The personal information of 100 service members was posted on a website by a previously unknown group calling itself the "Islamic State Hacking Division" that urged "lone wolf" sympathizers to kill those named on the list.

ABC News is not identifying the three service members who provided reactions to their personal information appearing on the list.

"This is just a way they are trying to intimidate us -- and it's not going to work," said one service member.

Another service member said it is not surprising that ISIS wants to hurt members of the U.S. military, though he was surprised that this group would be "brazen" enough to publish it.

A third service member called the publishing of the list "regrettable" but said he had no concerns for himself or his family.

They would not disclose what precautions they had taken in the wake of the online threat, though they said they were already being cautious.

"I wouldn't say I'm scared," said one of the service members. "It's just part of this 'new war' against an enemy with a different, more developed capability than what we've faced in the past. We have to make the adjustments in order to continue to win the battles."

A defense official told ABC News it does not appear that the information on the list was gained through a data breach. Instead, the official said it all appears to have come from publicly available information on social media and Internet sites.

Some of the service members acknowledged that information on the Internet can make such a threat possible.

"We really weren't surprised because all the people I saw on that list are on a webpage some place anyways, all that information was already public," said one service member.

"In a world with computers, it's easy to find information on anyone," said another. "We have a footprint -- the best we can do is to make that foot print not so deep in the sand."

The service members said they had been made aware of the threat, though some would not disclose under what specific circumstances.

In the wake of the threat, U.S. Central Command posted a message on its Facebook pagereminding its personnel to maintain "a heightened sense of vigilance whether dealing with work or home computer usage, specifically as it relates to Social Media."

"Adversaries and malicious 'cyber' actors continue to use any method possible in an attempt to gain access and exploit any information they can," the posting said.

Aden (AFP) - Yemen's Shiite militia sent reinforcements south and clashed with local fighters on Monday after the United Nations warned the country is on the brink of a protracted civil war.

Security sources said the militiamen, known as Huthis, had sent thousands of troops and clashed with Sunni tribes, with their sights set on the main southern city of Aden, where President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled to from the capital last month.

The militia on Sunday seized the airport and a nearby military base in Taez, 180 kilometres (110 miles) north of Aden and seen as a strategic entry point to Hadi's southern refuge.

Yemen, a long-time US ally which borders Saudi Arabia, is increasingly divided between a north controlled by the Huthis, who are allegedly backed by Iran, and a south dominated by Hadi supporters.

Mounting unrest -- including suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group that killed 142 people in the Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa on Friday -- have raised international concerns and prompted an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Sunday.

Its 15 members voiced their unanimous support for Hadi, with UN envoy Jamal Benomar warning that without immediate action the country will slide into "further violence and dislocation".

View gallery

Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi delivers a speech in the southern city of Aden, on March 22, …

"(Recent events) seem to be leading Yemen to the edge of a civil war," Benomar told the meeting by video link from Qatar, warning of a protracted crisis like "a Libya-Syria combined scenario".

The Huthis seized Sanaa in September and have been expanding their territory, clashing with Hadi loyalists, local tribes and Sunni Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda.

Since taking over Taez airport, the militia has pushed toward Aden, security sources said, although two convoys were repelled in overnight clashes with tribesmen.

- 'Puppet in hands of evil' -

It was not immediately clear how many Huthis or tribesmen may have been killed or wounded in the clashes near Al-Abd, about 40 kilometres from Taez, and Al-Maqatara, 80 kilometres from the city.

View gallery

Troops belonging to the Yemeni special forces loyal to General Abdel Hafedh al-Sakkaf, protest at th …

The Huthis have also deployed some 5,000 militiamen and more than 80 tanks to an area of neighbouring Ibb province, 30 kilometres northeast of Taez, local and military sources said.

The reinforcements have converted schools into barracks, the sources said.

Troops and southern paramilitary forces loyal to Hadi have also reportedly deployed in Lahj province, north of Aden, to ward off any Huthi advance.

Huthi leader Abdulmalik al-Huthi in a televised speech Sunday called for his supporters to mobilise for an offensive in the south, condemning Hadi as "a puppet in the hands of forces of evil, led by the United States".

