Category Archives: Terrorism

Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, Terrorism, United States

The U.S. believes Islamic State has used Chemical Weapons in Iraq…

ISLAMIC STATE/CHEMICAL WEAPONS USE

The White House has said it is likely that Islamic State militants have used mustard gas in an attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq earlier this week. America believes this is the first indication the militant group has obtained a banned chemical weapon.

Islamic State could have obtained the mustard agent in Syria, whose government of Bashar al-Assad admitted to having large quantities of the blistering agent in 2013. Then, Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal.

It is also possible Islamic State could have obtained the mustard agent in Iraq, as vast quantities of chemicals have been shunted around in a possible attempt to subterfuge the 2013 agreement. Pro-Assad forces have gathered throughout Syria and Iraq in attempt to defeat Islamic State. The United States has not specified where or when exactly the attack took place, or whether the mustard gas attack caused casualties. The White House’s National Security Council has said it is seeking more information.

Recently, U.S. intelligence agencies have said they believed Islamic State has used chlorine gas in attacks in Iraq. Chlorine is not a banned chemical agent and is normally dropped in barrel bombs from helicopters.

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Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, Terrorism, United States

‘Significant airstrikes’ carried out by the US-led coalition on Daesh…

ISLAMIC STATE

One of the most sustained air operations carried out to date against the group Islamic State (IS) has been carried out by the US-led coalition.

The United States, using the Arabic acronym Daesh for the IS group, have said ‘significant airstrikes’ were carried out overnight, executed to deny Daesh the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.

The joint-command statement issued yesterday detailed a total of 38 airstrikes on targets belonging to IS in Syria and in Iraq. Tactical units and vehicles had been hit and sixteen bridges were destroyed in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, as well as Hasaka and Kobani, according to the statement.

Raqqa has become the centre of the IS control of territory which extends across both Iraq and Syria.

This is one of the largest deliberate engagements that the US has conducted in Syria, and the US military believes it will have serious debilitating effects on Daesh’s ability to move from Raqqa.

There were twelve strikes on IS targets near eight cities in Iraq. A statement from Iraq’s Defence Ministry has said government forces repelled an IS attack yesterday morning on the town of Haditha and the nearby Haditha dam in Anbar province. It claimed 20 militants were killed in the attack.

Last month IS lost control of the border town of Tal Abyad to Kurdish fighters. The Turkish border town was a major conduit for the group to smuggle in supplies.

The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet has reported that the Turkish army had called a meeting for next week of the commanders of the 54,000 soldiers deployed along the Syrian border.

Turkey is believed to have increased its military defences on the volatile border in the last week as fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has intensified. The build-up has fed speculation that Ankara is planning to intervene in Syria to push back IS and halt Kurdish forces, which have made gains against IS in the area.

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France, Government, Intelligence, National Security, Society, Terrorism, United States

Intelligence services in France gain new laws to eavesdrop…

FRANCE

The National Assembly in France has passed a new law allowing intelligence services to more freely eavesdrop.

The National Assembly in France has passed a new law allowing intelligence services to more freely eavesdrop.

The French parliament has passed a law which will provide state intelligence services with more freedom to eavesdrop. The controversial decree aims to target suspected terrorists.

The law, which was voted on by a simple show of hands from deputies in France’s National Assembly waivers the need for judicial warrants to use an array of spying devices including cameras, phone taps and hidden microphones.

Under the new legislation, French security officials will be able to place clandestine devices in suspects’ homes and beacons on their cars without prior authorisation from a judge.

Communication and Internet firms will also be forced to allow intelligence services to install electronic boxes to record metadata from all Internet users in France. The controversial law has been met with protests from privacy advocates and concern about US-style massive data sweeps. The United States passed a similar law in the form of the US Patriot Act following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

France’s ruling socialist government rushed through the bill earlier this year, shortly after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris, in which 17 people were killed over three days.

Despite the vote in France, the law won’t take effect, however, until a court rules on whether it abides by France’s constitution.

The news of the decree came as France reacted with outrage to revelations from transparency lobby group WikiLeaks that the US National Security Agency had eavesdropped on France’s three most recent presidents – Francois Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

Speaking on French television channel TF1, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged France’s leading politicians to launch a ‘parliamentary inquiry’ into the foreign surveillance activity. The anti-secrecy campaigner also said that other important revelations were in the pipeline: ‘I think from a policy perspective, what is to come is much more significant than what we have published so far,’ Assange said.

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