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The Afghan Taliban overran two district centers in the east while Afghan forces regained control of another which has changed hands several times over the past year. Afghan officials confirmed that the district of Zana Khan in Ghazni was overrun, while the Taliban claimed to have seized Gomal in Paktika province. Afghan officials then said that security forces regained control of Jani Khel in Paktia, however the Taliban has denied that claim. A member of Ghazni’s provincial council said that the Taliban killed four policeman and confiscated two “tanks” (likely up-armored HUMVEEs) and several Ranger pickup trucks after  storming the Zana Khan district center . Taliabn spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that a Taliban force inflicted “multiple enemy casualties” and “lots of weapons/equipment seized” during the operation. The Taliban  claimed it  “took over the center of the district of Gomal and its checkpoints in Paktika province during an intense fighting following an ...

On Jan. 19, the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released 49 documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound. To date, only a few hundred documents from bin Laden’s massive cache have been declassified. Still, the files that have been posted online reveal new details about al Qaeda’s complex international network. For instance, one  newly released missive  discusses Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) support for Boko Haram. The letter was written by Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, an AQIM commander who was subsequently killed in Mali in 2013. It was authored in Aug. 2009 and is addressed to AQIM’s emir, Abdelmalek Droukdel (also known as Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud). Boko Haram’s men sought AQIM’s assistance “Imam Abubakar Shekau, who assumed power of the Nigeria group after the death of Imam Muhammad Yusuf, sent three brothers to us,” Abou Zeid wrote at the beginning of his letter. Shekau (seen on the right) is the notorious leader of the organization commonly...

People gather at the site of a car bomb explosion next to the central bank in Yemen's second city of Aden, October 29, 2016. (Photo by AFP) Three people, including a child, have been killed in a bomb attack in Yemen’s central province of Bayda. According to Yemen's official Saba news agency, the bombing was carried out near a checkpoint in the center of the town of Rada' on Tuesday, when Yemeni soldiers fired at an advancing car, suspected of carrying explosives, to bar it from striking itself against a nearby sports and culture club. The huge blast killed the assailant on the spot and claimed the lives of a fighter with the Houthi Ansarullah movement and a child. It also injured at least eight other people. The explosives-laden car was heading to target the club, in which a ceremony was held in commemoration of martyrs from the Yemeni army and the Ansarullah movement. The explosion also damaged a nearby school and shattered the windows of houses that were in the vi...

Soldiers of the Hashd al-Sha'abi (Popular Mobilization Units) wave the victory sign onboard a pickup truck on their way to Tal Afar airport on November 20, 2016. (Photos by AFP) Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units have blocked the escape of around 200 Daesh terrorists who were attempting to flee the city of Tal Afar and enter Syria. On Monday, PMU spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi told reporters that the terrorists were using tanks in their attempt to escape Tal Afar, which is located to the west of Mosul. "The attack by the Daesh terrorist gangs started at around 7:00 pm (1600 GMT)” and lasted for around six hours, he said. PMU forces, also known as Hashd al-Sha'abi, have been stationed around Mosul since October 17, when Iraq launched massive operations to retake the city from Daesh. The coalition of anti-terror forces have so far fully liberated the eastern half of the flashpoint city -- home to more than one million people -- and are gearing up to liberate its western side....

“I had many slaves – they did everything for me,” the 25-year-old said, explaining how women and girls kidnapped by the Islamist militants washed, cooked and babysat for her during the three years she spent in their base in the vast Sambisa forest. “Even the men respected me because I was Mamman Nur’s wife. They could not look me in the eye,” Aisha said in a state safe house in Maiduguri, where she has lived for almost a year since being captured by the Nigerian army in a raid in Sambisa. Aisha is among around 70 women and children undergoing a deradicalisation programme – led by psychologists and Islamic teachers – designed to challenge the teachings they received and beliefs they adopted while under the control of Boko Haram. Thousands of girls and women have been abducted by the group since it began its insurgency in 2009 – most notably the more than 200 Chibok girls snatched from their school in April 2014 – with many used...

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 ...

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...

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...