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Dozens of summary executions have been reported across the country since former Al-Qaeda and ISIS leaders took control of Damascus.. Extremist armed factions across Syria are carrying out executions of civilians and soldiers amid the chaos following the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government. Al Mayadeen reports on 10 December that a video circulating on social media shows armed militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Al-Qaeda offshoot that took control of Damascus on Saturday, carrying out field executions of unarmed men in the village of Al-Rabia in the countryside of Latakia. The militants referred to the men as...

Christians in Syria confront an uncertain and perilous future under the control of Islamist-led rebel forces, a human rights group has warned. The city’s minority Christian population, significantly diminished by years of civil war, now grapples with fears of escalating threats and restrictions. Islamist rebel forces, led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.K., captured Aleppo about a week ago, followed by Homs and Damascus late Saturday night in a sweeping offensive that toppled Syrian government forces. Bashar al-Assad resigned and left the country on a flight to Russia on Saturday...

By Fran Gardner (BBC Security correspondent) When the celebratory gunfire subsides, and the prisons and torture chambers of Assad’s brutal, kleptocratic regime are emptied, Syria will find itself at a crossroads. This could now go either way. If Abu Mohammed Al-Jawlani, the leader of HTS, the main victorious rebel group, is true to his word, then there is a chance for this country to transition to a more pluralistic, democratic future, supported by the UN and others. But HTS, and some of its fellow travellers, have a violent past, rife with allegations of human rights abuses. It is a proscribed...

Hamas’ rockets never discriminate between Arabs and Jews — they fall where they fall. .. gunmen who raced across the border, butchering and kidnapping as they went, were not discriminating ... Hamas terrorists killing Muslims inside of Israel after they infiltrated the border ... Masudin’s family hails from the Bedouin village of Segev Shalom in southern Israel, just an hour’s drive from the border with Gaza. ... Gunmen burst into the city Saturday morning with their automatic rifles blazing, killing civilians and shooting it out with local police units in firefights that consumed the town. They even captured the local...

At least 50 killed after suicide bomber targets last Friday prayers of the month Eyewitnesses describe 'dead bodies everywhere' after 'deafening blast' in Kabul Hundreds were inside the mosque at the time of the attack, survivors claim Today's Zikr remembrance prayers seen as heretical by hardliner Sunni Muslims Whitehall adviser says death toll could be 200 as Taliban insist only ten dead A suicide bomb blast killed at least 50 worshippers during Friday prayers at a mosque in Afghanistan today. Hundreds were gathered inside the Khalifa Sahib Mosque in western Kabul when the huge explosion took place. It's thought hundreds...

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers decided against opening schools to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a previous promise and opting to appease their hardline base at the expense of further alienating the international community. The unexpected decision, confirmed by a Taliban official Wednesday, came at the start of the new school year in Afghanistan. It is bound to disrupt Taliban efforts to win recognition from potential international donors, at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. ... women are not required to wear the all encompassing burqa. but must wear the traditional hijab, covering their...

When you meet the unbelievers, strike necks.” (Qur’an 47:4).. “Islamic State claims responsibility for attack on Pakistan’s Shi’ite Hazara minority that kills 11,” by Gul Yousafzai, Reuters, January 3, 2021 (thanks to Henry): QUETTA, Pakistan -Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on Sunday that killed 11 miners from Pakistan’s minority Shi’ite Hazaras in Baluchistan province. The attack took place early on Sunday morning in the Mach area of Bolan district around 100 kms southeast of Baluchistan’s capital Quetta, killing the miners who were in a shared residential room near the coal mine where they worked, officials said. “The throats...

Afghanistan: Bomb rips through wedding in Kabul An explosion has ripped through a wedding hall in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and many casualties are feared. Eye witnesses told the BBC a suicide bomber detonated explosives during a wedding ceremony. Witnesses said they had seen bodies. The explosion happened at around 22:40 local time (18.10 GMT) in an area mostly populated by Shia residents. No group said it carried out the attack, which happened in the west of the city. Sunni Muslim militants, including the Taliban and the Islamic State group, have repeatedly targeted Shia Hazara minorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan....

Original title too long: Major Islamic Leader In Mecca Declares This Command To All Muslims: ‘Slaughter The Christians, I Pray That Allah Will Give You Strength To Kill And Crush The Christians.’ A major Islamic leader recently did a speech in Mecca in which he commanded Muslims to slaughter Christians, even praying to Allah to give victory to the Muslims over the followers of Christ. Here is the report: A top imam in Saudi Arabia has called for the killing of Christians, Shia Muslims, and Jews in a prayer broadcast at the Masjid al-Haram mosque. In a video showing a...

