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At least 17 civilians have been killed in an air strike on a basement shelter in south-western Syria, activists say, as warplanes pound rebel-held areas. A monitoring group reported that five children were among those who died when aircraft identified as Russian bombed Musayfira, east of the city of Deraa. Russia is backing an army offensive in the region, which borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. More than 90 civilians are said to have been killed since it began 11 days ago. The provinces of Deraa and Quneitra had been relatively calm for almost a year because of a...

A British Muslim of Pakistani origin, known as a "master bomb maker" for the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group, triggered the US laptop ban on flights last year, a former MI6 spy has revealed in a new autobiography. According to 'The Sunday Times', Aimen Dean a former al Qaeda explosives expert recruited by MI6 to infiltrate UK Islamist extremist circles writes in 'Nine Lives' that he first met 41-year-old Hamayun Tariq from the West Midlands region of England as an undercover agent in 2004. Tariq, who used the alias 'Abu Muslim', evaded the UK authorities twice to travel abroad where...

Press Statement Heather Nauert Department Spokesperson Washington, DC June 14, 2018 The President has authorized the United States Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State to release approximately $6.6 million for the continuation of the vital, life-saving operations of the Syrian Civil Defense, more commonly known as the White Helmets, and the UNÂ’s International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM). The United States Government strongly supports the White Helmets who have saved more than 100,000 lives since the conflict began, including victims of AssadÂ’s chemical weapons attacks. These heroic first responders have one of the most dangerous jobs...

The U.S. will take advantage of the temporary cease-fire with the Taliban declared in Afghanistan to train its firepower on ISIS Khorasan and al Qaeda remnants, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels Friday. “Should the Taliban take full advantage of the cease-fire in the best interest of the Afghan people, then many of the surveillance assets we have overhead could be reoriented to ISIS-K, to al-Qaeda, and other foreign terrorists who have no business being in Afghanistan in the first place,” Mattis told reporters. “And obviously, those forces that would have been...

A Navy SEAL who led a rescue operation to retrieve a fallen teammate on a treacherous mountain peak in Afghanistan will receive the Medal of Honor, the White House announced Monday. Retired Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt K. Slabinski will receive the nation’s highest military award on May 24, the White House said. Slabinski is credited with rallying a team of SEALs for a counter-assault on al-Qaeda fighters, who had pinned down another SEAL, Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, during a firefight in the early morning hours of March 4, 2002. Roberts had been ejected from a Chinook...

A Syrian-born German national accused of helping to plan the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States has been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria, a senior Kurdish commander told AFP on Wednesday. “Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been arrested by Kurdish security forces in northern Syria and is now being interrogated,” the top official said, but did not provide further details. Zammar, who is in his mid-fifties, has been accused of recruiting some of the September 11 hijackers. He was detained in Morocco in December 2001 in an operation involving CIA agents, and was handed over to the Syrian...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) &#8212; A Muslim charity leader linked by prosecutors to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was sentenced yesterday to more than 11 years in federal prison for defrauding donors.</p> <p>Enaam Arnaout, 41, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen who said he has met bin Laden but opposes terrorism, was calm as the sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon.</p>

A district court judge ruled the Syrian regime — and specifically its ruler, President Bashar al-Assad — are liable for the murders of three Americans by al-Qaeda because of the regime’s massive support for the terrorist group’s branch in Iraq. In addition to those three Americans, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqis and others have been killed or injured due to Assad’s sponsorship of al-Qaeda and other jihadists. The lawsuit was filed by the families of Laurence Michael Foley, a U.S. diplomat in Jordan assassinated by al-Qaeda in 2002; Staff Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, killed in Iraq in 2004...

Five men from a small French town that supplied around 20 jihadists to the war in Syria, most of whom never returned, went on trial Thursday accused of a terrorist conspiracy. Lunel, a town of 26,000 people outside the coastal Mediterranean city of Montpellier, became a symbol of the jihadist fervor sweeping parts of France when a group of friends slipped out of the country to Syria in 2013 and 2014. At least eight members of the group are believed to have been killed in Syria, with another seven missing in the war-torn country. The outsize number of recruits from...

It is a terrible thing to be a people without a state or province to call its own. Just ask the Kurds, who now find themselves under the hell of Turkey's ruthless ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who may as well be one of the Turkish sultans of the past. For he has unleashed a campaign of genocidal fury against people of his ever-expanding realm. And no one can say the world hasn't been given fair warning of his genocidal intentions. At latest report, his troops and some Syrian puppets under his control were driving farther and farther east, planning to...

EXCLUSIVE – After he escaped from Al Qaeda in Syria, American photojournalist Matt Schrier investigated his own kidnapping and uncovered what he describes as a pattern of "betrayal" by FBI agents handling his case. Schrier is now asking hard questions of former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who now leads the special counsel Russia probe, and former FBI Director James Comey who was fired by President Trump in May 2017. "Not every FBI agent is bad. Some are very good people," Schrier told Fox News. "But the ones that are bad need to be weeded out. And the ones who let...

