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ISIS Making a Comeback with Specific Targets

ISIS is trying to make a comeback by creating chaos with assassinations — the same tactic it employed before it rose to power 5 years ago

  • The terrorist group ISIS has lost most of its territory and has few fighters left in Iraq and Syria, but it remains a threat in the region.
  • A new report warns that ISIS is attempting to make a comeback by resorting to a tactic it employed back in 2013 when it was still known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) — the targeted assassinations of Iraqi security personnel.
  • ISIS also continues to wage an effective propaganda campaign online, which helps it maintain a global footprint even as its presence in Iraq and Syria has become more faint.

Roughly four years ago, ISIS shocked the world when it took over a large swath of territory across Iraq and Syria, declaring the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate in the process.

Fast forward to 2018 and the terrorist group is a shadow of what it was even a year ago. It has lost the vast majority of the territory it previously held and the number of fighters it counted among its ranks has dwindled exponentially to below 3,000.

Nevertheless, ISIS remains a threat in the Middle East, and a new report from the Soufan Center warns it’s attempting to make a comeback by resorting to a tactic it employed back in 2013 when it was still known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) — the targeted assassinations of Iraqi security personnel.

“To get back to its heyday of 2014, the Islamic State first needs to get back to 2013, a year in which the terrorist group concluded one very successful campaign to free thousands of its detained members from Iraqi jails and started another campaign to assassinate and intimidate Iraqi security personnel, particularly local police officers,” the report stated.

In late June, Iraq executed 12 ISIS members, which the Soufan Center says was in response to the “high-profile assassination” of eight Iraqi security personnel.

‘A weakened Islamic State is now trying to recreate that past’

With fewer numbers, ISIS will be less inclined to focus on regaining territory and more likely to ramp up attacks on Iraqi police to sow the same brand of chaos it did back in 2013, according to the Soufan Center.

“A weakened Islamic State is now trying to recreate that past,” the report noted.”Targeted attacks on police and government officials have risen in several provinces as the group has stopped its military collapse and refocused on what is possible for the group now.”

The report added, “Assassinations require few people and are perfectly suited as a force multiplier for a group that has seen its forces decimated.”

‘The social fabric of Iraq remains severely frayed’

Peter Mandaville, a professor of international affairs at George Mason University who previously served as a top adviser to the State Department on ISIS, backed up the Soufan Center report.

“I think it would be difficult for ISIS to retake significant territory given the ongoing presence and vigilance of [US-led] coalition forces,” Mandaville told Business Insider, adding, “They certainly have the capacity to engage in an extended insurgency campaign using the kinds of tactics highlighted in the Soufan Center report.”

Mandaville said the situation on the ground in Iraq — that led to the rise of ISIS in the first place — has not changed significantly even though ISIS has more or less been defeated militarily.

“The social fabric of Iraq remains severely frayed, with high levels of political polarization,” Mandaville said. “Until the central government succeeds in advancing key political and security reforms, many areas of Iraq will continue to provide a permissive environment for low intensity ISIS operations.”

David Sterman of the New America Foundation, an expert on terrorism and violent extremism, expressed similar sentiments.

Sterman told Business Insider that the threat of ISIS returning to the strategy of breeding chaos on the local level by targeting Iraq security personal is “very serious.”

“ISIS continues to show capability to conduct attacks in liberated areas, an issue seen also during the surge,” Sterman added. “Bombings in Baghdad in January illustrate this as well as the assassinations and smaller attacks discussed” in the Soufan Center report.

In short, ISIS is still in a position to create havoc, albeit in a more limited capacity, in an already troubled country that really hasn’t even begun to recover from years of conflict.

ISIS continues to operate underground across the world

From a broader standpoint, this does not necessarily mean ISIS poses a significant threat to the US.

“Even at its height, ISIS did not demonstrate a capability to direct a strike on the US homeland (as opposed to Europe),” Sterman said. “So the threat [in the US] predominantly remains homegrown and inspired. Of course that doesn’t mean the US should take its eye off of what is happening in Iraq and Syria. ISIS’s bursting onto the global scene is proof of that.”

ISIS continues to wage an effective propaganda campaign online, which helps it maintain a global footprint even as its presence in Iraq and Syria has become more faint.

