| Blair poised to step back from Mideast role: FT Posted: 15 Mar 2015 04:12 PM PDT  Tony Blair is poised to step back from his role with the diplomatic Middle East Quartet, the Financial Times reported Sunday, citing several people familiar with the situation. The former British prime minister has discussed his position with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the business daily said, adding that news on his amended role could come later this week.
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| Saddam's tomb suffers extensive damage in Iraq fighting Posted: 15 Mar 2015 03:50 PM PDT  OUJA, Iraq (AP) — The tomb of Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein was virtually leveled in heavy clashes between militants from the Islamic State group and Iraqi forces in a fight for control of the city of Tikrit.
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| Islamic State militants claim attack on checkpoint in Libya's capital Posted: 15 Mar 2015 03:42 PM PDT  Militants loyal to Islamic State claimed an attack at a checkpoint in a suburb of the Libyan capital on Sunday, according to a statement on social media, days after a similar attack on a police station. A bag of explosives went off at a checkpoint next to a Janzour security directorate building, west of Tripoli, wounding five policemen, said Essam Nas, a local security spokesman. Islamic State militants published on social media a picture of a security directorate building next to the checkpoint which they said was the location of an explosion. Militants loyal to Islamic State, the group that controls much of Syria and Iraq, have been exploiting the chaos in Libya where two governments allied to armed factions are vying for power four years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
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| Gay groups march at last in Boston St. Patrick's Day parade Posted: 15 Mar 2015 02:36 PM PDT BOSTON (AP) — Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade has made history as two gay and lesbian groups were welcomed by the organizers after decades of opposition. |
| US seeking to get Assad to negotiate end to Syria war Posted: 15 Mar 2015 02:35 PM PDT  As the devastating war in Syria entered its fifth year Sunday, the US said it would have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as it seeks to "reignite" new peace talks. We've always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process," US Secretary of State John Kerry said when asked by CBS television if he would negotiate with Assad. His spokeswoman stressed however there had been no change in US policy as it was envisioned any talks would be held with representatives of the Assad regime rather than directly with the Syrian leader. "Our policy has not changed -- there is no future for a brutal dictator like Assad in Syria," said Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf in a statement.
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| Kerry says Syrian transition would have to be negotiated with Assad Posted: 15 Mar 2015 02:02 PM PDT  By Lesley Wroughton SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and was exploring ways with other countries to pressure him into agreeing to talks. She reiterated that Washington would never negotiate with the Syrian leader. Harf added: "By necessity, there has always been a need for representatives of the Assad regime to be a part of this process. It has never been and would not be Assad who would negotiate - and the Secretary was not saying that today." Washington has long insisted that Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, although the rise of a common enemy, hardline militant group Islamic State, appears to have slightly softened the West's stance toward him.
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| Bahrain arrests Iraq returnee with bomb-making materials: interior ministry Posted: 15 Mar 2015 01:58 PM PDT Bahraini security forces have arrested a wanted man bearing bomb-making materials after he returned from Iraq, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday. Like its neighbors, Bahrain is concerned that some of the hundreds of Gulf citizens who have joined militant groups fighting civil wars in nearby Iraq and Syria may return and undermine stability at home. "Security personnel have arrested a person wanted on security grounds upon his return to the country coming out of Iraq, and seized materials used in carrying out terrorist acts," the ministry said. Bahrain and fellow Sunni Muslim-ruled Gulf monarchies are taking part in an American-led campaign to bomb Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq from the air, and have fought home-grown Islamist radicalisation with surveillance and arrests. |
| IS and Fajr Libya in second day of Sirte clashes Posted: 15 Mar 2015 01:43 PM PDT  Islamic State group jihadists again clashed with fighters from the powerful Fajr Libya militia alliance in the central city of Sirte on Sunday, a local official said. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the second day of fighting after at least four Fajr Libya fighters were killed on Saturday, according to a source close to the militia alliance. An AFP correspondent on the western edges of Sirte confirmed that fighting between the two sides had been brief and that calm returned to the city. Fajr Libya is a coalition of militias, including Islamists, which controls Tripoli where it has installed a government and a parliament opposed to the internationally recognised legislature and cabinet.
