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A former Department of Homeland Security agent says that an investigation he was conducting into a fundamentalist Islamic group operating in the U.S. may have helped stop San Bernardino jihadi Syed Farook had the government not shut down his probe. During an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Thursday, Philip Haney said that in 2012 as an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center, he opened an investigation into a Sunni Islamic group called, Tablighi Jamaat, a subset of the fundamentalist Deobandi movement. But Haney said that just a year into the investigation it was shut...

A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict. Labib al Nahhas, foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham, spent a few days in Washington in December, according to four people with direct knowledge of the trip and who spoke on condition of anonymity. His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with...

An Al Qaeda-linked group fighting in Syria has released video of the first American to carry out a suicide attack in the country's civil war, showing him smiling and saying he looked forward to going to heaven. The Nusra Front released the new video late Friday showing American citizen Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, 22, with other fighters before the May 25 attack that targeted several army positions at the same time. Abu-Salha appears smiling in the video and speaks in broken Arabic. "I want to rest in the afterlife, in heaven. There is nothing here and the heart is not resting,"...

Russia's foreign minister said Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, but the U.S. insisted Friday that it only wants Russia to carefully select it targets to avoid hitting civilians and legitimate opposition groups. Sergey Lavrov said that Russia has long insisted that the moderate, U.S.-backed opposition groups should leave the areas occupied by Nusra. He said in televised remarks that Russia and the U.S. have engaged in close dialogue on how to secure a cease-fire in Syria, but added that fighting the Islamic State group and Nusra should be a top...

Russia's foreign minister said Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, but the U.S. insisted Friday that it only wants Russia to carefully select it targets to avoid hitting civilians and legitimate opposition groups. Sergey Lavrov said that Russia has long insisted that the moderate, U.S.-backed opposition groups should leave the areas occupied by Nusra. He said in televised remarks that Russia and the U.S. have engaged in close dialogue on how to secure a cease-fire in Syria, but added that fighting the Islamic State group and Nusra should be a top...

Al-Qaeda militants swept through a rebel-held town in northern Syria in a display of dominance Sunday, arresting U.S.-backed fighters and looting weapons stores belonging to the Free Syrian Army. The militants belonging to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front along with allied jihadists have been moving to exert their authority over rebel-held areas in Idlib province since a partial ceasefire to the country’s five-year conflict took effect two weeks ago, extinguishing patriotic demonstrations and sidelining nationalist militias. …

Spanish authorities seized 20,000 military-style uniforms being sent to fighters of the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, the Interior Ministry announced Thursday. Police conducted a counterterrorism operation last month in the port cities of Valencia and Algeciras, where officers opened three shipping containers and found the uniforms along with other military accessories, the ministry said. The uniforms were mixed with “secondhand clothing” to avoid raising suspicion while passing through customs. The ministry said in a statement that police arrested seven people on suspicion of providing logistical and financial support to ISIS and the Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate...

The woman who took part in the ISIS-inspired San Bernardino massacre is linked to her native country's most notorious radical mosque, American officials believe. Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials. It is unclear currently how law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US have connected Malik to the mosque.

The Obama administration's policy toward Syria and its more than four-year civil war is rapidly becoming a black mark on the president's legacy. And a scathing new report by Peter Baker of The New York Times details the mind-boggling decision by the White House to refuse to accept any responsibility. The blame for the failed US effort to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS "should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place," administration officials told Baker. There are only "four or five" US-trained rebels left fighting...

CBS/AP/August 16, 2015, 8:20 AM Al Qaeda releases abducted U.S.-backed Syrian rebels ....The Nusra Front said at the time it abducted the rebels because they were trained by the U.S. It was also around the time of the announcement by the U.S. and Turkey about their joint effort that the al Qaeda affiliate said they would be withdrawing from the northern border region. The Division 30 statement described Nusra Front fighters as "brothers" and thanked them for the release, saying, "We value this noble step." It said Division 30 is on the "same page with all holy warriors in Syria."..................

The kidnapping of a group of U.S.-trained moderate Syrians moments after they entered Syria last month to confront the Islamic State was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, multiple rebel sources have told McClatchy. The rebels say that the tipoff to al Qaida’s Nusra Front enabled Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration’s plans for confronting the Islamic State.

BAGHDAD — The commander of a group of Syrian fighters trained by the United States has been kidnapped by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, his group said in a statement Thursday. The commander, Nadeem Hassan, and seven of his fighters were taken by the Nusra Front, a rival of the Islamic State in Syria, as they were returning from a meeting in Turkey. A contingent of 54 fighters from Mr. Hassan’s group, known as Division 30, are the only ones who have graduated from a Pentagon program to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in Syria. One the...

Lebanon’s Hezbollah is on the verge of launching an offensive against Syrian rebel groups in the mountainous Qalamoun region straddling the Syria-Lebanon border, north of Damascus. But what was once seen as a relatively minor engagement in the broader Syrian conflict has taken on new significance. After military setbacks in the north and south of the country in the past six weeks, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is desperate for a victory and is depending on his Shia Hezbollah allies to deliver it. Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies badly need to defeat — and to be seen...

Syrian opposition activists say al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, has seized large parts of the northwestern city of Idlib from government forces. ...

Nusra Front is the Sunni Muslim al-Qaida offshoot which is currently fighting the Iranian-backed axis of Bashar Assad and Hezbollah in Syria. Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal. The prominent American newspaper reported that Nusra Front, the Sunni Muslim al-Qaida offshoot which is currently fighting the Iranian-backed axis of Bashar Assad and Hezbollah, "hasn't bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer" along the Golan Heights.

Damascus, Jan 3 (IANS) Intense clashes were raging since Saturday morning between the Syrian troops backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants in Lebanon. According to the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), violent clashes flared up in the area of Flaita, in the western part of al-Qalamoun, in Lebanon, Xinhua reported. Meanwhile, al-Mayadeen TV denied reports that the Nusra fighters managed to storm a Hezbollah position in Flaita, adding that the clashes raged on. No reports of losses, however, have yet emerged. Syrian government troops have been fighting rebel groups and militants since...

The Free Syrian Army is on the wrong side. Here's its bloody track record and disturbing alliances. Video House approves Obama's plan to combat Islamic State in a 273 to 156 vote Demonstrating yet again that we do not have an effective opposition party in the United States right now, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted Wednesday in favor of Barack Obama’s plan to arm and train “vetted” members of the Free Syrian Army. As expected,the Senate went along on Thursday. The Hill noted about the House vote that “vocal opposition” came from “both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who...

While the Islamic State group is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say. At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

For the first time in the Syrian civil war, al-Qaida fighters are hunkered down on Israel’s doorstep, and Israelis in the lush, hilly Golan Heights who have long considered Syrian President Bashar Assad their bitter foe are now worried about something more ominous—that they could become the militants’ next target. The push into the Golan by the Nusra Front, as al-Qaida’s branch in Syria is known, comes just two weeks after Israel ended a 50-day war against Hamas on its southern border with the Gaza Strip, giving the conflict-weary nation another cause for concern. Israelis in the Golan have grown...

Iraqi Al Qaeda's entry into Syria's civil war caused "a political disaster" for Islamist militants there, the movement's global leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video message, urging the faction to redouble its efforts in Iraq instead. Zawahri has repeatedly tried to end infighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and another Al Qaeda-aligned group, the Nusra Front. He said on May 2 in a message translated by SITE Monitoring that if ISIL had accepted his decision not to get involved in Syria and had instead worked to "busy itself with Iraq, which needs double its...