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'They Even Cut the Throats of the Babies': Yazidi Survivors Share How they Lost their Families to ISIS

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In Kurdish-protected and internationally-organized refugee camps throughout Iraq and Syria, Christians, Yazidis, and Muslim Kurds live a tentative life in which many have lost their entire families and have no sense of when they will be able to return to a life of normalcy.

Speaking to the UK’s Daily Mail, a number of refugees living in various centers across Iraq told stories and shared photos of the family they had either never seen again or watched die before their eyes. “My older brother, my father, my mother, my wife and even my two kids were killed. All I have left of them is just one picture on my mobile phone,” says one man, Tahysn, whose two sons were aged three and four when killed.

A Yazidi grandmother identified as Rezal, who escaped Mount Sinjar, managed to escape the wrath of the Islamic State, but watched children die on the mountain of thirst and heat. “When we left Sinjar, the kids suffered a lot… Many men from our village died, many women have been captured. I saw some kids dying because of the heat,” she said. “Daesh [the local name for ISIS based on their Arabic acronym]… even cut the throats of the babies,” she said.

Read more from this story HERE.

ISIS Planning Gold, Silver Currency to Displace Dollar, International Banking

Photo Credit: DailyMail

Photo Credit: DailyMail

ISIS wants to introduce its own currency and plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins, it has emerged.

The Middle East terror group apparently wants to introduce its own Islamic currency as part of its attempts to solidify its makeshift caliphate.

Militants are said to want to bring back the original dinar, which is an ancient currency from early Islam, and religious figures in Mosul and Iraq’s Nineveh province have apparently announced its return in mosques.

The currency known as the dinar, which once consisted purely of gold and silver coins, is today used by a variety of countries, but the coins are created from different materials to the originals.

However, the jihadi group is understood to be planning to return to the original gold and silver coins, which were first introduced during the Caliphate of Uthman in 634 CE.

Read more from this story HERE.

ISIS Claims Beheading US Aid Worker

Photo Credit: © Sera / Handout, EPA

Photo Credit: © Sera / Handout, EPA

By Ramadan Al-Fatash and Anne K Walters, dpa.

The Islamic State extremist group released a video on Sunday purporting to show the aftermath of the beheading of US hostage Peter Kassig, triggering an international outcry.

The video shows a masked fighter clad in black with a severed head lying on the ground that he claims is that of Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker captured by militants in Syria in October last year.

US President Barack Obama later confirmed the death in a statement offering condolences to the family.

The killing is the fifth execution of a Western hostage by Islamic State militants.

Kassig, a former Army Ranger, founded the aid group SERA (Special Emergency Response and Assistance) that was focussed on operating in areas where other groups were unable to work. The group provided medical training and logistical support as well as coordinated aid deliveries, but had “temporarily ceased its operations” due to the security situation in Syria, according to the group’s website.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Peter Kassig death: A new Isis video, but a different ending. What could it mean?

By DAVID USBORNE.

The Islamic State extremist group released a video on Sunday purporting to show the aftermath of the beheading of US hostage Peter Kassig, triggering an international outcry.

The video shows a masked fighter clad in black with a severed head lying on the ground that he claims is that of Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker captured by militants in Syria in October last year.

US President Barack Obama later confirmed the death in a statement offering condolences to the family.

The killing is the fifth execution of a Western hostage by Islamic State militants.

Kassig, a former Army Ranger, founded the aid group SERA (Special Emergency Response and Assistance) that was focussed on operating in areas where other groups were unable to work. The group provided medical training and logistical support as well as coordinated aid deliveries, but had “temporarily ceased its operations” due to the security situation in Syria, according to the group’s website.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s ISIS War Is Illegal

Photo Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty

Photo Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty

For a generation, Democrats stood up against Republican presidents who they deemed to be too eager to go to war—or too ready to put troops in harm’s way without the full consent of the American people through their elected representatives in Congress.

Where have those Democratic protectors of the constitutional authority of Congress gone? Was it always just a partisan attack on Republican presidents?

If not, when will Democrats—who so vociferously opposed a Republican president’s extraconstitutional war-making powers—stand up and oppose President Obama’s unconstitutional usurpation of war-making powers?

Yale Professor Bruce Ackerman puts it succinctly: “The war against the Islamic State is now illegal. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gave President Obama 60 days to gain consent from Congress and required him to end ‘hostilities’ within 30 days if he failed to do so. This 90-day clock expired this week.” And yet, there’s been no consent, and no end to the fighting.

I believe the president must come to Congress to begin a war. I also believe the War Powers Act is misunderstood; President Obama acted without true constitutional authority even before the 90 days expired, since we were not under attack at that time.

Read more from this story HERE.

Iraqi Officials Say ISIS Leader Wounded in Airstrike

Photo Credit: AP / Militant video

Photo Credit: AP / Militant video

Iraqi officials said Sunday that the head of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was wounded in an airstrike in western Anbar province. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such an attack or on the militant leader being injured.

Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries both issued statements saying al-Baghdadi had been wounded, without elaborating, and the news was broadcast on state-run television Sunday night.

The reports came at a time when President Barack Obama said the U.S.-led coalition was in a position to start going on the offensive against the Islamic State militants.

Al-Baghdadi, believed to be in his early 40s, has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Since taking the reins of the group in 2010, he has transformed it from a local branch of al-Qaida into an independent transnational military force.

He has positioned himself as perhaps the pre-eminent figure in the global jihadi community. His forces have seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, killed thousands of people, beheaded Westerners and drawn the U.S. troops and warplanes back into the region, where Washington is leading a campaign of airstrikes by a multinational coalition.

Read more from this story HERE.

Yazidis Face Genocide by ISIS After U.S. Turns Away

Photo Credit: GettyIn August, the Obama administration intervened to stop what it called a pending genocide of Yazidi minorities in Iraq. Now the U.S. is gone, but the genocide continues.

Thousands of Yazidis remain stranded and starving on Mount Sinjar while thousands more have been sold off into slavery by ISIS, according to Yazidi leaders, several of whom are in Washington to beg for urgent assistance.

When President Obama announced U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq in early August, he said the mission was twofold: to protect U.S. personnel in Erbil and to save the ethnic Yazidis from ISIS, who had fled from their villages, chased by ISIS, and were stranded on the mountain with no food, no supplies, and no protection.

“People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide,” said Obama. “And when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”

Read more from this story HERE.

'I Have to Check Her Teeth': Chilling Footage Shows ISIS Fighters at Slave Girl 'Market' Bartering for Young Women…

Photo Credit: YouTubeAn unsettling video has emerged purporting to show Islamic State fighters bartering over Yazidi women at a slave girl ‘market’.

The terror organisation recently boasted of enslaving women from the Iraqi ethnic minority, and the men appearing in the clip explain it is ‘slave market day’.

The clip shows the men negotiating the price of the women, with blue and green-eyed young girls fetching a higher price.

It starts with one man saying to the camera: ‘Today is the slave market day. Today is the day where this verse applies: ‘Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess, – for (then) they are not too be blamed’.

He added: ‘Today is distribution day God willing. Each one takes his share.’

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: White House Delayed Action to Save American Journalists Held By ISIS For Five Weeks

Photo Credit: TownHallAccording to new reporting from Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, the White House sat on intelligence detailing the location of ISIS hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff for five weeks before attempting a rescue. When a rescue operation was eventually launched, the location of the hostages had changed and shortly afterward, Foley and Sotloff were beheaded on video.

“The criticism is that the White House had a high [intelligence] threshold than those who would carry out the mission.”

More on the failed rescue attempt from the WSJ:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the July 3 raid on an oil storage facility, a mission for which Delta Force commandos drilled for weeks, took place too late, as officials believe the hostages were moved by the militants just days before.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fliers Claiming To Be From ISIS Found Near Marine Base In Virginia

Photo Credit: Daily CallerBy Derek Hunter.

Federal agents are investigating threatening fliers claiming to be from ISIS operatives found near the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia.

The Daily Caller learned a message was sent to senior base officials announcing the discovery of roughly half a dozen fliers by a contractor who works on the base. The fliers depict the ISIS flag upside down and have religious writing in Arabic and ends with what roughly translates to “We are here from Mexico and came by train.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: TwitterISIS costumes for Halloween: Partygoers dress up in sinister jihadist-themed outfits with machetes, severed heads and guns

By Simon Tomlinson.

Partygoers are dressing up for Halloween as fighters from the Islamic State in the latest trivialisation of the world’s horrors.

Social media has been flooded with pictures of people wearing ISIS-style outfits, just weeks after the jihadists beheaded four Western hostages during their reign of terror across Iraq and Syria.

Some people are pictured holding fake machetes and severed heads in a twisted reference to the group’s brutal executions. The group routinely beheads opponents and its members often post horrific photographs of themselves posing with the bodies.

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Sources: Dozens of Former Gitmo Detainees Now Fighting With ISIS

As many as 20 to 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees — some of whom were released within the last three years — are suspected by intelligence and Defense officials of having joined forces with the Islamic State and other militant groups inside Syria, Fox News has learned.

The development has cemented fears that the U.S. military would once again encounter militants taken off the battlefield.

The intelligence offers a mixed picture, and officials say the figures are not exact. But they are certain at least some of the released detainees are fighting with the Islamic State, or ISIS, on the ground inside Syria. Others are believed to be supporting Al Qaeda or the affiliated al-Nusra Front in Syria.

A number of former detainees also have chosen to help these groups from outside the country, financing operations and supporting their propaganda campaigns.

Sources who spoke to Fox News were not able to provide the identities of the fighters.

Read more from this story HERE.