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| Iraq says it busted IS Baghdad bombing network Posted: 15 Mar 2015 01:06 PM PDT  Iraqi intelligence said Sunday it had arrested 31 members of the Islamic State group who were responsible for planning and carrying out 52 attacks in Baghdad. It "resulted in the dismantling of terrorist groups linked to what is known as Wilayat Baghdad (Baghdad province), a part of the terrorist group Daesh," the statement said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. The intelligence service said the 31 people arrested are IS members from all parts of Baghdad, as well as areas south and north of the capital. "The reason for the decrease in attacks in Baghdad over the past three weeks is the arrest of this network," Fahim al-Atraqchi told AFP.
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| Iraq army says coalition raids needed in Tikrit battle Posted: 15 Mar 2015 12:37 PM PDT  Iraqi forces need support from coalition air strikes in Tikrit, where die-hard jihadists are defending their last redoubt with trenches, sandbags and roadside bombs, a top officer said on Sunday. Two weeks into Baghdad's biggest operation yet against the Islamic State (IS) group, Iraqi forces have a complete stranglehold on Tikrit but have yet to launch a final assault. Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi said he had asked the defence ministry to request coalition involvement, but "no air support" from foreign allies had yet been provided in Tikrit. "They are able to locate the targets exactly" and carry out accurate strikes, he told AFP in an interview at Tikrit University on the northern edge of the city.
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| Fighting between militias and Libyan Islamic State branch Posted: 15 Mar 2015 12:36 PM PDT SIRTE, Libya (AP) — Violent clashes erupted between Islamic State-affiliated militants and militias aligned with the Islamist self-declared government near Sirte in north-central Libya. |
| Egypt agrees $36.2 billion in investment deals Posted: 15 Mar 2015 12:32 PM PDT  Egypt has agreed $36.2 billion (34.5 billion euros) in investment deals, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab said Sunday at the close of a three-day conference to kick start the economy. The conference, which started with three Arab states pledging $12 billion in investments and aid, is seen by the government as a ringing endorsement of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his fight against Islamist militants. He added that Egypt also undertook 18.6 billion in financed projects such as for a power plant that the country would repay. Egypt also won $5.2 billion in loans from international institutions, he said.
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| Is winning in Tikrit really the key for Iraq retaking Mosul? Posted: 15 Mar 2015 12:13 PM PDT The battle for Tikrit - a Tigris River town about 80 miles north of Baghdad - has been presented by Iraqi officers and their supporters as a spring-board for a successful assault on Mosul, the northern Iraqi city that the Islamic State seized last June. Claims made last week that Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was back in government hands have proved premature. Reuters reports that the Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militias fighting for control of the town have been stalled by the difficulties of urban combat and the improvised explosive devices and booby-traps that the Islamic State has laid in the town. Tikrit is about a third of the size of Mosul, and is 140 miles closer to Baghdad and the country's Shiite Arab dominated south. |
| Iraqi Kurds say Islamic State used chlorine gas against them Posted: 15 Mar 2015 11:22 AM PDT  By Isabel Coles ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday they had evidence that Islamic State had used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq in January. The Security Council of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region said in a statement to Reuters that the peshmerga had taken soil and clothing samples after an Islamic State car bombing attempt on Jan. 23. Chlorine is a choking agent whose use as a chemical weapon dates back to World War One. It is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits all use of toxic agents on the battlefield.
