Turkey has stopped more than 36,500 terror suspects heading to join the IS group in Syria, Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said.
Ala told the Anadolu Agency that most of the suspects had been stopped from entering Turkey at the border but that almost 2,800 people from 89 countries had been arrested and later deported.
Turkey has stopped more than 36,500 terror suspects heading to join the IS group in Syria, Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said.
Ala told the Anadolu Agency that most of the suspects had been stopped from entering Turkey at the border but that almost 2,800 people from 89 countries had been arrested and later deported.
Libya's warring factions have met in Morocco to sign a U.N.-brokered peace deal to form a national government that Western powers hope will bring stability and help fight a growing Islamic State presence, Reuters reports.
IS militants, exploiting the growing chaos in Libya since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi four years ago, have expanded their presence in the country, including by taking over the city of Sirte, ransacking oil fields to the south of that city and killing a group of Egyptian Christians.
Investigators of the Paris attacks have found evidence they believe shows some of the attackers used encrypted apps to conceal their plotting for the attacks, officials briefed on the investigation have told CNN.
Officials found that the attackers used apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which use end-to-end encryption that protects user privacy.
CNN says that the officials have not revealed what specific evidence shows that these apps were used for planning the Paris attacks, but they did say that the attackers used the apps to communicate among themselves for a period before the attacks.
The "optimistic view" of the Saudi-led Islamic coalition against terrorism is that it is a "is a badly needed first step towards a more local approach to the many systemic drivers of violent extremism," intelligence consultancy the Soufan Group says.
Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a 34-member "Islamic military coalition" on December 14 -- to the surprise of some of the countries it listed as participants.
Despite the rushed nature of the announcement and the subsequent confusion, the Soufan Group argues that:
A truly unified approach to countering the violent ideologies tearing many countries apart would be a far greater accomplishment than any feasible military option. A more realistic view is that the initiative will struggle to avoid what has ailed so many Arab coalitions; sectarianism, parochialism, and competing self-interests.
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The U.S. Department of Defense says that the U.S.-led coalition against IS has trained 15,892 members of the Iraqi Security Forces so far.
AFP has spoken with Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov during a press trip to the Hmeymim base in Syria.
Konashenkov said that sorties are usually carried out within 30 minutes.
"From the time the pilot gets the order to when the plane takes off and the target is destroyed -- all that is normally completed in just some thirty minutes," spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said as he looks at another plane gearing up for a mission.
"If the objective is in Deir [al-Zor] province then it can take some 25 minutes to get there, if it's near Idlib, then just 10," Konashenkov told AFP as part of a tightly controlled press trip to Hmeimim organised by the defense ministry in Moscow.
Tarad Mohammad Aljarba, the man believed to be responsible for helping the attackers behind the November 13 Paris attacks enter and leave Syria has been personally involved in moving Australian IS recruits into the conflict zone, The Australian reports.
Western intelligence agencies have evidence that Aljarba, a 36-year-old Saudi Arabian also known as Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali, was appointed “border emir” and facilitated the entry of several Australian, European and other Middle Eastern recruits into Syria from Turkey throughout last year.
As of mid-2014, he was also Islamic State’s “leader for operations outside Syria and Iraq”, according to U.S. agencies and the UN Security Council, which placed economic and arms sanctions against him just weeks before the November 13 Paris attacks.
From our newsroom:
U.S., Russia Drafting New UN Resolution Against IS Financing
WASHINGTON -- The United States and Russia are working together on a new United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at putting further pressure on the finances of Islamic State (IS) militants.
Adam Szubin, the acting U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the resolution will "fully criminalize" terror financing and is modeled along the lines of those that targeted Al-Qaeda finances after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
He said IS, which holds vast territories in Syria and Iraq, receives about $400 million a year from selling oil and gas.
Asked about Russia's recent charges that Turkey buys oil from IS, Szubin said "we don't see any evidence that the Turkish government is purchasing oil from [IS]."
Szubin said a U.S. raid in May that targeted a senior IS commander helped refine U.S. air strikes to target the group's oil and gas production.
Jets and missiles have hit oil wells, tanker trucks, and small refineries in the area.
Another member of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a Syrian activist group that reports on the activities of the IS group in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, has been murdered, the BBC reports.
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said Ahmad Mohammed al-Mousa was killed by a group of masked men in the rebel-held city of Idlib yesterday.
The group have no further details, but at least two other members have been killed by IS militants since 2014.