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Inside Mosul: Satellite imagery reveals ISIS defences By Rudaw 15 hours ago ISIS has erected barriers in the city, satellite imagery reveals. Image: Stratfor ERBIL, Kurdistan Region ? Satellite imagery of Mosul has revealed ISIS preparations in the city, including razing an entire area and erecting barriers in the city. Around Mosul airport, ISIS appears to have cleared all structures and erected a string of barriers to the north, according to satellite imagery published by Stratfor. The geopolitical intelligence company theorized that the area had been cleared “to ensure clear visibility of approaching forces.” The imagery published by Stratfor shows...

Of the 31 states that have declared their opposition to taking in Syrian refugees, one state, Kentucky, has a specific reason to be wary of the background check process: previously two Iraqi refugees who settled in Bowling Green turned out to be al Qaeda-linked terrorists with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, an ABC News investigation found. In the wake of the Kentucky case, the U.S. halted the refugee program for Iraqis for six months, a fact the Obama administration did not disclose to Congress at the time, officials told ABC News in the 2013 investigation.

NORTHERN IRAQ – On the Western side of Mosul, lies a forgotten front crucial to choking off ISIS' lifeline to Syria. Fox News recently made the eight hour trip west from Mosul to the front outside the devastated city of Sinjar and found a small outpost where a handful of men hold off near-daily attacks from ISIS fighters. One soldier manning the post was David Shumock, a 62-year-old Floridian and former U.S. Air Forces pararescueman. The American fights side-by-side with the Kurdish Peshmerga, and serves as medic and trainer to his comrades, as well. Shumock has called the dusty, makeshift,...

Kirkuk Gov. Najmaldin Karim and Peshmerga fighter Ako Rahman (Photo courtesy of Gov. Karim's office) After the ground offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS was launched in mid-October, Islamic State terrorists attacked Kirkuk, Iraq.Nearly 90 civilians and Peshmerga were killed by ISIS in the surprise counterattack Oct. 21, which included suicide bombers and gunmen targeting police stations and a city power plant.But the death toll could have been higher if one Kurd and his armored BMW hadn't stepped in.Ako Rahman, a member of the Peshmerga’s 116th Brigade in Tuz, volunteered to plunge into the fighting to save more than 70...

Iraqi special forces recaptured six districts of eastern Mosul on Friday, a military statement said, expanding the army's foothold in the Islamic State stronghold a day after its leader told his jihadist followers there could be no retreat. An officer in the elite Counter Terrorism Service said CTS troops had launched a major operation against the militants, who are now almost surrounded in their last major urban stronghold in Iraq. CTS special forces took over the neighborhoods of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama, the statement said, inflicting heavy losses on the militant fighters and raising the Iraqi flag...

ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has expressed confidence in victory, "This raging battle and total war, and the great jihad that the state of Islam is fighting today only increases our firm belief, God willing, and our conviction that all this is a prelude to victory," He also called on the group's suicide fighters to "turn the nights of the unbelievers into days, to wreak havoc in their land and make their blood flow as rivers" Baghdadi told ISIL's fighters to "unleash the fire of their anger" on Turkish troops... "Turkey today entered your range of action and the aim...

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Donald Trump’s favorability rating is sky-high here, where citizens are paying surprisingly close attention to the U.S. election and see the developer and political novice as the clear choice for the White House. In dozens of interviews FoxNews.com conducted in various cities across the country this month – with Iraqis from different religions and walks of life – the overwhelming majority support Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Many believe Trump would be tough on terror, and blame Clinton – at least in part – for policies that have destabilized much of the Middle East. "America should...

Archbishop Yohanna Petros Mouche of Mosul (L) gives communion as he leads a mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception on October 30, 2016 in the town of Qaraqosh, 30 kms east of Mosul Iraqi forces retook Qaraqosh from the Islamic State group days earlier, as part of a massive offensive to wrest back the country's second city Mosul."After two years and three months in exile, I just celebrated the Eucharist in the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception the Islamic State wanted to destroy," Yohanna Petros Mouche, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, said."But in my heart it was...

Iraqi Shia militias have launched an offensive to the west of Mosul in an operation intended to tighten the noose around Islamic State’s Iraq stronghold. But the move has alarmed Turkey and could inflame tensions in the mainly Sunni area A spokesman for the Shia militias, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, said thousands of fighters “started operations [on Saturday] morning to clean up the hotbeds of Daesh [Islamic State] in the western parts of Mosul”. The militias aim to capture villages west of Mosul and reach the town of Tal Afar, about 35 miles from the city,...