Western countries and Sunni Arab Gulf monarchies have backed Hadi as the country's legitimate ruler.

View gallery

Shiite Huthi militants take part in a demonstration in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, on March 18, 2015 ( …

On Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal reiterated calls for Huthis to "obey an international consensus on rejecting the coup," in reference to their seizure of power in Sanaa.

- 'Journalist arrests' -

Yemen has been a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda by allowing Washington to carry out drone strikes against jihadists on its territory.

Washington announced Saturday it was evacuating its remaining personnel from Yemen, underlining fears in the West of growing insecurity.

The forces allied with the Huthis include members of the former central security force, a unit seen as loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

View gallery

Yemeni Army troops loyal to Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, take position on the coast in t …

Saleh was forced from power in early 2012 after a year-long popular uprising and has been accused of working with the Huthis to restore his influence.

Human Rights Watch on Monday accused the Huthis of an increasing number of attacks on journalists, including arrests and alleged torture.

"There has been an increase in arbitrary arrests and violence against journalists and other media workers" by Huthis, HRW said.

The Huthis reportedly killed one protester in Taez on Sunday when they fired on thousands demanding they withdraw.

Activists said several thousand Taez residents protested Monday outside a camp of pro-Saleh forces. Witnesses said four demonstrators were wounded.

Elsewhere, IS claimed responsibility for an attack Friday in Lahj that killed 29 police, in a sign of its growing activity in Yemen.

The attack came on the same day that two Shiite Huthi mosques were bombed in Sanaa. On Monday, IS posted pictures of what it said were the five Yemeni suicide bombers on the Internet.

This pushes against a growing sense that a framework nuclear agreement between a US-led group of countries (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, called the P5+1) and Iran is imminent. There has been reported agreement on the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges Iran would be allowed to operate, and the US has been willing to halve its demands on the deal's lifespan.

But the Ayatollah's tweet shows that Tehran — or at least the regime's most significant center of power — considers a deal that's based on a mutual, phased quid pro quo to be "fraudulent." If this tweet accurately reflects the Supreme Leader's demands, then he wants all of the P5+1's leverage to evaporate as soon as an agreement is signed.

Basically, what Khamenei is saying is a nonstarter and maybe even a deal-killer.

The tweet is just the latest sign that the interim period hasn't gone as planned — which raises questions as to whether a possibly impending final nuclear agreement will go as planned.

That is, if there is a final agreement. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif claimed on March 4th that the sides are "very close" to an accord. But they may be so far away — on negotiated limits on nuclear research and development, as well as the timing and mechanisms for sanctions relief — that Iranian deputy foreign minister Hamid Baidinejad said last week that the Framework Agreement wouldn't even be committed to paper.

"There will be no written agreement," Baidinejad told Reuters. "It will be kind of verbal agreement that will pave the ground for further talks."

This is especially alarming, because the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) signed in Geneva on November 24, 2013 doesn't even mention a "framework agreement" (or at least the public version fo the document doesn't — much of the JPOA is in the form of an implementation agreement that can only be viewed by individuals with a secret-level federal security clearance or higher). Talk of a "political agreement" with a March 1, 2015 deadline first started on November 24, 2014, when talks were extended for another 7 months.

View gallery

.

Even after multiple extensions, the Iranian head of state has declared one of the central assumptions of the negotiating process — that Iran would get sanctions relief as a result of adhering to their negotiated commitments — to be "fraudulent," while the sides may have to settle for a "verbal agreement" to meet a benchmark that was itself contrived during the interim period.

And that's not the only area where the JPOA hasn't exactly gone to plan. In April 2014, Reuters reported that Iranian oil exports were exceeding the new sanctions cap the sides had negotiated 5 months earlier. And while it's true enough that the International Atomic Energy Agency hasn't accused Iran of violating the terms of the interim agreement, Tehran has frequently skirted them, or at least the terms that the Obama administration has permitted the public to know about.