Moreover, ISIS is also turning to Bitcoin and encrypted communications as a means of rallying its followers worldwide.

“If you look across the globe, the cohesive nature of the enterprise for ISIS has been maintained,” Russell Travers, the acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently told The New York Times. “The message continues to resonate with way too many people.”

The Trump administration says there’s ‘still hard fighting ahead’ against ISIS

Speaking with reporters in late June, Defense Secretary James Mattis lauded the success the US-led coalition has had against ISIS in Iraq and Syria but added that “there’s still hard fighting ahead.”

“Bear with us; there’s still hard fighting ahead,” Mattis said. “It’s been hard fighting, and again, we win every time our forces go up against them. We’ve lost no terrain to them once it’s been taken.”

Meanwhile, US troops stationed near the Iraq-Syria border have been hammering ISIS in Syria with artillery in recent weeks.

*** New alliance formed in Syria | rojavaofficialsupport

SOUTHWEST ASIA, July 9, 2018 — Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve and its partners have accelerated offensive activity against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria targets in designated parts of Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Operation Roundup

Since the May 1 start of Operation Roundup, Syrian Democratic Forces resumed major offensive operations in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. Since then, the SDF has continued to gain ground through offensive operations coupled with precision coalition strike support.

CJTFOIR and its partner forces continue to exert pressure on ISIS’ senior leaders and associates in order to degrade, disrupt and dismantle ISIS structures and remove terrorists throughout Iraq and Syria. ISIS morale is sinking on the frontlines as privileged leaders increasingly abandon their own fighters on the battlefield, taking resources with them as they flee.

Over the coming weeks, Operation Roundup will continue to build momentum against ISIS remnants remaining in the Iraq-Syria border region and the Middle Euphrates River Valley. the Coalition remains committed to the lasting defeat of ISIS here, increasing peace and stability in the region and protecting all our homelands from the ISIS threat.

Between July 2-8, coalition military forces conducted 31 strikes, consisting of 42 engagements, in Iraq and Syria

2017 Abu Kamal offensive - Wikipedia

Strikes in Syria

Yesterday in Syria, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of one engagement against ISIS targets near Abu Kamal. The strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

On July 7, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets near Abu Kamal. The strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

On July 6, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets near Abu Kamal. The strikes destroyed two ISIS vehicles.

On July 5, coalition military forces conducted six strikes consisting of 11 engagements against ISIS targets:

— Near Abu Kamal, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

— Near Shadaddi, four strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS improvised explosive device, an ISIS vehicle, an ISIS logistics hub and an ISIS headquarters.

On July 4, coalition military forces conducted four strikes consisting of eight engagements against ISIS targets.

— Near Abu Kamal, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle and an ISIS-held building.

— Near Shadaddi, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three ISIS vehicles and an ISIS headquarters.

On July 3, coalition military forces conducted four strikes consisting of four engagements against ISIS targets near Abu Kamal. The strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two ISIS vehicles and an ISIS fighting position.

On July 2, coalition military forces conducted three strikes consisting of three engagements against ISIS targets.

— Near Abu Kamal, two strikes destroyed two ISIS supply routes.

— Near Shadaddi, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

Strikes in Iraq

Yesterday in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets:

— Near Makhmur, a strike destroyed an ISIS-held building.

— Near Kisik, a strike destroyed an ISIS tunnel.

On July 7, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets:

— Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIS-held building.

— Near Qaim, a strike destroyed an ISIS supply route.

On July 6, coalition military forces conducted two strikes consisting of two engagements against ISIS targets:

— Near Hawijah, a strike destroyed two ISIS fighting positions.

— Near Qaim, a strike destroyed an ISIS supply route.

On July 5, coalition military forces conducted one strike consisting of one engagement against ISIS targets near Basheer. The strike destroyed five ISIS caves.

There were no reported strikes conducted in Iraq on July 4.

On July 3, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of three engagements against ISIS targets near Habbaniyah. The strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

On July 2, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of one engagement against ISIS targets near Tal Afar. The strike destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group’s ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and ground-based tactical artillery, officials noted.