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| UK arrests 3 teens stopped in Turkey on way to Syria Posted: 15 Mar 2015 10:45 AM PDT LONDON (AP) — Three male teens from Britain who reached Turkey before being deported to the U.K. and arrested are believed to be the latest examples of a worrying trend — the rising number of young Britons seeking to travel to Syria to join extremists there. |
| UK teens 'believed to be travelling to Syria' held Posted: 15 Mar 2015 10:34 AM PDT  Three male teenagers were on Sunday being held in custody, British police said, after they were deported from Turkey from where they are believed to have been trying to travel to Syria. Scotland Yard police headquarters in London said counter-terror officers were told Friday that the 17-year-olds had "gone missing and were believed to be travelling to Syria". "Officers alerted the Turkish authorities who were able to intercept all three males, preventing travel to Syria," a spokesman said. A Turkish official confirmed that the three were detained by security forces in Istanbul on Friday and were deported back to Britain on Saturday.
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| Iraqi offensive on Tikrit stalls, Kurds say Islamists used chlorine Posted: 15 Mar 2015 10:31 AM PDT  By Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters traded sniper fire and mortar rounds with Iraqi troops and allied Shi'ite militia forces on Sunday in the city of Tikrit amid further reports the militants had obtained chlorine for possible use as a chemical weapon. A military official returned from the front in Tikrit said no major advances were made by either side nearly two weeks into an operation to win back the city IS fighters seized last June. Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday they had proof the radical Islamist militants occupying large parts of the country's north and west used chlorine against Kurdish peshmerga fighters in January in a car bombing attempt west of the city of Mosul. "We found a number of storage units containing chlorine that we think were seized by Daesh from water purification stations in different parts of Tikrit," Laith al-Jubouri said, using the Arabic acronym for the group.
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| 7 jihadi suspects in Spain denied bail after questioning Posted: 15 Mar 2015 10:26 AM PDT MADRID (AP) — Seven suspected members of a jihadi cell in Spain were denied bail Sunday for allegedly urging attacks to be carried out in the country and recruiting people to be sent to fight for the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. |
| UK teens suspected of trying to join Islamic State arrested Posted: 15 Mar 2015 09:31 AM PDT  By Orhan Coskun ANKARA (Reuters) - Three male British teenagers suspected of planning to join Islamic State militants in Syria have been arrested by London police after being deported from Turkey, officials said on Sunday. The three, who have not been named, were detained on Friday in the Turkish city of Istanbul, Turkish sources told Reuters, after a tip-off from British authorities that two of them were travelling to Turkey via Spain. London police said they had been made aware on Friday that two 17-year-old boys from the city had gone missing and were thought to be travelling to Syria. They were then flown back to Britain late on Saturday, when they were arrested "on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts", the Metropolitan Police statement said.
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| Iraqi militia loyal to radical cleric joins Tikrit offensive Posted: 15 Mar 2015 09:19 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — Dozens of fighters with the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr left Iraq's capital Sunday to take part in an offensive to capture Tikrit from the Islamic State group.
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| Seven air strikes target Islamic State in Iraq, four in Syria: U.S. military Posted: 15 Mar 2015 08:42 AM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and coalition partners carried out seven air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and four in Syria since Saturday, the U.S. military said. The raids in Iraq hit Islamic State tactical units, vehicles, excavators and staging areas near al Asad, al Hawayja, al Qaim, Falluja, Ramadi and Tal Afar, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement on Sunday. The air strikes in Syria were focused near Kobani, at the border with Turkey, and destroyed nine Islamic State combat positions and a vehicle, the statement said. ... |
| Pope Francis condemns Pakistan church attacks Posted: 15 Mar 2015 08:03 AM PDT  Pope Francis on Sunday condemned two suicide attacks on churches in Pakistan and accused the world of "seeking to hide" the persecution of Christians. "It's with pain, much pain that I was told of the terrorist attacks against two Christian churches in Lahore in Pakistan, which have caused numerous deaths and injuries," the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome. "These are Christian churches and Christians are persecuted, our Christian brothers are spilling their blood simply because they are Christians," he said.