Iran's stock of 5% enriched uranium, which has undergone over half of the centrifuge revolutions needed to reach weapons' grade, has increased over the interim period from 7,154 KG in November 2013 to 7,953 KG today. Sensitive research has continued — last year, Iran was caught feeding uranium hexaflouride into an advanced centrifuge, a possible infraction of the JPOA that the US is eager to cast as an innocent mistake.

View gallery

.

What's the purpose of this continued nuclear activity during a period in which Iran is supposed to be negotiating a landmark arms control agreement? The International Atomic Energy Agency isn't entirely sure: On Feb 19, the New York Times published details of an IAEA report on Iran's program that underscores Tehran's hesitance to disclose all aspects of its nuclear program.

According to the Times, the IAEA submitted questions related to 12 technologies necessary for nuclear weaponization that Iran had pursued. As of November of 2014 — a year into the JPOA — Iran had "engaged the inspectors" on only 1 of the 12 topics.

"The agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," the report states according to the Times.

View gallery

.

As the Brookings Institution's Suzanne Maloney noted in a January 21st article on the state of the nuclear negotiations, "the presumption of path dependency is a pretty weak basis for asserting momentum where clearly none exists."

In other words, an honest assessment of the JPOA has to account for Rouhani's failure to meet analysts' and policymakers' expectations.

The interim period has dragged on for nearly a year and a half. Iran's negotiating position hasn't softened. There are still glaring gaps in its nuclear transparency. The sides even created a new benchmark that they may now fail to meet.

Nevertheless, the interim agreement has had three important results: It's reduced Iran's stockpile of 20% enriched uranium, provided Iran with billions in sanctions relief, and enabled negotiations that could resolve the multi-decade standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

But Iran seems to have deftly exploited the asymmetry at the heart of the negotiations. The Obama administration has invested its political and diplomatic capital in a foreign policy breakthrough that many compare to a Middle Eastern version of Richard Nixon's China thaw. As former National Security Council director Michael Doran has argued, Barack Obama had reoriented the US's entire regional policy in the Middle East in order to affect this goal.

View gallery

.

If the sides do end up reaching a deal, it may end up going smoothly enough to make the JPOA period seem like little more than a footnote — a series of inevitable and necessary hiccups as two former enemies embarked on the difficult process of learning to trust one another. One assumes there won't be an agreement unless the P5+1 is satisfied that Iran's intransigence and a longstanding mutual mistrust has been meaningfully overcome.

But the interim period doesn't inspire confidence that the sides will ever really reach that point.

Kasane (Botswana) (AFP) - African elephants could be extinct in the wild within a few decades, experts warned on Monday at a major conservation summit in Botswana that highlighted an alarming decline in numbers due to poaching for ivory.

The Africa Elephant Summit, held at a tourist resort in Kasane, gathered delegates from about 20 countries across Europe, Africa and Asia, including China -- which is accused of fuelling the illegal poaching trade.

"This species could be extinct in our lifetime, within one or two decades, if the current trend continues," Dune Ives, senior researcher at Vulcan, a philanthropic organisation run by US billionaire Paul Allen, said.

"In five years we may have lost the opportunity to save this magnificent and iconic animal."

The conference heard latest figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which reported that the African elephant population had dropped from 550,000 in 2006 to 470,000 in 2013.

East Africa has seen the worst decline, from 150,000 to about 100,000.

"The overall objective of this meeting is to secure commitments at the highest political level to effectively protect the elephants and significantly reduce the trends of killings of elephants," said Elias Magosi, from the Botswanan environment ministry.

"The current killing rate is unsustainable and the population of African elephants is in danger."

Elephant hunting is often organised by international criminal networks to supply the illegal ivory market, mainly in Asia, with some profits thought to fund regional conflicts and militants.

View gallery

File photo shows a Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) officer standing near a burning pile of 15 tonnes o …

"These syndicates take advantage of conflicts, social unrest, poor governance," Magosi said.

- Ivory trading routes -

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring group, said ivory trading routes demonstrated the flow from Kenya and Tanzania to transit countries including Vietnam and Philippines, before going on final markets in China and Thailand.

There, the ivory is sculpted into jewellery or art pieces that are prized by the wealthy.

"Thailand is still a country of great concern," Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC said.

