Isis

Since June 2014, when Islamic State attacked northern Iraq, the desks at Mar Ephrem seminary in Hamdaniya, a city 18 miles southeast of Mosul, have stood empty. Today, they are dusty and rooms once teeming with priests and nuns in training are dark; student ID cards, with titles such as ‘Syrian Catholic: Parish of Bashiqa, Iraq’, litter the floor and a statue of the Virgin Mary lies smashed. Now, Isis are gone. But in their wake an eerie quiet remains and the path of destruction is a visible reminder of their legacy, with thousands of houses destroyed in the fierce battle to retake the city last October. And for the Christians who live in Hamdaniya, the question remains: will they

It’s often said that the Trump administration is ‘isolationist’. This is not true. In fact, we are now witnessing a dramatic escalation in the militarisation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan. This has not been announced but it is happening, and much of it without consultation with Nato or other key allies, or any debate in Congress or the media. A few weeks ago, US aircraft carried out over 30 air strikes against Islamic militants in Yemen — almost the same as the number carried out there all last year. In Iraq and Syria there have been many reports of civilian casualties in US raids.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for yesterday’s deadly terror attack in Westminster. Isis described the man involved – a British-born jihadist who has been named by police as Khalid Masood – as a ‘soldier of Islamic State’. The terror group released a short statement, saying: ‘The attacker yesterday in front of the British Parliament in London was a solider of the Islamic State, executing the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations’. The statement from Isis was published by the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda outlet with links to the organisation. Despite claiming responsibility for the attack, however, Isis released no further details about the man involved. Police said

On the Israeli side of the Syrian border, near al-Quneitra, you can watch the war. From my vantage point on the hill, I see a town held by Jabhat al-Nusra and another held by Nusra’s enemy, Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Behind a hill in the distance, I’m told by my Israeli guide, is an area controlled by Isis. Near a road blockade, a sign reads ‘Mortal Danger. Any person who passes endangers his life’ — a point reinforced by the rumble of mortars exploding and the screams that follow. I’ve never heard anything like it. The photographer I’m with is braver than me, or perhaps more foolish. He ventures past the

The Afghans on the road in Serbia were wet from the rain. They were trying to hitch a ride into the border town of Presevo to make the way north to Hungary. Later I saw them sitting next to a train station drying their socks. Did they fear for the future? ‘This is nothing, we came from Syria,’ one of them said. That was in 2015 at the height of the refugee crisis as more than a million people sought refuge in the EU. Many of them had fled the conflict in Syria. But the traffic of people was not all in the same direction: Afghans, Lebanese, Tunisians, Uighurs from China, Hazaras

Europe’s unpreparedness to deal with the terrorist threat it is now facing is highlighted in two reports today. The Wall Street Journal has obtained a copy of the report prepared for the Belgium parliament on the failure of the Belgium authorities to stop the Islamic State terror cell who travelled from Belgium to carry out the 2015 Paris attacks. The report details a quite remarkable litany of incompetence, including the failure of the Belgium police to act on a warning that Salah Abdeslam had changed his social media profile picture to a picture of the Islamic State flag. The failure of Belgium’s various police and intelligence agencies to cooperate with

Yassine was one of the most popular teaching assistants at his primary school in Strasbourg. What is known in the French school system as an ‘animateur’, Yassine supervised the kids during their lunchbreak and in after-school activities. ‘Nice,’ ‘sociable’ and ‘attentive’ have been some of the words used by parents this week to describe the 37-year-old. Yassine had worked part-time at the school for a decade before he was taken on permanently in 2014 because of his popularity with the kids. Last weekend Yassine B [his surname hasn’t been disclosed] was arrested by the French security services after an eight-month surveillance operation. When police raided his flat they allegedly discovered

As the sun set over the frontline in northern Iraq on the first day of the long anticipated Mosul offensive, Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army soldiers began to celebrate the first victories over Islamic State. Almost a dozen villages had been taken yesterday, and more than 77 square miles liberated southeast of the Isis stronghold. The offensive to re-take Mosul, the last major city held by Isis in Iraq, has been more than a year in planning. It was long anticipated all along the hundreds of miles of frontline where the peshmerga and the Iraqi army have been fighting Isis. When I was in Tel Skuf in June last year, men would