The Islamic State Thread


None of the Islamists on myBB who are pro Hamas anti Israel will be brave enough to decry this travesty here on MyBB. What a sad indictment to humanity. Subhuman scum are those that do this under the the justification of doing it for their deity.
 
AUSTRALIA MAY HELP IN US AIRDROPS IN IRAQ: PM

Australia may participate in United States airdrops of food and water to civilians threatened by jihadist violence in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday.

US President Barack Obama has authorised air strikes in Iraq to prevent fighters from the so-called Islamic State from moving into autonomous Kurdistan and carrying out a potential genocide against displaced minorities.

The US has also dropped food and water to thousands of people who have been hiding from the Sunni extremist militants in a barren northern mountain range and Abbott said Australia could contribute to this effort.

"We are talking to the Americans about possible Australian participation in these humanitarian airdrops," Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

"Australia does have some transport assets in the Middle East," he added, saying two C-130 aircraft in the United Arab Emirates could be used.

Australia is a close ally of the US, and Abbott said it was important to assist international partners as the situation deteriorated in Iraq.

But he said there had so far been no discussion about Australia becoming involved in the air strikes which the US has authorised.
"There is a looming humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in northern Iraq right now," Abbott said.

"Some 40,000 women and children mostly are exposed on a mountain surrounded as I understand it by ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) forces that are threatening to kill them. They are exposed on this mountaintop without food, without water without shelter.

"We've been asked to consider participation in humanitarian airdrops, and I think the Australian people would be pleased to think that Australia might be involved in helping to rescue up to 40,000 people."

Abbott said Australia's efforts would not be designed to "pick sides in a war" but to protect civilians from violent onslaught.

"This is medieval barbarism assisted by modern technology," he said.

Source : Sapa-AFP /gm
Date : 09 Aug 2014 09:03
 
IRAQI FORCES READY FOR US-BACKED COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

by Abdelhamid Zebari

Iraq's federal and Kurdish forces Saturday prepared their bid to reclaim lost ground as US jets pounded jihadist positions to pave the way and also dropped aid to stranded civilians.

President Barack Obama's decision to send warplanes back to Iraq, three years after pulling the last US troops out of the country, marked a potential turning point in the two-month-old conflict.

After a first day of US air raids on Islamic State (IS) fighters who had moved within striking distance of Kurdistan, a top official in the autonomous region said the time had come for a fightback.

"Following the US strikes, the peshmerga will first regroup, second redeploy in areas they retreated from and third help the displaced return to their homes," Fuad Hussein told reporters Friday in the Kurdish capital Arbil.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who has boycotted cabinet meetings for weeks as relations soured with Baghdad, said that failing to arm the Kurdish peshmerga forces had been a costly mistake.

He said the American air strikes had stopped the rot on the ground and allowed the federal and Kurdish authorities to unite behind the common cause of defeating the IS jihadists.

"The Iraqi army and the peshmerga are fighting side-by-side in the same trenches now," he said.

Iraq's military chief of staff, Babaker Zebari, told AFP on Friday that US advisers, peshmerga and federal top brass were "selecting targets" together.

The first US bombings struck IS positions and at least one convoy of vehicles carrying militants west of Arbil.

A White House spokesman said Friday the strikes would be "very limited in scope", but Babaker Zebari said he thought US air support would extend to other areas.

He said the intervention would allow joint action to reclaim large tracts of land lost to the Sunni extremists since they launched their devastating offensive on June 9, exactly two months ago.

The Pentagon also said late Friday that cargo planes escorted by combat jets made a second air drop of food and water to "thousands of Iraqi citizens" threatened by the jihadists on Mount Sinjar.

Obama justified the strikes on Thursday by the threat to US personnel in Kurdistan and the need to avert a genocide against Sinjar's Yazidi community.

Thousands of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority following an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism, fled their homes a week ago when militants attacked the town of Sinjar.

Many of them have since been stranded in the nearby mountain range, with no food and water in searing temperatures.
Several thousand have made their own way to Turkey or Syria after walking for days, while others have been evacuated by Kurdish fighters from both those countries.

But aid groups and rescued Yazidis say a larger number remain trapped and in dire need of assistance.

"They suffer from dehydration, sunstroke and some of them are seriously traumatised," International Rescue Committee acting country director Suzanna Tkalec told AFP of some 4,000 survivors to whom her organisation is providing emergency care in Syria.

She said the latest string of IS attacks in northern Iraq had triggered an influx of 200,000 displaced people into the western Dohuk province of Kurdistan.

The scale of the displacement over the past two months has put huge pressure on the autonomous region of around five million people.

On Thursday alone, up to 100,000 Iraqi Christians fled their homes in the Nineveh plains, west of the main jihadist hub of Mosul.
Chaldean Catholic leaders said the largest Christian town in the country, Qaraqosh, had been emptied of its inhabitants in a matter of hours.

While it remains how long and how much deeper into Iraq US warplanes will remain active, analysts have said the intervention had the potential to turn the tide on jihadist expansion.

"The air strikes could certainly soften up some of the IS positions and make it easier for counter-offensives on the ground by the Kurdish peshmerga," John Drake of the AKE Group security company said.

He also said surgical strikes could take out some command centres and disrupt the Islamic State's chain of command.

The latest IS gains saw militants take over Mosul dam, the country's largest, vast swathes of land both east and west of their Iraq headquarters and further abolish the border with the Syrian half of the "caliphate" it proclaimed in late June.

Source : Sapa-AFP /gm
Date : 09 Aug 2014 11:33
 
ETIHAD AIRWAYS TO AVOID IRAQI CONFLICT AIRSPACE

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways announced on Saturday that it will reroute flights over Iraq in the wake of US air strikes on Islamist State (IS) fighters there.

