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The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group's official media wing has released a statement claiming credit for the deadly shooting attack at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub on behalf of the jihadist organization. In a statement published in the last few minutes, the al-Amaq agency - which functions as ISIS's propaganda and media wing - claimed that "the attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter." 50 people were murdered in the worst shooting spree in American history, and a further 53...

ISIS has trained at least 400 of its fighters to attack Europe in a series of waves, Associated Press has found. The attacks would be similar to those in Paris and Belgium, and timed to cause the most possible destruction and chaos across the continent. The ranks are made up of terrorists from a range of origins who undergo training in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the former Soviet Union. After completing their training, they will work semi-autonomously as they infiltrate Europe and prepare their attacks. Many of these would come from the 5,000 Europeans who have already traveled to Syria...

In an unprecedented statement Palestinian Authority (PA) Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki explicitly rejected the possibility of renewed direct negotiations with Israel - ever. While visiting Japan on Monday, Malki pledged to never again engage with Israel in direct negotiations towards a final settlement. “We will never go back and sit again in direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.” In what may have been a response to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s statements on Monday to US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power calling for a resumption of direct talks with the PA, Malki both rejected the idea of an invitation to return to the...

The United States strongly denied on Wednesday a Russian claim that the Turkish government buys smuggled Syrian oil from the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group. A State Department spokesman admitted that there was a longstanding issue of oil being illegally transported to Turkey from wells in what is now ISIS territory. But he said the tanker trucks are operated by private smugglers, not directly by the ISIS terror group, and Turkey is working with its NATO allies to seal its border. "We reject, outright, the premise that the Turkish government is in league with ISIL to smuggle oil across its...

Too funny for transcription.

In April 2014 teenagers Samra Kesinovic and her friend Sabina Selimovic travelled from their Vienna homes to join ISIS in Syria, where it is believed they both married Jihadists. The two young women became "poster girls" for the Islamic State after appearing in images on social media websites showing them carrying AK-47 rifles surrounded by armed men. But their glamorous online persona appears to have been little more than a show. Now, reports have emerged that Kesinovic has reportedly been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape. Previously, reports quoting the girls’ friends stated that Ms Kesinovic...

A mass grave believed to hold the remains of dozens of Yazidi women executed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group was found Saturday in northern Iraq, officials said. The grave, which has not yet been excavated, is located on the edge of the town of Sinjar, which was captured from ISIS this week in an operation led by Kurdish security forces and backed by US-led air strikes. The area is infamous for a brutal ISIS campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape against Yazidis, a minority group whose faith the jihadists consider heretical. The grave contains the bodies of some 78...

Bataclan Theater in Paris, the concert hall where most of the bloodshed was seen on Saturday as 82 out of a total of more than 128 people were murdered in six coordinated attacks claimed by Islamic State (ISIS), was owned by Jews. In the attack, four terrorists armed with assault rifles shouting "Allahu akbar" (Allah is greater) stormed in during a concert by the US rock group Eagles of Death Metal. They executed hostages one by one. Three of them blew up their explosive belts in suicide attacks as anti-terror police ended the siege at 12:30 a.m. local time, while...

A Syrian passport found by police at the scene of the mass shooting in a Paris concert hall belonged to an asylum seeker who registered on a Greek island in October, a Greek minister said Saturday. "We confirm that the Syrian passport holder came through the Greek island of Leros on October 3 where he was registered under EU rules," said a statement issued by Nikos Toskas, the minister for citizen protection. French police said the document was found "near the body of one of the attackers" in the investigation into the main attack of Friday's carnage, at the Bataclan...

Former UK Chief of Staff Lord Dannatt has called for a ground invasion against Islamic State (ISIS) on Monday, claiming that the cultural and security impact of the group calls for an international armed effort to expand beyond the current airstrike campaign. "The capture and likely destruction of the 2,000-year-old Roman colonnades at Palmyra, Syria, by Islamic State constitutes a potential cultural crime on a gigantic scale," Dannatt wrote in the Daily Mail. "These majestic ruins represent thousands of years of human civilisation and there is now surely no doubting just how great a threat IS [ISIS - ed.] poses...