A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

U.S. to Withdraw from UN Human Rights Council

  • Haley has said panel wages ‘pathological’ anti-Israel campaign
  • U.K.’s Johnson has said council is flawed but has value

The Trump administration plans to announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, making good on a pledge to leave a body it has long accused of hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley plan to announce the withdrawal at the State Department in Washington at 5 p.m., the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing a decision that hadn’t yet been made public.

The 47-member council, based in Geneva and created in 2006, began its latest session on Monday with a broadside against President Donald Trump’s immigration policy by the UN’s high commissioner for human rights. He called the policy of separating children from parents crossing the southern border illegally “unconscionable.”

The U.S. withdrawal had been expected. National Security Adviser John Bolton opposed the body’s creation when he was U.S. ambassador to the UN in 2006. In a speech to the council last year, Haley called out the body for what she said was its “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel. She has also called for ways to expel members of the council that have poor human rights records themselves.

Won’t ‘Sit Quietly’

“For our part, the United States will not sit quietly while this body, supposedly dedicated to human rights, continues to damage the cause of human rights,” Haley said at the time. “In the end, no speech and no structural reforms will save the members of the Human Rights Council from themselves.”

A State Department spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, while the UN said it hadn’t received a notification that the U.S. was withdrawing.

The move comes as the Trump administration is under intense criticism from business groups, human rights organizations and lawmakers from both parties over its recently imposed decision to separate children from parents who enter the U.S. illegally.

Even some critics of the human rights council have called for continuing to push for a revamping of the body rather than quitting it.

On the opening day of the council’s current session, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson criticized the body’s perennial agenda item dedicated to Israel and the Palestinian territories, calling it “damaging to the cause of peace.” Nonetheless, he said the U.K. wasn’t “blind to the value of this council.”

The council is scheduled to discuss Israel and the Palestinian territories on July 2, according to its agenda.

*** Sheesh, judged by the company you keep eh? As a reminder, GW Bush removed the United States and Barack Obama reversed that.

Israel and Stuff » UN Human Rights Council ignores ISIS ... photo

COUNTRY TERM EXPIRES IN
Afghanistan 2020
Angola 2020
Australia 2020
Belgium 2018
Brazil 2019
Burundi 2018
Chile 2020
China 2019
Côte d’Ivoire 2018
Croatia 2019
Cuba 2019
Democratic Republic of the Congo 2020
Ecuador 2018
Egypt 2019
Ethiopia 2018
Georgia 2018
Germany 2018
Hungary 2019
Iraq 2019
Japan 2019
Kenya 2018
Kyrgyzstan 2018
Mexico 2020
Mongolia 2018
Nepal 2020
Nigeria 2020
Pakistan 2020
Panama 2018
Peru 2020
Philippines 2018
Qatar 2020
Republic of Korea 2018
Rwanda 2019
Saudi Arabia 2019
Senegal 2020
Slovakia 2020
Slovenia 2018
South Africa 2019
Spain 2020
Switzerland 2018
Togo 2018
Tunisia 2019
Ukraine 2020
United Arab Emirates 2018
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 2019
United States of America 2019
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) 2018

bin Qumu of Benghazi Attack Captured in Libya

Libyan army arrests former bin Laden driver Abu Sufian bin ...

photo

bin Qumu was in Afghanistan in the 80’s, then Sudan in the 90’s and back to Libya and Afghanistan and back to Libya. In 2011, he was working to overthrow Qaddafi, which is precisely what Hillary was trying to do. Heck, the Hillary operation hired bin Qumu. For interesting read, click here to read his GITMO file. That pesky left wing radical law group, The Center for Constitutional Rights that represented several GITMO detainees, published a statement in 2011 that bin Qumu was a harmless man.

Fox News’ Benghazi Special & the Continuing Cover-up ...

Osama Bin Laden’s driver who was linked to 2012 Benghazi attack that killed a US diplomat ‘is captured in Libya’, 11 years after he was released from Guantanamo

  • Reports: Libya National Army have captured a ‘high-ranking al-Qaeda’ operative
  • Suspect found in Derna is named as Ansar al-Sharia leader Abu Sufian Bin Qumu
  • Bin Qumu was once personal driver to al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden
  • He has links to the diplomatic compound attack by gunmen that killed US envoy Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi in 2012

Reports have emerged that the Libyan army has arrested Abu Sufian Bin Qumu, a leader of an Islamist militia group and former driver of Osama Bin Laden.

He was reportedly captured in raids in ‘one of the last strongholds’ of extremist groups in Derna.

Bin Qumu had purported links to attacks in Benghazi that killed US diplomat Chris Stevens in 2012.

It is believed Bin Qumu was arrested after his group ran out of ammunition at a hideout in Derna, according to Al Arabiya.

The 59-year-old is considered a high-ranking operative of al-Qaeda based on his associations with the terrorist group around the time it was founded.

He was said to be the personal driver to Osama Bin Laden in Sudan where the al-Qaeda leader lived for three years during the 1990s. But Bin Qumu denies this.

Washington Post reported he fought alongside the Taliban against US forces in Afghanistan before he was detained at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Pakistan.

The US military characterised him as a ‘medium to high’ risk to national security while he was in US custody and he refused to cooperate with authorities and explain his past associations with Islamic extremists.

He was extradited to Libya in 2007 where he served jail time before being released by Muammar Gaddafi.

Bin Qama returned to Derna to establish the Ansar al-Sharia extremist group, who advocate the implementation of Sharia law across Syria.

It was also suggested by Washington Post that the Islamic faction’s militiamen were present during the Benghazi attacks in 2012.

Last year, Ahmed Abu Khattala was on trial in the US capital as the suspected mastermind of the attacks on a diplomatic compound in the Libyan city that killed four Americans.

It resulted in the death of Chris Stevens — the first US Ambassador killed by violence overseas since 1979.

Al Arabiya said Bin Qama, despite being a leader of Ansar al-Sharia, no longer played a prominent role in the group.

He is set to be questioned by the Libyan National Army according to reports.

 

Crimes or War, the Body Collectors in Mosul

Imagine the other cities in Iraq and Syria. Mosul was part of Assyria as early as the 25th century BC. Of note, in 2008, there was a sizeable exodus of Assyrian Christians. They sought sanctuary in Syria and Turkey due to threats of murder unless they converted to Islam.

Related reading: Aleppo: Tell Our Story After we are Gone

Turkish Airlines New Flight Route to Mosul photo

Iraq Mosul picture, Iraq Mosul photo, Iraq Mosul wallpaper photo

Inside the killing rooms of Mosul

Warning: Graphic images

MOSUL, Iraq — In March, VICE News returned to Mosul for the first time since the war against ISIS was declared over eight months ago.

While life may be returning to normal in the eastern half of the city, on the other side of the river — where the fighting was most intense — the scale of rebuilding that needs to be done is monumental. It’s estimated there are still 8 million tons of conflict debris that need to be moved before reconstruction can start, equivalent to three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. About 75 percent of that rubble is in West Mosul, and it’s mixed with so much unexploded ordnance that experts say this is now one of the most contaminated spots on the planet.

In the Old City, where ISIS made its last stand, residents have slowly started to come back – a few business owners hoping to repair shops, and families who have no other option but to live in their damaged homes. Some water tanks have been trucked in, and electricity cables have been temporarily patched together along some streets, but the place feels deserted, and in some ways the scene was not that different from how it looked shortly after the fighting.

Eight months on, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of bodies still under the rubble, making life unbearable for the families who have returned.

The putrefied corpses are mainly Islamic State fighters or their families, since many of the non-ISIS civilian bodies have been dug out and reclaimed by family members or civil defense workers. The bodies that remain are a severe health hazard, but there’s little political will to deal with them, and removing them is risky given the unexploded munitions littering the area. Nevertheless, teams of citizen volunteers are going house-to-house carrying out this gruesome, dangerous work on a daily basis.

**

One volunteer team is led by Sroor al-Hosayni, a 23-year-old former nurse. Many of her group are even younger; some are medical students, but most have no formal training in handling corpses. So far, they say they’ve pulled and bagged more than 350 bodies that no one else was willing to deal with. They laid them in white plastic body bags where municipal trucks can easily collect them, labeling them for any potential explosives found with the corpse.