"(But) China is the most important country that we are dealing with in the world with respect to illegal ivory trade."

Tshekedi Khama, Botswanan minister of tourism and wildlife, also railed against China, saying: "Whether we like it or not, the determining fact and the end result is totally in the hands of China."

Participants told AFP that during a closed discussion at the conference, a Chinese delegate complained that the country was being unfairly targeted and should be considered an ally in fight to save the elephant.

The delegate said China funds anti-poaching efforts in Africa and is strengthening legislation.

The conference follows up a 2013 meeting when 30 countries adopted a set of urgent conservation measures, including a call to unite against poaching and for improved criminal prosecution.

"We need a lot of collaboration," said Kelly Landen from Elephants Without Borders.

"Elephant are crossing frontiers and moving from safe areas to poaching areas. This need to be addressed. But we are moving in the right way."

On Wednesday, the Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) will also meet in Kasane to focus on the trafficking of all threatened species -- an illegal trade worth $19 billion a year, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Ivory is reportedly bought at $100 per kilogramme ($45 per pound) from poachers, and sold for $2,100 in China.

Julian Blanc, an elephant specialist for the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), said the link between poverty in Africa and poaching highlighted one way to tackle the illegal killing of elephants.

"We have monitored a direct correlation between human infant mortality (a measure of poverty) at district level and levels of poaching," he said.

"In places where there is high level of infant mortality and poverty, we monitored the highest level of elephant poaching... so addressing poverty is a significant component of elephant conservation."

Reuters Videos
Netanyahu comments 'very troubling': Obama's top adviser

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's chief of staff rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to distance himself from his comments rejecting Palestinian statehood, telling an Israel advocacy group Monday that the U.S. can't just overlook what Netanyahu said on the eve of his re-election.

In a speech to J Street, an Israel advocacy group that is sharply critical of Netanyahu, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also warned Israel against annexing the West Bank, where Palestinians hope to establish their future state. He said Netanyahu's prediction that a Palestinian state wouldn't come about on his watch was "so very troubling" and called into question Netanyahu's broader commitment to the two-state solution the U.S. and Israel have officially supported for years.

"We cannot simply pretend that these comments were never made," McDonough said.

McDonough's critique of the Israeli leader came as both Israelis and Palestinians are closely watching to see how U.S. policy will change in practical terms after Netanyahu's success in the elections. Obama has said the U.S. must reevaluate its approach to pursuing Mideast peace because of Netanyahu's comments, and has entertained speculation the U.S. will be less willing to come to Israel's defense in the United Nations. The U.S. has voted against U.N. resolutions supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state, insisting the matter should be negotiated directly with Israel.

On Monday, Netanyahu apologized to Israel's Arab citizens for another set of remarks that offended members of the community and drew additional U.S. criticism. Netanyahu said he never intended to offend the country's Arab-Israeli minority, but it wasn't immediately clear whether that apology would placate those in Israel and elsewhere who took offense.

"We just don't know what to believe at this point," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. She said people were rightfully confused about which to believe: pre-election Netanyahu or post-election Netanyahu. "Who knows? We can't read his mind."

View gallery

In this Oct. 21, 2013 file photo, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough listens in the Rose Gar …

Such tough talk about a U.S. ally drew condemnation from Obama critics like Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a potential 2016 presidential contender, who called it "a new low." Graham took to the Senate floor to accuse McDonough of using "language that has been reserved for terrorist organizations up until now" — even though U.S. leaders of both parties, including former President George W. Bush, have used the word "occupation" to describe Israel's presence in the West Bank.

Obama's decision to dispatch his chief of staff to speak to J Street, just days after the election, was perceived as another sign that Obama intends to take a tougher tack toward Netanyahu despite his insistence that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is still strong. Although the group considers itself pro-Israel, it often advocates against the Israeli government's positions toward Palestinians.

McDonough received a standing ovation when he called out Israel's government for ongoing construction of settlements in the West Bank. He said Israel cannot control another people forever, warning that such a move would be illegal and would contribute to Israel's "total isolation" from the international community.

"An occupation that has lasted more than 50 years must end," McDonough said.

___

AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP