Bookmarks (178)

Exclusive: documents also indicate prisoners who pay £6,000 being freed from cells in north-east SyriaKurdish-led forces in charge of jails in north-east Syria housing about 10,000 men with alleged links to Islamic State are releasing prisoners in exchange for money under a “reconciliation” scheme, according to interviews with two freed men and official documents.Syrian men imprisoned without trial can pay an $8,000 (£6,000) fine...

Authorities accuse the five of having ties with the extremist group blamed for bomb blasts in the capital KampalaUgandan authorities have killed at least five people, including a Muslim cleric, accused of having ties to the extremist group responsible for Tuesday’s suicide bombings in the capital.Four men were killed in a shootout in a frontier town near the western border with Congo as they...

Witnesses to atrocity in Paris music venue that killed 90 tell court of playing dead and trying to help the woundedBritish and Irish survivors of the 2015 terrorist attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris have told a court how they played dead on the ground in a river of blood to avoid being shot, or crawled across the floor between bodies as...

Sami Jasim al-Jaburi is a veteran of IS’s rise and fall and was subject of $5m US bountyIraq’s prime minister has claimed the country’s forces have helped to capture Islamic State’s deputy leader and financial controller in a cross-border operation and bring him to Baghdad.Sami Jasim al-Jaburi, a veteran of IS’s rise and fall, was seized days before Iraqi parliamentary elections due on Sunday....

US says it discussed aid in talks in Doha but Taliban say deal agreed that stops short of formal recognition of new rulersThe United States has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, but refused to give political recognition to the country’s new rulers, the Taliban said on Sunday.The statement came at the end...

Islamic State suspected of carrying out bombing outside mosque in Afghan capitalAt least five civilians have been killed in a bomb blast at the entrance to a Kabul mosque on Sunday, a Taliban official said, the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since US forces left at the end of August.There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion fell on Islamic State extremists,...

A US drone strike in Kabul last month killed as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told reporters on Friday. Senior officers had said the 29 August strike which took place as foreign forces completed the last stages of their withdrawal from Afghanistan targeted an Islamic States suicide bomber who posed an imminent...

Gen Kenneth McKenzie says ‘it was a mistake’ and that it was unlikely those who died posed a direct threat to US forcesA US drone strike in Afghanistan last month killed 10 civilians – including seven children – and not an Islamic State extremist as first claimed, the Pentagon has admitted.In a briefing on Friday, the commander of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie,...

She was groomed as a child and has endured trauma – and to say she now ‘looks western’ is an insult to British MuslimsDr Gina Vale is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of RadicalisationIn her first live interview since joining Islamic State (IS), on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, 22-year-old Shamima Begum made her latest appeal to return to...

Emmanuel Macron claims ‘another major success’ after death of Adnan Abu Walid al-SahrawiEmmanuel Macron has said French military forces have killed the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, claiming “another major success” in the fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel.The French president, who recently moved to reduce French troop deployment in the troubled sub-Saharan region amid broad...

Twenty years after 9/11, 33 years after it was first conceived, and against all the odds, the terrorist group survivesIn the summer of 1988, a dozen or so men gathered in the sweltering Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar. Across the border in Afghanistan, the war was reaching a bloody climax, as hundreds of thousands of local mujahideen took on the Soviet occupiers and their...

Figures based on reported number of US airstrikes highlight the human cost of the 20-year ‘war on terror’US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it...

Analysis: Experts are divided over whether events in Afghanistan will significantly increase risk of attacksIn three days in earlier this month Islamist militants killed more than 120 civilians in a series of attacks in the Sahel, a belt of increasingly anarchic and violent territory across Africa, where such groups have gone from strength to strength in recent years. Thousand of miles to the east,...

Gen Kenneth F McKenzie confirmed the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) had taken responsibility for the suicide bomb attacks at Kabul's airport and the US would take action against those behind it.Two suicide bombs exploded near the main entrances to the airport hours after western intelligence agencies warned of an imminent and 'very credible' terrorist threat; the Pentagon confirmed that they expect attacks to continueKabul airport...

Analysis: Affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, poses ‘acute’ and ‘persistent’ threat, says USThe claim of responsibility from the Islamic State for the devastating suicide bombing at Kabul airport came as little surprise to analysts. The organisation’s affiliate in Afghanistan known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), had been pointed to as the prime suspect immediately after the blast.The IS official...

Analysis: deep faultlines, especially with Isis, may counter Afghanistan’s propaganda advantage for jihadistsFew doubt that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan will give violent Islamist extremists across the world a historic boost, encouraging them in their campaigns to overthrow and replace local regimes – but it has also revealed the deep faultlines that have weakened the jihadist movement in the past decade.Sunni militants in the...

Hogir Hirori’s film follows Mahmud as he and his team of volunteers infiltrate the dangerous al-Hawl camp in Syria to liberate Yazidi women trafficked as sex slavesThe first 20 minutes of Hogir Hirori’s extraordinary documentary has the beat of a gripping thriller, full of hushed voices, car chases, and the terrifying sounds of gunfight. Much of it shot at night, the film follows Mahmud,...

The oil firms have fled and an Isis-affiliated insurgency has engulfed the region. As foreign troops begin to arrive, hundreds of thousands face desperate journeys to try to find safetyPhotographs by Ed Ram/The GuardianPencils scratch as students in year eight feverishly work through an exam paper. At the back of the classroom, Clara Edna Chevambo, 37, a minute figure in hand-me-down clothes, finishes first...

As two women are rescued in Syria after being kidnapped by Isis years earlier, Yazidis renew calls for international help to find the thousands still unaccounted forFor seven years, their families waited and hoped for news. In July, they finally received it. Two young women, kidnapped by Islamic State as teenagers, had been found alive in Syria.Salma*, now 25, was located in Deir el-Zour...

Branco and X-Lang are part of an elite team – four canines and their Yazidi handlers – leading a groundbreaking sniff-search for the homemade devices that litter the landOn the wide, flat plain of the Sinjar district of northern Iraq, Naif Khalaf Qassim lets his dog, an eight-year-old Belgian shepherd, range across the dry earth on a 30-metre leash until Branco stops and sits,...

At least 35 people were killed and many more injured in an explosion in Iraq's capital Baghdad, on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The blast took place in Wahailat market, Sadr City district during rush hour. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.Baghdad suicide bombing: dozens killed, scores injured in blast at packed Iraq market Continue reading...

Iraqi special forces hunt Isis in lowlands south of Kirkuk, where the militants keep on the move, seeking to regain territorial controlA long convoy of humvees, trucks and troop carriers moved slowly through the countryside to the south of the city of Kirkuk, ferrying dozens of Iraqi special forces. Their target was a string of hideouts used by Islamic State militants in the rough...

Exclusive: hundreds of al-Hawl camp detainees have been smuggled out using bribes gifted by husbands they met onlineHundreds of foreign women with links to Islamic State in Syria’s sprawling al-Hawl detention camp have “married” men they met online and several hundred have been smuggled out of the facility using cash bribes gifted by their new husbands.The camp’s inhabitants have been sent wire payments totalling...

Military victories combined with new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforce militants’ position across much of continentIslamic State’s affiliates in Africa are set for major expansion after a series of significant victories, new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforced their position across much of the continent.Following recent gains in Nigeria, the Sahel, in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Isis propaganda published...