ISIS

Turkey is a NATO partner that stands with U.S. troops on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, but it’s an ally that’s increasingly turning its guns on fighters the U.S. sees as vital to crushing ISIS. On Wednesday, Turkey launched one of its biggest airstrikes in decades — bombing 18 positions in northern Syria and […]

Just over a week into the battle for Mosul, and the vast coalition seeking to oust ISIS from Iraq’s second city is making swifter than expected progress. But for all its gains — 78 villages liberated, and nearly 800 ISIS fighters killed as of Monday morning — the Iraqi coalition is encountering fierce resistance from […]

SOFREP reached out to several sources on the ground near Mosul, including a Kurdish intelligence officer involved in the battle against ISIS for Iraq’s second largest city. Predominately a Sunni city, Mosul was the home to about a million residents, after nearly half a million fled when ISIS took over in 2014. During Operation Iraqi […]

Iraqi forces shelled Islamic State (ISIS) positions outside Mosul on Monday as fighting to retake the extremist-held city entered its second week. A rights group, meanwhile, urged a probe into a suspected airstrike last week that mistakenly hit a mosque, killing over a dozen civilians. The purported airstrike in northern Iraq struck the women’s section […]

Taking Mosul from the Islamic State is a critical event that must transpire.  Mosul is one of the Islamic State’s most important strongholds. If not done in the best way possible – this fight could drag on. For the Islamic State, they know they’re out-gunned and so, creating humanitarian crisis to test the will of the […]

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s push for Iraq to let Turkey play a role in the Mosul battle encountered resistance Saturday from Iraq’s prime minister, who said his country’s forces will oust Islamic State of Iraq and Syrian militants from the northern city. “I know that the Turks want to participate, we tell them thank […]

The latest on developments in Iraq where Iraqi forces and their allies launched a major offensive this week to retake Mosul, the country’s second-largest city from the Islamic State group (all times local): 4:30 p.m. An Iraqi military spokesman says troops have repelled an attack by the Islamic State group on a western town, describing […]

US soldiers at a base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have donned protective masks against toxic fumes from a sulphur plant set alight in fighting with so-called Islamic State. They took the precaution after the wind blew smoke from the fire towards Qayyarah Airfield. In Baghdad, Turkish attempts to join the offensive against […]

On a road several kilometers outside Mosul on Monday, a convoy of Peshmerga fighters got a taste of the resistance the Iraqi army and police are facing inside the volatile city. This stretch of road and the villages along it — once they’re fully cleared of ISIS militants — will represent a great prize for […]

The first thing Musar Abid did when he escaped the Islamic State this week was grab a razor. “I shaved this morning,” he said, smiling and pointing to his cheeks, smooth for the first time since jihadist enforcers began requiring long beards two years ago. “I became a young man again.” When Iraqi federal policemen […]

Standing on the deck of the French aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, the pace of air operations is surprisingly swift. Several times per hour the crew launches between four and 10 fighter jets, many of them armed and headed for Iraq and Syria. France recently moved the Charles de Gaulle — or “CDG” as the […]

The battle to retake Mosul is underway and is being led by mostly Shia forces to expel ISIS. In doing so, they’ll free Sunnis – who may not like it. The sectarian violence after the battle got out of control it would spread into Syria – and vice versa. Because – the reality is – […]