Church bells ring out in the Iraqi town of Bartella for the first time in years. As Iraqi forces continue their offensive against the ISIS-held city of Mosul, reports and images of the re-capturing of a string of villages and towns outside the city have hit the international media. Video aired on France 24 shows a group of Christian militia fighters from Bartella, a town 13 miles east of Mosul, returning home after having been driven out by ISIS two years ago. Their first actions on entering their village? Erecting a cross, ringing the church bells for the first time...

The cross of Jesus is being lifted once more over many parts of Iraq, where for years Islamic State terrorists left a path of death and destruction. As a military campaign to rid the Mosul area of the Islamic state rages on, videos are surfacing of “the people of the cross” reclaiming their homes by raising makeshift wooden crosses over the churches and towns they were once forced to flee out of fear for their lives. The “people of the cross” was the term for Christians used by Islamic terrorists when they beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in February 2015.

Mosul offensive: See latest on Rudaw map By Rudaw 8 hours ago http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mosul-offensive_108839#10/36.3061/42.9924 Dark green: under Peshmerga control Spring green: Peshmerga encircle/battling Red: Under Iraqi forces' control Pink: Iraqi forces encircle/battling

(Photo: Reuters/Social Media Website via Reuters TV)An Islamic State militant holds a gun while standing behind what are said to be Ethiopian Christians in Wilayat Fazzan, in this still image from an undated video made available on a social media website on April 19, 2015. The video purportedly made by Islamic State and posted on social media sites on Sunday appeared to show militants shooting and beheading about 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya. Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of the video but the killings resemble past violence carried out by Islamic State, an ultra-hardline group which...

A renegade sniper has been striking fear into the hearts of ISIS thugs in Mosul — picking them off one-by-one, reports claim. The mysterious marksman — dubbed the “Sniper of Mosul” — is believed to be behind shootings in four separate neighborhoods in Iraq’s second largest city. ISIS UNLEASHES 'HEAVY RESISTANCE' OUTSIDE MOSUL, PENTAGON REPORTS But officials think the resistance fighter could be receiving help from other gunmen, according to the Daily Star.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton slammed her rival Donald Trump on Monday for saying that the week-old effort to re-take the Iraqi city of Mosul from the control of Islamic State was going badly. “He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started,” Clinton said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “He’s proving to the world what it means to have an unqualified commander in chief.” In a tweet on Sunday, Trump, the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election, said the “attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months...

Iraq’s parliament has passed a law forbidding the import, production or selling of alcoholic beverages in a surprise move that angered many in the country’s Christian community who rely on the business. The law, passed late Saturday night, imposes a fine of up to 25 million Iraqi dinars, or $21,000, for anyone violating the ban. But it’s unclear how strictly the law would be enforced, and it could be struck down by the supreme court. Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, but it has always been available in Iraq’s larger cities, mainly from shops run by Christians. Those shops are...

Iraq’s parliament on Saturday voted to ban the sale, import and production of alcohol, in a surprise move likely to anger some minorities but also to please influential religious parties. Proponents of the ban argue that it is justified by the constitution, which prohibits any law contradicting Islam. But some opponents argue that it also violates the same constitution which guarantees the traditions of religious minorities.

The Iraqi and Kurdish armies continue to progress towards Mosul in northern Iraq, and are now a mere 15 kilometers from the city itself. Terrorist group ISIS slaughtered 284 men and boys, then piled their bodies in a mass grave. CNN reported ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi slaughtered 59 senior ISIS captains after they attempted to negotiate withdrawal from Mosul in return for safely escaping the city. About a thousand people were suffered injuries from breathing gases in the Mosul area, after a sulfur factory in the south of the city was set on fire. The fire is assumed to...

Raeda Paulos could hardly conceal her joy when the television inside her cramped trailer showed Iraqi forces raising the national flag over a church in her hometown, a day after it was freed from Islamic State rule. "This is our church, this is where we used to pray!" she exclaimed as she watched the images at a camp for displaced Iraqis in Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital. It was also where her husband, Adil Mateh, hid when the extremists swept into Bartella, a historically Christian town east of Mosul, in the summer of 2014. He had stayed to volunteer at...

At the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Mary Habeck, an adjunct lecturer at John Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (known as SAIS), noted that terrorism has spiked since 2011. She said that today, "the terrorist threat against the U.S. has never been greater." She added, "You have to go back to the Algerian civil war to find" this number of terrorist attacks. Habeck said, "First of all, al-Qaeda and ISIS [known as the Islamic State, or ISIL] have a plan and they’re executing it." "They have created a whole series of campaign plans for each country," Habeck said, and "ISIS inherited...