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From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 3, 2017 – Coalition airstrikes continue to target and kill Islamic State of Iraq and Syria leaders and foreign fighters in Syria to support coalition partner forces and degradeISIS' ability to inspire, resource and direct terror attacks around the world, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials said today. Most recently, officials said in a statement, the coalition targeted and killed ISIS leaders involved in directing external operations as well as in bomb-making activities directed at regional and Western targets. Coalition forces killed Abd al-Ghafur, a Syria-based ISIS external operations official, and one associate in an airstrikeJuly 24 near Albu Kamal, Syria. His assistant, Abu Hammam, and three other ISIS members were killed by a coalition airstrike July 16 near Dayr Az Zawr, Syria. Ghafur and Hammam were responsible for managing and directing external op

The file photo shows Iranian fishing boats. Saudi Arabia’s coastguard has opened fire on Iranian fishing boats in the waters south of Iran, killing a fisherman, a senior border official of the Islamic Republic says. The incident happened after two Iranian boats fishing in the Persian Gulf strayed from their course due to big sea waves, the Iranian Interior Ministry’s director general for border affairs Majid Aqa-Babaei said on Saturday. “Accordingly and without establishing whether the Iranian boats had crossed Saudi borders, the coastguard of this country opened fire on the Iranian boats and an Iranian fisherman was killed due to a bullet hitting him in the waist,” he added. “This Saudi move is not compatible with human principles and even assuming that the boats had crossed Saudi borders due to sea waves, they were not authorized to shoot at the Iranian boats,” the official said. Aqa-Babaei noted that the Islamic Republic is following up on the issue to determine whether the

A journalist stands at the remains of the Temple of Bel in the historic city of Palmyra, in Homs Governorate, Syria. Source: Reuters The Syrian army continues its offensive on Palmyra with the support of the Russian air task force, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Feb. 13. "The Syrian government troops are continuing their offensive towards Palmyra with the support of Russia’s aviation. A distance of less than 20 km remains to be covered. Over the past week, Russian warplanes have conducted over 90 sorties in the Palmyra direction," the Defense Ministry said in a statement obtained by  TASS . In the course of their offensive, the Syrian government troops have destroyed over 180 militants’ objectives, including more than 60 strongholds, 15 depots with armaments, munitions and military hardware, 43 armored fighting vehicles, and also jeeps armed with large-caliber machine guns, the statement said. "The terrorists’ losses in manpower have amounted to over 200 men,

A Yezidi fighter on Mount Sinjar. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo Victims include rival elites and ideological foes by PATRICK BURKE Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sinjar, Aleppo. There’s a whole generation of academics who have spent their careers attempting to explain these massacres. Their research has largely identified three types of armed groups that commit such atrocities. The first is a genocidal group trying to wipe out a population based on religious, ethnic or some other type of group identification. The Ottoman Turks’ genocide of Armenians during World War I is  one example . The second type is an armed group that selectively kills individuals who can potentially impede its military or political goals. This kind of group mainly kills suspected enemy collaborators or combatants it captures. For example, Yoweri Musevini’s National Resistance Army in Uganda  practiced selective killing  throughout the 1980s. The third is a group that kills at random owing to its inability to discipline

The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have seen a proliferation of drones throughout the battlespace. Whether used for filming propaganda, as an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance ( ISTAR ) asset, or for command and control, drones are being used by a multitude of groups for a wide variety of missions. The Mosul offensive has seen this kind of drone warfare step up a level, with Islamic State (IS) employing drones armed with an assortment of different munitions, sometimes in conjunction with other assets, to deadly effect. Armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been around for some time, probably the most famous being the V1 flying bombs used by Germany during the Second World War. Modern drones, such as the Predator, have been armed since 2001. Developments in civilian recreational drones, most notably quadcopters, in the last five years have made them affordable, reliable and widely available. The parallel development and miniaturisation of civilian came

Russian special forces arrived in the western countryside of Palmyra on Saturday evening and are expected to help Syrian forces retake the ancient city in the coming days The (second) fall of Palmyra to ISIS came as a shock to almost everyone. (We are not trained in military matters, but apparently the major takeaway from this catastrophe is: controlling the high ground around Palmyra is the key to controlling the actual city.) There's no dispute that Palmyra has been a major embarrassment for Russia. The liberation of the city was supposed to symbolize the effectiveness of Russian/Syrian/Iranian military cooperation and signal a turning point in the war. Assad needed to take Palmyra to convince his people that the fight for Syria wasn't futile. Putin needed it to show the Russian people that the military operations in Syria were producing results. A convoy of Russian special forces arrived in the western countryside of Palmyra on Saturday evening after traveling from the

An investigator outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Tex., in May 2015. BRANDON WADE / ASSOCIATED PRESS An Arizona man was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday for aiding the Islamic State by helping two followers who attacked an anti-Islam event in Texas, leading to a deadly shootout with the police. Prosecutors were seeking a 50-year sentence for the man, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, an American-born Muslim convert who became the second person in the United States to be convicted on charges of supporting the Islamic State. He was convicted of conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization, interstate transportation of firearms and other charges. His friends Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were the only ones killed in the May 2015 shootout outside a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Tex. A security guard was wounded. The contest featured images that are offensive to Muslims. The authorities said Mr. Kareem had watched videos depicting violence by j