Yazidis shot... bomb kills 15

Lebanese arrest IS cleric

BAGHDAD, May 3, (Agencies): Islamic State group militants shot to death at least 25 captive Yazidis at a prison camp in northern Iraq, a Yazidi lawmaker said Saturday, the latest mass killing carried out by the extremists targeting the sect.

The killings took place at a prison camp near the town of Tal Afar, some 150 kms (90 miles) east of the Syrian border or 420 kms (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad, legislator Mahma Khalil said.

Khalil said he spoke to four different people with knowledge of what happened inside of the camp, though a reason for the killings still wasn’t immediately apparent.

“The militants want to spread horror among them to force them to convert to Islam or to do something else,” Khalil said.

He added that those killed included men, women and the elderly. He said he believes some 1,400 other Yazidis are still held in that camp.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled in August when the Islamic State group captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. But hundreds were taken captive by the group, with some Yazidi women forced into slavery, according to international rights groups and Iraqi officials.

About 50,000 Yazidis — half of them children, according to UN figures — fled to the mountains outside Sinjar during the onslaught. Some still remain there.

The US launched airstrikes and humanitarian aid drops in Iraq on Aug 8, partly in response to the crisis on Sinjar mountain. Since then, a US-led coalition of countries have conducted airstrikes across Iraq in an effort to destroy the Islamic State group, which now holds a third of both Iraq and Syria. The Sunni militant group views Yazidis and Shiite

Muslims as apostates deserving of death, and has demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax.

Previously, the group has let go of hundreds of other Yazidis held in captivity. Iraqi and Kurdish officials said they believe the militants couldn’t afford caring for the prisoners, many of whom were elderly and sick.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State group Sunday claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack outside a popular Baghdad restaurant that killed 15 people, including four policemen and a media figure.

Saturday’s attack, one of the deadliest in the Iraqi capital this year, took place in Karrada, a district packed with shops and restaurants. It was the latest in a series of similar bombings in Baghdad.

It killed 15 people and wounded 51, a police colonel told AFP on Sunday, revising an earlier toll of 14 dead and 39 injured.

IS radio Al-Bayan said the jihadist group carried out the attack and targeted a Shiite militia helping Iraq’s government forces fight the extremist militants.

“The soldiers of the caliphate managed to blow up an explosive laden car ... in the area of Karrada,” the broadcaster said.

Among those killed was Ammar alShahbander, chief of mission in Iraq for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), the interior ministry and two of his friends said.

Shahbander, who was born in 1976 according to his friends, was leaving a cafe in Karrada when the explosion hap- pened, his friends said.

A statement by the interior ministry described him as a “martyr of the Iraqi press”.

British-educated Shahbander was responsible for IWPR activities in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, and was in charge of a programme to set up a new media institute in Iraq.

A veteran Middle East journalist, Shahbander was mourned by Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama’s deputy envoy for the coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq.

“Tonight in Baghdad, terrorists took the life of my friend ... They will never silence his spirit, or that of the Iraqi people,” McGurk tweeted late Saturday.

Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad was the second claimed by IS in as many days.

On Thursday, 11 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in a wave of attacks in Shiite districts of the Iraqi capital which the jihadists also said they carried out.

Cleric

Security forces on Sunday arrested a Lebanese man accused of being a cleric and recruiting agent for the extremist Islamic State jihadist group, a security source told AFP.

“Ibrahim al-Barakat was arrested early on Sunday and is accused of being a religious jurist for DAESH in the northern city of Tripoli,” the security official said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Barakat, who is in his 40s, was arrested while trying to flee northern Lebanon to Turkey using a fake passport.

He is accused of recruiting young men from Tripoli to fight with IS in Syria and Iraq and of attacking Lebanese army units in the Sunni-majority city last year.

The army launched a security plan in April 2014 in an effort to stabilise Tripoli, which has seen deadly rounds of fighting between Sunnis who support the Syrian uprising and pro-Damascus regime Alawite residents.

Sunni gunmen in the city have often also clashed with the army.

In October 2014, 11 soldiers were killed when clashes erupted following the arrest of a Lebanese man accused of recruiting fighters for jihadist rebel groups in Syria.