'Small Handful' of Americans Believed to Be Fighting With ISIS in Iraq

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

A small handful” of Americans are believed to be fighting with ISIS in Iraq, U.S. officials tell NBC News.

U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and military officials have for months declined to discuss the possibility that Americans had joined the Islamic extremist group blamed for beheading 40-year-old New Hampshire journalist James Foley as well as atrocities against Iraqis. But they now acknowledge it is likely that one or more Americans – but no more than a “small handful” — have joined the fray.

The officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, say they base that opinion on analysis and a string of recent arrests and investigations of U.S. citizens who have sought to join the group that is simultaneously fighting government forces in both Iraq and Syria.

“It stands to reason that one or some of those Americans who have gone to Syria may have linked up with ISIS. It would not be surprising,” said one senior U.S. intelligence official. “In general, we have found that Western fighters, not just those from the U.S., are joining the biggest game in town and the biggest game in town is ISIS.”

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Iraqi TV Host Weeps Over Plight of Christians

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Photo Credit: Hussein Malla/AP

Photo Credit: Hussein Malla/AP

Nahi Mahdi, an Iraqi TV host, broke down in tears while discussing the desperate plight of Christian refugees in Iraq.

“They are our own flesh and blood,” Mahdi said after regaining his composure. “Some of them have left for Sweden or Germany. Who does (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) think it is to drive out our fellow countrymen?”

The Asia TV program was aired in Iraq in late July, according to a video and translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“This is one genuine Iraqi we have here,” another panelist commented at the sight of Mahdi in tears.

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Liberia's Ebola Clampdown Turns Violent as Official Evacuated

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Photo Credit: AFP / Zoom Dosso

Photo Credit: AFP / Zoom Dosso

Violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone in Liberia’s capital Wednesday when soldiers opened fire and used tear gas on crowds as they evacuated a state official and her family.

Four residents were injured in the clashes that flared in Monrovia’s West Point slum which has been contained as part of new security measures aimed at containing the deadly virus.

The crackdown in Liberia comes as authorities around the world scramble to stem the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 1,200 people across west Africa this year.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf quarantined West Point and Dolo Town, to the east of the capital, and imposed a night-time curfew as part of new drastic measures to fight the disease.

Residents of West Point, where club-wielding youths stormed an Ebola medical facility on Saturday, reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.

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Shoot-on-Sight Order in Ebola-Wary Liberia

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Photo Credit: SkyNews

Photo Credit: SkyNews

Liberia’s armed forces have reportedly been given orders to shoot people trying to illegally cross the border from neighbouring Sierra Leone, which was closed to stem the spread of Ebola.

Soldiers stationed in Bomi and Grand Cape Mount counties, which border Sierra Leone, were to ‘shoot on sight’ any person trying to cross the border, said deputy chief of staff, Colonel Eric Dennis, according to local newspaper the Daily Observer.

The order comes after border officials reported people continued to cross the porous border illegally.

Grand Cape Mount county had 35 known ‘illegal entry points,’ according to immigration commander Colonel Samuel Mulbah.

Illegal crossings were a major health threat, said Mulbah, ‘because we don’t know the health status of those who cross at night’.

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Christians and Yazidis in Iraq Subjected to ‘Savage Rapes,' Sexual Slavery

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Photo Credit: U.S. Central Command

Photo Credit: U.S. Central Command

By Patrick Goodenough.

As the U.N. scrambles to help tens of thousands of religious minority Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL), experts are warning that jihadists may have forced 1,500 Christians and Yazidis into sexual slavery.

“Atrocious accounts on the abduction and detention of Yazidi, Christian, as well as Turkomen and Shabak women, girls and boys, and reports of savage rapes, are reaching us in an alarming manner,” two U.N. experts said in a statement released in Baghdad.

“We condemn, in the strongest terms, the explicit targeting of women and children and the barbaric acts [ISIS] has perpetrated on minorities in areas under its control,” said U.N. special representative for Iraq Nickolay Mladenov and special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Bangura.

“We remind all armed groups that acts of sexual violence are grave human rights violations that can be considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Mladenov urged regional governments and the international community to help secure the release of the women and girls captured by the jihadists.

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Coptic Bishop: Without Action, It’s Only a Matter of Time Before Islamic Fundamentalism “Infects the Entire World”

By Leah Barkoukis.

ISIS’ barbarism in Syria and Iraq has gotten so bad that even the Vatican has signaled that military action may be necessary. And Down Under, Bishop Anba Suriel, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the diocese of Melbourne, denounced the terrorist group in no uncertain terms and urged Australia, and the world, to act before “such fundamentalisms infects the entire world.”

“The world watches in silence as the last Christians are expelled from Mosul, Iraq in one of the most merciless and barbaric acts of genocide we have seen in the 21st Century,” Suriel, who was born in Egypt, said in a statement last week.