"Etihad Airways has announced that it will reroute its flights to avoid conflict airspace in Iraq," a statement by the carrier said.

"The decision follows the deterioration of the security situation in parts of the country.

"The safety of Etihad Airways' passengers and staff is of paramount importance, and the airline will continue to monitor the security situation closely."

On Thursday, Etihad also said it was suspending flights to Iraqi Kurdistan's capital of Arbil because of fighting in northern Iraq.

The first US air strikes on Friday struck IS positions and at least one convoy of vehicles carrying militants west of Arbil.

However, "flights to Basra and Baghdad, which have a daily risk assessment, continue to operate as normal," Etihad said on Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration in Washington banned all US civilian flights over Iraq just hours after American warplanes Friday bombed positions held by the jihadists, who have occupied swathes of northern Iraq.

British Airways has said it will no longer overfly Iraq, as have Lufthansa and its subsidiaries Austrian Airlines and Swiss -- joining Air France, Emirates, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, which quietly opted to do so over the past two weeks.

Source : Sapa-AFP /dm
Date : 09 Aug 2014 12:09
 
'ONE OR TWO DAYS' LEFT TO SAVE IRAQ'S STRANDED YAZIDIS: MP

Displaced Iraqis, many from the Yazidi minority, who have been stranded in a jihadist-hemmed mountain for a week will die en masse if not rescued urgently, a Yazidi MP said Saturday.

"We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse," Vian Dakhil told AFP.

"If we cannot give them hope now -- the (Kurdish) peshmerga, the United Nations, the government, anybody -- their morale will collapse completely and they will die," she warned.

Thousands of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority following an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism, fled their homes a week ago when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked the town of Sinjar.

Many of them have since been stranded in the nearby mountain range, with no food and water in searing temperatures.

The Yazidis, dubbed "devil worshippers" by IS militants because of their unorthodox blend of beliefs and practices, are a small and closed community, one of Iraq's most vulnerable minorities.

US President Barack Obama sent warplanes back over Iraq for the first time in three years this week in part to avert what he said was a possible impending genocide.

American cargo planes have been dropping supplies on the Sinjar mountain to help the displaced, who have survived by hiding in old cave dwellings, seeking out natural springs and hunting small animals.

Source : Sapa-AFP /dm
Date : 09 Aug 2014 12:11
 
TURKISH AIRLINES RESUMES FLIGHTS TO ARBIL BUT ONLY IN DAYTIME

Turkey's national flag-carrier airline said it resumed flights on Saturday to the Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil after suspending them for security reasons amid an offensive by Islamist militants.

However Turkish Airlines said in a statement that it would as a continued precaution only be flying to Arbil in daytime hours.

"Our flights to Arbil will resume. Arbil night flights will be shifted to daytime hours," Turkish Airlines said in a statement.

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways announced on Saturday that it will reroute flights over Iraq in the wake of US air strikes on Islamist State (IS) fighters there.

The first US air strikes on Friday struck IS positions and at least one convoy of vehicles carrying militants west of Arbil.

Source : Sapa-AFP /dm
Date : 09 Aug 2014 13:32
 
OBAMA VOWS TO CONTINUE IRAQ AIR STRIKES 'IF NECESSARY'

President Barack Obama on Saturday vowed to continue air strikes against militants in Iraq if needed to protect US diplomats and military advisors.

Speaking in his weekly address, Obama said that he had authorized the strikes in Iraq to protect US personnel serving in the northern city of Arbil.

"And, if necessary, that's what we will continue to do," he said.

The president was due to speak about the situation once again during an address at 10:25 am (1425 GMT) on the South Lawn of the White House before he leaves for his summer vacation at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Obama said he had also authorized a "humanitarian effort" to help displaced civilians trapped by Islamic State extremists on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The United States has a strategic interest in halting the militants' advances, but Obama stressed that it would not serve as "the air force of Iraqi Shiites or any other faction."

"We do have a strategic interest in pushing back ISIL," Obama said in an interview with The New York Times, using the group's former name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

"We're not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq, but we can only do that if we know that we've got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void."

Thousands of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, fled their homes when militants attacked the town of Sinjar and many have since been stranded in the nearby mountain range with no food and water.

"The thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of Iraqi men, women and children who fled to that mountain were starving and dying of thirst. The food and water we airdropped will help them survive," Obama said.

"I've also approved targeted American airstrikes to help Iraqi forces break the siege and rescue these families."
Obama emphasized that the United States "cannot and should not intervene every time there's a crisis in the world.

"But when there's a situation like the one on this mountain -- when countless innocent people are facing a massacre, and when we have the ability to help prevent it -- the United States can't just look away," he said.

"That's not who we are. We're Americans. We act. We lead. And that's what we're going to do on that mountain."

But Obama vowed that as commander in chief of the US armed forces, he would not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq, from which it pulled its troops in 2011.

"American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there's no American military solution to the larger crisis there," he said.

"We will protect our citizens. We will work with the international community to address this humanitarian crisis. We'll help prevent these terrorists from having a permanent safe haven from which to attack America."

Obama also renewed his call for reconciliation among Iraq's increasingly divided religious, ethnic and political factions.

The first US bombings struck IS positions and at least one convoy of vehicles carrying militants west of Arbil.

Cargo planes escorted by combat jets made a second air drop of food and water Saturday to the civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar, the Pentagon said.

Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 09 Aug 2014 16:25
 
ISIS... that heading really makes me think of the Egyptian goddess for some reason. At least I literally thought WTF the ISIS (god) crisis :confused::D
 
[video=youtube;EWUjACpK0os]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWUjACpK0os[/video]
 
[video=youtube;jzCAPJDAnQA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzCAPJDAnQA[/video]
 
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