“We saw that there were bodies everywhere, in the alleys and inside the houses,” Hosayni said. “I took my team and started implementing this idea by going to help municipality and government workers in removing these bodies before summer comes and disease spreads in the city.”

At first the authorities complained, telling her: “‘You don’t have to move ISIS bodies. Leave them there; the dogs will eat them.”

Hosayni replied, “But one or two dogs can’t eat them; there are thousands of bodies.”

A suspected execution room inside the basement of a collapsed building Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team say there are more than 100 rotting corpses here. So far they have pulled more than 30 bodies from this room n the last few weeks. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

After filming Hosayni’s team at work near the destroyed Al Nuri mosque, we followed them to Al Maydan — the Old City neighborhood where ISIS made its last stand — where they had been working on one particular site for weeks.

Bulldozers have started clearing a path where Souk Al-Samak Street once ran along the river, but almost nothing else has changed since the air bombardment flattened this district.

The ruins of arched and intricately carved stone doorways open onto inner courtyards like dioramas of the war, frozen in time: Human corpses in varying degrees of decay lying amid stray ordnance, broken china, plastic toy trucks, and discarded military apparel.

Two hundred yards up the street and on the right, the team pointed us to a building on the banks of the Tigris River. Scrambling through the collapsed masonry, we emerged into two mostly intact basement rooms with barred windows looking out onto the river. In the far room, buzzing with flies and inescapable stench, were dozens and dozens of corpses, stacked too deep to count, one on top of another. It seemed to be the remains of a mass execution.

The body collectors told us there were at least 100 bodies in here; the team had already cleared more than 30 but had barely made a dent in the mound of corpses.

23 year-old Sroor al-Hosayni, a former nurse, leads a team of volunteer body collectors pulling corpses out of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team of volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

We saw what appeared to be the bodies of children, though it was difficult to verify given the level of decay. We saw no weapons or military gear on the bodies. The team told us they could see bullet wounds to their heads.

There are reports that ISIS locked large numbers of people in rooms like this, using them as human shields during the final days of the conflict. Many of those families died in coalition airstrikes — but this room was intact. It’s possible they could have been executed by ISIS fighters as government forces closed in. But it’s not clear why ISIS would kill or dispose of civilians in this way.

There are also reports of Iraqi forces executing captured ISIS members in this exact neighborhood. Beards and long hair were still visible on some of the corpses, leading the body collectors to believe some could be men who may have been affiliated with ISIS. But speaking to VICE, a senior Iraqi military official rejected any notion that Iraqi forces may have been responsible for the killings and told us that the site had already been investigated, without providing further details.

One international organization that has documented instances where Iraqi security forces have been accused of carrying out executions is Human Rights Watch.

Belkis Wille, the lead Iraq investigator at Human Rights Watch, visited the site soon after we did. She told us she was unaware of any investigation having been done at this particular site, and that — whoever was responsible for the deaths — the removal of evidence was troubling given that this was potentially the site of a war crime.

**

“Sites like that need the proper forensic teams securing the site and conducting the analysis needed to determine whether this is indeed the site of a crime,” Wille told VICE News. “Despite promises by the prime minister at the end of the battle to investigate abuses, we haven’t seen any sign of that leading to teams coming in and doing the investigations necessary. And the question really is, at what point do these sites potentially lose their forensic value and lose the evidence?”

Inside the remains of Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic State caliphate in 2014. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

But for the body collectors — and for many residents of Mosul — with the heat of summer approaching, the overwhelming priority right now is to clean up this city and begin rebuilding. The need to properly document and investigate potential war crimes isn’t at the top of the agenda.

“It’s time to focus on the living, not the dead,” was the mantra we heard from authorities and from many families trying to rebuild their shattered lives.

Nevertheless, the question of what happened in neighborhoods like Al Maydan and others in those final stages before victory was announced, and in the days shortly afterward, refuses to disappear.

In the ultimate stages of the battle to extinguish the last pockets of ISIS from Mosul last summer, access to the “fight zone” became increasingly restricted.

Baghdad declared the conflict officially over on July 10. The announcement, broadcast live on state television, came as a surprise to many, since there were explosions and gunfire still echoing out from the Old City where the last dregs of the Islamic State terrorist group were refusing to surrender.