“Mosul, the cradle of Christianity in Iraq since the first centuries, is now purged of its entire Christian population,” he continued. “The ruthless and purposeful savagery of the attacks by the fundamentalist Muslim terrorist organization The Islamic State (IS) formerly known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is truly inconceivable.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

ISIS militants ‘kill 300 MORE Yazidi men and kidnap their families on second day of massacre in northern Iraq after they refuse to convert to Islam’

By DAMIEN GAYLE and SOPHIE JANE EVANS FOR MAILONLINE and MAIL ON SUNDAY REPORTER.

Islamic State militants today ‘massacred’ more than 300 Yazidi men – just one day after allegedly killing 82 others who refused to convert to Islam.

The insurgents stormed into the small village of Kocho in northern Iraq, where they spent five days trying to persuade villagers to take up their religion, local officials said.

When they refused, 82 male members of the ancient sect were reportedly rounded up and shot dead yesterday, while more than 100 women and girls were kidnapped.

And today, a further 312 Yazidis were allegedly murdered and their families abducted.

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Rogers: Competing Terror Groups Multiply Danger to U.S.

By Patrick Goodenough.

The terrorist threat facing the United States is greater now than it was before 9/11 and the failure to address the jihadist problem as “an ecosystem” is helping it to spread and become more dangerous, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers warned Sunday.

“The difference here is that, before 9/11, there were single-level threat streams coming into the United States – some pretty serious,” the Michigan Republican said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “Obviously, they got in and conducted the attacks on 9/11.”

“Now you have multiple organizations, all al-Qaeda-minded, trying to accomplish the same thing,” he said, citing the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda affiliated such as the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

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Liberia: Ebola Fears Rise as Clinic is Looted

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

By AP.

Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital’s largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday.

Up to 30 patients were staying at the center and many of them fled at the time of the raid, said Nyenswah. Once they are located they will be transferred to the Ebola center at Monrovia’s largest hospital, he said.

West Point residents went on a “looting spree,” stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. The residents took medical equipment and mattresses and sheets that had bloodstains, he said. Ebola is spread through bodily fluids including blood, vomit, feces and sweat.

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plague-villageStruggling Liberia creates “plague villages” in Ebola epicenter – potential refugee nightmare

By The Extinction Protocol.

To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicenter of the virus, evoking the “plague villages” of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world. With few food and medical supplies getting in, many abandoned villagers face a stark choice: stay where they are and risk death or skip quarantine, spreading the infection further in a country ill-equipped to cope. In Boya, in northern Liberia’s Lofa County, Joseph Gbembo, who caught Ebola and survived, says he is struggling to raise 10 children under five years old and support five widows after nine members of his family were killed by the virus. Fearful of catching Ebola themselves, the 30-year-old’s neighbors refuse to speak with him and blame him for bringing the virus to the village. “I am lonely,” he said. “Nobody will talk to me and people run away from me.” He says he has received no food or health care for the children and no help from government officials. Aid workers say that if support does not arrive soon, locals in villages like Boya, where the undergrowth is already spreading among the houses, will simply disappear down jungle footpaths. “If sufficient medication, food and water are not in place, the community will force their way out to fetch food and this could lead to further spread of the virus,” said Tarnue Karbbar, a worker for charity Plan International based in Lofa County/

Ebola has killed at least 1,145 people in four African nations, but in the week through to August 13, Lofa County recorded more new cases than anywhere else – 124 new cases of Ebola and 60 deaths. The World Health Organization and Liberian officials have warned that, with little access by healthcare workers to the remote areas hidden deep in rugged jungle zones, the actual toll may be far higher. Troops have been deployed under operation “White Shield” to stop people from abandoning homes and infecting others in a country where the majority of cases remain at large, either because clinics are full or because they are scared of hospitals regarded as ‘death traps.’ “There has to be concern that people in quarantined areas are left to fend for themselves,” said Mike Noyes, head of humanitarian response at ActionAid UK. “Who is going to be the police officer who goes to these places? There’s a risk that these places become plague villages.” Aid workers say the virus reminds them of the forces roaming Liberia during the civil war, making it a byword for brutality. “It was like the war. It was so desolate,” said Adolphus Scott, a worker for U.N. child agency UNICEF describing Zango Town in the jungles of northern Liberia, where most of the 2,000 residents had either died of Ebola or fled.

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Australian ISIS Jihadist Brags About His Little Boy's Horrific Actions

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By Kevin Boyd.

Most of us have seen or read the appalling stories about the atrocities of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. However, a recent story covered by the Daily Mail – and verified by other media outlets – probably takes the cake.

Khaled Sharrouf is a Muslim from Australia who went to Syria to join ISIS and took his sons with him. After a Syrian soldier was beheaded (presumably by Sharrouf or a fellow fighter), he and his seven-year-old son posed with it for pictures:

2014-08-11_1437

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Pure Evil: ISIS Is Burying Alive And Crucifying Young Christian Children

By F. Peter Brown.

ISIS is now beheading children and crucifying youths in their genocidal war against Christians, Yazidis, and whomever else is standing in the way of the caliphate.

isis-crucify-youth

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5-Year-Old Christian Boy Horrifically Murdered by ISIS

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

WARNING: There are some images of purported atrocities against children at the end of this article. They are extremely graphic. Please exercise extreme caution.

By Bob Unruh. The images of atrocities by Muslim fighters in Iraq – and Syria – against their soldier and civilian enemies have been have circulating for some time already. There have been reports, many documented in images and even videos, of ISIS crucifixions, executions, mass burials and worse.

But now Americans collectively are being left gasping by a flood of new reports and photographs depicting such horrors being inflicted on children.

One such report came recently from the Anglican Communion News Service, which said the son, age 5, of a founder of Baghdad’s Anglican church was “cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State,” a name by which ISIS also is known.

“An emotional Canon Andrew White told ACNS that he christened the boy several years ago, and that the child’s parents had named the lad Andrew after him,” the report said.

“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew,” White told the agency.

Image of child’s decapitated body (image courtesy Catholic.org)

Image of child’s decapitated body (image courtesy Catholic.org)

Read more from “Children murdered by ISIS” HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Iraqi Refugee: People in Mosul Hailed ISIS, Drove Out Christians

By Lauretta Brown. An Iraqi Christian who fled for his life from Mosul says that his Muslim neighbors welcomed the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) and told him “this land belongs to Islam.”

“We left Mosul because ISIS came to the city. The (Sunni) people of Mosul embraced ISIS, and drove the Christians out of the city,” the unnamed Christian refugee, who reportedly fled from Mosul to Lebanon, told Lebanese LBC/LDC TV in a July 30 interview translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

When ISIS entered Mosul, the people hailed them and drove out the Christians,” he said in the video interview with a young child sitting on his lap. “Why did they expel just the Christians from Mosul? There are many sects in Mosul. Why just the Christians? ”he asked.

“This is nothing new,” he added. “Even before, the Christians could not go anywhere. The Christians have faced threats of murder, kidnapping, jizya (a tax imposed on non-Muslims).”

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Intel Official: ISIS ‘Sees Conflict With The US As Inevitable’

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Photo Credit: Interdependent

Photo Credit: Interdependent

By Jamie Weinstein.

An intelligence official warned Thursday that the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria “sees conflict with the U.S. as inevitable,” The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported in his latest column.

The columnist, known for his extensive sourcing in the intelligence community, summarized an intelligence briefing he attended:

In a briefing for journalists Thursday, a panel of five U.S. intelligence officials summed up their assessment of an organization that has shown a remarkable durability because it is “patient,” “well-organized,” “opportunistic” and “flexible.” Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group has rebounded from about 1,500 fighters in 2010 to more than 10,000 today — becoming a global jihadist organization that communicates in many languages.

“We don’t assess this as something that will collapse on its own,” said one of the officials, who commented based on an agreement that their remarks would not be attributed. “But with pressure and alternatives [that might draw away its Sunni supporters], it could collapse over time.” The intelligence experts cautioned that counterterrorist tools, such as drone strikes and other air attacks, wouldn’t be sufficient “to defeat it rather than just ratchet it back.”

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US conducts new airstrikes as ISIS kills dozens of Yazidis in Iraq town, officials say

By Fox News.

The U.S. military conducted new airstrikes against Islamic militants Friday as sources tell Fox News members of the group killed at least 90 male members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in a northern village and kidnapped “dozens” of women and children.

A senior U.S. defense official told Fox News that U.S. surveillance drones saw evidence of the massacre of dozens of Yazidi men. The U.S. military later struck two militant targets, killing some of those involved in the killings, the source said.

The U.S. military said in a statement Friday that the U.S. forces conducted the airstrikes on Islamic State vehicles in the village of Kawju. The village is located south of the village of Sinjar.

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious group which numbers in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, has been persecuted in the north by Islamic State militants, with at least 500 killed prior to Friday’s news, according to Iraq’s human rights minister.

Sources told Fox News it appears residents in the village did not comply with the militants’ demands to convert to Islam.

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More than 6 in 10 Worried About Ebola Spreading to U.S.

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Outbreak-Poster1While there is widespread concern about the latest Ebola outbreak, most agree with the decision to allow two infected Americans into the country to receive treatment, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. The poll finds 62 percent of Americans are concerned the Ebola virus in West Africa will spread to the United States. That includes 30 percent who are “very” concerned. About one in four (27 percent) disagrees with letting the infected Americans into the country for treatment. Most voters — 68 percent — agree with allowing them in. Even among those concerned about an Ebola outbreak here at home, 59 percent think the Americans should have been allowed into the country for treatment. That jumps to 84 percent among those not concerned about the virus spreading.