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| Vatican backs use of force to stop IS 'genocide' Posted: 15 Mar 2015 06:46 AM PDT  The Vatican's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva has endorsed military action against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria -- an unusual move because the Vatican traditionally has opposed force in the region. In an interview with the US Catholic website Crux, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said IS fighters were committing atrocities on a huge scale and the world needed to intervene. "We have to stop this kind of genocide," the Italian archbishop told Crux. Pope Francis has denounced the "intolerable brutality" being inflicted on Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria by IS group militants.
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| Defining test for young refugees: Prove you are Syrian Posted: 15 Mar 2015 05:00 AM PDT "With the refugee situation growing more protracted and more desperate, almost two million Syrian refugees under 18 risk becoming a lost generation, and many of the over 100,000 refugee children born in exile could face the risk of statelessness," the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, warned in a Feb. 26 Security Council briefing. Turkey, which now hosts more refugees than any other country in the world, is home to roughly 1.7 million Syrians, according to UN figures, most of them concentrated in camps and cities along the border. Only a tiny minority hold a valid Syrian passport or ID card, let alone an original copy of their marriage certificate or family book, legal documents needed to transfer nationality to their children. "Imagine – roughly half the Syrian population is wanted by the regime," says Bakri Kaake, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC). |
| Syria enters fifth year of bloody civil conflict Posted: 15 Mar 2015 04:54 AM PDT  Syria's conflict entered its fifth year on Sunday with the regime emboldened by shifting international attention, and a growing humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic State group. More than 215,000 people have been killed and half of the country's population displaced, prompting human rights groups to accuse the international community of "failing Syria". The country has been carved up by government forces, jihadist groups, Kurdish fighters and the remaining non-jihadist rebels. Diplomacy remains stalled, with two rounds of peace talks achieving no progress and even a proposal for a local ceasefire in second city Aleppo fizzling out.
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| Feared Iran general tops person of year poll Posted: 15 Mar 2015 04:35 AM PDT  An Iranian general who has been a key adviser in Iraq's fightback against the Islamic State group was voted Iran's person of the year in an annual poll released Sunday. General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, won 37 percent of the votes cast in the survey to mark the Persian New Year, Nowruz. Once rarely seen, Suleimani is now frequently pictured in social media near the front line in Iraq and has been spotted close to this week's battles in Tikrit. He has become the public, if unofficial, face of Iran's support for the Iraqi and Syrian governments against IS jihadists, reportedly landing in Baghdad hours after IS overran Iraq's second city Mosul last June.
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| How ISIS Recruiters Target U.S. Immigrants Posted: 15 Mar 2015 03:15 AM PDT  While some just give material support to terrorist groups, others go and fight. On March 3, U.S. officials reported that he was in the custody of the Somali government and were attempting to bring him home to face charges. On October 4, 2014, Mohammed Hamzan Khan, a 19-year old Pakistani-American, was caught attempting to leave Chicago with his younger sister and brother to go and join ISIS in Syria.
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| Today in History Posted: 14 Mar 2015 09:01 PM PDT Today is Sunday, March 15, the 74th day of 2015. There are 291 days left in the year. |
| France plays hawk role in nuclear talks with Iran Posted: 14 Mar 2015 08:53 PM PDT  As the drive to reach an accord with Iran on its nuclear programme heads towards a March 31 deadline, France is digging into its role as chief hawk -- a position inclined to annoy US allies, but not likely to scuttle an eventual accord, diplomats say. The French hard-line among its US, British, Chinese, Russian and German partners to hammer out a nuclear agreement with Tehran is rooted in ideological, historical, and even personal concerns that tend to stiffen as Paris recognises Washington's increasing pragmatism in seeking to conclude a deal swiftly. "France has taken the opposite path to that of the United States, which changed strategies with the arrival of Barack Obama," said Bernard Hourcade, an Iran specialist at the National Centre of Scientific Research, who says France's current Socialist-led government adopted and defends the wary, intransigent stance towards Iran set down by previous conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.
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