‘Islamic State manufacturing weapons on industrial scale’

Explosion in central Baghdad causes no casualties

IRBIL, Iraq, Dec 14, (Agencies): The Islamic State group was manufacturing weapons in and around Mosul on an industrial scale with products largely purchased in bulk from Turkey, according to a report published by an arms research group Wednesday.

The findings show that IS maintained a “robust and reliable” supply chain between Turkey and Iraq that allowed the fighters to produce tens of thousands of weapons, the London-based Conflict Armaments Research said. The group’s researchers studied IS weapons found at manufacturing facilities and on the battlefield during the Iraqi operation to retake Mosul that is underway.

As Iraqi forces advance, the extremists are losing the physical capacity to manufacture weapons on an industrial scale, but the research group’s executive director James Bevan warned that highly trained fighters will take their expertise with them as they retreat.

“Given that this group is so organized, they clearly see the writing on the wall in Mosul,” Bevan told The Associated Press, saying he believes IS has already moved its highesttrained bomb-makers out of Mosul and into Syria and southern Turkey.

“They place a very high value on technical capacity and they will do everything they can to preserve it,” he said. Bevan added that IS fighters likely looked to Turkey to purchase weapons ingredients, knowing that their demand would outstrip what is available in Iraq.

Iraq witnesses almost-daily attacks that have been frequently claimed by IS, including Baghdad where multiple attacks took place Wednesday.

A total of 11 people were killed and 38 others wounded in separate attacks in and around Baghdad, police and health officials said. The deadliest was in the southern district of Oaireeg, where a bomb killed four civilians and wounded 12 others, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attacks.

Iraqi forces have been met with stiff

Shiite fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary units advance towards the village of Shwah, south of the city of Tal Afar on the western outskirts of Mosul, on Dec 13, during an ongoing operation against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists. Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces said they retook three more villages

southwest of Mosul, completing another phase in operations aimed at cutting the jihadists’ link to Syria. (AFP)

resistance in Mosul, including waves of suicide car bombs, since launching an offensive to retake the city in October. They have retaken less than a quarter of the city since the operation began.

Meanwhile, a percussion bomb went off shortly after midnight on Wednesday in the Karrada shopping district of central Baghdad, causing no casualties, police sources said.

The same area was hit in July by a suicide bombing that killed at least 324 people, claimed by the hardline Sunni group Islamic State.

In an earlier report, she survived the first stone that struck her, then the second.

One of the Islamic State group’s fighters bent down and pressed his fingers to the side of her neck to check her pulse.

As her horrified neighbors watched, extremists threw a third stone at the young woman, who was accused of adultery. That one killed her.

It was, for those who witnessed it, the cruelest moment in Mosul’s descent into fear, hunger and isolation under 2 ó years of IS rule. Before the militants’ takeover, Iraq’s second-largest city was arguably the most multicultural place in the country, with a Sunni Muslim Arab majority but also thriving communities of Kurds, Shiites, Christians and Yazidis. Together, they had created Mosul’s distinct identity, with its own cuisine, intellectual life and economy.

But the Islamic State group turned Mosul into a place of literal and spiritual darkness.

It began with promises of order and of a religious utopia that appealed to some. But over time, the militants turned crueler, the economy crumbled under the weight of war and shortages set in. Those who resisted watched neighbors who joined IS turn prosperous and vindictive. Parents feared for the brainwashing of their children. By the end, as Iraqi troops besieged Mosul, the militants hanged suspected spies from lampposts, and residents were cut off from the world.

The woman’s killing in Mosul’s Samah district shook to the core those in the crowd who were forced to watch.

Several witnesses described to The Associated Press how the woman and her alleged lover were paraded blindfolded through the streets. The militants summoned everyone they could find to watch. It was in August, after the militants had lost strongholds in other parts of Iraq and Syria, prompting them to heighten their repression.

“’Still not dead,’” Samira Hamid recalled the militant pronouncing after he checked the woman’s pulse, before the lethal blow to her head. The man accused of being her lover was flogged 150 times and forced to go to Syria to fight in IS ranks.

Another witness, Sarmad Raad, found recalling the killing nearly unbearable.

“I shut down,” the 26-year-old said, “I just lost my mind.”

The AP interviewed dozens of residents who have left Mosul since Iraqi troops began retaking outlying districts last month. They described life in a city that has been virtually sealed off from the outside under the rule of the Islamic State group. They spoke from Mosul’s edges and from the refugee camps that are their homes for the foreseeable future, even as smoke rose and artillery boomed from nearby front lines.