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Pictures emerging of a Syrian soccer stadium turned into a coliseum of death by Islamic State terrorists are revealing the extent of the shocking horrors that once took place inside, as civilians reportedly were beheaded, tied down with iron cables and tortured by exercise machines.

Islamic State (ISIS) fighters are feeling the heat from intensified coalition airstrikes to such an extent that they have resorted to shaving their beards and seizing civilian homes in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa for fear of being targeted by armed drones and other coalition aircraft. The information came from residents who managed to flee Raqqa and fled to the Turkish city of Urfa, NBC News reported. "If your family is in a house, they take your house and they put their family in there," said Abu Baraa, 19, who fled last month from Raqqa to Turkey. "They've started taking...

Islamic State fighters drove Syrian government forces from a town in the west of the country on Sunday, as fighting looked set to intensify despite a flurry of international diplomacy and talks between regional rivals. The jihadists' advance came even as Russian warplanes and Syrian forces supported by them stepped up assaults against insurgents in west and northwest Syria, and the United States separately sought to increase pressure on Islamic State. The fighting tempered any expectation of progress towards a political solution to the four-year civil war, with warring sides and their foreign backers refusing to back down in a...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters have seized the last major oilfield under Syrian government control during battles over a vast central desert zone, a group monitoring the conflict said on Monday. The Jazal field was now shut down and clashes were ongoing east of Homs, with casualties reported on both sides, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, without giving dates or more details. Syria's army said it had repulsed an attack in the same area but did not mention Jazal or comment on how much of the country's battered energy infrastructure remained under its sway. It said...

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syrian rebels appealed for U.S. airstrikes to counter a new offensive by the Islamic State in the northern province of Aleppo that could reshape the battlefield in Syria. The surprise assault, launched over the weekend, opened a new front in the multi-pronged war being waged by the extremist group across Iraq and Syria, and it underscored the Islamic State’s capacity to catch its enemies off guard. The push — which came on the heels of the miltants’ capture of the Syrian city of Palmyra and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month — took them...

American intelligence analysts have identified seven buildings in downtown Raqqa in eastern Syria as the main headquarters of the Islamic State. But the buildings have gone untouched during the 10-month allied air campaign. And just last week, convoys of heavily armed Islamic State fighters paraded triumphantly through the streets of the provincial capital Ramadi in western Iraq after forcing Iraqi troops to flee. They rolled on unscathed by coalition fighter-bombers. American and allied warplanes are equipped with the most precise aerial arsenal ever fielded. But American officials say they are not striking significant — and obvious — Islamic State targets...

The ancient city of Palmyra, Syria fell to ISIS late Wednesday. Syrian television is airing nationalist songs over nature scenes.

Don’t look now but ISIS fighters are just a few short miles away from Bashar al-Assad’s Presidential Palace in Syria after taking control of the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus where some 18,000 are trapped in what the UN calls a “beyond inhumane” situation. The camp, which has been under siege by the Assad regime for years came under attack by ISIS earlier this month who reports indicate may be working alongside al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm al-Nusra in what would be a break with recent precedent. Some Palestinian factions — who, alongside the Free Syria Army are battling ISIS for control...

US President Barack Obama will personally sign off on any airstrike targeting Islamic State militants in Syria, Julian Barnes and Carol Lee of The Wall Street Journal report. With the high level of personal control in Syria, "Obama can better ensure the operation remain focused on his main goal for that part of the campaign: weakening the militants' hold on territory in neighboring Iraq." The U.S. has conducted 174 strikes in Iraq and is preparing Islamic State (aka ISIS) targets in Syria. Obama has sent hundreds of special operations advisors to Iraq to assist Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish peshmerga...

Since the United States started getting serious about military action against ISIS, politicians and policymakers have worried that such an initiative would play into the hands of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In his speech last night, President Obama was careful to stress that strikes against the group would not in any way imply that the United States was allied with the Syrian government. “In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its own people—a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost,” the president said. Instead, he said, Washington would step up...

The United States has begun surveillance flights over Syria, part of an effort to gather intelligence that will help the decision whether to launch airstrikes against ISIS, a U.S. official told CNN on Thursday. The Pentagon is refining its targets based on improved intelligence-gathering, including the surveillance flights now under way over Syria, a Defense official said.

Islamic State militants capture key Syrian air base - giving them open road to the sea and massive store of weapons and ammunition. Islamic State militants have seized a major Syrian air base, wiping out the last government stronghold in a province dominated by jihadists. The extremists won a week-long battle today to capture the sprawling Tabqa base 25 miles from their stronghold in Raqqa, reportedly killing dozens of soldiers in the process. The base was reportedly one of the military's largest facilities in the region, with several warplane squadrons, helicopters, tanks, artillery and ammunition. Its capture is a huge...

Pentagon warns new effort will require taking the fight beyond Iraq and into neighboring Syria.The beheading of journalist James Foley has prompted American officials to begin working to knit together a broader international campaign to combat the extremists of the Islamic State, an effort that the Pentagon warned will require taking the fight beyond Iraq and into neighboring Syria.The Obama administration has indicated it is prepared to continue selective airstrikes against the extremists inside Iraq, where they have seized significant swaths of territory. But Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the Islamic...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned passenger flights from overflying Syria yesterday. Bloomberg News reported on the FAA’s announcement: “The ongoing armed conflict and volatile security environment in Syria poses a serious potential threat to civil aviation,” the agency said. “Armed extremist groups in Syria are known to be equipped with a variety of anti-aircraft weapons which have the capability to threaten civilian aircraft.” Citing a “respected international research group,” the Associated Press reported that the terror groups may have “hundreds” of the portable anti-aircraft weapons. The report was released just hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice...

Erbil, Asharq Al-Awsat—Leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and self-proclaimed caliph Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi fled the northern city of Mosul to return to Syrian territory after the US authorized airstrikes on ISIS positions in Iraq, a Kurdish official said. In comments to Asharq Al-Awsat, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman Saeed Mamo Zinni said: “Caliph of the Islamic State Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi left Mosul for Syria a few days ago.” “According to our intelligence sources, Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi traveled to Syria as part of a convoy of 30 Hummer vehicles after fearing being targeted by US airstrikes,” Zinni said. He...

...Through a significant escalation against the Syrian regime and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga beginning in mid-July, ISIS forces have made large advances in a campaign to consolidate internal control within the Caliphate. The Syrian regime’s Regiment 121, Division 17, and Brigade 93 military bases have fallen to ISIS, and indicators have emerged of an upcoming ISIS attack against the Tabqa military airbase southwest of ar-Raqqa City. ISIS has also seized the Peshmerga stronghold at Sinjar in the west of Iraq’s Ninewa Province, successfully consolidating its internal line of control across the Jazeera desert into Syria. The breath of these linked...

JERUSALEM – Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials. The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq. The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any...

The spokesman for Iraq's human rights ministry says hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by militants from the Islamic State group. Kamil Amin says the women are below the age of 35 and some are being held in schools in Iraq's second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.

It may well be that ISIS is one of at least two too-clever-by-half operations masterminded by our enemies. At the beginning, ISIS spun off from Al Qaeda because, we were told, Zawahari was too moderate for them. AQ didn’t slaughter enough, didn’t crucify enough, wasn’t psychotic enough for their taste.

The latest victims of the Islamic State campaign of terror in Syria and Iraq have been revealed in a shocking new set of photos published online by the jihadist group's media arm. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Sunni tribesmen were from Shaitat, near Deir ez Zor, which has long been considered a key strategic target for the Islamic State owing to the eastern province’s considerable oil revenue. Rounded up and marched into the desert, they are made to kneel on the dusty grouind before being systematically shot in the head. Others aren't so lucky. One image shows...