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David Eubank rescues girl clinging to dead mother

The number of Christians in Iraq has decreased from 1.5 million 15 years ago to a couple of hundred thousand today. As the battle of Mosul comes to an end and Islamic State (ISIS) about to be defeated in Iraq, rapid action from the international community needs to be taken to safeguard the existence of Christians in the country. This is their last stand. The battle of Mosul, Iraq’s second city, is in its final stages. Predictions are that the city might be fully liberated before the end of Ramadan. While, due to a decade of persecution of “infidels” in...

US-backed Iraqi forces have pushed deeper into the last pocket of Mosul controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), as the battle for the city approaches an end after seven months of gruelling combat. ISIL fighters have now been dislodged from all but a handful of districts in the western half of Mosul including the Old City, where the group is expected to make its last stand, taking advantage of narrow streets and its dense population.

The Dominican friar has stayed a step ahead of militants bent on the destruction of evidence of pre-Islamic history.At an undisclosed location, Dominican priest Fr. Najeeb Michaeel is painstakingly digitizing his collection of ancient manuscripts documenting Iraq’s cultural heritage, including its Christian history, according to a report at the website Circa.com.Scanning these texts, the oldest of which date from the 7th century and which include manuscripts on Christian and Muslim spirituality, may be the only way to save these records of Iraq’s history from destruction by Islamic State groups. As part of former Mesopotamia, Iraq has a rich Christian tradition....

WASHINGTON -- An Iraqi unit with U.S. and Australian advisers was hit by an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) mustard agent, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. Twenty-five Iraqis required treatment but none of the advisers were injured Sunday, Martin reports. Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told the Associated Press that six soldiers suffered breathing problems from Sunday’s attack and were treated in a field clinic. An investigation was then launched to determine what type of gas was used. The attack marked the second chemical attack of its kind in several days. It occurred one day after...

An Iraqi military officer says Islamic State militants have launched a gas attack in a newly-liberated area in western Mosul.

"Iraqi security forces continue to progress as they liberate the western side of Mosul," U.S. Army Major General Joseph Martin, head of ground forces for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, said

Iraqi military leaders have halted their push to recapture west Mosul from Islamic State as international outrage grew over the civilian toll from airstrikes that killed at least 150 people in a single district of the city. The attack on the Mosul Jadida neighbourhood is thought to have been one of the deadliest bombing raids for civilians since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble on Saturday, more than a week after the bombs landed, when the US-led coalition confirmed that its aircraft had targeted Isis fighters in the area. They carried...

Chaldean Catholic church whose image announced the fall of Mosul in 2014 has been liberated. When so-called Islamic State (ISIS) swept through Iraq in June 2014, a ‘before-and-after’ picture of the Church of Our Mother of Perpetual help in Mosul emerged showing the crucifix topping the building replaced by the black banner of the terror group. Reports at the time detailed how the Christian community desperately fled the city as ISIS rapidly imposed its rule there. Now, liberating forces have revealed how the Perpetual Help became a central location for that rule. According to emerging reports, ISIS fighters quickly identified...

<p>Washington -- Foreign ministers from 68 countries meet in Washington on Wednesday to agree on the next steps to defeat Islamic State, the first such gathering of the U.S-led military coalition since the election of President Donald Trump in November.</p>

“…The Islamic State has become especially adept at turning various makes and models of cars into vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs). Armor is fixed to large and small vehicles alike in order to make it more difficult for Iraqi and American forces to destroy them before they reach their target. The US has been able to take out dozens of VBIEDs before their drivers could complete their missions. But the video showcases some of the jihadists’ more successful bombings. In one instance, one VBIED is driven into a security checkpoint and then a second snakes its way through an apartment...

Iraqi government forces battling Islamic State for Mosul took control of a main bridge over the Tigris river on Wednesday and advanced towards the mosque where the group’s leader declared a caliphate in 2014... troops fought street-by-street against an enemy using suicide car bombs, mortar and sniper fire, and grenade-dropping drones to defend what was once their main stronghold... troops on Wednesday took control over the Dor al-Sikak and al-Nafut areas, site of the militants’ main weapons stores in Mosul just west of the Old City.

Syrian Accountability Act to Combat Terrorism By Jim Hauser Talon News December 18, 2003WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week, President Bush signed into law H.R. 1828, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The legislation calls on the president to impose sanctions on Syria to discourage support for international terrorist groups and the occupation of Lebanon.The bill demands that Syria end support for terrorism; halt the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) along with medium- and long-range missiles; and withdraw the roughly 20,000 troops it has deployed in Lebanon.It also calls on Syria to "enter into...

“ISIS is trapped. … Any of the fighters left in Mosul, they’re going to die there,” Brett McGurk said in a conference in Baghdad late Sunday... “So we are very committed to not just defeating them in Mosul, but making sure these guys cannot escape,” McGurk stated.

One archeologist was quoted as saying that ISIS's act of “destruction has actually led us to a fantastic find.” A find that shows the Bible to be correct once again. ...snip So here's how it happened. In 2014, ISIS destroyed a site believed by many to be the burial site of Jonah in Mosul because...that's what ISIS does. They destroy. For some reason they went to town on the place, even using dynamite to destroy it. But a few weeks ago, the area was liberated by Iraqi forces from ISIS. But because the site was blown to smithereens, what was...

Iraqi paramilitary forces announced Saturday that they had discovered a mass grave at Badush prison near Mosul containing the remains of hundreds of people executed by ISIS. ISIS reportedly killed up to 600 people after seizing the jail in 2014, and was also said to have held hundreds of kidnapped women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority at the facility. The Iraqi military said that forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi -- an umbrella group of pro-government forces that are dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias -- were among the units that recaptured the prison from the extremists.

Walking down a series of rubble-strewn streets. Almost every house pocked with bullet holes, windows shattered and twisted chunks of metal and contorted chassis: the remains of suicide car bombs by ISIS fighters,.

Award-winning war correspondent Magda Gad has tweeted from Mosul that the war-torn city is safer for women and more peaceful than Sweden’s capital city. “There’s no law on the Islamic veil here, and it’s safer for a lone woman to be outside than Stockholm,” the war journalist said on Twitter. Asked by another user to clarify whether she “feel[s] safer outdoors in Iraq than Stockholm”, the Expressen reporter — who has been covering the fight against Islamic State in Iraq since June last year, said “Yep”. Gad said Stockholm on a weekend evening is “much worse than any night in Iraq”,...

US and Iraqi officials believe the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has left operational commanders behind with diehard followers to fight the battle of Mosul, and is now hiding out in the desert, focusing mainly on his own survival.

In A series of lightning advances over the past few days, Iraq’s army has seized control of most of western Mosul, the last redoubt of Islamic State (IS) in the country. On March 7th, a day that may have marked a turning point, army units took Mosul’s main government complex... “They are in full collapse now,” he said. “When an army breaks it happens very quickly. Within a week or two, this will all be over.” ...American officers working closely with the Iraqi army estimate that as few as 500 IS fighters now remain in the city.