Canada plans to expand air strikes against IS militants

By BBC

Canada will extend its air strike campaign against Islamic State (IS) into Syria, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced.

"In our view, ISIL [IS] must cease to have any safe haven in Syria," Mr Harper said in the House of Commons.

Canada's mission against IS will also be extended for one year, beyond October's election and well into 2016.

Opposition leaders have criticised Mr Harper for drawing Canada into a war with unclear objectives.

The move means Canada will be the first Nato country, other than the United States, to strike inside Syria.

IS controls land on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border - and the US expanded its air strike campaign against the militant group into Syria in September.

It has been joined in similar strikes by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The Canadian prime minister announced the change as he asked for a vote on the measure in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

"The government recognises that ISIL's power base, indeed the so-called caliphate's capital, is in Syria," Mr Harper said, adding fighters and heavy equipment were moving across the border from Iraq for protection against strikes.

Mr Harper said Canada would not seek the "express consent" of the Assad government.

"Instead, we will work closely with our American and other allies, who have already been carrying out such operations against ISIL over Syria in recent months."

The measure is expected to pass as Mr Harper's Conservative Party controls the House of Commons.

The major opposition parties voted against the initial approval of military force against IS.

New Democrat Party leader Tom Mulcair told the Commons on Tuesday Canada had "no place in this war", while Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said Mr Harper had been "steadily drawing Canada deeper into a war in Iraq".

"It now wants to expand that war into Syria," Mr Trudeau said.

Opposition leaders also questioned the mission of Canadian special forces soldiers sent to work with Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The soldiers have been helping the Kurdish forces by directing coalition airstrikes against Islamic State fighters.

Canadian soldiers are near the front lines and have been involved in at least two firefights - but defence officials have said soldiers acted in self-defence in those cases.

One soldier was also killed by Kurdish fighters in a friendly-fire incident this month.

As a result the mission has become more controversial in Canada. Mr Mulcair accused Mr Harper on Tuesday of misleading Canadians "from the start".

Mr Harper had said he will provide details about extending and expanding the mission this week. It was due to expire in April.

In addition to assistance to Kurdish forces, Canada has provided six CF-18 fighter planes, as well as surveillance and refuelling aircraft and about 600 personnel to the US-led mission.

Islamic State conflict: Iraqi forces 'push into Tikrit'

By BBC

Iraqi government forces are advancing into Tikrit on several fronts, forcing Islamic State (IS) militants to fall back to the city centre, officials say.

Soldiers and militiamen have reportedly retaken areas and key sites in the north, south and west, including a police headquarters and a hospital. Iraq's defence minister said phase two of the offensive would begin soon.

Some 23,000 personnel are believed to be involved in the operation to recapture Saddam Hussein's hometown.

It is the biggest offensive against IS mounted by the government since the jihadist group captured large parts of the country last June.

Meanwhile, the BBC has seen video evidence that chlorine gas is being used as a weapon in Tikrit by IS militants.

The Iraqi government said small amounts of the chemical were being used in crude roadside bombs targeting its forces.

The battle for Tikrit appeared to be entering a critical phase on Thursday, with about 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and police making a final push for the city, backed by 20,000 Popular Mobilisation Shia militiamen and a much smaller force of Sunni tribesmen.

A security official in the Samarra Operations Command in Salahuddin province told the BBC government forces had taken the Industrial Zone and Celebrations Square near the city centre after seizing the Qadisiya area further north.

They also now reportedly hold the Teaching Hospital and the New Ouja district in the city's south-east, and the al-Diyum and al-Hayakil areas in the west.

The official said battles with IS militants were taking place near Celebrations Square, in the western district of al-Zuhur, and around the presidential palace complex built by Saddam in the south-east.

The Iraqi troops have been hoisting both the national flag and the flags of Shia Islam on their Humvees, the BBC Arabic Ahmed Maher in Tikrit reports.

They are still held back from the centre by roadside bombs and booby-trapped cars, our correspondent says.

Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obedi told the BBC the battle for Tikrit would lead the Iraqi army directly to Mosul - the country's second largest city.

"Every battle has its own character," he said. "Mosul is a sprawling city with a population of two million people. It's ten times bigger than Tikrit. But we are resolved to dislodge IS from Mosul and it will be their end in Iraq."

