Free Republic

) - Islamic State militants stormed an air base in northeast Syria on Sunday, capturing it from government forces after days of fighting that cost more than 500 lives, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 346 Islamic State fighters were killed and more than 170 members of government forces had died since Tuesday in the fight over Tabqa base, making it one of the deadliest confrontations between the two groups since the start of Syria's war.

Islamic State militants capture key Syrian air base - giving them open road to the sea and massive store of weapons and ammunition. Islamic State militants have seized a major Syrian air base, wiping out the last government stronghold in a province dominated by jihadists. The extremists won a week-long battle today to capture the sprawling Tabqa base 25 miles from their stronghold in Raqqa, reportedly killing dozens of soldiers in the process. The base was reportedly one of the military's largest facilities in the region, with several warplane squadrons, helicopters, tanks, artillery and ammunition. Its capture is a huge...

ALONG with a billion Muslims across the globe, I turn to Mecca in Saudi Arabia every day to say my prayers. But when I visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad, I am forced to leave overwhelmed with anguish at the power of extremism running amok in Islam’s birthplace. Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe. What is religious...

In the wake of the recent beheading of a US journalist by a suspected British Islamic State militant in Iraq, the UK is planning a tougher law to tackle threat of Islamist terrorism in the country which includes stripping citizenship of naturalised Britons who are fighting overseas. It will also have new orders for banning extremist groups that fall short of the legal threshold for terrorist proscription. UK Home Secretary Theresa May, in an article for the 'Daily Telegraph', wrote, "People who insist on travelling to fight in Syria and Iraq will be investigated by the police and security services....

The United States was said to be considering air strikes aimed at eliminating individual leaders of Islamic State as Turkey came under mounting pressure to stem the flow of jihadists across its border into Syria. As Washington debated extending air strikes into Syria on Saturday, senior British politicians urged Ankara to act to block recruits from the UK and other countries from entering Syria via Turkey, en route to joining Islamic State (formerly Isis). This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure greater control of the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi...

Assad offers to help Iraq rid itself of al-Qaeda group which took over Mosul, saying 'Damascus ready to cooperate with Iraq to face terrorism, our common enemy'

At least two rockets were fired on Saturday from southern Lebanon towards Israel, Lebanon's national news agency and security sources said, without saying who had launched them. The news agency NNA, citing its correspondent in Tyre, said the rockets were fired towards "occupied territories" and that the Lebanese army had encircled the suspected launch area. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Last month militants in Lebanon fired into Israel on at least three occasions and in the past a group linked to al Qaeda has claimed rocket attacks. Israel's military and police said at least one rocket fired...

The partnership that has emerged in this war between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a direct consequence of Obama’s abandonment of the US’s traditional allies. Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face. Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these countries view it as part of a larger axis of Sunni jihad that threatens not only...

Talk to any Syrian you meet on the Syrian-Turkish border these days, and in less than five minutes the conversation is likely to turn to Da’ash—the Arabic acronym for the rebel organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. Linked to al-Qaeda, the fearsome group has swept across northern Syria, imposing sharia law, detaining and even beheading Syrians who don’t conform to its purist vision of Islam, and waging war on rival militias. In early December, the group killed a foreign journalist, Iraqi cameraman Yasser Faisal al-Joumali, who was reporting in northern Syria. Even using...

Iraqi Al Qaeda's entry into Syria's civil war caused "a political disaster" for Islamist militants there, the movement's global leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video message, urging the faction to redouble its efforts in Iraq instead. Zawahri has repeatedly tried to end infighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and another Al Qaeda-aligned group, the Nusra Front. He said on May 2 in a message translated by SITE Monitoring that if ISIL had accepted his decision not to get involved in Syria and had instead worked to "busy itself with Iraq, which needs double its...

WASHINGTON — Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday afternoon that it would not be possible to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria without attacking its fighters in Syria. General Dempsey, speaking at a news conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, did not commit the United States to carrying out airstrikes in Syria, and the Obama administration’s broader strategy for defeating the Sunni militant group remained unclear. Earlier in the day, the Pentagon announced that American warplanes had conducted six more strikes on ISIS targets in the vicinity of the Mosul...

