Iraqi Christians celebrated Christmas on Tuesday amid improved security, more than a year after the country declared victory over Islamic State militants. In northeast Mosul, people attended a mass on Monday (December 24) at the Grand Immaculate Church, surrounded by blackened walls still tagged with Islamic State graffiti. Dozens of worshippers prayed and received communion, and then […]
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters on Tuesday it had “confirmed information” that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed. The report came just days after the Iraqi army recaptured the last sectors of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which Baghdadi’s forces overran almost exactly three years ago. Russia’s Defence […]
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Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were sceptical. The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a […]
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Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is on the brink of losing the two main centres of his ‘caliphate’ but even though he is on the run, it may take years to capture or kill him, officials and experts said. Islamic State fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the group’s territory, […]
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The bells have rung out after two years of silence in the Mar Korkeis church in the town of Bashiqa, some 15 km (10 miles) north of Mosul, Islamic State’s last major city stronghold in Iraq. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters retook the town on Nov. 7, ending two years of rule by the hardline Sunni group […]
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Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a traffic police post outside Moscow on Wednesday in which both attackers were killed, calling it revenge for Russia’s aerial bombing campaign in Syria. The militant group made the claim via the Amaq news agency, which it regularly uses to issue statements, and released a video […]
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As Iraqi forces prepare to attack Islamic State in its de facto capital of Mosul, residents inside the city and others who have managed to escape expressed relief at the prospect their home could be liberated from the extremist group’s harsh rule. But they also warned that if the assault is successful, the city’s Sunni-majority […]
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