A senior Popular Mobilisation commander, Moeen al-Kadhimi, told CNN75% of Tikrit was back in government control. The remaining 25% was in the hands of about 150 IS militants, he added.

On Wednesday, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, said he was certain the operation was going to succeed, despite the fact that US-led coalition air power was not being used.

But with Iranian-backed Shia militia leading the fight for Tikrit and the Iranian military helping to co-ordinate it, he voiced concerns about what would happen to the city's Sunni population when the fighting was over.

"There's no doubt... they're going to run [IS] out of Tikrit," he told a hearing of the Senate foreign relations committee.

"The question is what comes after, in terms of their willingness to let Sunni families move back into their neighbourhoods - whether they work to restore the basic services that are going to be necessary, or whether it results in atrocities and retribution."

Shia militia leaders have vowed to seek revenge for the massacre by IS fighters and allied Sunni tribesmen of at least 700 soldiers, most of them Shia, at Camp Speicher outside Tikrit last June.

The offensive on Tikrit is the first attempt to push out IS from a major urban centre in Iraq and is seen as a test for a planned operation to retake Mosul.

El IS destruye la antigua ciudad iraquí de Dur Sharrukin

Vía El Mundo

Tras la destrucción de las antiguas ciudades de Nimrud y Hatra en los últimos días, el autodenominado Estado Islámico se ha cebado este domingo con las ruinas de Dur Sharrukin, fugaz capital de la civilización asiria durante el reinado de Sargon II (722-705 a.C.).

El ministro de Turismo y Antigüedades iraquí Abdel Shirshad ha reconocido haber recibido información de que el recinto -situado en la actual ciudad de Jorsabad, a unos 15 kilómetros al noroeste de Mosul- ha sido atacado este domingo con excavadoras. En una entrevista con Ap, Shirshab ha añadido que los extremistas han retirado algunas de las piezas antes de demoler el sitio arqueológico.

Said Mamuzini, dirigente del Partido Democrático del Kurdistán en Mosul, también ha confirmado que miembros del IS (Estado Islámico, por sus siglas en inglés) han comenzado este domingo a destruir con maquinaria pesada el enclave, levantado por orden de Sargon II durante una década. Tras su inesperada muerte en el campo de batalla en el 705 a.C., su hijo Sennacherib abandonó el proyecto y trasladó la corte a la ciudad de Nínive. Dur Sharrukin se convirtió entonces en una ciudad inacabada que había sobrevivido durante cerca de tres milenios hasta el saqueo del IS.

Nimrud: Outcry as IS bulldozers attack ancient Iraq site

By BBC

Archaeologists and officials have expressed outrage about the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

IS began demolishing the site, which was founded in the 13th Century BC, on Thursday, according to Iraqi officials.

The head of the UN's cultural agency condemned the "systematic" destruction in Iraq as a "war crime".

IS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, says shrines and statues are "false idols" that have to be smashed.

"They are erasing our history," said Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani.

Nimrud lies on the Tigris river, about 30km (18 miles) south-east of Mosul, which IS controls.

Many of the artefacts found there have been moved to museums in Baghdad and overseas, but many remain on site.

BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir says the attempt to destroy Nimrud is already being compared with the Taliban's demolition of theBamiyan Buddha rock sculptures in Afghanistan in 2001.

As well as destroying artefacts, Islamic State also trades in them - and the trade is one of its key sources of revenue.

IS "assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles," the tourism and antiquities ministry said on Thursday.

It said the militants continued to "defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity", calling for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss how to protect cultural heritage in Iraq.

Nimrud covers a large area, and it is not yet clear whether it has been totally destroyed, our correspondent says.

But a local tribal source told Reuters news agency: "Islamic State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the valuables in it and then they proceeded to level the site to the ground.

"There used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely."

Profile of Nimrud

• Ancient Assyrian city on the River Tigris
• Capital of Assyria for about 150 years
• First excavations in modern times undertaken by Europeans starting in the 1840s
• Treasures unearthed included sections of royal palaces, individual statues and smaller artefacts
• Investigations stopped for decades but in 1949 Sir Max Mallowan (husband of writer Agatha Christie) began fresh excavations
• Extensive photographic record of remaining treasures made in the 1970s

Irina Bokova, head of the UN cultural agency Unesco, condemned the assault.

"This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing under way in the country," she said.

