier. The Pentagon said Harzi was "responsible for...

The Obama administration is working quickly to push back against the notion that there is no strategy to defeat Islamic State terrorists, after President Obama’s comments during a press conference in Germany after the G-7 World Leaders Summit. (snip) “The ends are very clear, we’ve said this all along, the goal is to degrade and defeat ISIL and remove them as a threat in the region and around the world,” he said. (The newly minted State Department spokesperson John) Kirby outlined Obama’s effort to train and equip more Iraqi troops to fight ISIS, directing airstrikes against ISIS forces and working...

BEIRUT (AP) — A U.S. official said Wednesday that more than 10,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed by American-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in nine months, offering a body count for a campaign that has yet to blunt their advance. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken's figure came after a Paris conference on how to stop the extremists ended without any new strategy to halt their campaign. It also comes months after the Pentagon dismissed such counts as "simply not a relevant figure" in the fight against the Islamic State group. Meanwhile, the Islamic State group launched a...

In the southern city of Aden, more than 150 airstrikes hit the city's airport, witnesses and security officials said. Houthi rebels and their allies are locked in fierce fighting there against forces loyal to exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Monday's airstrikes also hit airports in the city of Hodeida and the capital, Sanaa, witnesses and officials said. They said other airstrikes targeted Yemen's eastern province of Marib and the Houthi stronghold of Saada. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to talk to journalists. Witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity over fear of reprisals. Iranian-allied...

As the conflict in Yemen intensifies, fully armed Royal Saudi Air Force F-15Cs are caught on video intercepting a civilian Airbus A310. The Mahan Air jet was en route from Iran to Yemen, supposedly on a relief mission to deliver humanitarian aid. Apparently the Saudis didn’t believe that. Iranians claim that proper clearance was acquired for the flight to Yemen via Oman and pilots ignored Saudi radio communications demanding the aircraft land at an alternate airport, one that just so happens to be under Saudi control.

Air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook Yemen on Sunday in some of the most widespread combat since a Saudi-led alliance intervened last month against Iranian-allied Houthi militia who have seized wide areas of the country. There were at least five air strikes on military positions and an area near the presidential palace compound in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa at dawn on Sunday, while warships pounded an area near the port of the southern city of Aden, residents said. "The explosions were so big they shook the house, waking us and our kids up. Life has really become unbearable...

Senior U.S. officials pressed Saudi leaders for fear of making matters worse Senior U.S. officials pressed Saudi leaders in a series of messages to quickly wrap up their air campaign in Yemen for fear of making matters worse, people familiar with the matter said, before Riyadh declared Tuesday it was ending the offensive. Yet on Wednesday, Saudi airstrikes resumed in several parts of the country after Iranian-linked Houthi militants took over a military brigade in the southern city of Taiz, provincial security officials said. There was no sign of peace talks, though the Saudis had said they were shifting to...

Arab news sources reported at week's end that an unidentified jet believed to be Israeli destroyed warehouses in southern Libya that held weapons bought by Iran for Hamas. According to the reports in Al Watan and other news outlets, the warehouses were completely destroyed. The weapons that were inside them had allegedly been purchased by Iran, by means of weapons dealers in Sudan and Chad, and were supposed to be smuggled to Hamas through Egypt, by means of the smuggling tunnels between Sinai ands Gaza.

Iran called for political talks between all parties in Yemen as the Saudi-led coalition on Tuesday extended its campaign of airstrikes against Houthi militants in provinces across the country. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said intervention in Yemen wouldn’t solve the country’s problems and that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies “were putting themselves in a very difficult position” by launching airstrikes. “We believe that the situation in Yemen should be resolved through political means only,” he said in a Monday interview with the Russian state-run news channel Russia Today, the first such Iranian comments since Saudi Arabia began...

On the brink of a new Middle Eastern catastrophe: Saudi Arabia sends war planes into Yemen in a terrifying clash with Iran leaving region at boiling point Religious fissure between Sunni and Shia Muslims erupted into conflict Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels 18 civilians were injured after Saudi warplanes targeted Sana’a in Yemen Britain and America supported the Saudi-led military intervention Coalition deployed 100 fighter jets and 150,000 soldiers to fight in region Truly, it is a terrifying development. The great religious fissure between Sunni and Shia Muslims that dominates the Middle East has erupted into...