The U.S. accepted more than 2,300 Syrian refugees in June alone, sending the fiscal year total soaring past the 5,000 mark and putting the government on track to surpass resident Obama’s goal of 10,000 by the end of September, but raising questions about screening out potential terrorists. ... more than 99 percent are Sunni Muslims. Just eight identified themselves as Christian, eight identified as a non-Sunni form of Islam, and one reported having no religious affiliation. Those numbers have drawn criticism because the percentage of Sunni Muslims is far greater than that of the Syrian population as a whole, which...

Vatican’s ecumenism comes at the expense of Egypt’s human rights Pope Francis, who is “building bridges to build peace” around the world, has naturally reached out to embrace Sunni Muslims. Last month, for the first time after years of Vatican silence, Pope Francis summoned to his private library in Rome grand imam Ahmed El-Tayeb of Cairo’s Al-Ahzar Mosque Institute. Absent a press release before this event, the Pope was quoted as saying, “this meeting is the message” – leading all to dwell on the meaning and purpose of their 25 minutes together. Christians, especially Egyptian Coptic Christians, have observed the...

After perilous sea voyages from neighboring Turkey, they have been stranded here for days, some for nearly two weeks, running out of money and desperate to get to mainland Greece and continue their route. The island of some 100,000 residents has been transformed by the sudden new population of some 20,000 refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — and the strain is pushing everyone to the limit. ... "Why, man? Why?" one municipality worker, pointing to bottles in the sea, yelled at some young Iraqis sitting by the water throwing bread to fish. ... It doesn't help...

Saudi ArabiaÂ’s Attempt To Create A Sunni Alliance Against Iran Will Fail And Mecca The Pride Of The Muslims Will Be Destroyed By The Muslims Themselves! By Shoebat Foundation on March 11, 2015in Featured, General By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive) In the Middle East, everything could turn on a dime. Who would have imagined that powers such as Turkey and Iran, which both recognized Israel soon after it declared independence in 1948 would become now two of its arch enemies, while Arab states who were IsraelÂ’s arch enemies have come to realize that Israel is no longer their primary concern,...

Fahad Qureshi, who founded Islam Net and is considered an Islamic leader in Norway, told a large group of Sunni Muslims that, contrary to media claims that it is only “radicals” and “extremists” who support barbaric punishments for those who violate sharia, regular Muslims support such things, including the “death penalty for homosexuals” and “stoning for adultery.” Fahad Qureshi, who founded Islam Net and is considered an Islamic leader in Norway, told a large group of Sunni Muslims that, contrary to media claims that it is only “radicals” and “extremists” who support barbaric punishments for those who violate sharia, regular...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

JURF AL-SAKHAR, Iraq - After helping government forces break Islamic State's grip over a strategic town just south of Baghdad on Saturday, Shi'ite militias decided it was time for payback ... As the angry crowd of militiamen around the unarmed militants swelled, shots rang out. The three men lay soaked in blood in the dirt with gunshot wounds to the head. "Those dogs are Chechens. They don't deserve to stay alive. We took confessions from them and we don't need them anymore," said one of the Shi'ite militiamen. The victory could allow Iraqi forces to prevent the Sunni insurgents from...

Yazidis fleeing a jihadist onslaught in northern Iraq say neighbours took up arms alongside their attackers, informing on members of the religious minority and helping the militants take over. "The (non-Iraqi) jihadists were Afghans, Bosnians, Arabs and even Americans and British fighters," said Sabah Hajji Hassan, a 68-year-old Yazidi who managed to flee the bloody offensive by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group. "But the worst killings came from the people living among us, our (Sunni) Muslim neighbours." "The Metwet, Khawata and Kejala tribes -- they were all our neighbours. But they joined the IS, took heavy weapons from them,...

U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned top government officials that Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki and his policies were gravely antagonizing his country's Sunni population, two U.S. security officials said on Friday. The officials said the warnings were contained in secret intelligence reports and analyses presented in the last two years to policymaking officials, including President Barack Obama. This contrasted with public comments by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who in his annual presentation to Congress on "worldwide threats" in January made only bland references to religious tensions in Iraq.

The United States has evacuated most of its personnel from the Embassy in Baghdad and dramatically stepped up security for those who remain as thousands of Islamic fighters bear down on Iraq's capital city. Some 5,500 people work in the massive Embassy complex in the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Many will be airlifted to Amman, Jordan, and others will be sent to consulates in Basra, in the south, and Erbil, in the Kurdish north. Other workers will remain in Baghdad. Some 12,000 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) are marching on Baghdad after quickly...

Sunni militants on Tuesday seized control of military bases and the provincial governor’s building in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as police officers and army soldiers abandoned the town and left weapons, vehicles and even their uniforms to the gunmen. By midday, the militants, believed to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group, were in control of much of central and southern Mosul, according to witnesses and local officials. Soldiers who fled the city said the militants had seized a jail, freeing the inmates. “They took control of everything, and they are everywhere,” said one soldier...