"The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. There is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity's cultural heritage."

Dr Gailani told the BBC: "Nimrud for us in Iraq and for me as an archaeologist is one of the most important [sites]. There are still quite a lot of things that are standing - the reliefs and the statues, the famous winged bulls.

"They are erasing our history. I wish it was a nightmare and I could wake up."

It is a "horrific crime against the cultural heritage of the whole world", said the president of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, John Curtis, calling Nimrud "the best preserved Assyrian site in Iraq".

Last week, IS released a video apparently showing militants with sledgehammers destroying historic artefacts in a museum in Mosul.

One militant was seen drilling through and pulling apart what appeared to be a stone winged bull.

In the video, the artefacts are described as "false idols" and their destruction justified in religious terms.

That attack was also condemned by the UN as a war crime.

IS has controlled Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and nearby areas since June 2014 - a region with nearly 1,800 of the country's 12,000 registered archaeological sites.

Iraqi forces and Shia militia, have united to try to drive IS militants from the northern city of Tikrit, with the support of Iran.

The militants are also being targeted by a US-led coalition mounting air strikes.

The latest strikes came on Thursday, with the coalition targeting IS positions around Mosul and other Iraqi cities, as well as several locations across the border in Syria.

Islamic State: Fears grow for abducted Syrian Christians

By BBC

There are fears that more members of an Assyrian Christian community in north-eastern Syria were abducted by Islamic State militants than at first thought.

Initial reports had put the number of missing at 90, but one activist said as many as 285 people had been seized on Monday in Hassakeh province.

Efforts to try to negotiate their release are reported to be under way.

Some 1,000 local Assyrian families are believed to have fled their homes in the wake of the abductions.

Kurdish and Christian militia are battling IS in the area, amid reports of churches and homes having been set ablaze.

Thousands of Christians in Syria have been forced from their homes by the threat from IS militants.

In areas under their control, Christians have been ordered to convert to Islam, pay jizya (a religious levy), or face death. IS militants in Libya also recently beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.

Kurdish offensive

The Assyrians were seized by the militants as they swept into 12 villages along the southern bank of the Khabur river near the town of Tal Tamr before dawn on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said at least 90 people had been abducted, most of them women, children and the elderly.

However, the Syriac National Council of Syria put the figure as high as 150, while Afram Yakoub of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden said sources on the ground had told him that up to 285 people were missing, including 156 from the village of Tal Shamran and 90 from Tal al-Jazira.

"These were peaceful villages that had nothing to do with the battles," Nasir Haj Mahmoud, a Kurdish official in the YPG militia in north-eastern Syria, told the Reuters news agency.

There are conflicting reports as to where the families have been taken.

Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the Syriac Military Council - a Christian militia fighting alongside the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) - told the BBC that it believed the captives had been taken to Abdul Aziz mountain.

Osama Edward of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network told the AFP news agency that the captives had been taken to the IS stronghold of Shaddadi, as did Syria's state news agency, Sana.

Another report said they were in Raqqa, 145km (90 miles) to the west, the de facto capital of the "caliphate" declared by IS last June.

Jordan Executes 2 Prisoners After ISIS Killing Of Pilot

By The Huffington Post

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan's king rushed home Wednesday, cutting short a U.S. trip, to rally public support for even tougher strikes against the Islamic State group after the militants released a video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned to death in a cage.

The gruesome killing of 26-year-old Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, captured while participating in airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants, sparked outrage across the Middle East and anti-Islamic State protests in Jordan.

King Abdullah II, a staunch Western ally, returned home from a White House meeting with President Barack Obama during which both leaders affirmed their resolve to destroy the militants who have seized about one-third of Syria and Iraq.

Jordan believes the international community must intensify the campaign against Islamic State, said government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani. "This evil can and should be defeated," he said.

However, public opinion in Jordan has been ambiguous — growing demands for revenge against the militants have been mixed with misgivings about Jordan's role in a bombing campaign widely seen as serving Western interests.

The extremists, meanwhile, appeared to be goading Jordan. In Raqaa, the Islamic State group's de facto capital, the militants gleefully played al-Kaseasbeh's slaying on outdoor projectors, with some chanting "God is great," according to militant video posted online Wednesday that conformed to Associated Press reporting of the event.