Yemen's beleaguered government said Saudi-led airstrikes against its Houthi militia opponents would not last long on the second day of a Gulf Arab-led campaign against the Iranian-allied militia that could escalate a proxy conflict spreading through the region. Warplanes targeted Houthi forces controlling Yemen's capital and their northern heartland on Friday and, in a boost for Riyadh, fellow monarchy Morocco said it would join the rapidly-assembled Sunni Muslim coalition against the Shi'ite Muslim group. Tribes in Yemen's oil producing Marib region said they supported the air campaign, but Houthi forces advanced south despite the airstrikes and Pakistan, named by Saudi...

Tehran: In what may intensify the Yemen crisis, Iran has termed Saudi Arabia's military intervention against the Houthi rebels as “dangerous”, reports said Thursday. Saudi Arabia which had earlier warned to act in the wake of continued advance of Houthis, on Wednesday started conducting air strikes against the rebels which it considers as being supported by rival Iran. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies believe the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are tools for Iran to seize control of Yemen and say they intend to stop the takeover. The Houthis deny they are backed by Iran. Reacting to Saudi strikes,...

US officials confirm to @NBCNews that Saudi Arabia has started bombing rebel positions inside #Yemen. NO indication of troops crossing in.

Saudi Arabia had announced on Wednesday night that it had begun a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official had said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni Government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.

SANAA, Yemen — Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies launched air attacks early Thursday in neighboring Yemen, after Shiite rebels believed backed by Iran swept toward that country’s second-largest city and forced the president to flee. The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, made the announcement Wednesday evening in Washington. He said the operation began at 7 p.m. Eastern time in order “to prevent Yemen from falling into the hands of the Houthis,” the rebels. The operation was an extraordinary development that could plunge Yemen into full-out war. The ambassador said that military forces from several countries...

WASHINGTON -- A senior U.S. official says the U.S. has begun airstrikes in Tikrit in support of a stalled Iraqi ground offensive to retake the city from Islamic State fighters.

The Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday defended the pace of the air war against Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists, warning that escalating bombing raids or sending in more American troops would be a mistake. During a visit to a French aircraft carrier in the Gulf taking part in the air campaign, General Martin Dempsey appealed for "strategic patience" in the fight against the ISIS group in Iraq and Syria, according to AFP. Expanding the air war could risk civilian casualties and play into the hands of ISIS propaganda, he said aboard the Charles de Gaulle....

Thirty-five Egyptian workers were rounded up by terrorists after the Egyptian airstrikes. The Libya Herald reported: There are reports that at least 35 Egyptians have been kidnapped in what appears to be a round-up at various locations in areas controlled by Ansar Al-Sharia and IS. The Libya Herald has been told that starting this morning, in the wake of the attack on Derna by warplanes from Egypt, Egyptian nationals, many of them it seems farm workers, have been picked up by gunmen. The first reports were that seven men had been seized, but by mid-afternoon, it was being said that...

President Sisi had vowed to ‘avenge the criminal killings’ after release of video purporting to show killing of 21 Christians, believed to be kidnapped Egyptians Egypt reported that its war planes had struck Isis targets in Libya, shortly after President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi vowed revenge for the release by Isis-affiliated militants of a video of a mass killing of Christians. A spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command announced the strikes on state radio Monday, marking the first time Cairo had publicly acknowledged taking military action in neighbouring Libya. The statement said the warplanes targeted weapons caches and training camps...

Jordanian fighter jets struck Islamic State targets for a third straight day Saturday, as the militants' claim that a Jordanian airstrike killed an American hostage remained unconfirmed. Jordan launched the raids to avenge the killing of a Jordanian pilot the Islamic State group captured in Syria in December. The United Arab Emirates said Saturday that it ordered a squadron of F-16 fighter planes to Jordan to help with the airstrikes. State news agency WAM carried the announcement. Both Jordan and the UAE are members of the U.S.-led coalition attacking the militants in their captured territory in Iraq and Syria. Coalition...