Iran has sent 2,000 advance troops to Iraq in the past 48 hours to help tackle a jihadist insurgency, a senior Iraqi official has told the Guardian. The confirmation comes as the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said Iran was ready to support Iraq from the mortal threat fast spreading through the country, while the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called on citizens to take up arms in their country's defence. Addressing the country on Saturday, Maliki said rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) had given "an incentive to the army and to Iraqis to act...

The threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of its Shiite-dominated Arab ally presents Iran with the biggest security and strategic challenge it has faced since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. With the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials. Iran has invested considerable financial, political and military resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged from U.S. war as a strategic partner for the Islamic Republic and a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran...

A warship and a destroyer belonging to the Iranian naval fleet have berthed at Qatar's Doha port upon an invitation by Qatari Naval officials. Iranian Ambassador to Doha Abdullah Sohrabi and Iran's military attache in Qatar Brigadier-General Mashallah Poursheh conferred with commanders and cadets aboard the Bandar Abbas warship and Naqdi Destroyer. Sohrabi said that the symbolic docking of the Iranian warship and destroyer at the Qatari capital is a step toward the improvement of bilateral defense ties between the two countries. Since Iran and Qatar are neighbors and have common sea borders, issues such as defense cooperation and security...

The impetus underlying China’s manifold interests in the Middle East remains a topic of close scrutiny. The dramatic social and political changes that are taking root in the region portend a vastly different geopolitical cartography in contrast with previous arrangements. These circumstances yield important implications for the people of the Middle East and foreign powers, such as the United States with longstanding strategic interests in the region. Owing to its notable inroads into the Middle East in recent years, China also is watching regional events unfold with great interest. Due to its increasing demand for Middle Eastern oil and natural...

President Barack Obama has announced that the United States launched air strikes on the terrorist organization ISIS to assist Kurdistan. It is likely you have not seen a headline that says, “US Strikes help Kurds retake towns.” That is because it never happened. The air support came from Russian and Iranian planes. The only problem is that’s not entirely true. My contacts in Kurdistan are now saying that many of these attacks are being launched by the Iraqi air force. The only problem is that the US government has not sold airplanes to Iraq, but Russia has armed them with...

Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, are seeking to build up their air power and missile defenses to counter any challenger from Iran. Mostly they're looking to their traditional arms suppliers in the West, the United States, Britain and France, but Russia is pushing hard for a piece of the action. This year's biennial Dubai air show, which opened Sunday in the United Arab Emirates, provided a showcase for the latest technology on offer. Air power has been the deciding factor in most Middle Eastern conflicts since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, when Israeli warplanes annihilated the air forces of Egypt,...

Washington, Asharq Al-Awsat- The United States will soon provide Israel with some 100 "bunker buster" bombs to kill the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group and destroy its trenches, Informed sources in both Washington and Tel Aviv to Asharq Al-Awsat. The sources also revealed that "bunker buster" bombs, which can penetrate up to 40 meters under ground, will be delivered to Israel from a U.S. military base in Qatar. Israel has been bombarding Lebanon after Hezbollah killed eight and captured two Israeli soldiers, provoking Israel's biggest military campaign against Lebanon in 24 years. The fighting has left hundreds of civilians...

Why Israel? Why now? Though few Americans paid any attention at the time, in November of last year, Secretary of State John Kerry announced to the world that this summer would be defined by violence against the Jewish state. Almost as he had been tipped off, the Secretary of State warned Israel to make a deal with the likes of Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian parties who do not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, Kerry said, “Does Israel want a third intifada? … “I believe that if we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis; if we do not...

Egypt on Saturday called for an open-ended cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, urging Israel and Hamas to return to indirect talks after seven weeks of fighting punctuated by a number of failed truce attempts. The call from the foreign ministry came shortly after Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo. Egyptian officials did not say how they expected renewed talks to produce a different outcome after repeated failures. …