"The polonium trail started on 16 October 2006 when Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun in London. ..." "When Lugovoi and Kovtun's movements were mapped against the sites of polonium contamination, there was an exact match. The evidence of guilt was strong. In May 2007, the then Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald announced that Andrei Lugovoi was to be charged with murder and his extradition would be sought from Russia. Kovtun was charged in 2010. ..." Prof Norman Dombey, a physicist who has a deep knowledge of Russian nuclear sites, gave evidence at the public inquiry. Dombey says there is...

In the series of Abbottabad files, discovered in Osama bin Laden's house which was raided by the US military in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan in 2011, one document has exposed particularly sensitive information. It reveals that al-Qaeda targeted “common” and “ignorant” recruits worldwide, as stated by the group’s Libyan military commander Abu Yahya al-Libi. Abu Yahya was al-Qaeda’s second-in-command after Ayman al-Zawahri and was killed in a US drone attack in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. The document dated Monday, 29 March, 2010 was an internal bulletin sent to al-Qaeda members. It read: “Warning: To be published among the media,...

Marty Kiar and Barbara Sharief embrace groups linked to terror and bigotry. ... both Broward officials made videos of themselves voicing statements in support of Emerge USA. While the group has an innocuous – even Patriotic sounding – name, Emerge USA is actually a radical Muslim organization with links to terrorism and bigotry. ... Emerge USA is the brainchild of Khurrum Wahid, a South Florida attorney who has built his name on representing high profile terrorists. His clients include members of al-Qaeda and financiers of the Taliban. Wahid previously served as a legal advisor for the Council on American-Islamic Relations...

US President Donald Trump today unveiled a US$ 4 trillion annual budget for the fiscal 2019 beginning October 1, proposing US$ 256 million in civilian assistance and US$ 80 million in military aid to Pakistan. The proposal of aid to Pakistan comes weeks after Trump administration suspended nearly US$ 2 billion in security assistance to Islamabad due to its inability to take action against terrorist groups operating from its soil. The White House has said it would consider lifting the freeze if it sees action by Pakistan against terrorist groups. The budgetary proposal says that the military aid depends on...

The United Nations has issued a report in which it states that al-Qaeda's global terror network remains "remarkably resilient" as ISIS quickly heads towards defeat. In some regions, the reports argues, al-Qaeda now poses more of a threat than ISIS. The report, sent to the UN Security Council, says that AQAP -- al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen -- has now become the communications hub for the entire organization. "Al-Qaeda affiliates remain the dominant terror threat in some regions, such as Somalia and Yemen, a fact demonstrated by a continuous stream of attacks and foiled operations," the report...

A Minnesota woman whom prosecutors said set fires at a Minnesota university out of anger because of U.S. military actions overseas was charged with terrorism Wednesday after she allegedly tried to assist a terrorist organization last year. Tnuza Jamal Hassan, 19, was charged in federal court for attempting to provide material support to Al Qaeda, lying to the FBI and arson, Fox 9 reported. She was initially arrested Jan. 17 after she set eight fires in seven buildings on the St. Catherine University campus in St. Paul. The Minneapolis woman admitted to investigators that she started the fires...

The United States Department of Justice says a resident of Oklahoma was arrested for fraud, lying to the FBI and for not disclosing that he attended an al Qaeda training camp. Naif Abdulaziz M. Alfallaj, 34, is a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a current resident of Weatherford, Oklahoma. The FBI says he attended an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in late 2000. "Based on a criminal complaint signed in the Western District of Oklahoma and unsealed [Tuesday], Alfallaj was taken into custody by the FBI without incident on February 5," the announcement said. "A grand jury returned a...

Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Saturday for the downing of a Russian warplane in northern Syria, apparently using a surface-to-air missile to target the aircraft. The pilot was killed after he ejected and exchanged gunfire with militants on the ground, the Russian Defense Ministry and a monitoring group said. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a powerful rebel alliance that publicly split from al-Qaeda last year, said it had used a shoulder-fired weapon to down the Su-25 fighter jet as it flew low over the opposition-held town of Saraqeb.

A Russia-led initiative involving China and Pakistan that seeks a political settlement to Afghanistan’s civil war has the makings of a diplomatic alliance that could supplant the United States as the leading power in Central Asia. The grouping was unveiled after a third meeting in Moscow late last month and may be expanded to include regional powers Iran and Turkey, which formed a separate tripartite grouping on Syria with Russia in talks preceding the parleys on Afghanistan. The Afghan government reacted angrily to the Moscow meeting, to which it had not been invited, because the meeting proposed the relaxation of...