Just a day before that, VICE News was one of the few outlets that managed to get past the cordon to join a general from Iraq’s elite counterterrorism brigade and an advance team of his men as they carefully picked their way across the booby-trapped rooftops of collapsed buildings in the district of Al Maydan to plant an Iraqi flag on the banks of the Tigris.

It was a journey through hell. The neighborhood had been pulverized by airstrikes and shelling throughout the campaign, but the intensity had grown as ISIS fell back to these ancient, narrow streets lined with buildings dating back to the 12th century. There was hardly a structure still intact, ordnance and bodies lined the route, some fresh, some bloated and badly decomposed from days or weeks in the sun.

Reaching the river was a symbol of having decisively broken through ISIS defensive lines, a long-awaited moment of triumph for the soldiers. But as the flag was raised and the soldiers took selfies, gunfire from a sniper still alive among the rubble sent the party scattering for cover. In those final days, as different units of Iraq’s security forces held impromptu victory celebrations after liberating neighborhoods, the question lingered of what the end of hostilities actually looks like when the enemy is hell-bent on fighting to the death.

We will likely never know who killed the people in the basement room of the house on Al-Samak Street — but as long as claims persist that extrajudicial killings by Iraqi security forces may have taken place, the stakes of not investigating those could be high. While there is little sympathy for ISIS right now in the devastated neighborhoods of Mosul, a culture of impunity for any abuses that were committed could set the stage for the same kinds of grievances that contributed to the group’s rise in the first place.

Cover image: The basement of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room filled with more than 100 corpses in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

 

Results of OPCW Investigation in Syria

Remember, the anti-Assad forces otherwise known as rebels don’t have aircraft and don’t have bombs that would create craters in the ground. Oh yeah, notice that Russia has not produced their own investigations or conclusions as they pledged to do?

 

The exact same sort of wheel assembly we saw on the Douma chlorine bombs on the chlorine bomb used in Saraqib!  The details of samples taken are interesting in light of the Douma attack, soils samples and samples from the munitions confirm the presence of chlorine, although these were taken close to the time of attack.   Here’s samples from Khan Sheikhoun, showing the same three chemicals as detected in the Saraqib attack, all indicators of Sarin use.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 16 May 2018 —The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), confirmed in a report released yesterday that chlorine was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in Saraqib, Idlib Governorate, Syrian Arab Republic.

The FFM determined that chlorine was released from cylinders by mechanical impact in the Al Talil neighbourhood of Saraqib.

The conclusions are based inter alia on the presence of two cylinders, which were determined as previously containing chlorine; witness testimony; environmental samples that demonstrated the unusual presence of chlorine in the local environment; and the number of patients at medical facilities shortly after the incident who showed signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine and other toxic chemicals.

The Director-General stated: “I strongly condemn the continued use of toxic chemicals as weapons by anyone, for any reason, and in any circumstances. Such acts contradict the unequivocal prohibition against chemical weapons enshrined in the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

The FFM’s report on the Saraqib incident has been shared with States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention.  The report was also transmitted to the UN Security Council through the UN Secretary-General.

Background

In response to persistent allegations of chemical weapon attacks in Syria, the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) was set up in 2014 with an on-going mandate “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic”. The FFM’s mandate is to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons have been used in Syria. It does not include identifying who is responsible for alleged attacks. Attribution was part of the mandate of the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism, set up by the UN Security Council, which expired in November 2017.

The FFM has previously confirmed with a “high degree of confidence” the use of chlorine, sulfur mustard, and sarin as weapons.

The FFM is required to study available information relating to allegations of use of chemical weapons in Syria, including information provided by the Syrian Arab Republic and others. The FFM employs investigative methods to determine if chemical weapons have been used. It interviews witnesses and obtains environmental and bio-medical samples and physical evidence for analysis.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons operates according to a strict confidentiality regime, which governs the operations of the Organisation, protects the integrity of its investigations, ensures the security of its technical experts, and determines what information can be made public.

As the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the OPCW oversees the global endeavour to permanently and verifiably eliminate chemical weapons. Since the Convention’s entry into force in 1997 – and with its 192 States Parties – it is the most successful disarmament treaty eliminating an entire class of weapons of mass destruction.