In the 20-minute video, the pilot displayed signs of having been beaten, including a black eye. Toward the end of the clip, he is shown wearing an orange jumpsuit. He stands in an outdoor cage as a masked militant ignites a line of fuel leading to it.

The video, released on militant websites and bearing the logo of the extremist group's al-Furqan media service, featured the slick production and graphics used in previous Islamic State videos. It could not independently be confirmed by the AP.

After the video's release, a wave of condemnation washed across the Middle East, signaling that the Islamic State militants might have overplayed their hand by putting their brutality toward a fellow Muslim on display. Some said this could trigger a backlash among Sunni Muslims in the region, the main reservoir of potential IS supporters.

Abdullah al-Muhaysni, a prominent Saudi sheik with close links to jihadi groups, said on his Twitter account that while he believes those carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State group deserve to be killed, the Jordanian pilot's immolation was too barbaric and generated sympathy for the man.

"After millions of Muslims were cursing every pilot, with this act they (IS) have made the burned one a symbol," the cleric wrote. "They made everyone who was reluctant to participate in the Crusader campaign (against IS) adjust his opinion and decide to participate."

At the same time, Jordan faces increasing internal and external threats from the militants. It borders areas of Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. There also have been signs of greater support for the group's militant ideas among Jordan's young and poor.

Following the pilot's death, Jordan launched what it said would be a tough campaign against the Islamic State group. In a first response, Jordan executed Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziad al-Karbouly, two Iraqis linked to al-Qaida, government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said. Another official said they were executed by hanging. Authorities said the pair would be buried later in Jordan.

Al-Rishawi had been sentenced to death after her 2005 role in a triple hotel bombing that killed 60 people in Amman orchestrated by al-Qaida in Iraq, the predecessor of the Islamic State group. Al-Karbouly was sent to death row in 2008 for plotting terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq.

Islamic State group militants purportedly had demanded Jordan release al-Rishawi in exchange for the pilot. Over the past week, Jordan had offered to trade her, but froze any swap after failing to receive any proof that the pilot was still alive.

Jordan now believes that the airman was killed in the early days of January, said al-Momani, the government spokesman. He said the assessment is based on additional intelligence information but did not elaborate.

Al-Kaseasbeh had fallen into the hands of the militants when his F-16 crashed near Raqqa. He was the first airman participating in the U.S.-led bombing raids against militant positions in Syria and Iraq to be captured.

The pilot's father, Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh, urged his government to "take revenge for Muath and to take revenge for the country, even before Muath."

Late Tuesday, dozens of people chanting against Islamic State marched toward the royal palace in Amman. Waving a Jordanian flag, they chanted, "Damn you, Daesh!" — using the Arabic acronym of the group — and "We will avenge, we will avenge our son's blood."

Al-Kaseasbeh was from a tribal area in southern Jordan's Karak district. The tribes are considered a mainstay of support for the monarchy, but the pilot's capture strained that relationship. During the weeks of uncertainty about his fate, relatives criticized the government's handling of the crisis and Jordan's participation in the anti-Islamic State group alliance.

However, the tone has changed since the announcement of his death, with family members and other Jordanians speaking out against the militants.

"No religion accepts such an act," said Amman resident Hassan Abu Ali. "Islam is a religion of tolerance. They (IS militants) have nothing to do with Islam. This is a criminal act."

Across the Middle East, religious and political leaders offered angry denunciations and called for blood as some on television wept when talking about the pilot.

The head of Sunni Islam's most respected seat of learning, Egypt's Al-Azhar, described the militants as enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad, saying they deserved the Quran-prescribed punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of their arms.

"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," Ahmed al-Tayeb, Al-Azhar's grand sheik, said in a statement, adding that by burning the pilot to death, the militants violated Islam's prohibition on the mutilation of bodies, even during wartime.

The Islamic State group has released a series of gruesome videos showing the beheading of captives, including two American journalists, an American aid worker and two British aid workers. Tuesday's was the first to show a captive being burned alive.

The latest video was released three days after another video showed the purported beheading of a Japanese journalist, Kenji Goto. A second Japanese hostage was apparently killed earlier last month.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a California Republican, said after a meeting with the king that Abdullah had been visibly angry and promised to retaliate against the militants.

"They're starting more sorties tomorrow than they've ever had. They're starting tomorrow," Hunter told the Washington Examiner in an interview published online Tuesday night.

