Syrian president makes rare appearance

Bashar Assad attends prayers as the U.S.-led coalition carries out new airstrikes in Syria.
Muslims celebrate holy holiday

Mursitpinar (Turkey) (AFP) - Kurdish fighters backed by US-led air strikes battled Islamic State jihadists for control of a key Syrian town Sunday, while Turkey evacuated some border areas as mortar fire spilled over.

IS fighters seized part of a strategic hill overlooking the town of Kobane late on Saturday, a monitor said, but their progress was slowed by new strikes from the coalition of Washington and Arab allies.

A Kobane local official, Idris Nahsen, said IS fighters were just one kilometre (less than a mile) from the town and that air strikes alone were not enough to stop them.

He complained of a lack of coordination between the coalition and Kurdish fighters of the ground.

The dusty border town has become a crucial battleground in the international fight against IS, which sparked further outrage this weekend with the release of a video showing the beheading of Briton Alan Henning.

The video -- the latest in a series of on-camera beheadings of Western hostages -- included a threat to another hostage, US aid worker Peter Kassig.

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Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobane, seen from the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey, on …

Fighting raged around Kobane as the jihadists pressed their nearly three-week siege of the town, which saw them make some progress late Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

"IS succeeded on Saturday night in taking the southern part of the Mishtenur hill," the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Abdel Rahman said seven new coalition strikes against IS positions were carried out in the area late Saturday and the air raids were hindering the jihadist advance.

In a statement, US Central Command said the US military carried out three air strikes in Syria on Saturday, while fighter jets, bombers and helicopters were used in six assaults against IS positions in Iraq on Sunday.

- Villages evacuated -

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Islamic State jihadists held a military parade after they cptured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul o …

The battle for Kobane continued on Sunday, with shelling echoing from the town -- also known as Ain al-Arab -- and warplanes roaring overhead, an AFP reporter just across the border in Turkey said.

A mortar round hit a house Sunday on Turkish territory just a few kilometres (miles) from Kobane, wounding five people, medical sources said.

The source of the fire was unclear, but as a security precaution Turkish forces ordered the evacuation of residents from two small border villages.

They also fired tear gas to clear the border zone around the Mursitpinar crossing that has served as the main vantage point for watching the fighting for reporters and Kurds.

The toll for fighting on Sunday was not known, but the Observatory, which relies on a network of local sources, said at least 33 IS fighters and 23 of the town's Kurdish defenders were killed on Saturday.

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An image received from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office on September 15, 2014 shows Bri …

IS began its advance on Kobane on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the Syria-Turkey border.

The offensive prompted a mass exodus from the town and surrounding countryside, with some 186,000 fleeing into Turkey.

Extremist Sunni Muslim group IS has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in June and imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The group has been accused of carrying out widespread atrocities including attacks on civilians, mass executions, abductions, torture and forcing women into slavery.

It has also released videos of the on-camera beheadings of two US journalists, a British aid worker and on Friday of Henning, a 47-year-old British volunteer driver who went to Syria with a Muslim charity.

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A girl reacts while leaving a house that was hit by a shell in the Turkish village of Mursitpinar ne …

Kassig, the US aid worker, was shown alive in the video and threatened by a knife-wielding militant.

- Secret talks in Turkey -

After first launching strikes against IS in Iraq in August, Washington has built a coalition of allies to wage an air campaign against the group.

Britain and France have joined the strikes in Iraq and five Arab nations -- Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- have taken part in the Syria raids.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Sunday called for joint efforts to fight extremism "and defeat it because it has nothing to do with Islam".

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Syrian Kurds stand in the back of a pick-up truck in the southeastern town of Suruc after crossing t …

Turkey's parliament last week authorised the government to join the campaign, but so far no plans for military action have been announced.

Turkish media reported Sunday that the leader of the main Syrian Kurdish political party -- Democratic Union Party (PYD) chief Salih Muslim -- was in Turkey for secret talks with intelligence officials.

Reports said Muslim was told the PYD should distance itself from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which waged a deadly insurgency in Turkey for the past three decades.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said Syrian rebels on Sunday seized a strategic hilltop in the southern province of Daraa after a two-day battle in which 30 regime forces and 29 rebels were killed.

And in the Lebanon-Syria border area, at least two Hezbollah fighters were killed along with "dozens" of gunmen in clashes, said the Lebanese Shiite movement which has sided with the Syrian regime.

Kurdish fighters, Islamic State battle for Kobani (video)

The statement said Israel "is opposed to any unilateral action that does not help to reach peace, but on the contrary just makes the prospect for it more distant."

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said earlier that Sweden’s “new prime minister was in a hurry” and did not “study the issue in depth."

Löfven announced the decision during his inaugural address to the parliament in Stockholm on Friday.

Lieberman called on Löfven to focus on the problems “elsewhere” in the region, referring to the situation in Iraq and Syria.

Washington also reacted to the Swedish initiative with US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki calling the move “premature.”

“It's not the US that decides our politics,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström said in response to Psaki’s comment.

The Swedish decision will have to be approved by the parliament to make the country the first EU state to recognize Palestine’s sovereignty.

Sweden was among the countries that voted to upgrade Palestine’s status to non-member observer state at the United Nations General Assembly on November 29, 2012.

The observer state status grants Palestinians access to UN agencies and the International Criminal Court, where they can file formal complaints against the Israeli regime.

On Wednesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would take measures to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) if the United States vetoed a UN Security Council motion to condemn occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli regime.

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the besieged Gaza Strip and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.

Kurdish fighters in Kobani have battled for 20 days as the militants took scores of local villages and some 160,000 people have fled across the nearby border into Turkey. The lightly armed Kurdish forces defending the town, also known as the People's Protection Units or YPG, have largely succeeded in fending off the militants, who are armed with heavy artillery and tanks, some of that U.S.-made and seized from other Syrian rebels and Iraqi forces. But Islamist forces have ramped up their efforts in recent days, shelling the town on Friday and Saturday.

Some of the heaviest battles so far took place Sunday, as Islamic State forces battled Kurdish fighters for control of a strategic overlook. An Islamic State missile reportedlyhit a house in Turkey close to the Syrian border and wounded five people, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have done little to stop the siege of Kobani. According to U.S. Central Command, the coalition led nine airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday and Saturday,reportedly killing at least 35 militants. However, Kurdish fighters maintain that those attacks are largely ineffective in aiding the Kobani defenders.

"Airstrikes alone are really not enough to defeat ISIS in Kobani,” Idris Nassan, who acts as Kobani's foreign minister, told The Guardian. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every [Islamic State] fighter on the ground.”

Last week, Turkey's Parliament voted to authorize military action in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State if it is deemed necessary. The 298-98 vote also gave the Turkish government a mandate to allow foreign troops to launch operations from within Turkey.

"We wouldn't want Kobani to fall," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. "We welcomed our brothers who came from Kobani. We'll do whatever we can to prevent this from happening."

While the vote has received much attention as a possible step in the right direction, this is the third consecutive year the Turkish Parliament has voted in favor of military authorization to retaliate across the border in Syria without taking subsequent military action.

Many Kurds are skeptical that Turkey will cross the border and help fend off the militants' advances in Kobani. Turkish leaders have yet to articulate any plans for lifting the siege. And on Friday, the BBC reported that Turkish tanks stood idle as Kobani faced further militant attacks.

"The Turkish state has declared its hostility to the Kurds with its reluctance," Burhan Atmaca, a Turkish Kurd, told Agence France-Presse as he watched the fighting from across the Turkish border. "We no longer have confidence in Turkey. We will fend for ourselves."

Indeed, despite last week's vote, Turkey has made it clear that there will likely be no military action anytime soon. Meanwhile, rumors run rampant about Turkey's supporting the Islamic State and turning a blind eye both to extremist recruiting cells within its own borders and to the use of smuggling routes to and from Syria.

Within the Turkish government, there is growing concern that the U.S.-led coalition focuses too much on defeating the Islamic State and not at all on toppling longtime Syrian President Bashar Assad. There is also worry over possible attacks on and within Turkey if the country did take up arms against the Islamic State.

In particular, Turkey is concerned about YPG's ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been in conflict with the Turkish state for 30 years. Designated a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States for its attacks on Turkish soldiers, the PKK has called for basic civil rights, greater freedoms for Kurds and the establishment of an ethnic homeland independent from Turkey (a demand since tabled).

Recently, imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has warned that a fragile peace process with Turkey would abruptly end if Kobani fell to the Islamic State, threatening the country with internal conflict even as neighboring Syria implodes from its own war.

“I am calling on those in Turkey who don’t want to see the process collapse to shoulder responsibility,” Ocalan said in a statement from prison on Thursday. “The reality of Kobani and the peace process are not separable.”

Over 40,000 people in Turkey have died in the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state since 1984, the majority of them Kurds.

(HUFFINGTON POST)

Cairo (AFP) - An Egyptian jihadist group released a video Sunday showing the execution of four men, including three being beheaded, accused of spying for the army and for Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

It is the second time such gruesome footage has been released by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), the deadliest militant group based in Egypt's insurgency-hit Sinai region.

A similar video of beheadings was released by the group on August 28, showing the decapitation of four men also accused of being "Israeli informants".

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis says it supports the Islamic State (IS) group which has seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, but has not pledged formal allegiance to it.

Sunday's video, released on Twitter, features parts of a September speech by IS spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani directed at Sinai jihadists, urging them to kill Egyptian security personnel.

The footage then shows the execution of four men after their recorded "confessions".

One was shot dead after saying he worked with the Egyptian army, while the other three were beheaded after saying they worked for Mossad.

Before being killed, the men called on other "spies" to repent publicly, saying the militants knew who they were and that they would not be spared.

The footage also shows jihadists manning checkpoints and searching for "spies".

Egypt's Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel has seen fighting between militants and security forces after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July last year.

Militants have killed scores of security personnel, saying the attacks are in retaliation for a brutal government crackdown since Morsi 's ouster.

The authorities have launched a sweeping crackdown on his supporters which has left at least 1,400 people dead and more than 15,000 jailed.

Egyptian jihadis release video of beheadings

A Sinai region terrorist group executes four men for spying for the Egyptian army and Israel's intelligence service.
Supporters of IS