Read more from this story HERE.

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rtr41zj1Five illegal immigrants detained in Albania with Ebola symptoms

Albanian police have detained 40 illegal immigrants from Africa today, five of whom are currently under quarantine after exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, Macedonian newspaper Vecer has reported. Police suspect the five are of Eritrean origin, having arrived illegally in Europe via Greece. They are currently being tested for carrying the Ebola virus in hospital in the Albanian city of Vlore, less than 86 miles from Italy’s closest port. The news comes after one person was quarantined in Montenegro earlier today under suspicion they may be infected with Ebola. The possible victim entered Montenegro from a West African country with an epidemic of the disease, according to the public health institute. In an attempt to prevent the spread of Ebola, Serbian authorities have currently put 14 people under medical surveillance, each hailing from either Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea or Nigeria, Bulgarian newspaper Standart reported. They will remain under watch for the 21-day incubation period of the Ebola virus.

Read more from this story HERE.

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AP_ebola_workers_jef_140814_16x9_992Nigeria reports another Ebola case – experts warn magnitude of the crisis not understood nor comprehended

Nigeria’s health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, has announced there is another Ebola case in Africa’s most populous country, bringing the total confirmed cases there to 11. Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital, Thursday that the latest patient is a doctor who helped treat the first Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who arrived from Liberia last month with the virus and died on July 25. All those who are ill with Ebola in Nigeria had direct contact with Sawyer. Nigeria has recorded three deaths: Sawyer, a Nigerian nurse who helped treat him as well as an employee of the Economic Community Of West African States who helped transport Sawyer to a hospital after he landed in Lagos, the commercial capital, and collapsed at the airport. –ABC

Magnitude of crisis not understood: There is evidence the numbers of dead and sickened by Ebola in West Africa may “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak,” the World Health Organization said Thursday. The U.N. health agency said it was prepared for the crisis to continue for months. With more than 1,060 deaths and 1,975 sickened, the Ebola outbreak is already the deadliest ever. Liberian officials faced a difficult choice Thursday: deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful. ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the West African country late Wednesday. A day later, no one had yet received the treatment, which officials said would go to three people. The outbreak, which was first identified in March in Guinea and since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, has overwhelmed the already strained health systems in West Africa and raised questions about whether authorities are doing enough to respond. There is no licensed treatment for Ebola, a virus transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, so doctors have turned to the limited supply of untested drugs to treat some cases. The Liberian government had previously said two doctors would receive ZMapp, but it was unclear who else would. Information Minister Lewis Brown said Thursday it would probably be another health care worker.

Read more from this story HERE.

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2014814105436417734_20Korean Air suspends Kenya flights over Ebola – cuts all ties with African continent

Korean Air Lines Co. is suspending flights to and from Kenya in what it says is a measure to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. The South Korean flag carrier said on Thursday it would stop operating flights between the southern city of Incheon and Nairobi from August 20. The carrier flies to Nairobi, which is its only destination in Africa, three times a week and did not say when it would resume its service. Ebola has not been detected in Kenya yet during this most recent outbreak, the worst recorded. The outbreak has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria last month became the fourth West African country affected. Dubai carrier Emirates was the first major international airline to impose a ban in response to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa by suspending flights to Guinea on August 2. News of the move came after Liberia received the last known doses of the experimental drug ZMapp, to be administered to a small number of patients infected with the virus. The boxes containing the drug were brought to Liberia on board a flight from the US, carried personally by Liberian Foreign Minister Augustine Ngafuan.

Read more from this story HERE.

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ebola-virus-sierra-leone.siThere’ll be no stopping Ebola’s spread in Philippines, says leading Filipino doctor of infectious diseases

The Philippines, the local primary and secondary hospitals will have a hard time containing its spread, according to an infectious disease specialist. At a health forum on Tuesday, Dr. Ludovico Jurao said the infection control committees in these hospitals were not fully capable of managing such a highly contagious disease and, without the help of experts; they may even contribute to an outbreak. “In containing Ebola, an infected patient must be confined to one room. But in secondary hospitals, patients stay in wards so the rate of transmission of diseases is high,” said Jurao, who is also president of the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID). Jurao said the PSMID had 200 members who could be tapped to help these hospitals. “There is really no way to curb the spread of the disease but through strong infection control measures in hospitals,” he said. But he also stressed that the key to preventing Ebola from entering the country was for those who come from Ebola-hit countries in West Africa, especially returning Filipino migrant workers, to fully disclose their health condition and their whereabouts upon arrival in the Philippines. He said some overseas Filipino workers had a tendency to keep to themselves information about their health to prevent them from being separated from their families.

Read more from this story HERE.