Hunter added the king also said: "The only problem we're going to have is running out of fuel and bullets."

Islamic State video claims to show burning death of Jordanian pilot

By The Washington Post

The Islamic State released a video on Tuesday that purports to show a Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, being burned alive by his captors.

According to the SITE monitoring group, which follows militant Web sites, the 22-minute video, titled “Healing of the Believers’ Chests,” was released on social media even as Jordan struggled to learn his fate.

Shortly after the video appeared online, Jordanian state TV reported that the pilot was killed on Jan. 3. It gave no further details on how the date was determined, but it suggested that it was new information because Jordanian officials sought “proof of life” evidence from the Islamic State as recently asearlier this week.

The killing appears to mark an effort by the Islamic State to present increasingly gruesome acts. Previously, the group decapitated its captives and then showed the head sitting on top of the body. Execution by decapitation in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, is not uncommon.

Burning the pilot to death would represent a stunning escalation.

President Obama, speaking to reporters in Washington, said he was not yet briefed on the details of the video, but he called it “just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity” of the Islamic State.

Hours earlier, before the release of the video, Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and the country’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, as part of a visit to sign a deal for further U.S. aid to Jordan. The Jordanian officials in Washington had no immediate comment on the video.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in an e-mail that the U.S. government was aware of the video and that “the intelligence community is working to confirm its authenticity.”

“The United States strongly condemns ISIL’s actions, and we call for the immediate release of all those held captive by ISIL. We stand in solidarity with the government of Jordan and the Jordanian people,” she added.

The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL,released a video over the weekend that appeared to show the beheading of Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist.

The video did not mention Kaseasbeh’s fate. However, the Islamic State had previously said it would kill both Kaseasbeh and Goto if Jordan failed to meet a Thursday deadline to release an Iraqi woman convicted of a role in 2005 bombings that killed 60 people in Jordan’s capital, Amman.

The pilot was captured by the Islamic State in December, after his plane crashed in Syria during a bombing run. Although the Islamic State claimed that it had shot down his plane, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Lisa Brackenbury, a Central Command spokeswoman, said in December that while “a thorough investigation will be conducted, this was an aircraft crash and not the result of enemy action.”

Late last year, the Islamic State posted social media images of Kaseasbeh, 26, surrounded by masked militants, as his captors pulled him from a body of water.

According to SITE, the video shows “media footage of Jordan’s involvement in the U.S.-led coalition” against the Islamic State. Then, the video shows Kaseasbeh, with a black eye, “discussing Jordan’s operation in a news-style monologue.” The video then juxtaposes images of the pilot surrounded by militants, and images of the aftermath of bombings.

“At the end of the video, [Kaseasbeh] stands inside of a cage and is burned alive by fighters,” SITE writes.

Reuters reported that the head of Jordan’s armed forces personally notified Kaseasbeh’s family of the pilot’s death.

The killing risks undermining a U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, which has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Jordan has absorbed a flood of refugees fleeing the militants from the civil war in Syria and the uprisings in Iraq. Jordan’s air force and intelligence agencies are active, public partners in the U.S. coalition against the Islamic State.

The capture of the Jordanian pilot, however, sparked an antiwar movement calling for Amman to pull out of the coalition. Kaseasbeh is from a large and influential tribe centered in Karak, a province south of Amman, and his people have been staging protests in front of government buildings. The demonstrators have stressed not only the pilot’s capture, but the growing number of Syrian civilians caught in the bombings.

The Jordanian government said last week it was prepared to swap a prisoner sentenced to death for her role in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings for the Jordanian pilot.

Jordan’s sensational offer to free the suicide bomber, an Iraqi whose device failed to explode, illustrated the tremendous pressure that Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his government have faced over the pilot’s capture.

Last week, Jordanian Foreign Minister Judeh said his government insisted that the Islamic State offer “proof of life” that the pilot was alive before they released the Iraqi woman, who is serving a sentence on death row.

Judeh tweeted last week, “Unfortunately we have heard nothing.”

As the deal appeared to fall apart last week, the Islamic State released an audio recording during the stalled negotiations threatening to kill the pilot.

The Jordan pilot’s release was being sought at the same time that diplomats and families pleaded for the lives of two Japanese hostages, a journalist and an adventurer, both of whom were subsequently beheaded by the Islamic State.