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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish authorities on Thursday charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Islamic State group with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country. Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016, in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate and home to about 300,000 people. The crimes “took place under IS rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time...

8pm ET TONIGHT: Watch AC 360 to learn more about the FBI employee who married an ISIS terrorist. An FBI translator with a top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate, CNN has learned. The rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI about where she was going and warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records. Greene's saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI—an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS...

BEIRUT, LEBANON (9:00 P.M.) – The U.S. military has returned to six bases they previously abandoned in northern Syria, Turkey’s Anatolia News Agency reported on Wednesday. The agency announced that the U.S. military is strengthening its presence in northeastern Syria, near the borders with Turkey and Iraq, and in areas of oil fields. They reported that the U.S. military is spreading to five bases and posts in the Hasakah Governorate of northeastern Syria. In addition, the Americans are constructing two other barriers in the town of Al-Qahtaniyah and in a residential area in Qamishli. The agency said that the United...

More than 1,600 civilians were killed in US-led coalition air and artillery strikes during the offensive to oust the Islamic State group from the Syrian city of Raqqa in 2017, activists say. Amnesty International and monitoring group Airwars said they had carried out investigations at 200 strike locations and identified 1,000 of the victims. They urged the coalition to "end almost two years of denial" about such deaths. The coalition says there were 180 civilian casualties in its campaign. Commanders say all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties were taken in those cases and that the decisions to strike complied...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Once known as the Islamic State “public square from hell,” with regular executions, crucifixions, and lashings, Raqqa’s old Paradise Square is returning to its former glory, two years after its liberation. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) liberated Raqqa in October 2017, after a heavy battle that lasted months. When it was retaken, the damage to the city’s infrastructure was extensive and grim. Now, the Raqqa Civil Council (RCC) is focused on rebuilding and providing services as life slowly comes back to the streets of the Islamic State Caliphate’s former capital in Syria. Just after its...

There are moments within investigative research when your jaw can stand agape as you recognize the scope of what you are reading or hearing. A brutally down-played audio of Secretary John Kerry is just such an occasion.(snip) This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans. What the recording reveals is substantive: ♦ First, only regime change, the removal of Bashir Assad, in Syria was the goal for President Obama. This is admitted and outlined by Secretary...

The U.S. military allowed thousands of Islamic State militant group (ISIS) fighters to flee from their de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, in a secret deal that boosted the U.S. fight against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a former Pentagon-backed commander, who has since switched his allegiance to Turkey and who spoke to Reuters. As the spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish coalition of Arabs and ethnic minorities, Brigadier General Talal Silo acted as the face and the voice of the U.S.’s leading partner against ISIS in Syria. The U.S.-backed group successfully ousted...

Lorry driver Abu Fawzi thought it was going to be just another job. He drives an 18-wheeler across some of the most dangerous territory in northern Syria. Bombed-out bridges, deep desert sand, even government forces and so-called Islamic State fighters don’t stand in the way of a delivery. But this time, his load was to be human cargo. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters opposed to IS, wanted him to lead a convoy that would take hundreds of families displaced by fighting from the town of Tabqa on the Euphrates river to a camp...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria’s army and its allies will keep fighting in Syria after the battle ends in Deir al-Zor province, where Islamic State has its last significant stronghold, President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday. snip Assad said in his meeting with Velayati that the battle would last “until the recovery of security and stability to all Syrian lands”, his office said.

Paris is under a curfew for the first time since 1944. Think about that. Not since World War II and the Nazi occupation has the City of Lights been under a curfew and martial law. A state of emergency exists across France. The borders have been closed. The French Army is on the streets of Paris. The police now have the authority to raid homes and conduct searches with no legal precedent, other than the fact that the country is under a state of emergency. Paris is a war zone tonight. Broken, bullet-ridden and blown up pieces of glass, furniture...

