Homeland Security News

Islamic State militants ambushed a convoy of government-backed militia fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk late on Sunday, killing at least 25 of them, police and militia commanders said on Monday.

Police and militia commanders had earlier said 12 militia fighters were killed in the ambush and at least 10 were missing, but security forces later found another 13 bodies dumped nearby with multiple gunshot wounds.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

A security official said Iraqi security forces were pursuing the Islamic State militants who disguised themselves in police uniforms to carry out the attack.

Iraqi forces launched an operation this month to consolidate control of a mountain area near the oil city of Kirkuk to be used for the transit of Iraqi oil, highlighting concern about mountainous terrain where two armed groups are active.

Iraq declared victory in December over Islamic State militants who seized control of nearly a third of the country in 2014. However, the group continues to carry out attacks and bombings in Baghdad and different parts of the country.

Source:  Reuters

When Yar Mohammad Mohammadi joined the municipal street cleaning crew here over a decade ago, he was expecting some unpleasant tasks. But nothing prepared him for the grim debris he encountered after a bloody bombing in central Kabul last month.

“We found hands, feet — even a head,” recalled Mohammadi, 40. “I couldn’t eat for the next two days. I was horrified.”

For the cleaners, clearing away and carting off body parts has become a grisly but routine chore in the Afghan capital, where suicide bombings and commando attacks by extremist insurgents take place almost every month. The United Nations on Thursday reported that more than 3,400 civilians died in the country in 2017, many from attacks targeting public places.

Just two weeks ago, at 12:45 in the afternoon, a white ambulance carrying a load of explosives detonated on a crowded downtown street, near a public hospital, a police compound and an antique market.

The human toll from the powerful bomb was unusually high — at least 105 people killed and 235 wounded. The physical destruction was also extensive; cars were crumpled like paper and buildings were left with collapsed roofs, windows shattered and walls charred.

Security forces quickly cordoned off the area, then detectives arrived to investigate. After five hours, they left. Then about 250 municipal cleaners, wearing bright orange coveralls and shouldering shovels, moved in.

“Be careful, don’t hurt yourselves,” Ahmad Behzad Ghayasi, the cleaning department director, told the men as they swept up shards of glass in one hospital building.

Read more:  The Washington Post

Five women have been killed in a shooting at a Christian church in Russia's volatile republic of Dagestan.

Five others, including a police officer and a national guardsman, were injured, Russian officials said.

A man fired at people leaving an evening service in the city of Kizlyar.

The attacker was shot and killed at the scene. He was later identified as 22-year-old Khalil Khalilov, a resident of Dagestan. The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attack.

The gunman used a hunting rifle, opening fire on worshippers leaving a service during celebrations for Maslenitsa - a traditional pre-Lent festival, Russian media report.

Four women were killed at the scene, and another woman died later in a hospital.

Russian news outlet RBK Daily quoted an Orthodox priest as saying the attack took place immediately following the afternoon service.

"We had finished the mass and were beginning to leave the church. A bearded man ran towards the church shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest) and killed four people," the priest said.

"He was carrying a rifle and a knife," he added.

IS later said - through its information wing Amaq - that one of its "soldiers" had carried out the attack.

Read more:  BBC News

From their outpost on Iraq’s westernmost edge, U.S. 1st Lt. Kyle Hagerty and his troops watched civilians trickle into the area after American and Iraqi forces drove out the Islamic State group. They were, he believed, families returning to liberated homes, a hopeful sign of increasing stability.

But when he interviewed them on a recent reconnaissance patrol, he discovered he was wrong. They were families looking for shelter after being driven from their homes in a nearby town. Those who pushed them out were forces from among their “liberators” — Shiite militiamen who seized control of the area after defeating the IS militants.

It was a bitter sign of the mixed legacy from the United States’ intervention in Iraq to help defeat the militants. American-backed military firepower brought down the IS “caliphate,” but many of the divisions and problems that helped fuel the extremists’ rise remain unresolved.

The U.S.-led coalition, which launched its fight against IS in August 2014, is now reducing the numbers of American troops in Iraq, after Baghdad declared victory over the extremists in December. Both Iraqi and U.S. officials say the exact size of the drawdown has not yet been decided.

Read more:  AP

A Nigerian court has released 475 people allegedly affiliated with Boko Haram for rehabilitation, the justice ministry said on Sunday, as the country’s biggest legal investigation of the militant Islamist insurgency continues.

The first person convicted for the kidnapping in 2014 of Chibok schoolgirls, sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment last week, was also handed an addition 15-year sentence, to run back-to-back, the justice ministry said in a statement.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and two million forced to flee their homes in northeastern Nigeria since Boko Haram began an insurgency in 2009 aimed at creating an Islamic state.

But humanitarian groups have criticized the Nigerian authorities’ handling of those detained for infringing on the suspects’ rights.

Some of those whose cases were heard last week in a detention center in central Nigeria had been held without trial since 2010, according to the justice ministry statement.

“The prosecution counsel could not charge them (with) any offence due to lack of sufficient evidence against them,” the ministry said.

In October, the ministry said 45 people suspected of Boko Haram links had been convicted and jailed. A further 468 suspects were discharged and 28 suspects were remanded for trial in Abuja or Minna.

Source:  Reuters