Tag: ISIS

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces moved closer on Wednesday to a town south of Mosul where aid groups and regional officials say Islamic State has executed dozens of prisoners. A military statement said security forces advanced to the edge of Hammam al-Alil, a thermal water resort, after an elite unit breached the eastern limits of Mosul, the […]

Iraq’s prime minister has warned Turkey against provoking a confrontation while saying he does not want war. Haider al-Abadi made the comments after Turkey deployed tanks and artillery near the Iraqi border and insisted that any Turkish involvement would be a violation of national sovereignty. Turkey wants a a role in the battle to retake Mosul from the […]

Iraqi forces were on the doorstep of ISIS-held Mosul on Tuesday, encountering snipers, landmines and road-blocking boulders to edge ever closer to the key city. Troops came within hundreds of meters from Mosul on Monday evening and are now the closest they’ve been since launching an operation two weeks ago to wrest the city from […]

Jack Murphy, SOFREP’s Editor-in-Chief, is currently in Syria participating in a conference held by the British Syrian society. Yesterday, Jack was given the rare opportunity to interview President Bashar al-Assad. After being escorted into the atrium of the presidential palace we were told that we could walk upstairs to meet the president. I walked up the white […]

Reports have emerged claiming that a veteran spy has handed over information to the FBI alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump. There isn’t a lot of authority behind this claim and media development. But is there a direct connection, relationship, between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump? Probably not. Trump’s connection to Putin may […]

So-called Islamic State (IS) has gone on a propaganda offensive as its enemies close in on its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. The city holds symbolic weight for IS because it was here that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made his first – and only – appearance following its declaration of a “caliphate” in the […]

Abbas Ali wept as his wife slowly pushed him in his wheelchair out of their village in northern Iraq, a risky escape along a route where Islamic State snipers three days earlier had shot dead a couple seeking freedom from their rule. Flanked by their four children, they looked behind them to see if any […]

In the video below, Kurdish Special Forces fight ISIS in Kirkuk. As Iraqi security forces launched the Mosul offensive, ISIS countered by attacking several locations within Kirkuk. According to the Wall Street Journal, ISIS is losing Sunni Arab support as the Mosul offensive continues. After all, it is Iraq’s Sunni Arab community that has paid the highest […]

Iraqi forces reached a position within firing range of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-held city of Mosul on Monday, a military source told CBS News. Iraqi Special Forces were advancing on Mosul early Monday. Moving in from the east under heavy fire, they were inching closer to the city’s limits. The elite […]

At the evening service, the priest counseled forgiveness to a congregation with little reason to forgive. They were Christians from Mosul, brutalized by the Islamic State and betrayed, in some cases, by neighbors, and nothing — not the priest’s pleas, not his invocation of Cain and Abel — seemed likely to heal those scars. Khalid […]

Through the haze and smoke, the brown and gray outline of Gogjali is just about visible. It’s an industrial suburb on the eastern outskirts of Mosul, just two kilometers (1.24 miles) from front line positions of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force (CTF), and it’s their next target. The Iraqi units send mortar fire into the […]

A constellation of warring factions have seemingly set aside deadly disputes to take part in one of Iraq’s toughest challenges yet — clearing ISIS out of its last major stronghold in the country. A successful offensive to recapture Mosul could boost desperately needed national unity, restore the pride of an army that was humiliated when […]