Rapid advances by Russian- and Iranian-backed government forces in eastern Syria are thwarting the U.S. military’s hopes of pressing deeper into Islamic State territory after winning the battle for Raqqa. An expansion of territory held by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad is also likely to provide Assad with additional leverage in political negotiations over Syria’s future, talks the United Nations hopes to reconvene next month. In a statement this week, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said the “latest developments” in Syria pointed “to the urgent need to reinvigorate the political process.” The recent government gains have cut off the...

I realize that it must be intensely humiliating for members of the Obama foreign policy team to see President Trump making good on his promise to eliminate ISIS. The rapid fall of the Jihad Caliphate is showing up the bloody fecklessness of the Obama administration, which, after the President ridiculed ISIS as the jayvee, was forced to lamely account for its failure effectively dispatch it. But Marie Harf has gone the extra mile into absurdity in dealing with the shame, actually trying to credit her former boss, President Obama, with the victory. She was, in other words, “harfing.” The Urban...

We congratulate the Syrian people and the Syrian Democratic Forces, including the Syrian Arab Coalition, on the liberation of Raqqa. The United States is proud to lead the 73-member Global Coalition that supported this effort, which has seen ISIS’s so-called caliphate crumble across Iraq and Syria. Our work is far from over but the liberation of Raqqa is a critical milestone in the global fight against ISIS, and underscores the success of the ongoing international and Syrian effort to defeat these terrorists. In January, ISIS was actively plotting terrorist attacks against our allies and our homeland in Raqqa. Nine short...

U.S.-backed forces in Syria are celebrating the defeat of ISIS in its former stronghold of Raqqa. Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces danced and chanted in the streets. Losing Raqqa is a major blow for ISIS as the terror group once called the city its capital.

BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces in Syria claimed full control of the Islamic State’s onetime capital of Raqqa on Tuesday, heralding an end to the militants’ presence in their most symbolically important stronghold and bringing closer the likelihood of their complete territorial demise. Talo Silo, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, said that military operations have halted and that members of the joint Kurdish-Arab force are clearing the city of explosive devices and hunting for sleeping cells. It was still unclear whether some Islamic State pockets remained, but the SDF portrayed the battle for Raqqa as effectively over....

Raqa (Syria) (AFP) - US-backed fighters battling to oust the Islamic State group from Syria's Raqa were nearing the "final week" of their assault, the campaign's commander told AFP on Sunday. snip The SDF alliance's Kurdish and Arab fighters are advancing on IS-held districts from two fronts in the city's north and east, said Rojda Felat, who heads the "Wrath of the Euphrates" campaign. "If the two fronts meet, we can say we have entered the final week of our campaign to liberate Raqa," Felat told AFP on the western outskirts of Raqa on Sunday. "Within 3-4 days, we will...

The U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State said Wednesday that it won’t accept a negotiated withdrawal for hundreds of ISIS militants holed up in the Syrian city of Raqqa, once the extremists’ de facto capital.

The terror group used the Syrian city to showcase its savagery. Now a sense of vengeance is galvanising the final fightback. snip I don’t even hate them,” he said. “They are ignorant people. They have been brainwashed. If we treat them like they treat us, we become like them.”

The (ISIS) jihadists' last remaining strongholds are the central hospital and a nearby stadium – but they are holding civilian hostages in both of them, and both buildings are surrounded by snipers, booby traps and tunnels that emerge behind SDF lines. Raqqa's hospital, a big complex pocked with bullets holes, lies just 200 yards/metres from the SDF's frontline base. Beyond it is a roundabout where the jihadists once displayed the heads of their enemies, crucified people and held military parades at the height of their expansion. Commanders say seizing these and the stadium from the few hundred remaining militants is...

SDF fighters have liberated the ISIS’ administration building called ‘Raqqa Province’ in Nahda neighbourhood west of Raqqa. Clashes intensify and get heavier between Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and ISIS gangs in Raqqa city center as well as eastern and western fronts of the city. SDF fighters have liberated the building from which ISIS administered the city, called ‘Raqqa Province’ in Nahda neighbourhood west of Raqqa. Here, fighters have found ISIS’ seals for Raqqa. The gang members in possession of a paper with this ‘Raqqa seal’ on them were freely operating in the city without facing any obstructions.