Jihadist News

Washington's waning influence over events in Syria and the failure of the US policy of keeping Assad from reasserting state authority over areas lost during the more than eight-year conflict with rebels trying to end his rule.

In a televised statement, senior SDF official Redur Xelil said the SDF was continuing to cooperate with the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State even as it must now also confront the Turkish attack on northern Syria.

Al-Badri was killed in an "operation against the Nussayriyyah and the Russians at the thermal power station in Homs," the group said in a statement alongside a photo of a young man holding an assault rifle.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that 18 people were killed by Russian strikes in the town of Misraba, while the remainder died in shelling from government forces.

Human Rights Watch in a report on Tuesday criticised Iraq and the autonomous Kurdish authorities over mass trials of suspected Islamic State group jihadists.

More civilians have died in US-led air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria, officials acknowledged on Friday amid criticism the American military is being less cautious about killing innocents.

Air strikes by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have dropped significantly, a spokesman said Tuesday, as the war against the jihadists winds down.

Hussein Faleh has only one dream: to return to his home in the ravaged Old City of Iraq`s Mosul.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose forces Thursday battled jihadists in the west of the country and Kurds in the north, won the support of Iranian leaders at talks in Tehran.

U.S.-backed militias raised a flag inside Raqqa stadium on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said, as a four-month battle to take Islamic State`s Syrian capital came to an end.

Four Moldovan nationals were killed and three French soldiers hurt on Saturday when a transport plane chartered by France`s army crashed off Ivory Coast, authorities said.

 Investigators were desperately trying to establish the motive of a retired accountant who killed at least 59 people and wounded more than 500 after amassing a weapons cache in a hotel room and opening fire on the Las Vegas strip.

After breaking an Islamic State group blockade, Syria`s army is seeking to encircle the remaining jihadist-held parts of Deir Ezzor city, a military source said on Wednesday.

Many of them say they are from Russia, Turkey and Central Asia, but there are also some from European countries, the officials said. They have mostly arrived at the camp south of Mosul since Aug 30.

Oil-rich Deir Ezzor province borders Iraq and is a strategic prize for both the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Russian-supported government troops.

The attack on Friday evening in Ngala, near the border with Cameroon, came as two people were killed in an explosion outside another camp in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

As a result of the strike, a "large" group of fighters was destroyed, along with a communications centre, warehouses and ammunition, the ministry said in a statement.

US-backed fighters on Friday ousted the Islamic State group from Raqa`s Old City, a spokesman told AFP, bringing them closer than ever to the jihadists` most well-defended positions.

Tal Afar was the last major population centre in northern Iraq still under jihadist control and its loss deprives IS of what was once a key supply hub between its territory in Syria and Iraq.